Sketchbook Thread of deco

#31

This was initially an experiment to limit myself to 1 hour. Unfortunately, the result was a very flat, very awkwardly thin ice skater :scream:

So, I started working on it a little at a time, adding some highlights, filling her out a bit - kind of interesting to see the progression. I tried to focus on some of the tips I’ve gotten here (so helpful, thank you!) - opposing curves (although, I think that one is going to take a while to truly understand) and avoiding heavy outlines (which I do think gives her legs more depth, I probably could have done better on the arms).

Figure Skater (reference)

#32

Happy New Year, Abby!

Nice perspective study and way to take the time to work on shading as well. Keep it up and before long you’ll become better and better in all of the areas you’re studying. I think one of the coolest things about art is that there’s always room for self-improvement and expansion, evolution as an artist doesn’t stop unless you make the decision to stop.

#33

@Knilblink - thank you, a belated happy new year to you too! :slight_smile:

I’ve moved onto the DOTRSOTB chapter on Portrait Drawing. These are just a couple of quick & dirty sketches from the book to get a feel for the size of the head to avoid the “chopped off skull” syndrome. I drew in the face first and then drew the rest of the head with ears and hair around it to see how much space they take up. I didn’t use any grids on these (ironically, maybe these were the ones I should have used grids on) but just wanted to get a feel for it and see how it came out on my own…

Portrait in Profile View

Portrait in Three-Quarter View

[left]I forced myself to use the entire page (9x12) on these instead of drawing so small (I keep feeling like when I do a copy my copy has to be the same size as the original - but the reference for these were only ~2" tall). The results seem very stiff and hesitant - not sure if that was from trying to draw larger, or just my discomfort with the notion of drawing heads… ah well, this is only the very beginning of the chapter, will keep tredging along…[/left]

#34

might be my screen settings being too bright but I can’t see much of the last posts. nearly white… think you could play with the levels a bit in your scanning software or in ps or GIMP?

anyway,
that’s a good choice not to draw too small. the smaller we draw, the easier to misplace a line :slight_smile:

#35

@nr43
Oops, I did draw these really light, part of that hesitation, I guess. Try Ctrl-F5 to reload the new copies and let me know if you can see them better now.

Thanks,
Abby

#36

Better :smiley:

Not sure if this book DOTRSOTB talks about the proportions of a human head, but one thing you should always be aware of is the relation of the different parts of the head to eachother.

Check out Loomis, Hogarth, etc if you can…
and draw many many heads :thumbsup:

keep going!!

#37

@nr43 - ahh, but wait, there’s more! :wink: (keep in mind though, DOTRSOTB is an absolute beginners book, you did see my portrait at the start of this thread, right? :smiley: - it’s not going to get into the intricacies of Loomis & Hogarth - those will come later :slight_smile: )

Here’s another quick one on how to place the features in relation to one another. This method obviously still leaves much left to learn about shape of skull/how to deal with heads that aren’t in perfect portrait view. I think the point is to start getting us to see these relationships (like the eye line at the half-way point on the head, and the triangle between eye-ear-chin) when we see people’s heads so we can start understanding how to draw what we see more accurately…

Portrait (placement of features)

#38

hey Abby,

I started off with Betty Edwards book too. The thing it helped me with most was teaching me how to draw what I see instead of what I think I see.

once you’ve learned that you’ll be able to draw things from reference with greater and greater skill. You’ll also get faster, and your lines will become stronger, more confident.

I love this quote:

In Chuck Amuck, an autobiography by Chuck Jones, Jones recalls that his first instructor at Chouinard Art Institute greeted the class with a grim edict: “All of you here have one hundred thousand bad drawings in you. The sooner you get rid of them, the better it will be for everyone.”

Once you’re satisfied that you can generally reproduce images from reference, you’ll want to move on to start building a library of shapes and forms in your mind so you don’t always have to draw from reference.

I’ve a fond place in my heart for that book you’re going through now, and I recommend it to anyone who wants to learn to draw but is stuck at the stick figure stage. You’ve got a very strong start here. Keep it up! :slight_smile:

#39

@adien, thank you! Great quote - definitely must keep that in mind (I could really use that for all aspects of my life - not just drawing :wink: ) [size=2]I can’t wait to get to a point where I can have a similar library to draw from, I feel very very far from that so I really appreciate your words of encouragement![/size]

Re: DOTRSOTB, I can totally see how this book has withstood the test of time, she’s obvioulsy figured out the trick of teaching people to draw (even if it does involve much kicking and screaming from the student :wink: ). Frankly, it makes me wonder why they don’t do a better job of making learning to draw a basic skill we’re taught in grade school - it would make life so much easier if we all knew how to at least do basic sketches to get our points across.

#40

Okay, now this one I’m really happy with (although C&C are still appreciated!).

This was our “warm up excercise” in the book before doing a portrait of a real, live person. I tried to draw a little more free-form, just kind of contour drawing for the outline. I did it in a light pencil as I expected to screw up a bunch but when I finished I was a bit blown away by how close it was to the original. Perhaps knowing that its easy to erase makes me relax and draw a bit more truley? Or maybe it was just a fluke, who knows? :wink: But, anyway, once I saw how close it was, I just made a few adjustments and then went over it with darker pencils.

The details inside the outline were a bit harder - the eye especially, I was amazed when I figured out the problem was that I was drawing it too big (it looked like I drew it too small!). The final version is still a little big, but that was the smallest I could get detail on (hmm, need sharper points!).

Sargent - Mme. Pierre Gautreau (click here for reference)

#41

I’m definately seeing a lot of improvement from your pre-instruction pictures. I especially like the last Sargent profile study. Keep it up.

#42

Up to the very first drawings you posted, I’d say you’ve come a very long way indeed. The sargent copy is nice, the outline of the head is pretty spot on, the only thing that I could see is that her lips are just a touch bigger on the original, but that’s being nitpicky! I’d say with the figure drawings you’ve been doing on the grey, to not be afraid to push your values a little more, so you have some darker shadows in the skin. This should help accentuate the 3d mass of them. But you’re definitely on the right path! Keep up the good work.

#43

Hey Abby, the jumep between your first post and last is…a very far jump! Congrats and I hope to see you develop your style more. It’s very original(i.e., awesome).:slight_smile:

#44

Hi, oh my gosh - thank you, everyone! How crazy but I feel like I’m going through a bit of withdrawl not getting to draw (our entire home’s belongings are crammed into our living room and den as we prepare our house for sale and so, well, drawing time and, for that matter, space, are a bit - shall we say - cramped :sad: )

(hmmm, I bet there are some interesting perspective drawings of the piles in here… )

@asatira, thank you! I feel like I’ve gone a bit one-step backwards with the portraits, but I know they’re a real stretch for me so am trying to remind myself this is still progress… :wink:

@zephyri, thank you so much. And you’re right, I’ve been doing virtually no shading on these heads (perhaps this is part of the reason why they seem one-step backwards!). Will have to see what I can do about that. Oh, and I see what you mean on the lips!

@ha-dou-ken, thank you, thank you! I’m also really looking forward to seeing my own style come through instead of just rote copying :wink:

#45

Okay, help? :blush:

I tried to work on getting a wider range of values with her shading, but everytime I went dark there seemed to be such a drastic drop off that it looked funny, so I wound up shading the surrounding areas darker to minimize the difference and then, suddenly, my values were all really close again (repeat, lather, rinse). Fortunately, the next chapter in DOTRSOTB is on shading, but I obviously don’t know what I’m doing here, so any tips or pointers anyone could offer would be muchly appreciated. :slight_smile:

Anyway, I kind of had fun doing this. I know she’s not as true to her reference as the last one. I noticed that happening as I was drawing her, but I didn’t worry too much as I really wanted to focus on shading. Hopefully the face’s proportions are still “correct”?

Profile of Brunette Woman (reference)

#46

If you want to shade really smoothly you will have to build up your shading in layers.
There are different methods… using the tip or using the side of the tip… making round “strokes”, hatching,…

squinting your eyes so your view becomes a bit blurry really helps to see which part needs a bit more shading and which not etc. The same counts for while looking at your drawing, putting the focus of your eyes beyond the paper. For me that works best but I must warn you if you do that too much in too short time it might give you a headache…
Stepping further away from your drawings to compare the original with your ref also helps

there is a great tutorial on crosshatching somewhere in the tutorials section of this forum, allthough it’s not really what you are looking for, it might still be useful.
Anatomically spoken… always remember that the bridge of the nose has a bone in it
Try to imaging - looking at your drawing - how the face would look, as you drew it, in profile. The edge of the chin would be about where the tip of the nose is, which isn’t the case in the ref. The forehead seems a bit too large as well, i think it’s because the face/cranium relation is a bit off.

Anyway,
I think your shading is nice. Try not to rush. I know it’s hard but it’s worth the patience :smiley:
Hope I didn’t scare you with my comment, but you will take this on as a stimulation, because that is what I am trying :smiley:

Keep going!

#47

deco-3d,

Hopefully these tutorials will help: :slight_smile: - thanks Johan for mentioning the crosshatching one, not sure if it is great, but I hope it will be useful:

TUTORIAL - Shading Techniques (Various Media)
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=199&t=273928&highlight=crosshatch

TUTORIAL - General Principles of Anatomical and Figurative Art / Cross Hatching
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=199&t=374939

Shading Tutorial by Slux:
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=2705824&postcount=32

Keep up the good work, there is definite progress here!

#48

Well, at least I got the shading in layers part right, even if it was purely accidental :wink:

@Johan, thank you so much for the tips and the kind words! Please don’t think you’re scaring me off (now I feel a bit bad at my delayed response, I lost the use of my computer for a few days while my house was moved around), I am so very grateful for the feedback! I see what you mean about the chin, that’s funny - I knew something was wrong with it while I was drawing it but somehow I couldn’t get it right. Well, at least I’m recognizing some of these things even if I don’t know what to do with them yet :wink:

@Rebecca, thank you, I’m so happy to hear you say that and I’m looking forward to going through these tutorials. :slight_smile:

Abby

#49

Wow, I just had to buy a new scanner and was a bit irked as I thought my old one had been just fine. But wow, what a difference. Thought I’d upload my pic again, look, my lines actually look black rather than purple (neat)

Same pic, new scanner

[left]Canoscan LiDE 70 (old one was LiDE 30) - if anyone cares. I think this one is faster too.[/left]

#50

hey deco,

You’re coming along nicely. I was not doing this well when I was working through Betty Edwards’ book. :slight_smile: Betty Edwards teaches you to draw what you see instead of what you think you see, and mastering that is pretty hard. You’ve taken the first steps by removing symbolism from your drawings. You’re looking at the actual shapes and working to draw that instead of the symbols that your mind has associated with the things you’re seeing.

while drawing the curve of the line as you see it is a good start, don’t forget to look at the shapes those lines are creating and checking your drawing to make sure it holds true as you go. As an example, the curve of the brow as it goes down to the nose, and the straight line you have for the nose are approximately correct, but if you check your reference, you’ll notice that the straight line of the nose is longer, and a bit more vertical, and the curve going up to the brow is not quite as prominent as you’ve drawn it.

so the way that I go back to check that my lines are close is, after I’ve drawn what I see the lines are doing, I look at the overall shape that group of lines are creating (in this case the overall approximate shape of the nose), and see if it’s the same as in the reference. if it’s not, I start comparing the 2 shapes (mine and the reference), to see which lines I’ve drawn are not quite right, and adjust until they are right.

Keep going, you’re doing great! :slight_smile: