Figurative Thread of A.Sinner

#9

Hi there,

From what I see I strongly suggest dropping the drawings from imagination and thoroughly copying reference for a while. Not only the linework. The complete set, values and all. Working in greyscale is a good idea and as you can handle Photoshop it might be good to focus on digital for a while. Open your source photo side by side with the canvas and start to draw what you see!

Which is why this book might be very helpful as it focuses on making you draw what you see as opposed to drawing what you think you see.

For the portraits: Try to find reference which has other views, too. Not only the frontal view. A nice 3/4 view offers nice opportunities for shading and showing the character.

I like the b/w digital eyes, btw!

#10

I’ve heard about that book. I’ll check it out. thanks
Well my digital paintings always start as pencil drawings from reference, just along the way I change the drawing to fit my vision. this is the closest I’ve been to a reference image. it started as a portrait of Halle Berry


Im not very happy with how the lips and chin turned out, even thought I tried to correct it many times, it just didnt work ><

and another one which turned into more of a semi realism portrait (from imagination)

Digital WIP

#11

Hello! I find your sketches interesting but as a personal advice I think you need to work more on anatomical features. Study some book, make some practice and your images will improve for sure. Cheers!

#12

Thank you for your comment. Working on anatomical features is my main priority right now :slight_smile:

#13

Finished this one. The eyes turned out a bit weired and the shading could be better, but this is as far as I could push it

and started working on a new one for which I have as a starting point one of the pencil portraits from above. I am going to turn this into a full character design so by the time I’m finished with it its going to look very different from my original drawing.
Here is where I am so far. Painting the hair turned out by far my best try.
Any constructive comments are welcome! :slight_smile:

#14

Things seem a little flat. Where do you feel your light sources are? In the first portrait I’m also curious about that dark line across the right side of the face. Is it a hair strand?

Keep drawing! You have some interesting ideas.

#15

Thank you for your comment. Yes they look flat because I havent defined the light source, I have trouble with that, so in the future I will do some seperate drawings concetrating just on that.
The dark line you mentioned was supposed to be a scar across her face, but I couldnt figure out how to paint it.

Here is the finished piece and some of the process. I left the clothes as an idea for now and just focused on the face.

#16

I agree with Mr. Mu. It helped me alot to go through the figurative workshops copying master’s works. Later the master copies were used to be bases for some imaginative stuff. May I also suggest to render your work from very loose lines with broad brushes to tighter harder smaller brushes for more detailed work. Work over the whole figure this way and not go straight to detail work before you have laid out the entire figure. I found that that helped me most with proportions. You have nice rendering so far, it is a bit flat, but the 3D will come with live figures. I am not a professional so take my advice for what it is worth. I just found that this advice helped me. The other guys in this forum like Mr. Mu are the real guys. Listen to them.

#17

Thank you for the advice. I will go back to basics.
I did some form and light studies today. So here is what I came up. The female was drawn from a Ron Lemon tutorial. I’ve never really dont studies like that before, so please let me know how I did. The last one is not finished yet

#18

Mu has made some very good points.

Some others:

carry cheap paper (in pads) wherever you go and draw everyone and everything around you - just loose fun sketches. I find using pens, mechanical pencils good (mechanical pencils because you don’t need to carry masses of pencils with you and worry about sharpening them). I carry small memo pads 3.5x5 inches, up to 12x14 pads of newsprint. (check out Bobby Chui Subway Sketching: http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=247487)

Also, if there are life drawing workshops available in your community sign up for them - great practice.

Good luck!

#19

Sinner - Keep your art loose like the last few posts. Study the flow of your construction and when you render put a symbol for the light source somewhere in your drawing to remind you where it is coming from and you will get the highlights and shadows down. Gord made a great suggestion about carrying a pad of paper around. I find myself doodling on everything up to a napkin at the diner. Keep it up.

#20

Nice progression here! Keep it up :thumbsup:

#21

Gord-MacDonald
Thanks for the suggestion and link!

Anggie93
I do use symbols for the light source, sometimes I am just not sure where the light is supposed to be. I will make some studies on simple objects like cubes and spheres.

jabuhrer
thank you. ^^

I have a funny question, I thought I’ll do some sketches on the train tomorow but how do you draw someone without constantly looking up at them, they might notice. I guess you have to be inconspicuous…

#22

An update to my last post.

#23

I started doing this online drawing course, with video tutorials and its really helped me. here are some of last weeks drawings I did fallowing the course. Turns out with instruction I draw much better.

Gesture

Angels and Negative Space

#24

Looks like to me you have been doing good with your course. It is a good foundation to a finished product. I have to go back and learn that all over nearly every time I get ambitous as an artist.

#25

Great improvements, congrats. :slight_smile: What was the course you took?

#26

tutorials from Glenn Vilppu and some good anatomy books.

Here is my month’s worth of leg studies. The first ones are my first attempts and then the other ones were made after reading a bit about the structure of the leg. Any feedback is appreciated if I am doing it right or wrong what needs improving. thank you for looking!
Sorry for the poor quality, I had to take pictures of it with my camera, because I don’t have a scanner yet.

#27

this month I started studying the hand and arm. I havent watched any tutorials yet, but here is a few I came up with, looking at a reference. I find positioning the fingers really puzzling. I have to read up on it maybe.

#28

I’m a beginner myself, and so I have no advice…except to listen to what these other artists are saying, because they know this stuff. You’re improving a lot, keep it up!