Sketchbook Thread of LunaticSymphony

#1

First of all, my name is Moneer and Hi to everyone that visits and critiques my work. I would really like to get to know you all and contribute to your posts as well as offer my own work. so say hi and let me know what you think!

Since I’m a Biology major and Art Studio minor I started my first life drawing class (and art class) ever, this semester. So, it’s been about three weeks since we started and I’ve seen some improvements but I would really like to be able to show light and dark, position, form, and develop the truth value of my work. I would rather have my figures have the correct proportions and the values that Mother Nature gave them than to continue making up things in my head.

I think once I’m well versed in the body and the natural world I’ll have the foundation that I need to go back to my own imagination.

I’ll post sketches that I’ve done in class and on my own:

The names will be as follows:

LD = life drawing class

PD = personal drawing

X= referenced work

I’ve seen so many threads that I love I can’t stop looking. I have my Chemistry midterm tomorrow and I’ll be up late and sometimes when I need a break I open up these threads and am inspired…hopefully, in the near future cgtalk will offer free videos that explain different things to us newbies? :slight_smile:

#2

Most of these are from my Life Drawing class that I go to. It’s a workshop where a live model comes in and we just spend various timelimits line drawing. We are not working on shading yet, so that’s a big no no for our small class. At the moment, it’s difficult working without shading bc your mind wants to just DO IT but you can’t, you have to sketch the lines and try to convey where lights hits the body and where light does not…

I also included a blind contour drawing which is where you just watch the model and try to draw what you see without checking your work…it’s annoying but what can you do?

:thumbsup:

LD 1

I put a silly smiley face for the head since I was overtime on this one…lol

LD 2
this is one of my favorite positions and I liked her pose and everything seemed to be going well at first…but her right leg seems strange and I make feet look like potatos…any pointers?

#3

LD 3

LD 4

In this one…I did shade in but that’s because I lost track and kept going and it was before she went over the rules (“remember! this is linedrawing only!” ooops)

#4

LD 5

In this piece, I did not shade or tend to the errors…since my eye is untrained I usually don’t see the major errors—erghhhhhhhh. but what do I do? I can see some errors now but I’m sure more proficient artists would see more (I tend to over exaggerate- I’ll explain this later)

^potato feet

LD 6

This is a blind contour. I just stare at the lines and curves of the model and draw what I see. I had a minute to do it. We had 15 of these…and gradually I got better and better. This is one of my preliminary BCs and I advise everyone to try thhese…it teaches you where your eyes skip over things or where your brain assumes that what you’re eye is seeing is bigger or smaller than it actually is.

#5

LD 7

three fast sketches of one girl in one pose. the length of her torso is bothering me, and so is her left leg at that angle it should look shorter, maybe I should have extended the knee to be lower than it is…

LD 8

hmmm…I like the arms …again, no shading or detailing but i did cheat a little. can’t help it!

LD 9
this model was great…love this pose. but there’s something to be said about incorrectly placed shadows lol


^potato feet

#6

LD 10

constantly redoing lines makes it look messy but there is a final sketch in there somewhere
[img]http://i58.photobucket.com/albums/g249/belle_aurora/LD5.jpg[/img]

LD 11

I did try to convey light and dark here by the width of the lines and although i'm not disappointed in this one the lines on the torso are actually layers of fat and skin that sort of creased at his upper abdoment area...
[img]http://i58.photobucket.com/albums/g249/belle_aurora/LD4.jpg[/img]

LD 12
focus on the legs...the best thing that I always try to do but forget is keep track of time since we had 5 minutes on this

[img]http://i58.photobucket.com/albums/g249/belle_aurora/LD3.jpg[/img]
#7

LD 13

  this one needs major help. the right leg is not put in the correct position compared to the left leg which is more forward. I think I could do something to fix that by pulling the knee up higher 
  
  [img]http://i58.photobucket.com/albums/g249/belle_aurora/LD2.jpg[/img]
  
  
  
  By the way, I work on newspaper print pads with vine charcoal...I hate vine charcoal (it's so powdery and unprecise...but we have to and I'm just starting to learn so it could be a good lesson)
#8

Hi,
these studies are coming along really nice. I see that on your last picture the kneecaps of the model are facing the viewer and the rest of the torso is not. Try to
move the kneecaps further to the left and give the legs a little bit more curve.

Because when we are resting on one leg, the other leg is usually bent, so the kneecap of that leg should be positioned slightly lower :slight_smile:

#9

Oscen~ awww thank you Eva. In retrospect I can see what you’re talking about. I just posed for myself in the mirror and my back leg did appear to be behind and thus lower than my front leg. The last image is the model standing slightly to one side, with one hand on the hip and one leg facing me and the other towards the side…so yes, the knee caps are not well placed.

I think shading and contouring help to portray where the body is actually situated. hopefully we’ll get to that soon because line drawings are so simple…but they do show me where my eye makes mistakes in reading the figure.

:)thansk

#10

great work!
consistency is the key here I think.
Check out Rebecca’s articly on opposing curves. I think it will help you a lot.

She also gave me a great tip on using charcoal once: sharpening the charcoal tip on one side will allow you to vary the thickness of your line.

I agree about the blind contour exercises… great stuff!

Keep at it these are great studies.

#11

Johan- Thank you for your input. Everything helps right now. I’ll start going over that article today and practice some sketches. I use Willow or Vine charcoal right now and if you’ve ever worked with that medium they’re very annoying in that they constantly change in consistency (sometimes, in one short line you will see thick dark value and all of a sudden the charcoal will decide to suddenly lose its darkness and the line gets extremely thin and full of loose particles).

lots of things to learn though -:slight_smile:

#12

I just did a sketch after reviewing the opposing curves article…and the java applet I was working in crashed…an hour of neck pain and nothing to show for it.oh well, I’ll post some new ones soon

#13

Looks like you’re getting some good starts to these. You have a natural touch which is an indication that with a lot of practice you can start to really manipulate the line. I agree that vine charcoal is a poor medium for line drawing. Hopefully you can graduate to charcoal pencil or other media.

Have you ever seen the dvds of Glenn Vilppu? Some of his work is online, definitely check it out. He’s very good at teaching a Gestural method of drawing.

#14

glenn vilpu…will youtube/google him. For sure I’ll search for articles about gestural sketching…because I can tell that some of the master work is just too smooth and clean to be chicken scratch like some of mine.

I think I’ll start doubling my work (both newsprint ad and small sktch book) to get the most in.

Anyone else have any references or articles they can share?

#15

well, I skipped class for a day (we have two studio classes per week) and I was biting my nails the whole day thinking what I was missing…apparently, I missed ALOT. The class went through shading and wipe-down processes. They started doing blind contour introduction then finalizing drawings on drawing paper.

Until now, I’d been using cheap newsprint and cheap willow vine charcoal. i’m still using the cheap charcoal, but my drawing pad is a little better. I’m 100% happier with a drawing pad.

Here’s two sketches, the first is a 5 minute blind contour, then 5 minutes of added retouching the shapes and then a wipe-down of trouble areas. For this first, I didn’t know that we were supposed to be shading! :slight_smile: so I ended up with a linedrawing that doesn’t look shaded. sad.

my second piece is when the instructor informed me that we were shading and I did it for the first time in my life like this with charcoal. believe me when I say that charcoal (vine or willow) is very hard to control on drawing paper. It needs lots of practice to know how much pressure to apply with your finger and how much to wipe off or in which direction to shade, etc…

thanks NR43, Rebeccak, and Oscen:bounce:

The model was very thin, and had a bony appearance

LD 14

LD 15

#16

Great studies! Could I recommend these videos:

The Structure of Man

They teach you anatomy from skeleton to muscles to flesh, from the mind. If you understand the human from the mind, when analysing a real person I am sure it will be easier then. I actually bought the 5 DVD’s as I saw high potential and would have hated to find the videos being taken down and never got a chance to see them all.

#17

They have only about 19 of the lessons put up, the rest are in the dvd and for sale. If I get extra money to spend I will but right now I’m sticking with mostly free lessons like Loomis, CGTalk workshops, etc…

I think it’s great for more videos and interactive learning to be posted online. Maybe their could be flash lessons for people to practice the placement of bones, muscle groups, and to practice precision in pose and structure of the body at different angles.THat’d be cool.

#18

I can’t work with willow/vine charcoal! I can, but I’m having so much trouble keeping these charcoals consistent in their application (at one point they get extremely light and grainy then at another smooth and full)…I don’t reccomend anyone work with these unless you enjoy migraines.

this last position is so…strange. I don’t know if I like it or not, but it seems so much more natural than the others. I really enjoyed this model, her body was just right (she wasn’t as rounded as other models but very skinny so you could see the light outline of her bones under)

#19

Since photobucket seems to be deleting my art if it’s nude I posted it on flickr and on sphosting.com and yet sophosting doesn’t seem to work here (the images wont show up) and flickr only links to an image.

#20

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