Sketchtastic!

[element1988]

alright some 30 sec poses and thats it for now, gotta go out now, will be back later and maybe post some more, i need to keep pushing hard.

[Corean]

Just went through your sketchbook and I must say I'm digging your studies! The anatomy is coming along really well for you so keep those up. I'm seeing improvement in your faces. Doing 30 sec posemaniacs is definitely intense lol. Looks like you're starting to get the hang of it though. You've got lots of great advice in here so far so continue pushing.

[element1988]

did some heads...man it was a struggle. all from memory...gah its so hard. and they still stuck.

[Captain Maelstrom]

\
its just a little hard putting it into practice, finding the right shapes and so on.

Yeah, it is hard putting it into practice. I have this thing, where even if I am doing okay on contrast and shape/proportion in a sketch, my lines might be sketchy. If the tones are all working right, something's out of perspective. It's hard to apply everything in one sketch. Just try to keep juggling things in your head and thinking about them. Sooner or later you'll be able to juggle them all without dropping any.

And your last sketches are different. They don't look bad. The faces in particular are pretty expressive. I'd just move the left most head to the right so it's more on the neck. Right now, either his head is ET shaped, or his neck has a bulge in it.

I know it can be frustrating when your eyes are better than your hands. It just takes lots of time and practice. At least, from what I understand. My stuff is still n00b-ish too, haha.

Keep doing anatomy studies. Copy from different books/sites/pictures/artists, and most importantly from life. I know it's hard to coerce friends/family/neighbors but soon they'll think nothing of it. Offering cookies helps. : P

Seriously though, keep working. You have potential. I'll keep visiting. = )

[element1988]

A couple of really bad torsos. Im trying to do everything that i struggle with, attack my weaknesses. So there going to be a lot of crap being posted lol

[Craz]

Drawing portraits from life will help you immensely. Do really detailed studies of your own head and face from multiple angles for each pose. Do it until you build up a really confident knowledge of head structure. Also, look into some of the basic canon for proportion that's out there. Really, really invest in thinking about the overall form of the head, be thoughful and clear about your construction lines and don't stray from them. Do lots of portraits of other people, including many quick gestures. We're talking at least 50 quick head gestures each from reference and imagination.
As for putting in really dark dark and light lights, save those for the end. Work middle out and build up your values with a consistent and logical process. You can also work dark to light or light to dark, but middle out keeps you from going anywhere near extreme values until you know exactly what's up.

[element1988]

hmm 50 heads from ref, 50 heads from memory...i know thats not what you was getting at but i like the idea...im gunna do it! starting ................ Now!

[rumpenstiltzkin]

hey there, great studies, keep it up!

[element1988]

Got inspired while watching ironman 2, so for the first head, its iron man...doesn't look anything like him but give me a break im trying

[element1988]

Some more poses, this time only 15 secs each.

[element1988]

Man my eyes are hurting lol. Dunno how long ive been doing these for but i started when i got up and haven't stopped since and its dark now... haha im so slow i didn't even finish the page will finish soon. these are from imagination btw, i had 10 i did form ref but photoshop crashed so w/e.

[element1988]

Getting there...but i thought i had a handle on side views haven't done one for ages and now i cant do them haha oh well 1 more thing to work one .

These took a while at first, but now i can get through them pretty fast and they even end up looking better. All from imagination, i think im getting there. Ok now time for a page of heads from ref. Hmm actually i think i will do a few hours of posemanics 30 sec poses first. I don't want my poses getting worse because im focusing on heads.

Btw im not sure if ive said this before, but i really am looking for crits and comments, anything that will help me

[element1988]

these were 60 sec poses, there not any better then the 15 sec ones lol, i did more but i hate scanning now takes so long and i gotta keep putting paper in and whatnot Lmao at the coffee stains.

[xinranliu]

Hi
For your sketches, I would suggest using less lines, and really just put down a few clean, clear, concise and straight lines for the construction
Also for gestures (posemaniacs), I find that often less is more, instead of scribbling a bunch of lines, why not try to get the action in one or two strokes?

[element1988]

Yeah that's something ive been trying to work on.. i guess i just need more practice.... anyway! tiger...because umm there cool

One of my biggest rendering issues is where to put the darkest darks...they always look wrong, so i end up doing half the sketch dark black and then its got no darkest dark's again lol.

[papervampire]

hey man nice going on the studies try some longer studies though and maybe with pencil on paper, using the tablet at an early stage can cloud how much you get out of things like anatomy studies

[element1988]

hey man nice going on the studies try some longer studies though and maybe with pencil on paper, using the tablet at an early stage can cloud how much you get out of things like anatomy studies

Do you mind if i ask how exactly would looking at a screen instead of a piece of paper cloud how much i get out of studies? i don't really see a difference in what i do.

[element1988]

After some reading i wanted to put some ideas into practice. Ive been really struggling with the torso and poses (as you can see from some posts above lol) so ive been trying different techniques to get my head around it. The peanut shape seems to be working pretty well, and it doesn't feel so impossible any more to do a pose. ...yeah so im happy now lol.

Ok so what we got here? just some poses from memory that i tried to do with a few lines using the peanut for the torso and a few action lines. im happy with the way its working out, much easier now im still not great but i think its a improvement.



oops forgot to resize, 1 sec

[element1988]

30 sec poses, i put all my effort into using less lines... which resulted in half done or under detailed sketches I did notice tho that my hand does not want do what i tell it too

Something else, they started getting bigger.... i guess as i tried to get the lines right i felt i had to draw bigger, i dunno but im not happy with my skills...

[element1988]

Ok, so for the last few hours ive been painting over the same head. Just doing it over and over again trying to figure out where the light hits and where the shadows are because im soo bad at rendering. So here on the left we have the way i would normally render a head with frontal lighting, and on the right the way i did it after looking at a ton of refs and trying to work out where the light would actually hit. I think its an improvement, but ive got a feeling there still some stuff wrong with it.

Oh btw i do know that the head is pretty screwed up but i just did it fast so i could work on rendering. I would really like it if ppl could crit the improved head and tell me how i might make it better.

[element1988]

Heres my 10 sec drawings for today lol , i keep lowering the time, but surely its going to force me to capture the gesture? i hope

Just a side note: No1 is telling me if im doing ok or not? am i studying the right things? am i on the right track or going in the wrong direction? What should i be studying more of?

[element1988]

Thought i would try a head since i did all that rendering study stuff today. i think it came out ok, not great, i screwed up the neck. i think the heads i do from memory are getting better tho...

[element1988]

Tried to do a body from memory...but failed hard. The heads too small the legs are all screwed up and there's something weird going on with the chest but i cant figure it out

Maybe one day i will get this stuff down.

[a.k.a.Brady]

I can see some improvement in your drawings so keep it up. I found that the more I drew people the better my understanding of proportions and anatomy got even if I wasn't thinking about it.

On your face rendering, my guess is that you are looking at model or magazine photographs for reference? My advice is to not do that. Photographers purposely like flat lighting. They hate shadows, but an artist loves shadows (or should) since it reveals the form of an object, or a head in this case.

Also, when you are thinking of light from your imagination, think of it coming from one side or slightly above from one side. In your renderings you have the light coming directly from the top in front of the model.

And I don't know if you are doing this but from looking at it, it seems that you are confusing lines with shapes. When you render, you have to forget about the lines. For example, the nose would be defined by light on one side and the darker cheek on the other, not by 2 parallel patches of darkness, which if you think about it look like really fat lines.

Try this. Get a good photo of a face with light and shadow on it with the light coming from one or the other side. The get several sheets of colored paper ranging from black to several shades of grey to white. Then cut out shapes that match the light and dark on the photo and tape them down on another sheet of paper. Try to make it readable as a face.

This way you can train yourself to see the shapes of the shadows and lights, and get an idea of what to think about when you try to render.

Edit: Oh, and one more thing. When you render, don't put equal light or dark on both sides of the object, whatever it is. An object has a light side and a shadow side. So the light should (as a general rule) never be as bright on the dark side as the light side. There are probably exceptions to this but for now if you keep this as simple guideline it should help.

[pretentieuse]

Yeah, following up from what a.k.a.Brady said up there, you're using the...well...wrong kind of reference pictures (from what I can tell). I have problems with that too...I usually pull reference from catalogues and glossy magazines, which are just FULL of ridiculously flat pictures. We should do something about that, actually.

Your gesture drawings are decent. I'm incredibly impressed with your ability to get something down in 10 seconds. I would probably start hyperventilating.

One question, I guess: why the emphasis on drawing from imagination? I'm seriously a slave to reference, I really am, and I often fail to understand why drawing from imagination is so highly lauded, especially in an artist's infancy.

You're doing really well. I know scanning sucks. Art's all about patience, unfortunately. (And the payoff is someone looking at your work for ten seconds to criticize it...yuck) Don't get discouraged. Draw from life a lot. Be choosy with your references.

Who are your favorite artists?

[love tank]

yea so I have the opposite problem - my anatomy and and all that is somewhat decent from memory, but from reference it's terrible.

You however should not be ashamed of your gesturals, because they are amazing. 10 seconds is no time at all, but definitely keep doing them.

[element1988]

a.k.a.Brady: Yeah man, i have a really hard time trying to use shapes, not so much on things like the cheeks but things that have detail like eyes, im not sure how i would do and eye without lines lol. I will give that lighting from the side a try for next time

anniebelle: Reference always feels like a crutch to me, it feels like training wheels. just think about this, if you was trapped on a island and you only had a sketchbook wouldn't you want to still make great art even tho you cant look at refs? Besides i hate having to move the ref around or w/e ive only got a single 22" screen its annoying to try to fit everything and still have space to draw.

love tank: thx i will

[element1988]

some 10 sec poses to warm up with.

[element1988]

Tried to do some heads with different lighting but had a hard time finding refs so i had some make some of it up lol. if anyone has a pic of some heads with different lighting could you link it plz? thx.

Also...howd i do?

[element1988]

Been a rough few weeks for me, Ive really been trying to "fix" my weaknesses. Umm yeah im doing ok tho, done a lot of stuff on paper but im not in the mood to setup my scanner lol sorry Anyway this is what Ive been doing for the last day or so.

Basically Ive been looking at a few ref pix on what i wanna draw on google images then not looking again at any pictures until ive finished the drawing. I figured that way im going to struggle and force myself to remember what ive learned. On one of these i was just looking at it for almost 3 hours until i finally figured out what i needed to do.

Ok so the drawing that make me realize that i have to work though this noobyness was this one. It was so bad it actually made me study and draw more just to prove to myself that im better then this lol


and then after that i tried again...didnt work out much better.


Ok so now im getting pissed off right? so i go ok im not going to stop drawing until i fix these torso screw ups. and i sat there looking at a earlier version of this chick until it finally clicked for me. thank god


Ok so i wanted to see if i actually learned something, so i went back to that other drawing and tried to fix it. It worked out pretty well, im happy with my progress today