What to do next?

[Charadas]

Hello guys,

I need some help. I have just started drawing again after a gap of two year or so. To help myself I have started a sketchbook and I try to do a few sketch-studies everyday. I have found Loomis and I love him so I think I'm going in the right direction, but now I'm a little bored of sketches and want to finish something.

So I made this little guy and decided to make a, sorry not sure what words to use, b/w portrait maybe? No background, just him and a bit of the rock he's standing on in greyscales, nothing fancy, but I really don't know what to do in order to get beyond the sketch. I slapped on some different greys on another layer, but now they just feel stupid.

Anyways, sorry for the rant and thanks for looking!

[Natalia Soleil]

Hey there!
Good job on stydying anatomy! i think you did well here, everything is in the right place!
to continue with a painting, the next step would be to understand the forms of the animal, and how light would wrap around them. If you want a black and white rendering, you have to understand where the light would be and where shadow would be. Looking at photography (desaturate it in advance) helps a lot to study that. also, doing stilllifes helps!

you dont just throw grey tones on the sketch, before doing this, you must think carefully. after you blocked in the lights and shadows correctly, you are ready to go more into detail, add background, overpaint the outlines, and render everything clean!

i did a little overpaint here where i started to do that. the more time you spend on it , the more clean, detailed and realistic it will become!

hope it could help!

[arenhaus]

Next? Draw 1000 more things.

If you are interested in animals, look up Ken Hultgren's animal drawing book. It's the best one there is.

[Charadas]

Hi!

Thank you Natalia for the kind words! I shall definitely think of what you have said when I work on this tonight! And also I am very grateful for the PO, it gives me a hint of what I can do if I think a little before trying to paint, get frustrated, give up and go whine about it here

Arenhaus, yes, to put it bluntly that is exactly what I need, what every artist needs, but it is not what I asked for here. Here I asked for help getting this particular drawing beyond the sketch stage, because I'm really unsure of how to do it.

I love drawing animals, especially made up ones and I shall definitely look up Ken Hultgren and his books. Thank you.

[arenhaus]

Arenhaus, yes, to put it bluntly that is exactly what I need, what every artist needs, but it is not what I asked for here. Here I asked for help getting this particular drawing beyond the sketch stage, because I'm really unsure of how to do it.

Well, that's part of my point that I didn't state explicitly. If you feel like you need to use every sketch you make, because sketches are so difficult to make and success so precious, then what you really need is get to the point where sketches are a cheap commodity for you and you think nothing about making a dozen quick sketches in an hour to test your composition. You'll get two crucial benefits out of that: cheap way to experiment on your own, and freedom from being locked up in place by a sketch.

If you even have to ask others "what to do with this sketch", it means that the sketch isn't that interesting even for you. Leave it as a sketch and move on. Sketches are cheap. Not every sketch needs to be "finished". They are often just tools, an artist's way of thinking "aloud".

If you like this sketch (or something particular about it), file it for future use and move on. It shouldn't make you wait until you finish it before you make more sketches. A lot of artists keep folders of promising random doodles that they use in their work later.


Or, if your question had been purely technical and about being unsure how to give it a lit appearance, then you ought to go and study lighting on simpler objects from life. You won't be able to do it if you don't have a grasp of how light and shadow work, so get some practice in those before trying to do it from imagination!

[Lightship69]

This is starting to read as though you are getting a little upset so before you shout at us :-

Please don't get mad at Arenhaus! he just tells you what you need to know and doesn't sugar coat it at all, he just gives his honest opinion. In this particular case he is (as usual) correct, it is a reasonably good sketch and has been moved on to a reasonable render stage by another member.
The information we are missing is that we wonder if it going to be part of an environment study, an animal anatomy study, an animal portrait or just an experiment?
Generally Like the man said generally we use the sketches as a quick way to get ideas down on paper and work the composition so that it fits the story behind the image we try to create, and indeed it helps to turn a static image into one that tells a story and holds the attention of the viewer.

Anyhow enough of all that the over all anatomy of the beats looks ok but from looking at him I am not sure what family of animal he hails from. He seems to have a horse tail, a dog like body and a feline head so I am not sure what you were going for here, don't get me wrong it hangs together but it still raises some questions as you look at it which is a shame.

all the best with it and I hope you get all you need from it mate.

[Charadas]

Oh dear, what a mess, Lightship69 I think you have misunderstood me and it is my fault entirely. I am not angry with Arenhaus, I know he is correct, but I found his comment a bit blunt and wanted to give a blunt answer back. I probably should have put a smiley or two in there, because now when I look back at my comment it do look a bit sourly. I am sorry for that.

There, enough said about that, I hope

Now about the other things you mention in your comment; I wanted to do a b/w portrait of this creature. It is also a bit of an experiment, because I really don't know how to render it without turning it into a cel-shaded manga/anime monster, though I have a few ideas now that I'm going to try out... the main one being "work work work, don't give up"

the over all anatomy of the beats looks ok but from looking at him I am not sure what family of animal he hails from. He seems to have a horse tail, a dog like body and a feline head so I am not sure what you were going for here

Haha, great, you're spot on. How funny ^^

Thank you so much for your comment, I really mean it!

Arenhaus, firstly, sorry if I offended you in any way. I was serious about the book and I am going to look it up secondly, I haven't stopped sketching just because I wanted to make something out of this one and I have no intention to render every sketch I have ever made (that would probably make me crazy) I think ultimately I just wanted to assure myself that I can make other things than sketches, which didn't go very well, because I do need to study form more... I just feel I need to give this guy one more shot first

Regardless, thank you really for elaborating, it was very kind of you.

[Charadas]

Ok, after about two, two and a half hour, of moving blobs of grey around in psp even I realize that I don't know what I'm doing. So I'll go back to my pencil sketches for now... but I'll keep this sketch! I still like the look of it.

Over and out.