Sketchbook Thread of deco

#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:

#51

Abby!

I’ve been working with Wings 3d (frustrating at the moment) and when I put a piece up at my sketchbook thread I recalled the nice comments you had made and wanted to see yours. Wow. You are really coming right along. This is wonderful!

As they said ten years ago … You Go Girl!!!

Sincerely
~ Boni ~

#52

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