Starting from square one

**Dyeonyx** · December 10th, 2012, 08:42 PM

Not much today, family member got hospitalized last night (they are fine). Only read a few pages of that book so far, but I like it, tells you exactly what you need to know and makes it easy to understand. Anyways, perspective! Now will 100% less ruler!

**Dyeonyx** · December 12th, 2012, 12:58 AM

Never realized how much work it takes to freehand a simple cylinder, lot of fun though.

**Dyeonyx** · December 12th, 2012, 11:16 PM

More cylinders.

**Dyeonyx** · December 14th, 2012, 10:25 PM

I feel like I'm doing something horribly horribly wrong with these cylinders.

**Beartankmaster** · December 14th, 2012, 11:39 PM

Hey man

great progress. You seem to be making a common beginner's mistake however, not that I'm not a beginner O_o. When you draw a line you seem to kind of scratch it in rather than making one smooth, confident line. This is likely because you're drawing from the wrist rather than the elbow.

Here's a good video on it

. It may seem tedious but I think if you follow along with it you'll find it's really freeing to draw this way.

http://www.ctrlpaint.com/ctrlpaint-u...ng-the-pencil/

keep up the hard work

you can do this.

**Dyeonyx** · December 17th, 2012, 12:37 PM

More stuff. Thanks for stopping by Dichotomy, I'll try harder to break that habit.

**Dyeonyx** · December 26th, 2012, 03:26 PM

Some more stuff, really happy how the school fish ornament came out, along with the lamp and some of the bags on the last page came out. Shading is still a big problem though. Hope you all had nice holidays!

**Dyeonyx** · December 27th, 2012, 08:33 PM

Stuff from today.

**Dyeonyx** · December 28th, 2012, 08:28 PM

Wow, that construction stuff really helps a lot. I could have spent an hour on those pyramids and still not have gotten the angles right.

**Dyeonyx** · December 30th, 2012, 02:15 AM

I like the shape of the cat head. Maybe I getting better at drawing my cat, or maybe it just came out better because she was not moving the whole time? Who knows!? Ears are kinda small though.

**Dyeonyx** · December 31st, 2012, 02:49 AM

More stuff. The shaver, plug, and circular coin sorting thing were from life.

**Dyeonyx** · January 2nd, 2013, 04:40 PM

Hope you all had a nice new years.

**Dyeonyx** · January 4th, 2013, 02:56 AM

The creepy looking thing is my stuffed frog, drew it from different angles.

**Beartankmaster** · January 4th, 2013, 02:58 AM

You're making contour drawings like a baws son! =D maybe try out some gesture drawings? they kind of go hand-in-hand with contours I think. keep it up man

**Dyeonyx** · January 4th, 2013, 11:44 PM

Stuff, tried more gesture like stuff. If you can't tell what they are I did my phone a bunch of times, my cat, an exercise bike, some lamps, and a basket.

I also went to one of those picture rotation sites and did some 30 second gesture drawings, but they were way to light to post here. I really need to get better about that.

**Dyeonyx** · January 8th, 2013, 08:52 PM

A very small bit of what I have been doing since the site was down. Poses were gotten from one of those 30 second picture rotation site, the sandle and box thing were from life, as were the blobs that may or may not look like hands.

Edit: Also, I have been using an 'F' pencil at this point. It feels like the lines I'm getting from it are way too light. Should I use a 'B' or '2B' or somethig?

**Marian Rowling** · January 9th, 2013, 06:29 AM

Happy New Year Dyeonyx, great to see you still drawing away. I think you were very close with the shape and perspective of the sandal, and the cupboard/drawer perspective looks very good. In answer to your pencil question what not try a HB grade of pencil. It is in the middle of the soft and hard range. I sometimes start out with a H or F pencil and then go over my lines with a HB.

I also think your line quality is improving in your longer studies but still quite scratchy in your quicker gestures. A good exercise to do which can help improve you line quality is to just practice drawing straight lines as long as you can and fill up a whole sheet. Try going horizontal, vertical and diagonal. Then have a go at doing circles and see how smooth and round you can get them. These exercises are quite good a warm up before you draw as well as improving your overall technique with your pencil. Hope this helps, I do think you are doing all the right things so stick at it.

**Dyeonyx** · January 9th, 2013, 06:13 PM

More handy hands, and some blobs that should be hands. Thanks for the info Marian Rowling, I'll pick up some HB pencils. The straight line/circle practice seems like a very good drill to do everyday/before drawing.

Also found a video from an artist that I think posts around here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPg07NadVZI
Just looking his silhouettes you can make out some sort of mech type thing from each of them, and they all have a feeling of mass(if that even makes sense). It's really inspiring.

**L4xord** · January 9th, 2013, 08:05 PM

I definitely see improvement. My advice is to stick with perspective as it is arguably the most important tool in the core fundamentals. Also try to work towards more comfortable contours (your line), currently your line is looks a bit messy. Try to get a nice clean line.

**Dyeonyx** · January 10th, 2013, 02:42 PM

Stuff from today so far

**Dyeonyx** · January 12th, 2013, 01:30 AM

Ugh, being sick sucks, slept for 14 hours. Picked up some HB's last night. Gotta remember to stop scratching in my lines and just go for a nice smooth one.

**Dyeonyx** · January 12th, 2013, 03:39 PM

More hands/fingers that ACTUALLY kinda look like hands fingers. "Draw what you see, not what you think you see" was ringing through my head the whole time, I thought I was looking at my subjects a lot before, but it really just occurred to me just how many details one misses if they look away even for for a second, as soon as I take my take my eyes away from my hand, my brain just kinda goes "just draw a curved line, it's just a finger" and I miss out on all the subtle dents and curves in the fingers.

Sorry if that was a little weird.

**kazulax** · January 12th, 2013, 04:02 PM

Hey Dyeonyx, this is my 1st ever comment on CA, and it goes for you man, its really amazing to see your improvement and to know that you're doing it on your own will. Just want to suggest you to try and get a better "handle" of the pencil/tool you're working with, draw some lines straight or curve, just to get comfortable with the motion of the hand, and how the tool traces. Other than that I see you already got some great advice from everybody.
Keep it up man, its really great to see your improvement.
Cheers.

**Dyeonyx** · January 14th, 2013, 12:55 AM

Thank you so much for the kind words kazulax. I think my very bad lines come from more of a mental block. I seem ok with doing some in practice drills, but as soon as I have an object in front of me to draw, my mind is kinda telling me to take it slow and slowly chip out a line, when I should actually just be planning the entire line out in the first place and drawing in one fell swoop.

Anyways, not much today, so I'm also posting one of my line practice sheets as well. I do like how the life drawings came out however. I don't think I got the lines right on the pushpin thing though.

**GrayPersona** · January 14th, 2013, 01:08 AM

hey Dyeonyx that mental block you are talking about is mainly mascular tension- relax your wrist,the pencil should be hanging loosly in your palm-like dichotomy said draw from the elbow or shoulder once you start felling tense
or making scratchy lines stop and try again,the physical act of drawing is not that hard you keep practicing and you will get it right.

**Dyeonyx** · January 14th, 2013, 05:17 PM

Hello GrayPersona, makes a lot of sense, I tend to be a truly tense person. I just gotta relax and let the lines come out. I have always been drawing from elbow/shoulder, however.

Not that much today, tried drawing with pen to see how I would take to drawing with something more permanent. And also some perspective stuff from life, that came out better than the last one I tried of this.

**Dyeonyx** · January 15th, 2013, 08:36 AM

More stuff from life, getting better with the line problem I think.

**Dyeonyx** · January 16th, 2013, 10:46 PM

Not much today. It's pretty funny how you think something looks ok at first, but then later on you look at it and go "What the hell am I doing?" As soon as I uploaded this I saw how the top area was kinda leaning over to the left.

I tried to keep the shading very very basic, less worrying about values and more what is very dark and what isn't. Some lines are still very shaky but over all I think I'm getting a little better with that.