Brandon returns (dinosaurs, ancient warriors, and studies)

[Brandon Pilcher]

Some human face and nose studies:

[Brandon Pilcher]

I wanted to draw a biracial character, so here's a guy who's half Greek and half Egyptian.

[Brandon Pilcher]

Crude sketch of an earthen mound-temple from the ancient Mississippian culture which once thrived in eastern North America until 1500 AD:

[Brandon Pilcher]

A couple of days ago I bought a set of 36 Copic markers for $251 and have been using them to color my drawings ever since. Here's a sampling of my new Copic work:

[Brandon Pilcher]

And now for something completely different...a still-life of my desk lamp.

[Velocity Kendall]

jeez louise are you nuts? Spending £200(!!!!!) on markers and then using them to just colour in bog standard flat areas of colour is a insane waste of money. You could get the same results with some crayola felt pens from the supermarket for pennies. Or photoshop. For free.
Check out what skillful use of copics can produce; and be aware, they run out real fast colouring in entire pages of green grass...

[Brandon Pilcher]

Honestly, I only bought them because a DA friend of mine was using them and I felt inspired by her art. But now that you mention it...unless you buy a lot of intermediate colors, markers in general are not great for blending.

Maybe I could sell them online somewhere.

Anywhere, here's a portrait of a bald Native American dude that I drew and colored before seeing your post.

[BlackDelphin]

Hello Brandon, thank you for the nice comment you left in my sketch book.

I think you have a nice start in here, but you can do more. Challenge yourself!
Do anatomy studies: bammes,hogarth, bridgman,loomis, etc etc perspective, value studies and so on. Make your horizon even wider.
And then, try applying them to your own characters, study from life, study after masters, but most important,
understand what you are drawing, don't just copy!

[Brandon Pilcher]

An experiment with drawing cartoony faces. I enjoyed creating this ethnically diverse cast of portraits from a variety of shapes.

[Lightship69]

Hi Brandon

I just thought I would swing by and see what youre up to buddy, and youre definately on the up mate. AS for your pens $250 or whatever dont sell them work with them find some tutorials online and get your moneys worth out of them mate.

Oh and heres a link to the loomis books on .pdf format I dont know if you have them or not so here you go :-

http://www.placidchaos.com/AM/index..../andrew_loomis

all the best matey and keep it coming.

[Velocity Kendall]

its easier to learn markers on products as they can be more boxy and have less complex surfaces. then work up.
pencils compliment them really well too as does scanning and PSing over the top. CTRL-Z +scanned marker drawings is excellent.

http://www.idsketching.com/toolbox/m...orial-luggage/

[Brandon Pilcher]

These two studies, one of an arm and one of a male torso, are remarkable because whereas most of my anatomy studies were done using diagrams like the ones in the Loomis books, these were done using photographs. One thing I notice about photographs compared to anatomy diagrams is that people in photographs seem to wrinkle a lot more.

[Brandon Pilcher]

Normally I wouldn't show these on ConceptArt.org since they're not particularly well drawn or colored, but I loved the ideas behind them so much that I still wanted to share them with people.

The first drawing in this post was inspired by the Biblical myth of Adam and Eve, but it depicts a loving pair of Homo sapiens idaltu, ancestors of modern humans who lived 200,000 years ago. I actually titled it "The Real Adam and Eve" on DeviantArt.

The second drawing is also romantic and has a Biblical inspiration, but this time I've drawn Jesus Christ having a passionate moment with his female disciple Mary Magdalene. There are rumors that Jesus and Magdalene were lovers or even a married couple, so I wanted to draw them together.

[Brandon Pilcher]

Portrait of a Middle Eastern woman:

[Brandon Pilcher]

Unfinished construction of a human face (I want to show people how I construct my portraits):

[Lightship69]

Brandon matey
You really need to take a look back at the loomis figure drawing .pdfs the coloured guy and woman in post 163 are well off mate. The womans arms look like a skin coloured scarf around his neck and not attached to her at all!!

However the coloured woman immediately below her has a really well constructed head indeed so well done.

keep it up mate, like I said before there is improvement going on in here.

[Brandon Pilcher]

I took a gander at Loomis's pdf on heads, and it inspired me to draw these quick sketches:

[Brandon Pilcher]

Looking at the stick figures in Loomis's Fun With A Pencil somehow inspired me to draw something more modern and everyday than I usually do, so here's a Native American woman with a cup of coffee:

[Dayle]

Hello mate.

Nice to see you're keeping up with your sketchbook. You seem to have lots of advice and things to do here! The only thing I think when looking at your work is that you tackling really difficult subjects! Faces are really hard at the best of times but you're choosing really complicated ones. I get that you're interested in cultural diversity and anthropology but it might be useful to find a famous actor or try a self portrait to study on to help understand construction. I hope its not rude of me to give advice like this because you clearly have a passion for what you draw and I would not want you to lose it by doing something you don't like.

I've just been reading Burne Hogarths drawing the head book, it explains things differently and I prefer the style to Loomis (FYI).

All the best, I'll be back to see how its going!

[Brandon Pilcher]

Nice to see you're keeping up with your sketchbook. You seem to have lots of advice and things to do here! The only thing I think when looking at your work is that you tackling really difficult subjects! Faces are really hard at the best of times but you're choosing really complicated ones. I get that you're interested in cultural diversity and anthropology but it might be useful to find a famous actor or try a self portrait to study on to help understand construction. I hope its not rude of me to give advice like this because you clearly have a passion for what you draw and I would not want you to lose it by doing something you don't like.

Faces actually aren't the most difficult subject matter for me (that would probably be architecture, furniture, and backgrounds in general). And what exactly is complicated about the faces I'm trying to draw?

[Dayle]

I was saying complicated because if you're studying from standard reference books like Loomis how to draw.... then applying those proportions and general rules to different head types and shapes, makes it more complicated. Maybe I should add a "in my opinion" Lol! I think heads are very hard to draw.

[Rhubix]

Faces actually aren't the most difficult subject matter for me (that would probably be architecture, furniture, and backgrounds in general). And what exactly is complicated about the faces I'm trying to draw?

Faces are very hard to draw, I think your not giving them enough credit.
There are a lot of shapes coming together and they're all very mailable.
If someone has a firm understanding of perspective there's no difference between a chair or a sky scraper but the same face can be different from one second to the next. (see drawing A.)
That being said, I'm a lot better at faces than buildings for the same reason.
Faces aren't set in stone, they can have big eyes, little eyes, a long jaw or short. The freedom in that is great for artist who are more exploratory in their drawing.
Someone who is good at analytical thinking will be better at drawing structural things like robots and architecture.

Anyways- onto some general advice I found helpful:
You need to take the same care when doing any kind of studies. If your just copying what your seeing, your not learning as much as you could be.
It's much better to try and understand what your studying- measure the proportions, work the subject out in perspective.
it's not enough to look at a skull and draw a skull- you have to analyze the form of the skull - do a perspective study, do a tonal study- it will help you see the planes of the skull
Don't copy the dark and light parts- think about why this part is dark and that part is light.

And some more specific advice:
in the study I've chosen below you've cut off the back of the character's head. - this is a common mistake new artists make.
Also you haven't paid attention to the size of the eyes relative to one another, or the location of the ear in relation to the eyes.
Another important step is to map out the center line of the face- make sure everything is lined up where it should be

At first it's really tedious to measure out each piece and compare everything - but every time you do it you'll get a little faster. In time it will become second nature - you can visualize the guide lines in your head- are these eyes the same height? How high is the mouth supposed to be?

I hope some of this is helpful You've been making good progress so far. - I think your hands and feet are very good for your skill level - so kudos for that
best of luck with your studies- and happy sketching

[Rafal Dorsz]

I think you need to put more effort into your studies. There isn't as much difference between page 1 and this page as there could be.
Draw more stuff from life. Your perception of values and ability to accurately represent them on paper with a pencil is what I would focus on now. I looked through this thread real quick, and I saw some anatomy studies and some still lifes but I think you could put more effort into these.
cheers

[Brandon Pilcher]

1) Study of a leopard's contours (unfortunately the torso ended up being too short)

2) Three still-lifes of things around my computer desk

[Naidy]

Hey, mate. Long time no gander.

Been looking through I just think you reallllllyyyyyyy REAALLLYYY need to try harder to incorperate the advice given to you.

See that reconstructed face by rhubix? I cannot stress enough how much you would learn if you actually revisited your study and fixed it to look like their's. I've seen your old sketchbook and there's really little progress, aside from the fact you're shading your faces and bodies a bit more. I feel the main problem is you're peeking at something like Loomis, doing some quick sketches, then disregarding it entirely and returning to your comfortable 'default' way of drawing.

You need to work harder to intergrate their teachings into your own work. You will learn NOTHING from what you are doing if you do not try to put that knowledge to use.
I was given this link a while back and it helped me understand I was doing a very similar thing.
http://sirspamdalot.livejournal.com/81283.html

Also; when you do a study, focus less on lines and more on construction and form. If you need me to explain I will do so, but that's all I have to say so far. Keep on working.

[Brandon Pilcher]

Honestly, I feel frustrated with art right now. People keep telling me to draw from life and do studies, but no matter how many times I do them, I don't seem to learn anything from them. All these studies teach me is how to draw something at a particular angle or in a particular pose and under particular lighting; I don't see how they can be applied to the things I draw from imagination. Am I stupid or something?

[Naidy]

You're bound to feel frustrated; art is no easy process. Only a few of us will ever really get it.

Basically, from what I can gather(Keep in mind I'm a begginer myself), you're not yet able to understand what you're drawing enough to construct your own figures on paper. Yes, books and diagrams will tell you how to draw something from a certain angle, but they're also telling you how to construct it yourself.
You look at those Loomis heads. Look how he goes into great detail to explain how he bases his heads from a sphere and CONSTRUCTS from it. Don't you understand why he goes to the pain of explaining instead of just throwing ready drawn, perfect heads at you straight away?

You, as an artist, are meant to grasp that foundation, that 'blueprint,' and internalise it, so that you can draw something, think about how to construct a head and change it accordingly. You can't do that yet because you're not yet getting the basics.

When you do your studies, you're meant to be analysing just how and why what in front of you looks real. If you lack the understanding to draw what you see and understand why it looks realistic why do you expect to beable to beable to draw perfectly from the top of your head?

The fact is, you still need to do a lot of work. And by a lot, I don't mean the odd page. I mean a life time of studying. Hard to hear, but to me that's the truth.

[Brandon Pilcher]

I'm sorry to say that this was drawn and colored before I read the above recent criticisms, so it's not a technically terrific drawing, but I loved the underlying concept behind it so much that I couldn't resist sharing it. It's an African pygmy hunter vs a T. Rex:

[bish0p2004]

Honestly, I feel frustrated with art right now. People keep telling me to draw from life and do studies, but no matter how many times I do them, I don't seem to learn anything from them. All these studies teach me is how to draw something at a particular angle or in a particular pose and under particular lighting; I don't see how they can be applied to the things I draw from imagination. Am I stupid or something?

I know exactly what you mean about life drawing. But my thinking is, if so many people recommend it, then there most be some truth to it. As Naidy mentioned, it takes time.

I think that a combination of learning from life, books, and critiques are the best way to learn. You learn things from books like basic shapes, form, reflected light, cast shadows, hard edges and lost edges, etc. Basically, you learn what to look for from books. Then, when you start looking, and drawing these things from real life, it starts connecting a little bit at a time.

Getting your work critiqued (especially by people who are better than you) helps because it gives you insight into the errors that you don't see in your own artwork.

[Velocity Kendall]

"Am I stupid or something?"

You clearly are not stupid, as you can write intelligently about your subjects.

What about:
-using other media; ok so pen isnt working for you. Use paint. Or ink. Or watercolour. Or Photoshop. Actually use photoshop first as its the least messy and the easiest to play with.
Try 3d software. Try clay. Try cloth. Wire. Crayon. Throw yoghurt at a wall and take photos of it. Draw faces on cans of paint with a marker pen Ian Stevenson style. Whatever. Etc.

-drawing and painting abstract things. Currently all youve showen evidence of is some line drawings of some black guys and dinosaurs. Ive no idea why youre so obsessed with black guys and dinosaurs , your descriptions make me feel like I missed the post where you explained that, but maybe chill out on them just for a while. Moreover quite a few of them are verging on racial stereotypes that would be a bit offensive if I didnt know you were genuine.
Try painting a swirling colour storm. Or a sky before it rains. Or a dream you once had. Or a red triangle attacking some gentle blue squares.
No one can tell you drew them wrong because you made them up.
Look up Kandinsky and Miro.

-Draw other real, non-black guy things, ie bridges, houses, the view from your window, old family photos, space ships, mountains, trees, etc etc etc etc. Look up James Jean''s sketchbooks for more info.

Give those things a try and see what happens. If youre stil not feeling it, maybe visual art isnt for you. Try playing the guitar. Or learning to ollie a skateboard. Or get really into maths. The worlds your clam baby.