I decided to provide a link instead of embedding to save on space as I tear myself a new one with my own self critique.
[http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/96/aeneasanchisesandascani.png/](http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/96/aeneasanchisesandascani.png/)
Where to start with this one... It would be easier to talk about what went right, lol.
Let's begin with the drawing. First of all that right arm on the top guy is completely wrong. It's too long and spaced out. It doesn't even look attached to the body. The left forearm is too long and skinny even for the figure. I definitely should not have bothered with the little people and the cup or pedestal. They are not placed right and detract from the drawing as a whole. In fact all my problems, as far drawing goes, stem from the little people.
Here's how I started the picture. I drew some stick figures to get an overall idea on how to approach the figures. Then I bulled straight ahead painstakingly drawing out the head in minute details then the shoulder of the top guy, I should really learn their names -_-. At first it looked okay, yea the head is tilted a little bit more in the original but what I got is a decent enough approximation.
I moved on to the little people on the pedestal because they take up a big chunk of right side of the top figure. Things went downhill from there as I unwittingly related the right arm to the pedestal and not the body and I stretched over the forearm so the hand could meet the cup. In the back of my mind I saw myself doing it and I reproached myself but went ahead anyway because there wasn't much I could do about it without doing a lot of erasing or starting over. Even if I did start over, there wasn't a guarantee the second time would be a marked improvement.
After the drawing was done, I started reading Anthony Ryder's The Artist Complete Guide To Figure Drawing and it offer an alternative way to start the drawing, the "Envelope, Block-In" method. I've heard of these concepts before from one or two teachers in passing and from other people on the net through tutorials. But nobody ever bothered to explain it so I just put it out of mind. After reading about it, I definitely going to try it next time around. Especially after Ryder mentions a certain common student mistake regarding figure drawing. I sincerely hope I'm not breaking copyright laws but I really think this would be helpful for all the newbies out there struggling with drawing:[indent]
"...Many students unconsciously project the stick figure into their drawings as a kind of inner armature.According to this mode or thought the human figure is built upon a simplified skeleton of straight lines. These lines are subsequently padded with "muscles," like hot-water pipes wrapped with thick, spongy insulation....The problem here is what the drawing is derived from incorrect assumptions. Stick figures are all right as symbols of human beings, but they can be misleading when used as the basis of figure drawing."
[/indent]Dude, that's me right there! Though it's more of a deliberate action because I didn't have any other technique to employ other than mentally tracing the contours but I find this method highly frustrating and the technique yields often dismal results. Not that there's anything wrong with stick figures. They have a place as a shortcut, I think, after one has mastered proportion, anatomy, etc but for now they are hindrance. Plus I think the envelope method is useful to place other things besides figures. It is something worth investigating.
Enough of the drawing part, onto the shading. Oh dear, oh dear, I definitely need a new technique in regards to shading. I didn't intend for the shading to get so dark so fast it just happened that way. While is true that the original is a little on the dark side because of the way the light is angled but my picture is maybe a shade or two darker than what it should be. I also don't like the fuzziness of the shading or how the blacks or dark grays "sits" there on the page refusing to blend with the lighter shades.
Seriously, that right arm looks like it belongs to a burn victim or a zombie because of how patchy it looks. The problem is how I go about shading. Like most people I begin with the darker shades because the darker tones are more fun to do and people are naturally attracted to darkness. The trouble is that I start with the darkest shade possible and work my way up to light. I'm not saying that it can't be done but in my case starting with a puddle of black isn't working for me. I haven't gotten to the shading part of Ryders' book but I believe he starts with a medium value and have all other values relate to it by going up and down the gradation steps. I tried it out with the bottom guy and the modesty wreath, or whatever that thing is that covers the top guy's privates, and I think those parts came out marginally better.
The idea makes a lot of sense, when I think about it. Black and dark-almost-black-gray aren't specific to any color, they are there due to absent or near obscurement of light. Of course these "colors" are not going to relate to anything.
Moving along... I definitely shouldn't have bothered with the little people. They are too small for me to resolve properly with shade. That area looks too much like a mess of graphite than anything in particular and it interferes with everything else around bringing the drawing down as a whole. Andrew Loomis warned against mindlessly copying stuff just because it's there. I should've heeded his advice and drawn in the rest of the guy's face and torso. Sure, it's not there in the original, but the meat of the exercise is in the big figures not the little ones.
That's enough rambling for one evening. Next week starts a new adventure with painting in color using Photoshop. Yay!
