Just Another Noob Trying to Improve :)

[Beartankmaster]

So I'm working through a Scott Robertson DVD on basic perspective. Drew a bunch of cubes, ellipses, and attempts at straight lines today. 5 pages of each as is my wont. Though I don't care to scan 15 pages of the same stuff -_- lol. My trashcan is getting full and the stack of printer paper I bought is getting smaller =D.

I also tried a still life of one of my chess pieces. It was more difficult than I anticipated. I feel like my scanner made the value transitions a bit harsher than they actually are but overall I just kind of ran into rendering problems. I'm gonna do each piece in the future; well each type of piece I mean(rook, knight, bishop, etc.).

[Beartankmaster]

Yep. It's a duck alright.

[Beartankmaster]

More pen stuff. I'm still working through that perspective DVD. It's pretty much just a bunch of grids at this point with cubes and shit in them. I'm gonna work up to ellipses and complex shapes in a bit.

[Beartankmaster]

Something is wrong with this but I'm not sure what.

[Beartankmaster]

The shadows on these pieces have had multiple layers. I'm not really sure how to render it. Furthermore I'm not sure how to render the wood grain without distorting the overall values. It might be beneficial for me to get like some gray matte spray paint or something and buy some random objects at a dollar store to do still lifes with. That way I could focus on values until I get the hang of representing colors in the real world as value.

I had this idea. You know how sometimes you hear people joke about combinations of weird things to buy at a supermarket? (ex: KY jelly, cucumber, Lumberjacks Monthly) I think it'd be funny to apply that concept to still lifes =D

[Lucarky]

Hi mate! Good works you have here! The draw of bishop show a soft line and, even if you didn't mention the material, the texture is not bad rendered and was ascribable to wood. If you want to see a master of texturing and realistic draw, look for J.D. Hillberry. Keep posting, you're doing good!

[Beartankmaster]

Hi mate! Good works you have here! The draw of bishop show a soft line and, even if you didn't mention the material, the texture is not bad rendered and was ascribable to wood. If you want to see a master of texturing and realistic draw, look for J.D. Hillberry. Keep posting, you're doing good!

Thanks for the encouragement man . I actually have Hillberry's book. He's masterful, though I find his work a little boring sometimes. I was going to work on my rendering with Guptill, Bargue and Hillberry when I felt comfortable with anatomy and shapes at their conceptual levels but I'm not sure if it'd be more prudent to study more basic things first. This is what happens when you hoard resources I guess; you become overwhelmed with all there is to learn lol

[Punkie]

you're on a good track. learn the perspective first, then the rest si going to be much easier

[Beartankmaster]

I feel like the Knight came out a lot worse than the other two. The woodgrain wasn't really prominent in any spots so I couldn't rely on it to add some value or give me something to render, also it's a much more complex form than the other pieces I've done. I need to get better at rendering.

[Beartankmaster]

Merry Christmas everyone . I'm gonna spend some times with the family today. I horded a lot of resources yesterday and watched some videos on perspective; I might post something later.

[nouge]

Hey, I like the chess pieces! For the gestures, remember to longer poses also, to memorize the volumes, muscles etc. Still, there is definite improvement! Your most recent gestures read a lot more clearly than the first ones. So keep it up, and merry christmas!

[Thistlegorm]

Coincidentally, I was practising with that same Scott Robertson DVD! Helps a lot on perspective, also goes well with Loomis's "succesful drawing" first chapters which then shows you how to apply the practises from Robertson (and builds on it too) to create environments, shadows, forms and then it'll move on to proportion, it's real neat

Keep going man, really like your ink stuff too, you're getting the hang of that real fast! And merry belated Christmas!

[Thistlegorm]

Coincidentally, I was practising with that same Scott Robertson DVD! Helps a lot on perspective, also goes well with Loomis's "succesful drawing" first chapters which then shows you how to apply the practises from Robertson (and builds on it too) to create environments, shadows, forms and then it'll move on to proportion, it's real neat

Keep going man, really like your ink stuff too, you're getting the hang of that real fast! And merry belated Christmas!

[Beartankmaster]

Holidays are over, back to the grind. I'll be posting some stuff I've been working on and some new stuff today.

Nouge

hey man thanks for the comment I think I'll move up to 90 second poses and increase the time amount gradually from there. Maybe in increments of 30 seconds every 100 drawings. I'm not really sure yet :/ lol

Thistleborn

that's crazy man. i'm also going through Successful Drawing lol =D. small world eh?

[kevin_]

nice amount of work! keep pushing out the figures and values studies! keep it up!

[Beartankmaster]

@kevin_

thanks for the encouragement man



So some of these came out kinda wonky. I think I need more work on drawing lines still as the errors were probably due to mistakes in laying out my grid.

Looking through my posts though, I write a lot of self-abasing shit. It's getting old and it's probably not productive. So I'm done with that. I might make notes on what I think I need to improve but not more of this "this is shit" stuff. That's not even constructive.

[Beartankmaster]

alright nice. it's finally up again i was kinda bummed because I wasn't able to access ccsears' pen tutorial :/ here's some stuff.

i was trying to avoid using outlines on the rook but it came out a bit blurry i think. i need to learn how to convey hard edges without using them.


lol I just realized I wrote: "Having trouble conveying edges without edges." I think that's funny. I meant without outlines

[Beartankmaster]

Alright so I deviated from my usual rendering process. I tried to establish midtones before adding heavy shadows or highlights this time. I feel like this was kind of a 1 step forward 2 steps back scenario. I feel like the queen and rook look worse than the other pieces.

No matter though, onwards!

It looks like the scan was a bit fuzzier on this one :/

[Beartankmaster]

So I was in Hobby Lobby today cause I wanted to pick up a black prismacolor and a kneaded eraser and I decided to waltz into the toy aisle because I have no shame . I'm almost done with my chess pieces so I was looking for something cool to draw and I found this tube of toy dinosaur skulls and I was like ERMERGERD I can do dinosaur studies! =D I didn't know if I wanted to buy them though because I wasn't sure if they were anatomically accurate.

So I'm just sitting there with these dinosaur toys in my hands and this employee walks up to me and he's like "Sir, can I help you with anything?" and I just kind of stared at him for a second and said, "I'm not sure these dinosaur skulls are anatomically accurate." I think he thought I was complaining about it or that I had OCD or something cause he just said something to the effect of "Uh...I'm not sure myself." and then walked away.

I thought it was pretty hilarious in retrospect; it probably looked pretty autistic from his point of view.

In the end I decided it didn't matter whether or not they were accurate since I'd still be drawing forms from life. So I bought that and a ballin allosaurus figure with a moveable jaw(it's pretty sick =D) along with the supplies I came for.

Tried to draw one of the little skulls today. There's a pretty high level of detail on them, it's difficult to capture while trying to convey values. But anyway: IT'S A PARASAUROLOPHUS SON! BOOM!

[Thistlegorm]

Love that dinosaur skull! And the story of how you got it is pretty hilarious :p

On the chess piece where you said you don't know what went wrong, this is just a stab in the dark and I'll let you get to your own conclusions, BUT I think the problem is that the sides of the crown flare out and show their "bellies" (for lack of a better word ) whereas they should have shown their sides

Still, great work on still life drawings, your eye is most certainly getting better

[Thistlegorm]

Love that dinosaur skull! And the story of how you got it is pretty hilarious :p

On the chess piece where you said you don't know what went wrong, this is just a stab in the dark and I'll let you get to your own conclusions, BUT I think the problem is that the sides of the crown flare out and show their "bellies" (for lack of a better word ) whereas they should have shown their sides

Still, great work on still life drawings, your eye is most certainly getting better

[Beartankmaster]

Hey thanks Thistle born I think that might be where I went wrong. I knocked it over a couple of times and may have put it back up at a different angle. Thanks for your encouragement man .

So this came out pretty badly. You'll know what I'm talking about if you know where it's from; looks nothing like the ref lol. I have more than just HB pencils now so I wanted to draw something with a wide range of value, it seems to be an area I struggle in.

[ForScience]

I would love to see some creative stuff in addition to your studies. Keep up the good work

[eroquii]

I admire your work ethic dude. You work hard and you even do what people suggest. Keep at it man!

Also, I agree with forScience. =D Great avatar btw!

[Beartankmaster]

@Forscience

Thanks man I was actually thinking that myself. I was watching Jason Manley's TED talk last night and he said he'd advised Mindcandyman to spend half of his time drawing from life and the other half drawing from imagination. I haven't really drawn much from imagination as of yet though the idea of it seems liberating. I've spent so much time with my nose in books or reading threads. There's a lot of ideas rattling around inside.

As far as these chess pieces go it seems like they've gotten worse lol. I've learned a bit about my rendering process in doing them though. Trial and error I guess. Still feels good to have completed my goal of doing all of them. I'm going to do the dinosaur skulls next I think.

[Beartankmaster]

I admire your work ethic dude. You work hard and you even do what people suggest. Keep at it man!

Also, I agree with forScience. =D Great avatar btw!

thanks man I feel like I could be working harder but I'm glad if I can be of some encouragement to anyone .

thanks on the avatar by the way lol =D goku isn't exactly the most multifaceted character but I think this pic pretty well sums up my attitude most of the time. can't take yourself too seriously ya know?

[Beartankmaster]

I thought about what Forscience said a lot last night and had a little brainchat with myself that went something along these lines: "Something creative, huh? Am I even capable of that? What have I ever created that hasn't been derived from some already established idea? Are there even any new ideas left in the world? You don't even know any art history; how can you expect to be original if you have no idea what's come before you? Anything you posted under the pretense of creative would likely be bound to fail and look stupid as you haven't even developed those faculties."

These questions sparked an idea in my head though. I expect every artist has asked these questions of himself at some point; I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in this, or at least, I don't have to be if I am. I have the community here to some extent. The idea was kind of "metacognitive"(is that even a word?) but I FINALLY HAVE AN IDEA! =D The first idea I've had in a long time that I think has any worth. I'm going to be working on it secretly *wrings hands mwahaha, and then I'll unveil it when it's finished. I was debating as to whether or not to save the idea because I know my skills aren't good enough right now to convey it fully as it exists in my mind but I think I'll go ahead with it. I can redo the work later on when I'm better if I feel like it.

This is just a quick update. I think I'm going to gear my studies towards learning how to produce this idea for a bit. It'll be a piece of sequential art. I have some characters I want to include in it and I'll probably post some ideas or thumbnails for them later . I'm excited.

[DennisH-Art]

Thanks for the visit on my SB! I see that you allready have a lot of high quality studies and practices. Just make sure to apply them to some kickass personal work . And never be afraid to fail! If you dont fail now and then, your not working on the right stuff!

Keep it up and continue to be awesome!

[Dyeonyx]

Thanks for stopping by my sketchbook. I wish I knew enough to be able to give you some advice. But I can definitely see improvement, keep up the good work.

[eroquii]

Hey man, can't wait to see what you've been up to while CA was down! Hurry up and post =P