duck_king's path to glory

[duck_king]

Hello World:
This is my sketchBook - I am a Student Games Designer who has loved to draw
since I a kid, I never studied it academically so I would love for as much help as possible.
please leave any feedback or comments...


::-----::













Seriously please, go in to detail when telling me what's wrong with my work
and how i can improve it. thanks

[geldslaw]

love the work, I suppose i can say the same thing that has been mentioned to me which is to do lots of anatomical studies. In the sense that it will allow you to go from 2d drawings to 3d drawings, which effectly allows you the use of working with lighting and shadows to give the images mass.

whas greart about the site is that you can see once you've completed anatomical studies you'll probably as I will do, want to move onto using colour and the subtleties of blending and shading with colours as opposed to using just grey tones to create textures and shades, sketching.

good start, love the fact you can sketch and draw solid lines easily, I won't or can't comment on anime as I can see what people mean buy moving away from it because, anime is a style in itself and its hard to criticise because its 'comic' not real life drawing or painting, even surrealis, DALI is an abstract version of life.

So lets see some studies then at least I can help from there

[Envisor]

Welcome to CA. Good start to an SB. As geldslaw stated before, staying away from anime for awhile is probably a good thing, during that you should focus on boring life drawing, figure studies, and anatomical studies. This is what i did and it has improved my art greatly. Hoping to see more. Keep posting.

My Sketchbook- C&C very welcome
http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=85772

[duck_king]

Thanks for the advice envisor and geldslaw.

yeah I kinda knew that from before, but I just don't really know where to start y'know. i mean, i wanted to do a life drawing class, but it was full
and I'll have to wait untill next year before the new class starts.
So all i've done is just draw from books and magazines.

do u know n e good internet resources for anatomical studies or life drawing studies?

I have a bad habit of whenever I try doing life drawing and it goes wrong too many times, I end up just converting it into a manga style drawing and alot of the times it works, giving me a quicker reward if y'kno what i mean.
Either ways I've already started my training, I'm thinking of drawing at least a couple of pages a day and posting it up here for help on improvements.

Here's my homework for today:







I did these sketches from one of my sisters girly magazines, the first picture looks the worse cuz i used a cheap eraser (yep, blame it on the eraser). N e ways i tried measuring the features roughly and it worked a bit better but then I didn't measure for the last 2 pictures and I think they turned out better XD

N e ways lots of questions on faces:

1)how do u draw teeth without making it look grotty?
2)how do u measure faces consistently?
3)what do u think is a good way to draw a face?





These pages were sketched from the magazine aswell, I prefer drawing bodies as I've discovered it can convey more emotion than the face at times

That's it for today, I know my work's crap right now and I decided I wanted to put up the crap work in order to motivate myself to get better

as always - thanks for droppin in Quack

[Wake101]

pretty good start on the sb. My suggestion would be to do some life stuff. Ya know, just drawing whatever you can find around the house. Look up Andrew Loomis for free books on anatomy that you can download off the internet.

Also, fully shading your pics helps too. Try to nourish the pieces and treat them right; really paying attention to what your putting down on paper.

Great job so far.

[finlay]

Hey duck_king. One of the important thing to consider when drawing the head is the structure of the human skull:

1: The height and depth of the skull are about the same size.

2: The eyes are halfway down the head.

3: The widest part of the skull is the cheekbones.

4: The wider the cheekbones are, the more of an oval shape the skull will have.

5: The width of the skull is roughly two thirds of the height.

6: The skull is divided into threes. The below sketch illustrates (the black lines represent the three divisions while the red line represents th halfway point) .

don't worry about the life drawing class. There are some greate books for drawing the human figure and head.

These are the ones I recomend:

FIGURE DRAWING FOR ALL IT'S WORTH by Andrew Loomis.

DRAWING THW HEAD AND HANDS by Andrew Loomis.

The Artist's Complete Guide to FACIAL EXPRESSION by Gary Faigin.

You may also want to try DRAWING ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE BRAIN
A Course in Enhancing Creativity and Artistic Confidence by Betty Edwards.

I think there are some tutorials here as well that could help you out.

I hope this helps you

[duck_king]

Finay - thanks for that, It's really helpful to have it pointed out like that, because it makes it easier to focus.

Wake101 - thanks for the tip man, shading has always been one of my weakest weaknesses, but I think I should face my fears now.

[duck_king]

Been tied up with loads of stuff for the past few days so only managed a few sketches last night, to which i stayed up till 3am.

[duck_king]

Stayed up late again yesterday, cuz i didn't have time during the day to
practise. only managed to do 1 proper "learning sketch" and then i messed about and did a random 1.





as always tips and tricks appreciated XD

[duck_king]

Been hyper busy again, w/ family stuff and uni work - n e ways managed a couple of rough sketches:





as always comments and critique more than welcome.
Thanks Quack

[geldslaw]

hey wassup, love tha fact that you;re squeezing out drawings even though you're not getting the time and already i can see many improvements. Definately will say this, I looked at many anatomy books and was terrified, because I thought studying anatomy was beyond me, well like wow, duh. Its not, and it helps, the traps on one of your protraits well, look at the difference between men and womens traps, women's a re much smaller and slender unless they're superheroes.

May be in animation we could chat more about the loomis as I'm goin gto be definately using it like its going out of fashion. There's also a great section in it on tonal studies which you would and will benefit from.

I noticed only recently, that a lot of black and white drawings had the usual specular, diffuse and ambient shading, ok specular you expect to be white but you know what I mean. Also I notieced that if a surface is flat you don't have as details shading as if it is rounded as the light falls off towarsd the dark and you can define this by use oof at least two grades of shading, three if you include specular, but loomis has a wicked section which i'm saving for bedtime reading.

see ya 2malla at uni

[geldslaw]

I would say moer about your last pic but when you go through the tonal studies you'll see how it can be improved and how you can use shadow to emphasize the form and be more sonsitent with where and how the light is falling and the temperature of the shading you want to use to creat a mood.

for example she's sat leaning forward and there are no shadows on her face in particular the right side of her face because you have a fairly strong shadow on the floor to the right side of the chair.

nuff said, but wicked to see you producing the goods

[duck_king]

Yo, thanks for the comments geldslaw. And totally contradicting the message you left me earlier, I have been too busy to draw and I'm kickin myself cuz of it. But nonetheless as I have completed my assignment at uni and i get a weeks break before the next so I have managed to produce a drawing wahey.
As usual comments and critique welcome.

Quack

[Chizome]

Hey, duck_king! I'm pretty impressed with your work, and I'm also impressed that you're looking to improve. There is always, always room for improvement on anything; there's no such thing as perfect.

Now, you're here looking for criticism. I can't say anything about the manga style- I use it frequently- but I will say that the realism could use a bit of work. It's a long, slow process, but you'll be amazed if you just practice. I understand that you can get frustrated and revert from realism to the style you're most comfortable with. The key to working and improving your skills, however, is a bit of a problem for most people.

You must be patient. Then and only then can you really make progress. It's tough- extremely tough- but it works and it helps immensely. Listen to some music to get you in the zone before you work. Devote at least an hour a day to practice (I find third period Biology and fourth period Criminal Law are the best times for me). While this may be difficult, it takes militaristic work and training to mold yourself to your own conditions and work with them for art.

As for criticism on your art itself... As an artist who uses the style herself, I can say I'm impressed with your work in the manga style. However, you need to study realism first and THEN convert it to manga. I realized too late that I had made this mistake. Study anatomy in three dimensions and draw from a skeleton.

I can't criticise more until fifth, unfortunately- I'm in Spanish and we're about to hustle to third period. Keep up the work and keep uploading, I've got an eye on you. ^_~

[duck_king]

I've been so inspired coming back to the forum that I just had to do another pic.


This was done on my borthers graphics tablet, I've never used one properly before and I'm still a beginner at photoshop so I would love as much criticism as possible.

Chizome: Thanks for the comments man, yeh I def will practise more anatomical studies, but i don't think i've got the right material yet, that being said i will persevere. Nice one.

[Envisor]

Hey man. Been a while since ive been here. As some of the others have said, youve got be patient, A good thing to do is to draw a sketch of your character first, then notice the things that you like and dont like. After that draw the same character but spend more time and thought into it. By the way thanks for stopping by my sketchbook.

[themissinglink]

hey man, thanks for stoping by my sketch book. i was starting to get down from posting stuff and not getting any coments. to know that my drawings have inspired or helped you is truly awsome.

ok, on to your sketchbook. You have a really good start here. i like others that have posted in this thread suggest strongly to branch out from the manga style. it seems that its a crutch and stopping you from improving your figure drawings. drawing people from magazines is a great idea but i think first you should invest in an anatomy book. some of the proportions are off in your drawings and those books will help fix that. Continue to draw things from life and really focus on the form and shape. i can tell you have already come a long way, just keep working.

[Unbreakable]

hey

Looks good so far, I think you should get a good anatomy book. Something like Bridgman's Constructive Anatomy is a good place to start. Also try and move away from the anime it's holding you back.

cheers

[duck_king]

I've been bad, haven't posted here in months and I haven't been practising my life drawings - I've been really busy with coursework, made a really cool game, which I'll post on newgrounds once I've tidied it up.

N e ways, I've been using photoshop a bit more and because i've been so busy whenever i had time to draw i'd go back to my manga roots n try to draw something manga-ish. Here's a pic that i started colouring a couple of days ago and just finished:
C+C welcome

[duck_king]

And another one >)

[duck_king]

Wow, it's been a long time since I posted on my sketch book
But I haven't been lazy, although I've been so busy I haven't had time to post
I have still been drawing like crazy. It's a happy day for me because looking back at my first posts from this sketch book I've noticed that I have improved considerably. So please, if you happen to look at my posts make sure you give me some feedback cuz that is the only way I will get any better.

Here is something I managed to rustle up in about 3 hours to commemorate my return to conceptart.



As always plz leave as much (or little) critique you can.

Thanks

duck_king aka quisuke

[xinranliu]

Digital painting is really fun, but I really recommend taking little steps to eat the whole mountain of art. Begin with the fundamentals, form, values, colors, etc etc.

[thespianmonsalvo]

Anatomy is your weakest point here. Try also to venture away from Anime style for a bit to work on your faces. But keep 'em coming.

[thespianmonsalvo]

Something that has really helped me while doing anatomy studies and figure drawings is using the pencil to measure body parts. Measure out how wide a thigh is and than put that measurement against how wide the shoulders are. Doing this throughout the entire figure works well as a easy double-checking method. Doing this early in the drawing is great because you can always change what you've done before you started detailing everything out. It also can help you figure out what makes people's bodies all different from one another.
And BTW, internet image searches are great for finding figures to study from. Clothed or nude - although I prefer nude so I can really study the form without clothing being in the way.
Keep the work coming.