Fully Rendering Drawings

[bodied]

I often have a hard time rendering my drawings so that they look 'finished'. One of my weak points is taking the energy from my quickly done drawings away by trying to get the shading right. This is apparent especially on my drawings from life. I also have a tough time getting that smooth texture with charcoal. I'm a little better at it with graphite, but still. Any tips?

[Hunin]

Maybe you should take your time with the initial drawing, as going quickly isn't always a good thing, especially in terms of accuracy. I mean, I wouldn't render a gesture drawing, for example.

If you want to make a strong unified piece from start to finish, find the initial gesture and some repeating angles and carry them through to the finish.

Before worry about rendering skills, make sure what you are rendering is as accurate as you can make it, from life if you're drawing from life or as close to your original vision if drawing from imagination.

As for charcoal, I use a kitchen towel or toilet paper to get a smooth finish (well, as smooth as this noob can make it!)

[dose]

Examples plz

[bodied]

Hunin - what generally happens when I do life drawings is that I'll spend lots of time getting proportion, shape and placement down, but when I start shading it turns into a muddy mess and flattens out. When I say that my quick pieces have more life to them, generally what I mean is that very rough, sketchy shadow placement (with charcoal or whatever) looks better than something I lay down with pencil really carefully. I would really like to improve my charcoal skills but there must be something in the application that I'm doing wrong.

Dose - I'll post some pictures when I get back to school

[Hunin]

Hunin - what generally happens when I do life drawings is that I'll spend lots of time getting proportion, shape and placement down, but when I start shading it turns into a muddy mess and flattens out. When I say that my quick pieces have more life to them, generally what I mean is that very rough, sketchy shadow placement (with charcoal or whatever) looks better than something I lay down with pencil really carefully. I would really like to improve my charcoal skills but there must be something in the application that I'm doing wrong.

The only real way you'll be able to figure this out is by practice with charcoal, however, it is a good idea to establish a strong pattern of shadows and lights first, then introduce half tones- well, that is my approach at any rate. Work from general to specific, also, post some examples as Dose suggested

[bodied]

Okay, so I have a few links to some drawings I did:

http://imgur.com/DPOO7 charcoal pencil

http://imgur.com/vafiSgraphite pencil

http://imgur.com/suW86 charcoal pencil

For comparison, here's a quick charcoal block drawing:

http://imgur.com/8eOF5

The drawings themselves are kind of old so maybe I have progressed a little since then, but I feel like there's something missing. It could also be the tooth of some of the paper, but no matter how much smoothing out I try to do, the whole thing just looks like a flat mess. Meanwhile, my quick charcoal sketch has (to me) more of the sense of life. It doesn't look like a staid object. However, I would like to eventually do more finished looking drawings as well. The way I worked was building up very gradually with lighter tones and then going darker. I've also tried laying out dark shadows with a charcoal block and trying to push it around with my finger, but I mostly got a big dark smudged mark.

[vineris]

In the quick drawing you imply a lot of things, and the mistakes aren't as obvious. In the more rendered (it's not "fully rendered", you could push it a lot further) you try to keep everything separate, so it looks flat and cartoony, and also all the places where you've screwed something up jump out.

I think your rendered drawings will be better if you plan them out better. Having all areas be equally detailed and rendered and with a similar mix of values is going to result in a messy image. Having values shift abruptly without enough transition aread will give you a flat, graphical look. You have to control and enhance the effects to get the mix that you want, so that your viewer is looking at what's important and not so much at what's unimportant.

[Black Spot]

I can't seem to see your images. One thing you could try is to rub the whole thing over, leaving a ghost of your original image and then redraw. You can do this several times - I sort of like it as you can correct things and build form at the same time.

[bodied]

Black Spot, did you try again? I can see the links on my browser. If not, I'll repost it. So you just take a napkin and rub it all over your drawing?

Vineris, good suggestion on using focus. I usually just did it as I see it, but definitely it could help to use different kinds of focus to keep to the subject at hand... I am really bad about finishing the drawings. I guess I can't tell when I'm finished or when I'm just done looking at it, it's a bad habit of mine. I would love to play with lighting too, to help out compositionally. Thanks!

[Arshes Nei]

I can't seem to see your images. One thing you could try is to rub the whole thing over, leaving a ghost of your original image and then redraw. You can do this several times - I sort of like it as you can correct things and build form at the same time.

If you have noscript or flashblock on, I noticed the images won't show.

[Shaggnasty]

Maybe try out some planar drawing in this fashion:

Arranging the planes of an object will help you arrange your values to a better effect.
If planes are even a subtle bit off, the flaws will be amplified in the finished rendering - as this makes it difficult to place values and know exactly where to transition to the next.
Try giving each plane a value number that corresponds with a value scale next to the drawing:


As far as smoother finishes go, try some printer paper. It's exceptionally smooth.

[JeffX99]

They look fine for where you currently are in your progress - just have to keep doing more and experimenting. The paper surface makes a huge difference in the kind of "finish" you can achieve in various media, so you might want to really experiment with surfaces and various media.

It is always a challenge to keep work from life feeling fresh. Over-rendering, sometimes called over-modeling, can really kill a drawing.

You might want to pick up "Drawing Essentials" by Deborah Rockman as a thorough resource on observational drawing as well as demonstrations of a variety of "finished drawings". Hers are not to my taste but I think she's going for a certain kind of thing in her work.

[bodied]

Shaggnasty - excellent suggestion. I only became noticeable sensitive to planes very recently, when I started to learn how to digitally paint. Got any online books you look at? Although, I want to avoid the trap of filling in the shapes, but I guess that comes with time and experience. Thanks!

Jeff - yeah, I definitely fall into two extremes. I'll either stop too early and the drawing looks too grey, or I'll go too far and it's just overdone. When you started drawing, how did you know when you were 'finished'? That book is actually at my library. I think I'll snag it and start experimenting on this printmaking paper I have. Cheers!

[JeffX99]

Jeff - yeah, I definitely fall into two extremes. I'll either stop too early and the drawing looks too grey, or I'll go too far and it's just overdone. When you started drawing, how did you know when you were 'finished'? That book is actually at my library. I think I'll snag it and start experimenting on this printmaking paper I have. Cheers!

I'm kind of a weird case and don't make a terribly good example I'm afraid. When I got serious about wanting to be an artist I copied interesting photos mostly, and did so in a really high contrast manner. Also I lean a bit more toward design so my mor epersonal, creative drawings were more along those lines than classic drawing. Anyway, I knkow where you're coming from,
heck...I still usually do one or the other...very hard to dance on that razor's edge where everything comes together just so.

I think what helps is to have an idea what you want to say (or explore) in any given drawing...sometimes it might be about line quality...sometimes about interesting shadows...etc. Of course many of our drawings are simply studies where we are honing our ability to both see and translate but even these are an opportunity to push ourselves in one direction or another.

Hope that helps and isn't too abstract/froo-froo.

[Shaggnasty]

Does anyone here do small compositions of larger studies first? In the same way you would do thumbnails for an illustration?

It just occurred to me to try this, I feel it might help by being able to draw out a very small but organized version of what you're intending to do a full study of. A Kind of guideline to help make the finished piece more solid.

[bodied]

Jeff - that definitely helps. I wasn't 'classically' trained (whatever that means) to draw from life exclusively. My education so far has been focused on the contemporary art expression side of things - there are many students at my school who cannot draw because they prefer to paint nonobjectively. With my work I focus more on bodies, but still - the super-detailed way of working was never something that my teachers really wanted us to do. However, they really helped on the the conceptual side of art, as in why do I paint the things I do. I guess now I'm trying to play a little catch up.

Shaggnasty - I do totally! For my contemporary pieces, depending on the final medium, I'll do oil sketches on paper or small charcoal drawings. I did a couple studies in charcoal on printmaking paper but I don't have pictures yet... I drew it out, then on a separate sheet of paper, ground the block of charcoal to make a pile of dust. Then I took some paper towels (rough texture) and got the dust on there, then smeared it on the drawing to create a base tone. It was infinitely easier to then smoothly blend darker tones into that. I'll post pictures when I get the chance. Haven't quite got it but I'm liking the direction it could go.