From 0 onwards

[dracken]

Thanks for all the encouragement guys, gotta keep plugging forward. It gets hard, but if you don't do it there is no way to improve.

Some more stuff from the past month or so. Indeed some Giovanni drawings in there. That is a hell of a book that I got for only 10 bucks at a closing down borders.

[MasonJames]

Although you have some problems with proportions, your faces really have something unique in them, an almost 'sturdy' quality with wide eyes and broad noses. Not broad as in too big, broad as in 'statue-esque'. Hard to explain, lol, just keep going with your faces and you'll be able to harness this quality better.

[dracken]

Haha, I am not sure that I have a style when it comes to faces, those are all copied from the same book by Giovanni Civardi (I am sure you cna find a copy for cheap on amazon or Scribd), so that's his style which I am unsuccessfully plagiarizing, but thank you

Here is today's update Just some more heads and a commission piece for a sci-fi magazine. It's very amateurish stuff, but it was nice to actually sell something. It was also interesting to do a "complete" piece for once instead of bits and pieces. Of course it took hours and looking at it now is painful. Why the hell don't I make stuff in the background less saturated? Perspective rules where are they? :sigh

Here is a link to the magazine in PDF format

[dracken]

Here are some more head/ face studies. I am continuing my daily 30 second studies, along with some longer anatomy studies (bought a nice book on the human anatomy and will study those muscles). I will post these quick studies maybe tomorrow or so, but there is not much interesting to see besides some scribbles that vaguely resemble humans.

[Shad-]

Nice looking arms studies !
I would recommand :

- Trying to build your faces before adding the elements on it, because you draw great noses/eyes/mouths, but props are always a bit off ^^
-Do more of those arm studies ! They rock and should be really helpful !
-Updating your SB over and over, so I can come back and see you improving

See ya !

[dimi]

Hey man nice sb keep it up you re doing great,one thing i noticed is that you intend to get off proportions in the figure,measure in heads,the figure is usually divided in 8 sections.Keep that in mind before proceeding onto each section

[Saara_]

I see lots of effort in here . Keep working, you've already improved a lot.

[dracken]

Thank you guys, thank you ! Reading comments that encourage me is really, really helpful. It's a small ego boost that keeps me going through the tough times. I'll make sure to stop by and comment on everyone's posts.

Now, here is some more stuff. Not much to say...ink smears if you put your hand in it Also here are some heads from imagination, not very good, but at least I'm trying to use what I learn

[Saara_]

I agree with MasonJames about the faces, I think you have your own style with them. Really cool stuff, I think they're going to look really, really great once you become super crazy awesome (which will happen if you keep at it... Please do )... Because man, they already look that good!

Nothing much to crit on that won't be fixed with practice and experience. For something to say, though, I think going for the big shapes first would help with getting the proportions right. That's a matter of practice as well, though, so keep going, looking good .

[Shad-]

Wow dude it's cool to see you working so much !
Makes me feel like I'm still procrastinating ><

You are yet improving very fast, just keep at working this way !

Your proportions got a lot better in this last post !

Keep it up dude !

[dimi]

Dont worry about the results the drawings will improve the way to become better is only
towards the top.Frustation is included in the pack,passing it many times my self have faith
in only some months yo will see improvements,dont worry keep doing what youre doing.I like the loomis studies keep at them,drawing the head and hands is great for beginning as
also fun with a pencil!

[dracken]

Thank you everyone for your comments. I'll go back and comment on everyone's SB as soon as I have a sec (probably tomorrow)

In the mean time here is some more work, still trying to get a better understanding for anatomy and quickly drawing something digitally. I managed to get my lines with a pencil pretty close to what I want, but my digital stuff sucks so much. So hard to limit my lines when in a hurry.

First image is from the 11th and the last one is from today (10 days of daily work in between and I think even that little time shows, eh?)

These are all between 30 seconds and 2 min.

[Shad-]

Your digital stuff don't suck at all.
You're way more confident with digital than you were with traditional at the beginning of your SB and that's great !

Also the proportions are good in those pics, doing all those fast sketches sure help you at it !

I should do a ton of those myself. Very motivating to see all your work

See ya next update :p

[shiNIN]

Wow, you drew a lot of figures I can't say anything useful when I see this kind of stuff, it's good you do those, there are some really nice bodies there (especially the longer shaded ones back in #38) and keep at it but you know and do this already.
I had problem with my digital lines (I hated them) until I bought a big and good tablet. Now I'm unpleased with my digital and pencil strokes equally... Life is tough especially when someone want to learn to draw well.

[shiNIN]

Wow, you drew a lot of figures I can't say anything useful when I see this kind of stuff, it's good you do those, there are some really nice bodies there (especially the longer shaded ones back in #38) and keep at it but you know and do this already.
I had problem with my digital lines (I hated them) until I bought a big and good tablet. Now I'm unpleased with my digital and pencil strokes equally... Life is tough especially when someone want to learn to draw well.

[Rhubix]

Great progress so far. When I studied life drawing in school we did a bunch of studies converting the body to boxes and cylinders (example below). I found it really helpful for getting a better handle on the volumes of the body.

Also, don't worry so much about limiting lines when your learning. Do messy studies- no big deal.
I also included one of my earlier gestures- I used a bazillion lines but you can see the pose. We used to do studies in thick chalk, water colour, even crayons.
Don't feel restricted to just one rout. Try all kinds of stuff, make a mess.
The best thing I learned is that you don't have to get it right the first time. If you have a messy drawing you like you can clean it up later .
Just have fun with it- your on the right track so far!
Happy sketching!

[dracken]

That is some good advice. I think tonight I'll start working on some cube people

In the meantime here is some more stuff from my traditional sketchbook. I should probably sit down and learn more about muscles so my people don't look ridiculous... At least proportions seem a bit better.

[Valyavande]

Good to see you making so many studies!
Maybe some helpful tipps:
- flip your pictures. Use a mirror, make photograph and flip them digital or just hold your paper against the light to see your drawing through the backside ( oh my, I'm afraid this english is terrible XD). It will help you very much to see your mistakes. Sometimes they are kind of wonky
- care about the back of your heads. you focus to much on the face, don't forget the overall proportions of the head
- body proportions: if you draw the whole human figure, your heads are very small.Try to compare the size of your heads with the proportions of humans on things like photos. Make some studies with the head as measurement. Andrew Loomis has some nice drawings including this topic

I'm sure, if you do more gesture drawings, you will get the right proportions in a short time =)

[dracken]

Thank you, thank you!

Good advice that I must remember to follow.

Last night I spent a few hours painting this little bamboo. Tossed a texture behind it and here we go.

[Snyder]

Nice progress so far.

I think your digital gestures come out a lot better than the pencil gestures. The white ones with the blue background have a nice flow already.

You may want to try
http://www.pixelovely.com/gesture/figuredrawing.php
for gesture/figure drawing.

Dunno, if you know this tool already, but since its showing real people it is a good alternative to posemaniacs

c ya!

[dracken]

Thanks for the feedback. I use a combination of posemaniacs and various action images. Although a lot of people hate it for some quick speed drawing posemaniacs is okay IMO. I just use it when I want odd angles and I'm not really worried about proper anatomy.

Anyhow, tonight besides a bunch of thumbnails which I'll upload soon. I did a rendering study starting off with a loose sketchy image, cleaned it up and added some basic value. Looks bad, but it's only my third or fourth value study of a human body so hopefully it will be a good "Before all the exercises" photo at some point.

[dracken]

Had a nice long weekend due to memorial day here in the States, which means that I had extra time to practice drawing and focused almost entirely on Bridgman, 3 days of trying out his more cube like approach to anatomy left me with this:



]














A bunch more to follow as soon as I scan them in and resize them

[dracken]

Here is the rest of my work for the past weekend. Overall studied around 50 pages of Bridgman, trying to understand his angular style. I hope to do some more digital stuff soon.

[dracken]

Long time no update... unfortunately my computer died on me, which means I don't have access to the internet from home. It also means that I did a shit ton more pencil sketches since I didn't have the internetz to distract me . I focused on anatomy and hand studies. Some thumbnails and a bunch of stuff I doodled while at work (the yellow legal paper)


I am sorry about the poor quality of the images. I still need a scanner.

BTW: A lot of stuff in here is done after images from sketchbooks around here. I don't remember what came from where, but I know I'm not imaginative enough to make that goat-girl- fairy or the more cartoon-like stuff. It is all copied from other artists as I try to understand their style and approach.

[Helio]

there's a noticeable improvement in your skill. I would advise you to go for bolder and more confident lines in your studies, but otherwise it looks pretty promising. I wish I could get better on the same rate as you.

[dracken]

Thank you for the comments. Here are some more image dumps, studying anatomy and trying to apply it in every day study.

These are almost all from a book called drawing Hellbeasts. A nice inspiration if you're looking for fantasy monsters.

[dracken]

Slowly working through anatomy and finally yesterday set up a back-up laptop and got to some digital stuff in MyPaint.



I didn't get around to finishing this, but I'm pretty happy with how it's going so far. In the meantime here are some more traditional pieces after Bridgman. It's tough to keep motivated, but gotta keep going. I look at the sketchbooks around here and keep reminding myself to work hard... it will all pay out soon, hopefully

[dracken]

Did some more work yesterday, trying to get better at digital stuff. Also figured I better earn the NSFW in my title
WIP after about two hours. Hopefully will finish it tonight or so... the shades of the photo are very faint, making it damn hard to get the values right, so I ended up making everything darker, the angle is also not helping me and my knowledge of hands, well let's say that I spent the better part of an hour on her fingers and they still look like crap.



Also did this little piece, which surprisingly took a lot longer than expected. I have to improve my work-flow, just not sure how. Maybe use layers more efficiently.

[etui]

Hi there! Looks like you're doing alot of work, and there's lots of improvement towards the end.
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I did kinda get the impression that you were going through some studies really fast without thinking about it. The basics are something that will be with you for your whole artistic journey, so I would rather see you do them and then apply it to your lifedrawing/general drawing, instead of copying pages of pages of stuff from all over the place. It's good that you're drawing, don't get me wrong! But it would save you some frustration if you slowed down a little and took the time to think about and observe for yourself what the books are telling you.

Also I would really reccomend Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. It deals with the most basic of basics, training you to actually see and draw better in general. Good luck with everything!

[dracken]

Good advice. There is a huge difference between learning to copy what someone else draws and being able to draw on your own. My main problem starting out was/ still is that I have no clue about proportions and how to best start a figure drawing. Early on I went to a few life drawing sessions and quickly realized that while everyone else managed to get an entire body gesture down I only started to draw the foot of the model. In order to correct that I focused a lot of quick gestures from photos as well as Bridgman since I feel like his style lends itself to quick strong lines. The next step will be a lot more drawings from life and longer studies from photos as well as drawing little mannequins out of imagination.

That being said, here are some portraits of friends along with some muscle practice. Very, very crappy stuff (Got angry and added a beard to one of them