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Ok, so I don’t know if this is the right place, but it seems so? I’ve been drawing for about 5 hours weekly for the past two months, so I’m basically nowhere & I know that. But I’m having real troubles doing figure sketches/drawing, and it’s starting to become annoying. As background, I have virtually no drawing experience previously. Two months ago I picked up a sketchbook and a pencil and started doing whatever in there for a few hours a week. I started off just making cow tools and trying to practice drawing using more than my wrist. Eventually I moved towards drawing whole pages of cubes and pyrimids, or doing Loomis heads, falling back on lines or cow tools when I didn’t want to do either of those. Now I’m trying to learn the basics of figure sketches and I feel as though every time I look at the figure I am unable to figure out how to start, or how to guarantee even the simplest portion stuff, so my wireframe people are deeply incorrect. I don’t know if the answer is just “spend another 50 hours working on it and it will slowly come together.” or if there’s a generally agreed upon methodology to work through that might help me. Would anyone be kind enough to point me in the right direction? I can’t get any photos of my work right now, but I can do a page and post it tomorrow if need-be.
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Jul 26, 2019 05:19
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Chakan posted:Ok, so I don’t know if this is the right place, but it seems so? I’ve been drawing for about 5 hours weekly for the past two months, so I’m basically nowhere & I know that. But I’m having real troubles doing figure sketches/drawing, and it’s starting to become annoying. Well, the main way to get better at drawing is to keep drawing, unfortunately there's no shortcut around spending the hours putting own stuff in your sketchbook. The next most important thing is to find a group of people willing (and skilled enough!) to give you honest critiques about your drawing. This could be in a drawing class, or online like in this very thread or some other art community, like concept art.org or somewhere else. Finally, you should get used to drawing things that don't turn out the way you want them to. Every artist does it, it's OK to have a drawing not work out and it's OK to try again a second, or third, or fourth time. Attempt to draw some challenging things that you know are beyond your skill level in addition to the practice heads and other "comfort" drawings, no way to get better without attempting it. If you want to draw a good figure, you've got to draw a bunch of lovely ones first. I would say post some stuff in here! We're all super friendly while also being honest if people actually want critiques of their stuff. Plus, we can't give you anything more than very general pointers without seeing your work.
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Jul 26, 2019 08:10
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Chakan posted:Ok, so I don’t know if this is the right place, but it seems so? I’ve been drawing for about 5 hours weekly for the past two months, so I’m basically nowhere & I know that. But I’m having real troubles doing figure sketches/drawing, and it’s starting to become annoying. Hey, I'm pretty new (especially to figure drawing) as well. Wanna try working on it together? The most helpful resources I've found so far are two youtube channels: Proko and Love Life Drawing. Both have videos about gesture drawing, which is a good place to start.
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Jul 26, 2019 08:30
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Jul 26, 2019 09:16
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Macksy posted:i think that amount of twist in the torso is a tad unrealistic I fixed it for ya Freaking 
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Jul 26, 2019 09:47
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gmc9987 posted:I would say post some stuff in here! We're all super friendly while also being honest if people actually want critiques of their stuff. Plus, we can't give you anything more than very general pointers without seeing your work. Tayacan posted:Hey, I'm pretty new (especially to figure drawing) as well. Wanna try working on it together? Thanks to you both! I’ll try to post something weekly & not worry too much about quality. I’ve been watching this thread for about a month & keep thinking to post, but despite the OP I say “no, everything is just bad sketches I’ll just wait till I have anything complete.” I did want to ask about pencils. I’m using a .7 mechanical and I suspect that might be why I’m having a hard time with light lines. Is that true, or am I just too heavy-handed?
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Jul 26, 2019 13:05
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Without seeing your work it's hard to say. A mechanical pencil is a valid drawing tool, but I personally find they don't work so great for sketching. You can pick up a set of varying hardness pencils for like $10-15. I'd recommend it. The important thing w/ lighter pencils is to not push super hard to get darker lines. Switch out to your softer pencils for those bold/dark marks. Otherwise you'll end up damaging the paper (leaving indents).
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Jul 26, 2019 13:36
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I like 4b or 6b pencils for gesture drawing. Or crayons. I've been using crayons lately, and it's great fun, actually.
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Jul 26, 2019 15:29
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Practice is very important and all but you should absolutely seek out critiques from people who know what they're doing as regularly as you can possibly can, or you will carry over terrible habits into your art maturity that will take you forever and a day to shake off.
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Jul 26, 2019 16:11
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Chakan posted:Ok, so I don’t know if this is the right place, but it seems so? I’ve been drawing for about 5 hours weekly for the past two months, so I’m basically nowhere & I know that. But I’m having real troubles doing figure sketches/drawing, and it’s starting to become annoying.
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Jul 26, 2019 16:43
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Chakan posted:Thanks to you both! I’ll try to post something weekly & not worry too much about quality. I’ve been watching this thread for about a month & keep thinking to post, but despite the OP I say “no, everything is just bad sketches I’ll just wait till I have anything complete.”  The coming two weeks I am camping and drawing, I promise to post _all_ drawings, no matter how bad or doodly, when I come back. But only if you promise to do the same.
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Jul 26, 2019 20:25
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 with apologies to shinmera
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Jul 27, 2019 18:59
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WIP 1 WIP2 
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Jul 28, 2019 00:48
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Jul 28, 2019 05:43
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Digital painting and collage.
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Jul 29, 2019 02:17
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I drew cookie monster for my nephew's birthday! And then I drew a bunch of other junk!!     
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Jul 29, 2019 17:44
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I've been stressed out at work so decided to unwind by redrawing something I did a year ago when I was (also) stressed out about work. Drawing cables and tubes is more fun than I expected it to be. New drawing:  Old drawing for reference:  And some silly OC art: 
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Jul 29, 2019 23:19
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I would die for pompadour duck
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Jul 30, 2019 15:50
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Chakan posted:I’ll try to post something weekly & not worry too much about quality. I didn't forget about this thread. I put on the debate o one monitor and put up line-of-action on the other with a 10-minute timer so I could sketch the same outline a few times. I did not spend 10 minutes of attention on each of them, but y'know. Do other people put notes next to what they sketch so they can say "my first impression was better, but I didn't make that mistake on the second?" Haven't used a scanner in a long time. https://imgur.com/a/fJhOTRu The sketches are pretty large (>5mb) but I guess that's not such a big deal anymore and I'm too tired to futz with it more. Looking at them, the big issue seems to be that I'm not confident with them. I'm also afraid for body parts to touch, even when it's obvious they should overlap. I'd like to hear what people think I should focus on though, as that's just what stands out to me.
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Jul 31, 2019 02:44
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Jul 31, 2019 03:38
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tarot design
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Jul 31, 2019 08:43
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Chakan posted:Looking at them, the big issue seems to be that I'm not confident with them. I'm also afraid for body parts to touch, even when it's obvious they should overlap. I'd like to hear what people think I should focus on though, as that's just what stands out to me. Idk that I'm necessarily super qualified to give advice - I'm not that far ahead of you - but what helped for me was to start with the big flowy lines of the pose, and then add volume afterwards. Would it be cool or annoying if I tried to draw the same poses you did, spending 10 minutes on each? Either way, I'll try to get some figure drawing done this week and post it here.
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Jul 31, 2019 09:36
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Tayacan posted:Would it be cool or annoying if I tried to draw the same poses you did, spending 10 minutes on each? Either way, I'll try to get some figure drawing done this week and post it here. I would love to see others do the same poses I did, that was my secret hope when saving them. I didn’t really spend a full 10 minutes on them, but mostly because I was distracted by the debate, so don’t feel bad if you want to move on after 6 or whatever.
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Jul 31, 2019 12:59
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Cool! I'll probably have time to do them either tonight or tomorrow.
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Jul 31, 2019 13:16
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Ok, here goes: https://imgur.com/a/Ia9XZst This was fun! It's been a while since I've done this, so it was good to get back to it. I'm not super happy with either of my attempts at the first pose. The first one is ok, but I messed up her hip, so her body looks too thick. The second one, I placed her too far down on the paper, so I didn't have room for the legs. This is a thing I struggle with in stretched out poses in general. The second pose was fun! I only did one drawing of it, and I probably should've started a second one instead of trying to shade it, because with the time I had left, I couldn't really make it clear what was going on with the shadows. The third pose is also somewhat stretched out, and in my first attempt, you can see a bigger circle where I originally tried to place the head, before deciding that I needed to draw smaller. I also messed up the hip + the leg. Second attempt was much better - I'm pretty satisfied with that one, except for the right arm, which I messed up and then tried to fix as well as I could.
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Jul 31, 2019 20:26
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Chakan posted:Looking at them, the big issue seems to be that I'm not confident with them. I'm also afraid for body parts to touch, even when it's obvious they should overlap. I'd like to hear what people think I should focus on though, as that's just what stands out to me. My big advice for you is to focus on approaching your drawings as three dimensional masses with volume and spatial relationships, rather than attempting only to trace out the contour lines of the figure like a human laser-cutter. The challenge of representing a three dimensional shape on a page, and making one shape look like it's in front of or behind another shape, is incredibly important bedrock level stuff that is going to be the foundation of basically everything you ever do in drawing. Don't be afraid of the spots where the body parts connect or overlap-- these are actually the most important spots because they tell us something about how the big shapes fit together and their relative positions. Without overlapping and connected shapes, we get drawings that are very flat and unconvincing. I picked out one of the sketches that it looked like you struggled most with:  I should say first that It's important to pick good, clear reference to work from. This picture is heavily shrouded in shadow and cloth, and a lot of the figures is just plain not visible. It's a dramatic photo, but we really want to see the anatomy that we're drawing. Still, we can do better to find the big shapes in this figure. The cubes and boxes that you've been drawing are not just mindless drills! Boxes can be used to help break down and understand even very intimidating subjects. I've drawn a few of the major shapes that represent the head, torso, pelvis, and arms. Nobody's going to mistake this for a real person, but if we can master the proportions and placement of simple box figures, it puts us in a much more solid position to start understanding the complex fleshy stuff. Box figures are just one of a million ways to break down and abstract the body into major shapes or gestures. Learn as many as you can stomach. For sake of demonstration, and to show a more organic way of approaching the body than boxes, I also did 10 minute sketch on one of your other reference images.  The first stage is probably only 60-90 seconds of drawing, and I'm really bad at quick gestural stuff. My main goal here is to, as quickly as possible, establish the overall proportions of the body, and the gesture of the spine and limbs from head to toe. Establishing the full "length" of your figure immediately helps prevent you from running out of space on your paper as you work down or across the body. The first two lines I drew were the one from the base of the skull down to the groin, and the line that comes off the hip and extends down the leg to the end of the outstretched foot. Then I indicate the mass of the torso, the skull, the gesture of the arms, and I follow the shape of the hips around to find the other tucked in leg. I'm building a scaffold on which I can spend the next ten minutes hanging a more complex drawing. The next 9 minutes are just me working back across that blueprint to fill in the meat. The more you study the figure, the more you begin to understand how the big shapes of the body fit together, and how some muscles can be grouped and treated somewhat like a single mass. For example, knowing that the torso is made up of a rigid ribcage(yellow) and a flexible abdominal area (red) helps me know what to look for, and it makes it easier to see the big difference in the angle of the ribs from the angle of the hips/pelvis(blue). Anyway, I'm not a real teacher but I hope there's at least something helpful in here to either Chakan or Tayacan or anyone else.
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Aug 1, 2019 07:46
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Aug 1, 2019 12:20
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Scoss posted:Anyway, I'm not a real teacher but I hope there's at least something helpful in here to either Chakan or Tayacan or anyone else. Exceptional! Thank you gor writing all this. I’ll work on that and be back next week with something.
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Aug 1, 2019 12:46
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Scoss posted:Anyway, I'm not a real teacher but I hope there's at least something helpful in here to either Chakan or Tayacan or anyone else. Definitely! Thank you for taking the time to write this up.
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Aug 1, 2019 12:48
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Aug 1, 2019 22:09
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 Double post is your fault for not drawing more.
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Aug 2, 2019 23:32
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10 of cups tarot cards are literally always fun to do but i don't think i could maintain a consistent style through 78 fuckin cards
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Aug 3, 2019 06:11
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Currently camping in France, drawing and painting a bunch but I can't / won't post until I return, something about imgur and posting on mobile. Anyway, I enjoy watercolours and like to use them outside but run into a surface problem. Surface to put everything that is. The brush problem is solved as I found a clip with two small cans to hold water, allowing me to use a normal brush. I use a tiny water colour sketchbook for now and have a wallet to hold my pencil, pen and eraser. As for paints, I brought a 48 pan set and that is not very portable so that could be improved. A backpack to hold everything. But now, if I want to paint something I have to look for a place to sit that will also allow me to put the stuff down I want to use. How do others in this thread solve that?
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Aug 3, 2019 20:15
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I've not completely, but collapsable fishing stools look like the way to go. A bottle of water, a plastic mug, a watercolour tin that fits two brushes in, I don't think I could trim it down much more.
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Aug 4, 2019 01:30
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lofi posted:I've not completely, but collapsable fishing stools look like the way to go. A bottle of water, a plastic mug, a watercolour tin that fits two brushes in, I don't think I could trim it down much more. if you want a less bouncy surface for your cans, maybe you could also fit a rectangle of masonite in your backpack long enough to go from edge to edge of the stool, to give a flat surface for your cans.
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Aug 4, 2019 01:35
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hello thread. i don't post here often (ever?) and i barely (ever?) sketch. but, i've recently began loving around with it again. here a few things that have occupied my mind recently. constructive criticism greatly appreciated!   
ShoogaSlim fucked around with this message at 16:40 on Aug 5, 2019 |
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Aug 5, 2019 11:55
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ShoogaSlim posted:constructive criticism greatly appreciated! Did you mean to include images in your post? If so, they're not showing up for me.
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Aug 5, 2019 12:27
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Tayacan posted:Did you mean to include images in your post? If so, they're not showing up for me. that's what i get for posting deliriously at 3am. added the images!
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Aug 5, 2019 16:41
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Last artdome entry. From crappy concept painting. To 3d render. To finished photoshop comp.     Really gotta practice photoshop painting more.
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Aug 5, 2019 20:24
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ShoogaSlim posted:hello thread. i don't post here often (ever?) and i barely (ever?) sketch. but, i've recently began loving around with it again. here a few things that have occupied my mind recently. constructive criticism greatly appreciated! Looks like you're drawing from imagination pretty much exclusively. While that's not necessarily a bad thing, it tends to build some bad habits in regards to rendering the human form. There's incongruous areas in the faces where there are somewhat natural renderings of the face, and in other areas it's incredibly cartoony and abstracted looking, the eyesamf the mouths to be specific. I'm not saying you can't combine the 2, but it feels like it wasn't a conscious design choice. It creates visual tension and a bizarre disconnect visually. It makes the work hard to read. The eyes and the mouth are incredibly emotive and convey a lot of information in very subtle ways. I'd recommend you do some life drawing/drawing from reference of human faces to better help you convey the emotions and of the character in these scenes.
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Aug 5, 2019 21:01
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