Quest for improvement: I MUST GET BETTER

[Antgirl]

UPDATE February 20 2013



CHECK THE LAST PAGE FOR RECENT ART!!!!



Update Feb. 2012 Wanted to change the old picture that comes out in the sketchbook preview. 1st pic is from 2012.
CHECK LAST PAGE FOR MORE RECENT ART!!!!!!!!!


Updated: Aug. 2010. Working on drawing more often and trying new things. Learning about anatomy and the basics and trying to do well in that before attempting anything else. Any advice/critique is welcomed and desired. I am here to learn.

[Zeitwolf]

Welcome Antgirl, you've chosen the right community to improve

For your first picture, let me recommend you to leave less space between the hero an his foes. Make the image more dense. Look at the move screenshots to get a tense atmosphere for your composition.

And take a look into the daily sketchgroup. It's a helpful thing to handle daily tasks.

[Antgirl]

The golden retriever portrait, the man on the horse and the cat reaching over the table are the most recent ones. The rest are from last year or before that. I used some photo references for some of them.

[Taefa51]

That retriever is epic! And it's nice to see another Courage/Okami/Avatar fan, haha.

Keep up with the life studies. While you clearly have a wonderful sense of imagination, drawing from observation will help you tenfold. Push your grasp of shading and perspective; you're showing great hints of it in your dog and wolf drawings.

[Antgirl]

Thanks for commenting Bethany and Taefa51. Most of what I draw ends up being animals (especially canines) so my skills with human anatomy are not very good, I need lots of practice on that field. Right now I'm doing studies of human anatomy by drawing specific parts and understanding how they work. Just thought I'll start from the very basics. Currently I'm working on form, to later experiment with light and shadow. I hope I can post some more stuff as soon as I'm done with class for the semester. Thank you guys.

[Antgirl]

A quick sketch of my ps3 controller. Screwed up in proportions and perspective bu it I forced myself to finish the drawing instead of throwing it away or leaving it for "later" and never going back to it. Let's see if I can keep this rhythm.

[Antgirl]

Practicing drawing the eyes. The two at the top were done without reference after watching a vid showing "how to draw eyes" on youtube, I don't remember the the username of the artist, it probably was Sycra. And the two at the bottom were drawn from reference pics I looked at in a google search. Any recommendations on what I should try to practice next? I just need to start somewhere.

[Antgirl]

A quick doodle of a killer whale coursing through the bottom of the ocean. Done in queekypaint at queeky.com. If you want to see the video of the session you can go there. http://www.queeky.com/gallery/image/orca-wip There's not much to see. I might finish this in PS.

[Antgirl]

Splashed some more colors on the whale and started some Loomis studies on the shaping of the face and the different perspectives it can be drawn from. I especially had fun drawing the cartoony faces.

[redpandafire]

I dont think your art is silly, just very early and misguided. The drawing of the leopard and the eyes study show you can sit down and draw clean continous lines while slowly figuring out the form. I think you'd improve greatly if you took things slower and scratched less on the page. Save the scratching for your value study. Anyhow, good start, hope to see more.

[Antgirl]

I dont think your art is silly, just very early and misguided. The drawing of the leopard and the eyes study show you can sit down and draw clean continous lines while slowly figuring out the form. I think you'd improve greatly if you took things slower and scratched less on the page. Save the scratching for your value study. Anyhow, good start, hope to see more.

Thanks redpanda. I'm slowly working on it. I've always rushed things, its a bad habit of mine, I want results immediately but I know this I can't rush. Its a process and one learns through the journey. Be sure you'll see more art soon.

[Antgirl]

I didn't draw much yesterday because I was visiting my father's family. I actually took my laptop with me but my older brother decided he wanted to watch Avatar the Last Airbender on it so didn't do much progress. Just another life study like the controller, this time my laptop. There are tons of things wrong with it but I'd be doing more of these. Oh and I didn't draw the keyboard keys cause it was hard to do so while my bro was typing. By the way if anyone has links to speedpainting, drawing videos please share. I love to see them and they keep me inspired.

[Antgirl]

Hey! Well this is the first portrait/face I've drawn in a long while, but I thought I'll give it a shot. Pointers are welcomed. I used a reference pic from faestock on Deviantart. This is the link to her account profile http://faestock.deviantart.com/

[Antgirl]

Summer classes and a shitty real life have prevented me from doing proper studies. I've just been doodling every now and then. Couldn't find proper reference for the second picture (which is a scene in one of my stories about a father comforting his young son) If I find a good enough ref pic I might do a full scale painting.

[Antgirl]

Random stuff I drew today to pass the time in a class.

[Antgirl]

Trying to build the simple face shape,practicing angles, no reference.

[Antgirl]

Horse I drew, I'm aware head's too small for his body. Some shading practice with colored pencils, I just felt like drawing something colorful and did that and the flower. Another still life, this time my foot, my toes look like chess pieces. And lastly an Alien from the Alien series which I re-watched last week, I can never resist drawing one of these beasties each time I see the movies.

[Antgirl]

Male figure study, referenced and using A. Loomis' book on figure drawing as a guideline. Took me about half an hour to forty five mins in all. I had done some shading to define a little bit of form but the scanner did away with it all. If anyone has some pointers please comment. Getting advice is the reason I'm on this site.

[Antgirl]

Tried to draw things with less strokes. Had fun doing the crocodile/snake/whatever the hell it is creature at the bottom.

[Antgirl]

Gave myself a treat and bought some oil pastels I found. Only tried painting with pastels once before years and years ago. Used a little bit of water at the end to blend the colors in the landscape pic. The chick was my first attempt at coloring what I drew with the pastels (I think it shows). Everything is from imagination this time. I'll draw more figure studies later today or tomorrow. Going to try and keep this daily.

[Antgirl]

I totally forgot about this one. Thought I share it too.

[Timaz]

Draw MOAR!
Have a good ratio of studies(Bridgman/Loomis FTW), referenced work, and work totally from imagination.
A good way of making studies (at least, it works for me) is drawing a copy of what you want to study, then close the book and try to draw it out of the top of your head. It's hard, I know, but for me it worked wonders for memorizing the muscles in the arm.

[Antgirl]

Draw MOAR!
Have a good ratio of studies(Bridgman/Loomis FTW), referenced work, and work totally from imagination.
A good way of making studies (at least, it works for me) is drawing a copy of what you want to study, then close the book and try to draw it out of the top of your head. It's hard, I know, but for me it worked wonders for memorizing the muscles in the arm.

Thanks Timaz. I'm working on reading and understanding the Loomis/Bridgman books right now actually. I may be posting some studies related to that soon. I'll see how your technique works for me. Can't hurt to try. Thanks a lot for the advice and the time.

[Tim Murphy]

I'm not all that good myself, so I can't give really specific advice, so I'll just say draw everything and anything you can all you can; but don't forget to have fun with it, yaknow?

[Antgirl]

I'm not all that good myself, so I can't give really specific advice, so I'll just say draw everything and anything you can all you can; but don't forget to have fun with it, yaknow?

*Nods* Yes. It is always wise to not make the learning process painful or else it becomes counterproductive. Thanks for taking the time to look through my sketchbook.

[Antgirl]

Hey everybody. Sorry for the lack of updates, I've been busy getting ready for the new semester at the university next week and haven't had much respite. These are from the past Saturday. All of them stills of things around my house and the male torso was refs from a google pic, the random lines and scratches on the body are supposed to be scars since it was originally gift art of an original character for a friend.

[Antgirl]

Hey everyone. I wasn't able to update or draw as much for a while because I just started a new semester at the university and what's more I was out of power for a week because of a hurricane. But I have a few sketches, most are stills and one fanart doodle I thought I might share.

[Antgirl]

Managed to squeeze in a still life between classes. Its a little blurry thanks to my scanner and that the lines are really light in the original. I'll darken the lines and update the pic later. I just wanted to upload something today.

[Antgirl]

Gosh! A week between updates. Two more stills drawn during my Spanish class. A classmate on the top and my professor at the bottom (her eyes are partially closed because she was looking at the text in her hands btw). I wish I could update more often but until I fall into pace with my new class schedule or my workload diminishes I can just squeeze in stills every now and then. Though I'm starting to like drawing from life. These two were done in about 7 minutes, I don't know how much time each one took me individually though.

[Antgirl]

I think I'm kind of liking drawing still lifes.