Sketchbook of Steveland - The Journey Begins.

[Steveland]

Hiya

I decided after many hours of deliberation to start a sketchbook of my foray into the world of art.

I am a real newbie, and I mean that in terms of the last time I sat down and drew something was in my art classes when I was about 15, so that was 17 years ago.

Saying that, I like to think that I'm creative as I like photography and I'm always thinking up concepts/images that I want to create. The latest push is that I really want to develop the skill of being an artist and convey what I see to paper. I also want to create an animation for my son, and I want to be able to get the ideas from my head down onto paper. I've always liked the idea of reproducing what I see.

Over the years, I realise that I am a very visual person. I also want to develop a skill that will keep my brain active and I can do when I'm older.

I remember when I was younger in class that I want through a period of being artistic, I drew cartoon characters like Lion-O/Mumm-Ra, the characters from Battle Beasts (Which was hanging on my parents wall until a couple of months ago). They were pretty good for someone that didn't draw. However, the interest waned and I moved onto other interests.

I also remember the homework from school namely the bowl of fruit and the draw the view from the window. Back then it was boring but now I realise what it was that they were trying to teach (pity that they didn't tell me that and/or I wasn't paying attention). The problem that I had with the window view was that I was always trying to draw around the corner, so the perspective was all skewed.

The best piece I ever did was a still life of a fellow pupil, it was great (for my skill level), sure the angles were slightly wrong, but it looked like a person (minus a head - could never get the head/proportions right).

Anyway to the future, I plan to draw as much as I can, I really want to get better and I do have the drive. I'm also learning about 3D art as well (Using Blender). I'm learning from 'Drawing from the Right Side...' and the 'Fun with a Pencil'. I'll draw and scan them in as often as I can.

It's good coming from this as an adult as I can understand. Hopefully I can inspire my 2 year old son (incidentally we've got him a drawing desk for his birthday in 3 weeks ).

So it is going to be back to the homework of the past, drawing the fruit bowl, the view outside the window, the cups, the toy balls, etc.

What I'll do is first thing I draw something so that you can see my level of skill.

I look forward to your comments. It truly is an inspiration to be here and see the level of talent (which I realise has come from years of hard hard work). They say to improve you have to surround yourself with people better than you. That's why I'm here.

[Steveland]

As promised, here are the images as is. This is my current level of skill when it comes to art. The last time I did anything this involved was in school.

Would you believe me that I was almost scared to put the pencil to paper, I wasn't sure what I was going to produce. Almost 2 hours later and what you see before you is what I produced. This was done in reference to the Draw to the right side of the brain starting point that allows you to assess where you are at.

It was wierd as my 'photographer' brain knows all about light and shade and how they are needed to make an object 3D. At several points, I swear I was over thinking the drawings. I also knew some things were wrong but wasn't too sure how to fix them.

Just used the scanner for the first time so I need to find a good way of making the images darker so that you can see them better.

It's dangerous coming to this place because I was in real danger of not starting due to the whole 'Wow, this is good art, and this one, and this one....'

Let me know what you think.

Thanks.

Off to read the Loomis Fun with pencil and practise the spheres.

EDIT - Wow, that ear looks terrible.

[AbsorbenGhost]

good start,contine your improvement so we all can bare witness to your artist rise

[tronrobot]

goodluck with your art! youve come to the perfect place. The right side of the brain should indeed help you, read through it and do the exercises. and good luck

[Valyavande]

I wish you good luck too! And for a real newbie like you, the first two drawing are a good start, especially the hand. You see already many details. If you do many studies and sketches I'm sure you will improve very quick. Your photographers eye is helping you already

Betty Edwards and Andrew Loomis for the beginning are a very good choice. I think you know it already, but there's no better way than combining practical working with theory and understanding.
I hope we will see a lot of stuff from you!

[Steveland]

I'm looking forward to doing the value stuff and the revelation that was like *Woah* was that you could draw by removing/erasing.

The exercises will be good for me as I do well with doing assignments where I know that I'm accountable.

[Steveland]

Hi again, I realise that this is not exciting, but I'm going to be chronicalling my journey so this is the best way to do and get some good advice along the way.

I can't remember if I posted the Loomis heads before (as it was late last night and I can't remember if I attached them correctly).

I did the upside drawing from 'The right side of the Brain' book, apoligises for the smudge on the one side (didn't realise I had a bit of chocolate on my hand) .

Need to go back and try to understand the axis part correctly, I'm looking forward to doing figure and anatomy but I'm interested in everything right now. However, I want to ensure that I get the basics. So I think during lunch tomorrow, I'm going to take my sons ball and cube in to work and draw it.

I take it I should just keep on reading 'Fun with a pencil' and keep on practising.

Comments would be welcome.

Edit - Should I rotate the upside down one to show it right side up???

I just want to ensure that I'm doing this efficently. Keep working on Fun with and then move onto the next one.

Might be picking up a Bamboo Pen Small on the weekend. Also looking on ebay for a second hand intous 3

[Valyavande]

Thank you too for visiting my sketchbook!
right now, it's difficult to give some more advices. Just keep going! loomis and Edwards will tell you many intesting things that you have never thought.
Working hard on the basics is the best thing to do. Sometimes, you can use a mirror to flip you drawings. That helps to see problems in the shapes. But maybe it's to early for that. just do many many sketches and have fun!

[tronrobot]

Good job on the upside-down drawing.

[Steveland]

Well I did some more drawing today, a pencil sharpener and a cup.

I forgot it at work so I'll have to scan it tomorrow, however I did have some thoughts when I was drawing it.

On the sharperner, I think I got the basic shape right, but when it came to the texturing on the top of the item, it got me thinking how I would depict that. I ended up doing a cross hatch kind of pattern.

The cup was harder as it was in shadow and there were some points that I was thinking as I was looking.

My main thoughts was that as the majority of it was white, I needed to add shadow to give it that 3D feel, ok, that's fine. But what got me were the highlights. I squinted to see the values (I'm sure I read that somewhere) and the highlights really popped out (they were almost brillant white). I tried to shade in the area and then erase the highlights in (does that make sense). I also tried the same technique to get the reflection of the handle on the cup.

Another thought I had was that the other side of the cup did not have a line, it was just a shiny back going into shadow, so what I tried to do is not draw a line, I just shaded the black portion of the cup and then tried to shade the shadow darker so that it sorta blended in. You'll see what I mean tomorrow.

Might go off and do some more Loomis - I need to look at perspective, and about highlights/shadows as I want to practise on cubes and spheres. I'm looking forward to doing my figure studies though, but I cannot rush these things.

Might try some more upside down drawings though.

On other notes, I came home to my 23 month old son's drawing. I'll scan it in - I think he's working on his gesture work .

[mitchoo]

Keep posting those drawings! I am really curious how you are gonna develop your right side of the brain

[Steveland]

Quick reply before I head to work.

I thought I'll include my sons (23 months old) first attempt at picking up a pencil.

Note - It's the wild lines - I did the upside down knight (honest!). He must have got the idea after seeing me draw. He should like his art table that we got him for his birthday in a couple of weeks.

[mitchoo]

Hee Steve, your down knight is impressive! Did you also an up version to see the difference? The wild lines of your son are really great, there's a lot of flow in it and you can see trough the lines the horse and knight.

Thanks for visiting my SB. Here are some answers. I don't really know how I approach them, I do think that the most important thing is to try and experiment. Look at what other artist are studying and copy that and look if that works for you. I guess that's works for me.

I also try to learn a lot about techniques. In the community section there are some tutorials and lessons that can help you. They helped me! For the cup it's really important to know how to draw ellipses, that can really be hard and I am still having troubles with that.

I study Loomis, but also Burne Hogarth. I also got a anatomical study book to learn all the muscles. Keep it up! I really think you are doing the right thing with first doing the lessons from "the right side of the brain". Wished I started doing that.

[Steveland]

Whether this is my right side of the brain working or the fact that I'm used to breaking things down into their component parts (Software Tester/Hobbyist Photographer), but it is amazing that I look at things like trees and see that they are not just green, you have dark greens, yellow greens and so on. The same thoughts occurred to me as I drove down a country lane, I was looking at how the light beams shone through the trees to provide contrast within the scene and how the road met at the end to it's vanishing point. I could see it being broken down into each individual part (bit like how Flynn in Tron was decomposed into the Tron world) .

I guess I want to get to the point where I can put down on paper what's in my head, I have a goal of doing animation for my son so he has his own character to grow up with (I want to base the main character around him). So I'm learning 3D software as well as learning to draw (so that I've got the basics). I'm enjoying myself doing this and I've noticed that 1-2 hours can go by and I've not really noticed. It's like yesterday, I came home from doing overtime (so I rolled in aaround 9:00ish). I didn't go to bed until 11:30 as I was looking at concept art , but mainly I was doing the drawing of the upside down knight and I wanted to finish.

I also want to be able to do portraits to the standard where if a person looked at a photograph, they would not be able to see any differences between the drawing and the image. I do have to say that I do like the greyscale images. I've never painted before so I have no idea what that is like. I also like pencil styled drawings. I don't really know my art but I do like what I see. So I suspect that I'll be looking at a lot of images to see what I like and what makes me go, 'Ah, that's cool'.

Just been out at lunchtime to see what I could sketch. Stopped to see if I could capture the canal and bridge and I was about 2 minutes in and it started to pour, so the below image (will scan in once I get home) is what I could sketch out quickly. It was done in pen so I had to be quick and commit myself to the image.

[Steveland]

Well here are some things I've been working on. It is a bit overwhelming at times knowing what to do next, but I think I'm going to do the following

1) Learn about perspective
2) Figure out the head building stuff - I understand the theory it's just the drawing part (esp when it comes to putting features on the block).
3) I really want to learn how to draw a figure. I want to be able to take a pciture and draw it. I'm trying to do gesture style drawing from posemanics but not to sure if I'm doing it right. I jsut want to be able to construct a figure with simple shapes so that you can see the form and flow.

Oh the pen type drawing is a 2-3 minute jot down on the piece of paper as it started to rain heavy when I was just about to draw, so I just had to quickly take it in and draw.

So suggestions on how I should go about things, I am very focused. I just need a little signposting now and then.

I'm tempted to take an image from the net and measure the figure to see how it all matches up (the whole 8 heads high, the wrists in line with the crotch, etc).

With the cup - intrigued to know how to make it more dynamic, how to really show off the reflectivity of the cup, the highlights on the rim, the reflection of the handle within the black area of the cup., the pencil sharperner had a texture on top, be good to know how to show that off.

I think as well as doing the 100 tasks (100 heads, 100 expressions,etc), I think I'll try doing 100 sketches from real life and 100 sketches of figures, portraits.

As usual, critiques and comments are welcome.

[Ghast]

Thanks for checkin out my Sketchbook! You've definitely come to the right to improve your art. The knight looks pretty solid. For portraits, don't jump into outlining, rough out the overall shapes and lines for the center eyes, bottom of the nose, mouth, etc. FIRST. THEN go in and start roughing out. its all about the structure

[Steveland]

OK, This is a question that might seem silly but here goes, how would I go about drawing my son.

Now when I look at the picture (I'm going to describe how I think I would build it up).


1) I can see the flat 2D circle.
2) I can see the lopped off side where his ears are, considering that he's on his side, that chopped off bit is going to be a circle more than an oval.
3) Then you have the eyeline, midline and then the jaw part where his eyes, nose and chin is going to be
4) I then assume that I divide it up again so that I get the mouth and hairline
5) Block in the eyes, nose and mouth shapes and then go from there

Is that correct? Or can I measure the eye width (as that is quite small) and then figure out how many eye widths that his head is across and high.

The thing is that I can see the basic shapes of where things should go, I guess its a case of transferring it to my hand and then the paper. I guess that's what the studies are for. It's just hard trying to convert the knowledge into practise. I will get better.

In fact, with the studies, is it a case of just copying and then when you draw a figure, you just have to remember the proportions, like if the hand/wrist goes past the crotch, then it's generally wrong.

Apart from Loomis, is there another book/method that I could try? (Not given up on Loomis, just trying to learn and apply) - I think that I can do the bare bones orientation (The Blook), I'm thinking of doing a clock and have the faces be in the direction of the number (12, head will be straight up, 4 - looking down to the left,etc).


The thing is that I don't mind doing studies,anatomy and all that jazz as it's all new to me and thus fun to see that I'm improving every time I pick up the pencil.

I wonder if a mentor would help? Anyone want to take up that mantle - It would literally be the basics

[luxaeterna]

Just want to clarify, that with the bridgman - Is it just a case of copying from the book but just ensuring that you get the proportions right (by using the whole 8th rule to make sure that everything is correct).

I might give that a try tonight.

I think it is very helpful to copy every single drawing from Bridgman, besides of that you will understand the mechanisms of the body very well, and will be able to divide bodies in the single construction parts. He shows very well in his drawings how the body works - you start out with the whole body movement and then go on with single parts like the head and so on.
After a while you'll be able to get the proportions correct very easily, as you practised them for such a long time. (I'm on page 73 now, which took me approx. 1 month)

[Valyavande]

About drawing your son: The way you described is okay. But it is just one way. If you have ideas of other ways, when just try all of them. All will give you an other and maybe new experience. So it's positive. Never be afraid of failing with one of the ways and never be afraid of starting a drawing. It's good that you are thinking so much and do observations, but don't forget the drawings
And about your question in my sketchbook: I start drawing the head with a sphere and dividing lines for the middle of the face and the eyeline. I can not handle more I tend to draw lines in the false direction, so many lines doesn't make anything better and I use only a few (I'm a bad example for drawing faces)

[Steveland]

Did some more drawing practise from Bridgman - I have to say that once you actually start drawing it does start to click, although I'm wondering whether i'm over thinking it, thinking that the waist has to be around the 4 mark, the hands can't really go past the crotch, the calf is around the second mark,etc.

Hopefully it shows that I'm thinking in my diagrams below.

[Snyder]

Hi there! Good work so far!

While you were scribbling way too much in your first post (you were going over the same line over and over again...), your line confidence is much better in the last posts. There's already improvement in such a short time - that's cool!

Just a tip:
If you are not sure about a line, but need it anyways - just do a very slight one. And if you are sure about it, then draw with more pressure - make it darker.
(But don't draw the line 10x with the same pencil pressure ...)

By the way: The knight pic is great. It has a nice pencil-flow to it!

[Steveland]

Well I'm still doing good with updating every day, drawing every day. Today I drew something on my desk at work. Need to work on the perspective part of the drawing, so I'll do some exercises tomorrow.

Also thought I would work on something fun, so I did the spiderman kiss - I originally was going to copy from a master painting, but couldn't decide, so instead of procrastinating, I just chose this and went at it. As usual, the hard parts was the hands, mouth and nose . So all things I need to work on .

Came home and my son was holding a pen and he was drawing away, tongue out in concentration. Pretty good sight to see

[Steveland]

I'm looking at the picture of spiderman and I do realise that him being paper white isn't exactly right, but it was a case of stopping where I won't totally ruin it. Hope that doesn't come off as an excuse, but it's merely knowing my limitations. I guess this is where value lessons come in..I'm assuming if it was in colour, then you would go from very dark red to lighter red and so on. I suppose that's the same with black and white..

I think I need to practise about line weighting and values. If anyone wants to dl and show me on the file how to improve, then it's all good ..I'm here to learn. I think every month, I'll do similar pieces to see myself improve.

I do like MindCandy's initial quest of doing a painting and drawing every day (I'm only on page 3).

[Steveland]

It was a nice day so I spent the day walking around the town with son and at one point, we sat on the steps outside, he had my a3 pad and a pencil and was marking away. He seems to get into a real concentrating mode.

I tried to draw the street I was on, but couldn't figure out the perspective in practise (Street attached). Have I marked the image correctly???


In the meantime, brought some cheap books at the book store.

[Jay Dee]

Hey chap, have you drawn your son yet? Just jump straight in there!

When it first came to faces I didn't have a clue and I had no idea where to start but luckily I came across the loomis head construction which helped me get started, and it sounds like you need to try a method yourself and once you've used it a few times it'll get easier and things will start to fall into place.

Posemaniacs is a well known site for gestures but this site is quite good for ref: http://lovecastle.org/draw/

and I found this art tutorial pretty informative: http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/art_tut.htm

Keep up the hard work!

[Naidy]

H'llo there!
Not bad progress, really. It's good to see you tackling studies and reading the well known art books. Remember when you're doing the figure to take note of proportions. If you can relate things together in terms of proportions (e.g how many heads high) you'll find things a lot easier, though I'm sure you already know that, having noticed you're doing Loomis studies.

Not much to say really, just keep up the good work and don't be afraid to experiment or tackle any subject.

[Steveland]

I'm not afraid, I have lots to learn and its fun...

It's all good, my end goal is to do an animation for my son so getting the fundamentals down to translate my ideas to the screen is such a drive. Plus it's good to have a skill that I can do when I'm old and grey.

[Black Spot]

The horizon is a bit higher than those red lines - there's just a building in the way.

There's a saying on CA - Go Draw. It isn't meant to be nasty, but that the more you draw the better you'll get, and it doesn't matter what you draw. When doing the still lives, spend a lot of time really looking; it can be amazing what's there, you'll find shadows popping out everywhere. Also look at the shape the the outer edges make; concentrating on those and not drawing a symbol can make a huge difference.

[Comet]

Your stuff is coming along really nicely! I enjoyed looking over all your posts and I'm sure your art journey will be a great one. I especially like your sharpener and the Spiderman picture. I look forward to seeing more of your stuff!

[Steveland]

So I just picked up a pencil and thought 'Just Draw'. So I took one of my photographs that I took with a model and decided to copy that. Crits please

Here is the result. I'm also doing some tutorials on perspective and I'm also trying to come up with some character designs for my animation that I want to do. Still deciding what style of character do I want. Might have to do some research. It's a kiddie sci-fi based animation.

About the drawing, I really need to work on hands, and materials - esp when it comes to making it look see through. I think I made her thong to high and I really need to invest in some other pencils so I can get the values right.


Went to the library and got some books out, so doing the various exercises in the drawing books - also got a book about leonardo da vinci - I like his style.