shrey,
Welcome to the forum. 
My first suggestion to anyone here is to try some of the exercises posted to the beginning of this thread, here:
There are two good articles on Gesture Drawing there which I suggest you read as well.
Looking forward to seeing your exercises!
Cheers,
~Rebeccak
yes i was going to try the gesture drawings before i start with that i did this today … it came out ok with some editing in PS.
Here’s todays excercises. I’m a little grumpy about them. I feel like the harder I try to keep the lines loose, the worse I get. If I compare this with my first gesture sketches ever, I think the first are better. Hmmmppff! Oh well, I’ll keep trying, must get better someday…
2 min
5 min
10 min
Hi Maladie.
Don’t get upset over a bad drawing day, I am having those regularly and as Rebecca told me earlier in this thread: you can’t avoid them, they are like bad hair days. (It should be mentioned while I understand the analogy it does not work with me as for me every day is a bad hair day, but that’s a completeley different story…
)
I actually like the 5 min sketch very much - has a nice unified feeling about it. Is that traditional chalk by the way, or what did you use to achieve this effect?
Keep it up everyone in this thread!
i tried the 2-5-10 method and ended up with a pretty good sketch good for the first time at least anyway i tried rendering rendering it in photoshop and even though it aint the best render possible i thought it looked pretty good …
shrey,
I like the skull! The only thing I would say is not to apply Photoshop filters and such to your work ~ you really want to see the linework, and the filter distorts that.
With respect to your gesture work, keep on posting! The more you do, the better. My suggestion would be not to go so dark in the shadows ~ light bounces back into shadow areas and creates reflected light ~ look at any object in shadow, and notice that the furthest edge, the edge near the cast shadow, is slightly light.
Check out the demos on light and shade here:
REBECCA KIMMEL’S Anatomy Review 003: SHADING TUTORIAL AND HUMAN SKULL EXERCISE
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=259291
Shading principles apply to any object / figure etc. and are pretty universal.
Looking forward to seeing more of your work!
Maladie,
As Murat rightly pointed out, everyone typically has more bad than good drawing / painting days ~ it’s just the name of the game ~ which is why it’s so important to work consistently on a regular basis, as the more you do, the more likely you are to have a good drawing day and good results. As I’ve told Murat, I have just stacks and stacks of bad drawings that I can’t bring myself to throw away but as many an art teacher has told me, you have to do several thousand bad drawings before you get to the good ones.
Cheers,
~Rebeccak
Ok Just kinda wondering – how exactly is this thread supposed to be used?
Is it just for questions - showing WIPs - doing the gesture drawings -? All of the above?
Just curious so I ‘use’ it in the appropriate way.
Originally posted by LabyrinthineMind: Ok Just kinda wondering – how exactly is this thread supposed to be used?
Is it just for questions - showing WIPs - doing the gesture drawings -? All of the above?
Just curious so I ‘use’ it in the appropriate way.
LabyrinthineMind, good to see you here.
Basically you can use this thread for questions, showing WIPs, and gesture drawings ~ so, all of the above ~ but what I really encourage people to do here are the Gesture Exercises posted to the beginning of this thread:
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=2856581&postcount=1
There are several folks who have started out here ~ Calvin, Mr. Mu, gorgnut, and MichalB come to mind ~ who have since created their own personal Anatomy Threads. That being said, you do not HAVE to start out here, you are free to create your own personal Anatomy Thread at any time.
But for the most part what I find people lacking (in terms of figurative art) is the ability to draw gestures. Hence, this thread.
With respect to creating your own Anatomy Thread, this thread addresses many FAQs:
FAQ: Can I Create My Own Anatomy Thread?
Looking forward to seeing your work!
Cheers,
~Rebeccak
well i dunno why i used the photoshop filter … it kinda looks better without it …anyways thanks for the advice… will note that down … i want to post on a different thread but i kinda got lost on this forum …its bigger than i thought but it rocks 
hey, heres my try, plz give critz and tell me what should i do to make it look more like human body, like anothomy n’ stuff…
Ok, here goes nothing… my website is www.blurred-pixels.com please C & C my charcoal pieces, I have to admit there is not much and some days drawing comes better than others but that is why I am here. My school life drawing was meager at best and all the good teachers left about a year in for me. The last teacher I had left me irritated to the point where I would stop coming to class. She wanted everybody to draw her way, and preferred works that were way to stylized leaning almost toward anime and though it is a talent it’s just not mine.
I am looking foward to getting in on the workshops going on in here, it’s a excellent resource!
Rebecca, thanks for the encouragement. Seriously, knowing that you and other great artists here all started out with occasional bad drawings makes me feel less alone in my struggle:arteest:.
Actually, todays ten minute sketch is the first one ever I feel has interesting, flowing lines. It feels like my hand is learning - not me. Everyday it has a better feel for where to put everything, it seems. My challenge for today was to keep it all lines, not masses…not use the eraser, and move my arm instead of my wrist. Anyone feels like it, crit away!
2 min
5 min
10 min
Swarainiz, I think yours is looking good! Maybe it would be interesting to focus a little more on mass - you seem to be doing mainly the outline now. I’m learning that myself, too, and I find doing value studies in black and white really helps with it. Good luck!
Maladie, I think those look amazing! I would love to see how you continued on after the 15 min mark… I’m no expert, but at least with this post, it looks really natural and great.
Now that I think about it though, the human eye is the expert on form - because we can spot something wrong with a human figure more easily than anything else. And yours looks great!
Labyrinthmind, thanks so much! It’s great to see you appearing in the sketch challenges, the 15 minute-sketchathon and here as well!
I recognized much of myself in your story. Having been trained as a professional writer, I realized I really wanted to take my creativity in another direction. While working as a writing coach, I’m exploring all the visual arts now: CG painting, animation, film, 3D…you name it. Isn’t this sense of coming home fantastic? I hope you keep it up here, maybe you can open a WIP-thread pretty soon. I’ll visit!
Hey guys,
Great to see more work and more people here! I’m not at my computer much today, but will get back to this thread soon. Keep up the good work guys!
Cheers,
~Rebeccak
RiKToR,
I think your charcoal drawings show a lot of promise, and that the main bit is to keep drawing ~ I recommend doing Master Copies as a great way to learn how to draw, and I would of course recommend to you trying a few of the exercises posted to the beginning of this thread. Looking forward to seeing more of your work!
Swarainiz,
Your piece is turning out quite interesting ~ I think the main thing to understand is that I will not be critiquing individual pieces here so much as encouraging you to do a lot of drawing ~ ultimately, that’s the only way you are going to get better. Do you have any anatomy books? Try copying from them or from of the many online resources, such as can be found here:
Reference for Anatomical and Figurative Art
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=257570
The only way to learn anatomy is to draw the figure quite often.
Maladie,
Nice improvement with these! I agree that you are really starting to get a nice rhythm and flow. I was clearing out some of my old drawings today and ran across some old notes that I had taken regarding figure drawing. Basically, drawing is about Gesture and Structure ~ really, that’s it! These are two important things to keep in mind. Keep up the good work!
Cheers,
~Rebeccak
Maladie,
You are very persistent :).That’s good.
Why don’t you try to make a drawing on a very large pad with pencil.It seems to help me.
At least you can just see what happens.Thi is just a suggestion .
Keep drawing alot
M.
