themegagod (randy's) sketch book

[themegagod]

EDIT: This sketchbook was badly neglected for about a year. regular work should begin appearing at the end of page 2.

this is my first attempt at making a sketch book, so if anything is buggy, i'm kinda winging this....
anyway, i want everyone to critique my drawings and paintings, until i cry. yes i want you guys to be constructive, but i have a lot to learn, and anything you guys could teach me, or any hurdles you can help me over... i would be glad to take a verbal lashing in return.
in other words, don't be afraid to give me all you got; i'm a grown little man, and i can take it.

i'm 19 years old, and i've been drawing since i was 5 or even younger. still i have a far, far way to greatness, and i plan on like everyone else, using this space to get help and push myself to draw, draw, draw, and maybe paint or sculpt, or whatever.

so without much further adue, i'm going to begin posting some of my work.

what i'm going to try and do is put my works in chronological order so a change should become apparent. i have a lot of "completed" work that i have saved, so it may be a while until i get to my true sketch book. anyway...

these first four pieces are all around two years old, and they are what got me into drawing AP classes in atlantic city. i know these aren't very good.... at least i know now... if anyone sees any redeeming qualities in these, please explain to me... where? how would you make these good?

[themegagod]

so then i began drawing AP and a painting class... both high school level... and i began to get a bit better at creating, slightly pleasing images. i began working with water color (which i still have no skill in), and trying new drafting techniques under the instruction of my new teacher.

at this time i also was beginning to work on a sketch book (thats for a later post) and i was enrolling into the art institute of philadelphia (in my opinion, a very very bad idea, for animation). i was drawing a good deal at the time, but i wasn't really trying, and i could kick my self for it... if only i was a contortionist.

again with my eyes today, these things look horrible, but if you can critique them without vomiting, go right ahead.

[themegagod]

so now i started trying to get my skill up. i wasn't trying hard, but i did start to feel i could do better than i was. so i began doing bits of good art at home... or in english class. It's true english and math classes are the best places to draw.

one of the things i began playing a big focus on was anatomy, and musculature. i had taken anatomy and physiology the year prior, and found i liked drawing muscles. a guy who draws people with a lot of muscles... unheard of!

some of these thing were starting not to look simply bad, and now only kinda bad. things were actually becoming critique-able. so in other words, please critique away.

(sorry for the image quality.. i'm learning my scanner AND how to use this site , aka converting images to the right sizes)

[Samszym]

Welcome to CA.org! Keep posting stuff here, it's a great way to stay motivated and get help from people. So do you have any anatomy books you study from? If you don't know about him, look for some books by George Bridgeman, like his book the complete guide to drawing from life. I also suggest looking up some books by Andrew Loomis, like figure drawing for all it's worth or creative illustration. his stuff's out of print, but you can find it online and it's great to learn from. Draw from life. Good luck figuring out your scanner, and keep drawing!

[Mussy]

hey thanks for posting on my SB

i would say ur anatomy studies are very good, u understand the body well. Some of the work is quite abstract well, so ur drawing skill is good. Your painting skills need to improve, as the painting u done looks flat im not much of a teacher but i think u need to add more hues and saturation of colours to bring out the objects, almost like the one u done with the bottle infront of the red fabric, the fabric works to an extent, if u pushed it a little more it would work well, as for the botle its pretty flat cos it lacks definition.

Are you going to learn how to paint digitally or just looking to improve ur overall skill for traditional media?.. which ever path u choose goodluck and great start i must say, as u seem to understand certain things like the way light works, u just need to put into function now by learning how to do it

p.s the quality is quite bad lol, maybe take a photograph even if its from a phone and upload?

[themegagod]

so it is hopefully apparent that i began to get better. at this time i was spending a lot more time in my sketchbooks, and i began working on my AP concentration. initially this was going to be a small comic, but then this changed after becoming annoyed with the monotony. some times i really regret drawing comics, because although i learned sequential story telling, a great aspect for animation, i never really honed in on the necessity for photo realistic drawing capabilities.
my understanding of tone, value, and color all were getting better from where i had started. if you compare this painted self portrait (a monochromatic based off of a separate b & w painting i had done) to my first pencil self portrait, you can see that now i at least look human, although as required i had to be making a strange face, and being me, i had to make a very strange face.

now i imagine that the critiquing can be even more in-depth, as these get more like real drawings and paintings. In fact i still like the coloring done on the glass with the flower inside of it, the paper bag study.

[themegagod]

a part of my drawing class was we needed to create a series of drawings based on a single subject, and these were meant to be done throughout the course of the school year. i did most of these in the course of one night. i could really punch myself....

anyway, these drawings were my attempt to express problems of the world, or american society, i guess depending on what... the fears of people manifested as monsters and mutants.

i feel like at this point, almost one year ago, i was beginning to learn tonal quality, but i still had issue with the ideas of composition, and i completely ignored the bg in most cases. still critique away!...

(wow computer paper doesn't go well with my scanner at all. these are old images. so i'm not too concerned, this is really to set up a base line for how i have grown artistically... but for future reference, when i want something to come out well, i don't just batch it up and send it out. )

[themegagod]

i had finished drawing class, and all i had left to wrap up was my painting class. i had been accepted into the art institute of philadelphia, and as far as i was concerned i was going to go. just had to pass class.

the following are all done in acrylic, a color medium, i have some experience with, so some of these may actually look pleasing to viewers. still these paintings, i wouldn't say have that completed look.... even now, looking at these i can't figure out why.... these seem nice as far as color and design, but they don't seem to have that final... "umph!"

from this final set from classes my favorite by far are the mountain, and the orange. my teacher wasn't too fond of the orange, but i kinda like how it has an almost foreboding quality, as though the orange has issues mentally... even though it's just an orange.

[themegagod]

so after that full year of drawing, badly, being accepted into a school that may not have fulfilled my needs, and wasting my time going to open houses for a school that i was lead to believe was basically the the best option, and almost the only option, i wised up and decided not to go.

the AI of philadelphia, does not have many transferable credits... it's an art school that doesn't require a portfolio, and from what i could find of alumni work, not much of it seemed to be... "jaw-dropping". in other words the school didn't seem like it was for, me, but i had become lazy while thinking it was. i got into the school with almost no skill and thought that meant i was good... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.... i just made myself laugh.

so, as it went, i had no type of amazing portfolio, nor did i even know where i wanted to go. i continued to doodle, draw my own characters and begin animations using flash, none of which i've finished. this was how i spent that summer... than i began to take classes at my local CC....

then i found the school i wanted to go into, around winter of 2009, the beginning of 2010, and i realized how far behind i was in terms of where i needed to be.

so this is where i began to teach myself... this is going to lead to where i am now... hopefully i can get some really good criticisms, and never look back.

[Lizzybeth]

First thing's first. Image quality, I'm just going to be blunt. The pictures of your work are really bad, both scans and camera. I don't know what you're dealing with on your computer but it looks like you're not bringing them into any sort of post program to crop, rotate, tweak if necessary, resize, and properly save. #1 problem, they're all .gifs! You don't want to use .gif unless you're saving a smiley, certain web images, or want all your pictures to look like a throwback to 1995. Fix? Save things as jpgs. It is the standard for compressed images and the best thing for posting your images online. I don't know if you have photoshop or not. Photoshop is of course the idea image editor, but you can find tons of other stuff to use. I think there may even be a toned down version of photoshop on the web that is free to use (might have to register though). There's also always the GIMP, which is open source, powerful, and free to download. All this can get confusing quick. Take your time to play around with things, go through a couple tutorials/walkthroughs, read up about general tools and image types. Sounds like a lot but sorry, welcome to the internet. This is what we use here, so buckle up and learn it.

As for your actual work, it's a little hard to critique since a lot of it is old, some of it is upside down, and the image quality really doesn't help things. I think you could really benefit for doing some hardcore observational work. Set up still lifes and draw draw draw. Do stuff like sight measuring to keep your angles and proportions in check and relavent to each other. I thing your use of tone and shade could use a lot of work. Drawings should have clear areas of shadow like this, this, and this. There is shadow mass, and there is light mass. The darkest areas of the light mass are still lighter than the lightest of the shadow, and vice versa. Effectively using shadow mass not only will help describe the form it will also help you create compositional focal points and overall add interest to a drawing.

A quick note on color. Alot of your pigments look like straight up ones from the tube/pan/whatever, with little to no mixing. I highly recoment limiting yourself to just red, yellow, blue, and white. Avoid using black to make darks. Mix complementary colors, blues, and purples (that you've already mixed yourself) to get darker tones. Avoid using white and really limiting it in mixes, it sucks out color. You should mix all your colors. They will look so much richer, more subtle, and less like default store bought junk. Of course you can use other colors to mix but I really advise against it right now because I think you need to learn about color at a more basic level and become more comfortable in mixing and using them before moving on to other things. At this point too I'd really advise to do most of your studies in black and white to strengthen your use of values. Strong drawing and use of value are essential skills to effectively use color. And of course the best advice I can give is draw draw draw! It's all fine and dandy what you did before, but what are you going to do now?

[themegagod]

lizzy thank you! i like bluntness.
I'm about to start preparing my newer drawings, painting, etc, and i'm going to try out the different forms and such. i just really wanted to try and get all i think 40 of these up here, so that viewers, or critics can see where i started. in other words i just changed these all so they'd fit onto the site, changing them all using a general conversion, not changing each according to it's own needed criteria.
the reason i put these up was i heard that drawing is like one's signature, it is unique to each person, and it doesn't change much. i figure this stays true for ones issues, so i figure having old drawings show really clearly how and where one has been messing up.

so now, i have recently began playing with some more graphite drawings, and i've begun for the first time that i can remember, begun doing some facial and hand studies. I've been beginning to draw portraits, and i find they are actually pretty good. i hope to have these up later tonight, or rather tomorrow, because in one hour, it's tomorrow.

i think tomorrows drawing will be a still life of some kind... maybe in charcoal since i haven't used it much....

anyway, thank you for some good advice.

[themegagod]

this is a recent collection of newer work. this work extends from about 4 months back until only a few days ago. yes there is a large gap, but this area involves old sketches, and doodles. there were many studies, and many many character designs for animations, i never got around to finishing. basically, these are the only worth while images i did in awhile.

so now here we are, i tried to keep these in sequential order. As you can see i have been growing as an artist, but i have a long road ahead, and i need help to get there.

so please, hold no punches. i need to get better!

i'd like to thank lizzybeth for basically teaching me how to upload images. if there are any old images that anyone really wants to see in better quality, just ask and i can do it... so now without much further a due, i am going to read a bit of a text book, write a paper... sleep for maybe an hour, and then start drawing some more.

hope you can almost enjoy what i do!


and please, if there's an area you can see i need to work on, tell me! tell me how to fix it, and i will try my damnedest to follow said instructions. i want to get better!

[themegagod]

so gonna try to get this up in the next 15 minutes before it's tomorrow. started doing loomis studies at 2 AM... got 7 pages of sketches. trying to get better. any critiques welcome. help me get better!

[themegagod]

so today i spent less time drawing. had to read some of my textbook. got to finish this chapter and take a test tomorrow... fun.
any way, what i have today, Is a WIP of a value study for my intro to the visual arts class, and i have a couple of loomis drawings...
and a detail drawing.
any help is helpful : )

thank you for reading this!

(okay... images are attached and in jpg... but not showing up when i preview, so i'm going to submit and hope for the best.... it should work, but if not i'll just have to attache them to a later post)

[ColorExcursion]

The recent portraits show great improvement I think a big issue with your work in the beginning was muddiness. Maybe less shading with the side of the pencil? Keep postin'

[themegagod]

hey thanks, i'm trying!
i'm not sure if it was shading with the side or just bad uploading. i learned a bit on how to do that. either way, i prefer doing hatch work now, somehow i find it more stimulating to look at, so there will be much less "muddiness", at least that is the hope. as well looking at the first tonal drawings i've done versus the present i can see that i can now see many more areas of tone, many more in between tones.
anyway this sums up to thanks!

[Sanjo]

Hey mate Thanks for your critique!

You have one nice sketchbook here, nice and broad compilation

I really like your avatar (or ID) pic, pretty cool! Just study more and keep it up!

~Jeezee

[redpandafire]

I'm glad you've started Loomis figure studies, because I was just about to suggest the same thing. Your work has A LOT of expression and I wish I could convey my thoughts that well. But with that said, the realistic accuracy is missing. We need accuracy in order to capture nature in a way that our viewers can relate to. Too much expression can fail to touch the audience inside.

I notice that in your elephant-behind-a-wall study, that you started immediately to detail the stones in the wall. However, its much more important to establish the entire picture first before detailing. Get large areas completed first, with the correct values in place to set the stage. Then go in and start to seperate the light areas from the dark ones by adding more values. Then detail by adding more values... its a long process, but the key is to never focus on one area for any length of time. Keep moving around the canvas and establish the general shapes first!

Good luck!

[themegagod]

Your work has A LOT of expression and I wish I could convey my thoughts that well. But with that said, the realistic accuracy is missing....

I notice that in your elephant-behind-a-wall study, that you started immediately to detail the stones in the wall. However, its much more important to establish the entire picture first before detailing. Get large areas completed first, with the correct values in place to set the stage. Then go in and start to seperate the light areas from the dark ones by adding more values. Then detail by adding more values... its a long process, but the key is to never focus on one area for any length of time. Keep moving around the canvas and establish the general shapes first!

Good luck!

yeah, i started out drawing cartoons... i never copied anyone's work, and i learned to distort, BEFORE i learned to draw. now i'm paying the price, i have to work backwards, and needless to say it's a b***h. i'm trying to break down my whole way of creating and relearn... i'm happy to be seeing some improvements, but it's going to be a long process... good thing i'm passionate!

about the elephant... i was trying to go from square to square... and as you said.. things got distorted.... i'm going to upload the new image in a few.. it's almost done, and it's again, very expressive... not very accurate...

time to draw!

[themegagod]

all of these were done august 1, but got caught up doing dishes and couldn't upload an hour ago like i wanted. anyway, just got into loomis anatomy. finished reading a chapter of my text book, almost finished my value study, sketched my fat head cat, and i did a doodle, because my friend told me about his rat sleeping on his pillow and i compared it to a kid covered in blood with a knife... no i'm not normal... anyways, heres what i did today,

plus i turned my eraser into a baked chicken.

all critics welcome. please do your job and make me better! lol, in other words critique the hell out of me! tell me what i should do so i don't waste too much of my time!

[themegagod]

too late and too tired to make un upload for an hour ago... had to write an essay, and have to do another one tomorrow... i'm just going to upload the ones that go up an hour ago later today... sory if anyone cares that i upload daily... this is my first fail...

[BOMACHADO]

Those last pieces are really cool man! I think you progressed a lot!

Keep doing those studies, dude. I'll try to follow ya.

[themegagod]

so i didn't stop drawing, i just stopped posting. i was busy taking a test and playing catch up in class. I finished the value wip... sorry to anyone who cares, but i forgot to take a picture of it before giving it to my prof, so it should be a couple of days before i can upload it, but keep your fingers crossed cuz i might get it back tomorrow. i also read through around half of bridgman's constructive anatomy, a truly engrossing book. then of corse i ate and slept, i know a waste of time, but i find it helps me draw. anyway...

what you will see before you are:

Some anatomy studies, one set by a german author, another by bridgman

a paper machie sculpture of Prometheus; a project i'm doing for class... maybe get some wips of me working on the bird.

me becoming aquatinted with charcoal, mostly doing bridgman studies. there is are also a couple of imagination drawings ( a face.. an eye...) and a study of a face done by a photograph (the old man)...

several sketchy drawings.. these are wips i'm working on for my art class. my contribution to our teams project.. wish me an A!!!

these were done over the passed 3 days, and so was the elephant, value.
i need to stop writing and continue drawing...

hope you enjoy!!!

[Sweron]

I read your story here and you started to study good Just keep it up!

[Black Spot]

There is a big improvement from the start. I wouldn't use the grid system too much as all it does is make you copy slavishly without considering the whole form.

[Mikko Voipio]

Man you're working hard. Thanks a lot for popping by my thread and leaving that nice comment. It really made my day. You're off to a great start here. The only thing that makes one a great artist is the amount of work and thought he puts into art. There is no reason why we all can't be awesome it's just dedication that separates the good artists from hobbyists. Keep on working hard man. I'll be following your progress.

[cgaddict]

You have one of the most unique styles I've come accross, very interesting imagery and approach. Nice to see you tackling the head studies, Loomis is especially very useful - just keep an eye out for your proportions, they can be a bit off at times. Other than that, you're doing great, keep practicing!

[maanas.93]

you are working hard and you deserve every line in your art . lots of improvemnt man . you will surely get into ringling .. practise more figures

[Thelbsc]

I can definitely see improvement throughout. Very energetic style on a few of your pieces! I thoroughly enjoy your loomis and Bridgeman studies, motivates me to do a few myself. Your artistic drive is inspiring to say the least, keep at it!

[themegagod]

thank you every one who has commented. i really need to update this sketch book. i was going to do that daily. we can all see how that went, lol. i think i may start again. it's just such a pain to photograph everything and then edit it, and then upload... damn. i have to stop complaining and just do it.