Sketchbook: The Panda Pad

#21

Excellent post redpandafire! The values and rendering are wonderful here. You’re definitely inspiring me to try to keep up :cool: No critiques at the moment…just looks like a solid sketchbook page to me :thumbsup:

By the way, if anyone is interested, I found an old blog post that I stumbled upon a while back that addresses some of the stuff we were talking about:

http://artsammich.blogspot.com/2010/02/creativity-expression-education-and-dip.html

This guy is an amazing artist. He addresses what he calls “the dip,” which happens when you’ve acquired more knowledge & technical ability through practice, but at the same time your creativity and motivation starts to lag. It happens to all of us from time to time. Again, I agree with what he’s saying here…if you stick it out and keep pushing through, you’ll keep moving closer to your full potential, even if it seems like you’re going nowhere.

#22

@jabuhrer: WOW what an incredibly accurate blog post! And the guy has jaw-dropping artwork to boot! Thanks for that link, it truly is inspirational!

#23

I actually was not pleased at this one at all. It was drawn really slowly, really unsure of the masses and volumes, really hesitant and overall just a pain to work with. You might not see all that though because of how I hid all my chicken scratch beneath the shading, but everything about this drawing came out differently than what I had hoped.

But I learn even from failure. And I’ll keep on drawing until I get it right.

#24

Studying the leg today, with lots of help from Wikipedia and various stock photos.



#25

Whoa! This is the best post yet. I really love the shading technique here…looks like you’re using the side of the pencil to block in some masses. Excellent!

#26

Hey, I like your sb and thanks for stopping by mine. May I suggest that you do a few hand studies? Head over to the hand workshop here for ref. You admitted in your sketch that you can’t draw hands right? Attack them. It’s not that you can’t right now, it’s that you won’t. The workshop was fun to do. I did about 5 of them and that was all I could handle before I got bored. You can also pick a hand section from your favorite anatomy book. Either way, you have a nice sb here and you’re consistant! I’ll go months without posting…I really like your first photoshop face painting too!

#27

I think that a lot of these are quite good. I do notice some proportional problems and I think they start on the skeletal level. It seems to me that you shape the muscles and other layers to fit the final forms that you know the body should take rather than really building the form up to that whole. I would like to see more careful skeletal studies. I would love to see a multi layer drawing, from skeleton, to muscle/tendon/ligaments, and fat and fully fleshed figures. I’m not sure how much of this is from imagination but I am curious to find out.

#28

@jabuhrer: thanks!

@vicmonty: Like many people, the hands scare me. But at the moment I’m also plagued with being busy learning 3D. I just have to sit down today or tomorrow and just do it xD. Do one thing a day that scares me!

@jjacobo: Thanks for the tips. I was doing this subconciously and I did notice the proportion problems but had no idea what went wrong. I mostly draw the bones from imagination, but don’t have proper understanding of how large they are with relation to other bones, so most of the time its so off. Will be working on it, thanks.

#29

I heard Bargue plates were popular so I tried to do a few. Embarassingly, I suck at it. People definately deserve more credit for this stuff, its time consuming! Will try again sooon…

http://i768.photobucket.com/albums/xx325/redpandafire/IMG-barque.jpg

#30

Bargue…yuck!

Time-consuming != worthwhile

:wink:

#31

Very nice :thumbsup:

#32

@jjacobo: Lol, you’re right for the most part. But I didn’t spend any time at all on the shading. It was just flat tones done for the sake of understanding depth. The hardest part was figuring out why Bargue decided on the construction lines that he did. Its the most fascinating part of the whole thing actually and I spent 80% of my time on just that. I want to construct as well as he did.

@jabuhrer: thanks!

#33

Second Bargue plate study. More attention to values and neatness (sort of). I know i’m just copying a drawing of a cast model, but I’m actually learning a good amount about how to draw from life.

#34

I think your sketchs are nice- But Hands themselves are an ART- seriously, I sucked at hands hard so I bought a sketchbook and filled it solely with different hands until I got comfortable taking the time to complete them whereas before I’d generally sketch them out- It still takes me a few tries but I do find the practice pays off!

#35

Re: CKPinson’s comment: I agree. I found that Bridgman’s “Book of 100 Hands” was a great resource for that. The book gets a lot of criticism because it is simply a series of line drawings (rather than photos, fully rendered images, anatomical illustrations, etc.) with very brief notes and little instruction…but I think those critiques miss the point: it is a great resource for copying, practicing and memorizing numerous configurations of the hand. I spent a period copying every sketch in the book, and I found that it helped tremendously: the hands in my drawings from imagination were much better, I could “fill in the blanks” during life drawing sessions where the hands were obscured or difficult to read (rather than ignoring them or half ass sketching them as I had before) and the general proportions and construction of the hand improved a lot. Just my $0.02.

#36

I followed your gesture drawing tips here. I have to say this thread is one of the most encouraging threads I’ve ever read here. Normally I’m too shy to say anything. :slight_smile:

I’m a self learner too. BTW, your work is far better than mine. I adore your shading! I can fully understand how you feel because I have this feeling from time to time as well. Well, tasp’s enlightening comments about the study process reminds me of what my school teacher (not related with arts) used to say before. She said studying is like climbing staircases. Sometimes the stairs are packed, so you could go up quickly but of course very exhausted. But sometimes there will be a long platform between two stairs, people tend to stop here because the walking is more relaxing and they could not see where the platform leads. So when you are in this stage, you have to keep going since one day you will get the end of the platform and normally the next is a big step up. So you did the right thing - daily sketch. Your sketch is better and better. You are my example. I’d like to do daily sketch too!

BTW, is you sketch life drawing or imitating the ref books/photos? I’m too shy to do any life gesture drawing in front of the public. There is once I did so in a tram, the people I was targeting figured it out and walked away and others looked at me strangely… Ever since I lost my courage. Anybody
has similar experience? Any tips to overcome this awkward feeling? Thanks! PS: redpandafire, hope I am not off the topic.

Chao

#37

Thank you for helping me with the graphics card thread - I clicked on your sketchbook and think I can help you too! I specialise in illustration and drawing animation by hand so can give you some tips straight from art school -

Steps -
Find out where you are
Find out how to practice
Experiment

Finding out where you are:

Your rendering is exceptional, you have shown that you can draw from reference very well indeed. Therefore this first step is often the hardest. To find out where we were (even after 5 years A Levels and diplomas in art) the first thing they did in university was to make us draw something from memory. In your case I guess it will be the human form, which isn’t easy.

The purpose is to find out what you actually know about the standard form before you sit in front of it. After doing this exercise you will be able to clearly identify forms that you know well and others that you don’t. Its extremely valuable and will help you improvise in the future. After all, if you know the form like the back of your hand - you can draw it doing anything from any angle.

Finding out how to practice:

Photographs and diagrams are very good reference. You can do that very well now however, so I’d encourage you to draw from life. Start with some still life then move on to life drawing.

Definitely go to life drawing sessions. I still go to them even though I’ve left University. Just search in your local area and you should find something. They’re usually v inexpensive.

Until you can do that a very good (free) reference site is posemaniacs.com . Look for the tool on there that gives you a time limit of 30 - 90 secs per pose (thats typically what you’ll get in speed life drawing).

Experiment:

You look as if you can use pencils very well. To build your knowledge and improve your technique try other mediums (paint, pen/ink, charcoal etc). If you go to life drawing classes, they will probably encourage you to do this too.

Study colour, drapery, hair, gestures and weight as you go along. Also look into illustration a little if you want to eventually make stylised imaginary characters.

Affordable reference books for drawing I can recommend are anything by Barrington Barber. I used him when I first started out and still use him now. In terms of draftmanship he covers everything. A popular one is also Burne Hogarth, although due to his articulation I think that his books are overrated.

Good Luck!

#38

The posemaniacs site is fantastic! Thanks a lot!

#39

@dlthomas: Thank you VERY much for this information! I’m starting my very first life drawing class next week. =)

@cszhuchao: I also draw from reference photos. Its not that I’m shy to draw from people in the streets, but sometimes I find its a bit rude when I don’t ask for permission, and secondly I draw a bit too slow to capture everything I want lol.

Its really great to have a life or 3D model to work from, because you can just change your view to understand whats really going on in the form you’re studying. I try to draw people’s ZBrush models because of this reason actually. gotta stop copying just the shapes and start to understand what CREATES those shapes.

Also, your metaphor is lovely. I think it applies exactly to my situation right now!

#40

To both of you - I find coffee shops and malls good places to sketch people. In coffee shops people are too relaxed to notice and in malls their too busy looking elsewhere!