Brandon returns (dinosaurs, ancient warriors, and studies)

[mitchoo]

Nice sketchbook. I would recommend to study more from life and photo's. Maybe it's more boring and harder but you will learn a lot from it. And you get quick results with it for your own work. Also recommend Preston Blair for your cartoon work. Keep it up! Those stick figures are really good! You are already quit good with poses.

[Brandon Pilcher]

Here's something that has been troubling me lately: I have a hard time rendering the ball of the nose. Usually I draw a line underneath the septum (Exhibit A) even though I know that's not the most accurate way of drawing a nose, but the problem is that when I don't draw that line and instead use just shading, the nose seems flat like a gorilla's (Exhibit B). I don't give you a good sense of the ball. How can I do that?

[Barefoot]

Hey! you have definitely been improving.
I think you have the human frames pretty much dot on, the problem comes when you add meat to the bones, have you tried studying anatomy yet? I can see you have done some arm and leg stuff, but have you tried putting everything together? I'm only saying this because your digi-art people don't seem to have the same feeling of 'flow' as your pencil stuff.
So, yeah, if you ask me, you should take those frames (which are good) and start trying to add muscle to them.
I like your dinosaurs, they really have life to them.

Oh yeah, and I agree with mitchoo, do some studies from real life, even if you just rush down some quick sketches of other passengers while you're on the bus / train. Take a pencil and a small notebook with you wherever you go, if you have the chance, sit down and draw someone.

[Brandon Pilcher]

1) More arm and leg studies (I know I draw the limbs way too much, but they're among my weakest areas)

2) Egyptian bodyguard

[Brandon Pilcher]

Oh yeah, and I agree with mitchoo, do some studies from real life, even if you just rush down some quick sketches of other passengers while you're on the bus / train. Take a pencil and a small notebook with you wherever you go, if you have the chance, sit down and draw someone.

As a matter of fact, I was just doing a few facial studies (although I used photo refs instead of life) to get individual proportions and shapes right. I'll upload them tonight.

[ismo]

Nice sketchbook, man. I really like your historical subjects.

Last figure shows you're improving. Just keep crankin out those anatomy studies and also try to draw from life more if you really want to progress fast.

[Ghast]

hey thanks for checking my sketchbook out. I like that your work is all historic subject matter, its a nice change of pace. I think what will really help your figures (in adition to some good old life drawing and anatomy studies) is practicing some planar studies of the face. It will help you understand how light hits certain areas and not others, where the features are EXACTLY, etc. Keep with it!

[Brandon Pilcher]

First are facial studies of four Middle Eastern men that were drawn from photos found on Google Image Search. I figured that sketching real people's faces will give me a better appreciation for individual variation (a lot of my earlier characters all had similar-looking faces).

The next two are a bunch of stick figures arranged in various poses. These are really fun to draw and I hope they will help me draw more dynamic figures. All but one were drawn from imagination (the one exception used a drawing found in a how-to-draw book as a ref).

Now onto studying the planes of the face as Ghast just advised...

[Brandon Pilcher]

Here's one little facial planes and shading study:

[Brandon Pilcher]

Another Egyptian-themed drawing, but this time it's a slave rather than an ethnic Egyptian. In retrospect, I think I bulked up his leg muscles too much.

[Funddevi]

Keep it up, Brandon! I love the motion of the figures in #98.

Apologies if you've gotten this advice before, but something that may help with your illustrations is mirroring them horizontally every once in a while. This should help you to see any errors you might have made with eye position, perspective, etc.

Keep going strong!

[Cbee]

Hello Brandon,
Your gesture studies have improved greatly from your first posts! Now to just translate those studies into something that could be a final piece of art! Just keep building on those sketches and making a more finished body. : )

Keep on practicing you can only get better!

[Shua-bot]

From page 1 to 4 i can see a definite improvement. Keep it up. Try to make your lines loose and suggestive instead of set in stone. Maybe do some random sketches of some stuff around your house. Nice and loose and relaxed. Dont forget to draw for yourself.

[DariusDs]

thanks for visiting my sb. i like your studies though i have nothing to do with anatomy but they look very fluid. i saw that you asked about good pencils for shading and i believe that if you want to achieve great contrast 4b-6b is the best choice (but this works for me). however i've seen many h graphite users with great expressiveness.

[Brandon Pilcher]

Some random studies:

[Brandon Pilcher]

Wavy/lightly curled hair study using a photo of Gabrielle Union as a reference.

[GHudston]

There's definitely some progress here but I feel that you would benefit from some direction. Here's a few things that helped me to move forward:

It's very important that you learn to loosen up a bit, try doing more quick gestures and don't limit yourself to starting with a strict stick man. Instead, try to capture the overall shape and movement of what you're trying to draw in as short a time as possible. It'll suck to begin with, but eventually it'll help you to get your drawings looking a lot less stiff.

Draw hundreds of basic shapes to train yourself to put lines and curves where you want them: circles, straight lines, cubes in perspective etc.

You'll also notice that you are trying to draw an outline around everything, most evident in the problems you're having drawing the nose. Look at some artists work that you like and think about where they place their lines and why. Sometimes the line that you don't draw is just as important as the line that you do!

Keep it up! You're doing very well!

[kmoeini]

Hey Brandon, thanks for stopping by my sketchbook. The hair looks good. Front views can be tough because of the symmetry. You can divide the face roughly into thirds: Hairline to eyebrows, eyebrows to bottom of nose, and bottom of nose to bottom of chin.
Looks like the chin needs to come down a bit.

[Brandon Pilcher]

And now for something completely different...

Gesture drawing of a Triceratops and two chimpanzee studies:

[a la bapsi]

Here's something that has been troubling me lately: I have a hard time rendering the ball of the nose. Usually I draw a line underneath the septum (Exhibit A) even though I know that's not the most accurate way of drawing a nose, but the problem is that when I don't draw that line and instead use just shading, the nose seems flat like a gorilla's (Exhibit B). I don't give you a good sense of the ball. How can I do that?

hey, this might help.
http://www.stanprokopenko.com/blog/2009/06/draw-nose/

[Brandon Pilcher]

Hand and feet studies:

[Brandon Pilcher]

Pharaoh Rameses II leaping into battle with an ax:

[NickyBeats]

lots of nice work in here . things like anatomy, and proportions need some work, but your headed in a good direction! keep pushing hard!

[GHudston]

That gesture of the Triceratops is very strong. Keep it up!

[Brandon Pilcher]

That gesture of the Triceratops is very strong. Keep it up!

As a matter of fact, that gesture was preparation for a bigger drawing, but I haven't colored that yet.

[Brandon Pilcher]

Here's the Triceratops I promised in the last post, now fully colored:

[TomDeVis]

hey, cool to see you are doing anatomy studies, try to build up your muscles, draw loosely the bigger masses.
Keep it up !

[SquidInc]

Hey there - thanks for the sketchbook comment.

And its really great to see you drawing so many different things. I agree that the anatomy could use a bit of work, but you're definitely going in the right direction. That triceratops is bloody brilliant though - although maybe you could work towards softening your colours
Also, maybe you could try constructing your characters using really simple shapes - to get a better feel for where they're positioned in relation to the rest of the character (e.g. the arm compared to the torso).

Otherwise, cool beans. Keep it up

[Ludic]

Heeeey, it's good that you're working on your anatomy and all that. For your colored works,
try using both hard and soft brushes for some variation.

[Brandon Pilcher]

After someone complained that my depiction of the Numidian king Juba I (here) looked too tribal like a stereotypical African bush warrior, I decided to do a warrior from a more advanced civilization, so here's an elite spearman from ancient Nubia. His bronze scale armor was inspired by that worn by the Nubian god Apedemak.