Art Upgrade Project (Image Heavy)

[Saeyan]

I was talking to Thanqol about this, and after a few days of thinking it over it doesn't really seem like a terrible idea, so:

Art Upgrade

A group "learns-to-draw" thread, except you don't post everything you draw

A new exercise per week (or fortnight) every now and then (...). Many exercises may span a single theme, like line or tone.
Try and complete it to the best of your ability. Ask questions here if needed and we'll try to answer them together.
Post up your art by a deadline. Once we've got some art in the thread, everyone should try and leave some comments on other people's work.
There is no need to pad criticism as long as it is constructive.

We will be focusing on fundamentals for now because that's a) ultra important and b) everyone could use more work on their foundations. For instance, my school provided us with art materials then left us to figure it out on our own. So I can do shiny stuff with pencils and Photoshop but my foundations aren't as solid as I'd like. The focus will probably tend towards figurative art, though we'll probably have some experiments in abstraction too. (Figurative includes both realism and manga/other stylized forms in my book.)

Interested? We've started, but you can still join - reply with a link to your art; what you're interested in drawing/painting/whatever; and what media you have access to (pencil, paints, tablet etc.)

Quick Links to Exercises
1. Line quality (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=12312265&postcount=35)
2. Basic forms (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=12473512&postcount=99)

Here's mine:
Art: thread in my sig and http://jess-sketches.tumblr.com/tagged/art
Interested in: I dunno, everything? But mostly humanoid character-driven illustrations (with backgrounds), comics, digital art and learning how to use oil paints
Media: tablet, pencils, colored pencils, pens, charcoal, acrylic/watercolor/oil paint, umm a lot of stuff basically :smallcool:


For my convenience:
Mailing list - Eleanor_Rigby;Glass Mouse;Thanqol;Trazoi;Capt. Ido Nos;Fri; Kasanip;Kaytara;SiuiS;ninja_penguin;Remmirath;Sean Mirrsen;Zorg;Savannah;ShadowySilence

[Thanqol]

I'm going to follow along for the challenges if no other reason :smallsmile:

Profile Cardin'

Art: The daily update goes here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=200108), the stuff I like goes here (http://thanqol.deviantart.com/).
Interested In: At the moment, getting the hang of digital colouring, whatever that means.
Media: Tablet, occasional pencils.

[Domochevsky]

Hm, this is somewhat similar to the Challenge thread, innit? Except more on the informative side than the practice side. :smallsmile:

[Saeyan]

Mm, not quite. More of like a structured pseudo-art course thing for now.

[Trazoi]

I'm interested; it would help to have some concerted direction for these drawing thingies.
Art: My daily art thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=214012)
Interested in: Most things, aiming towards cartooning/comic style stuff, goal of a webcomic and/or game illustration
Media: Pencil, digital ink/paint, vector

[Eleanor_Rigby]

I might be interested in this...
I'll be honest and say I get fairly anxious about putting my stuff 'out there' for people to see, when it's my personal drawings, at least.

Art: I've not got a thread or other particular online gallery (my photobucket is too scrappy to count) but I'll edit some examples in here later, probably I inked and coloured some of Mazeburn's sketches (http://s1196.photobucket.com/albums/aa405/Zomp_Jorr/Mazeburns%20sketches/?start=all), have started and failed to complete a few multi-paged fancomics for the Murphy's Law fancomic (http://s1196.photobucket.com/albums/aa405/Zomp_Jorr/Murphys%20Law/?start=all), contributed to the late collaborative forum comic, Round Robin (http://s1196.photobucket.com/albums/aa405/Zomp_Jorr/Round%20Robin/) and have posted a couple of things to do with the play by post campaigns I'm in (http://s1196.photobucket.com/albums/aa405/Zomp_Jorr/PBP/)
Interested in: illustrative stuff and sequential art and you know... just doodling.
Media: Varies.


...huh. There are pretty much no finished pieces in there. Ah well.

[Glass Mouse]

Hm, this is somewhat similar to the Challenge thread, innit? Except more on the informative side than the practice side. :smallsmile:

In the "something is drawn every week" sense, I guess so. But the Challenge is more of a quantity/practice based ironman thing with a lot of freedom, where this seems much more focused and... what Saeyan said :smallwink:

In any case, this is a great idea. I'm in!
Art: Here (http://glassmouse89.deviantart.com/).
Interested in: Humanoids, sequential art, illustrations, getting better. I'd like a more expressive, comic-y style, but I really need to get... everything down first.
Media: Pencils, digital colouring and shading. Starting up on inks.

[Kaytara]

I can't promise to participate with any degree of consistency, but sure, I'm in. :D

Profile: Kaytara

Art: Fantasy Art, Odds & Ends (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=184488)
Interested in: Humanoids - poses and the like. But pretty much anything fantasy related. And horses. Also backgrounds and settings.
Media: Digital, pencils, crayons, markers

[Capt. Ido Nos]

This sounds like a fantastic idea! Heaven knows I could use a little direction and a lot of work on the fundamentals. Consider my card thrown into the pile.

Me Myself and Ido:

Art: Drawthread is right here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=213312), and I might throw in a link to my dA eventually, once I decide to update it for the first time in a few years >___>;;
Interested In: Improvement. I'm stagnant, and the thought of that is even worse than my skill level. Ultimately interested in character drawing, cartooning, and animation. The odd landscape is fun, and I can never draw too many world trees.
Media: Primarily tablet w/Photoshop Elements. Pencil too, but my scanner... less than ideal right now.

[SiuiS]

Okie Doke, sure. I could certainly stand to improve, if only so I don't lose sight of Thanqol over the horizon :smallwink:

Art I have a bunch of stuff scattered throughout. Bits in Thanqol's art thread, some in Ponythread learns to draw (Together!) and all the rest scattered throughout the MLP:FiM threads proper. I have an old dA account I'm not allowed to link to, as well, but that was mostly for social networking XD

Interested In depth; I've seen a pics by a friend and was blown away by the feel of of it. Clean line work; because. Cartooning/Sequential art; because it's my usual medium despite my sucking at it. Digital painting & color theory; because Moe is inspirational, and I can only go so far with a mechanical pencil and some 2b lead.

media is pencil and paper. I have an old, old tablet somewhere, and could probably grab a digital program, but want a better understanding of what I'm doing, so I don't light it on fire in frustration.

Now to add this to the subscription list so it doesn't get lost in the shuffle... here's hoping I don't drag the rest of you good artists down :smallwink:

[Kasanip]

It seems like fun, so I want to try too! I will do my best. Let's enjoy drawing together.:smallredface:


Art: I have sketchbook thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=139582
Interested in: I want to join in the community, I want to learning digital drawing, to make beautiful coloring, and landscape with characters. I want to make another comic, maybe for English. I want to make 'finished picture'.
Media: Pen tablet, pencil, pen

[Fri]

I"d be interested if only I understand what this thread is about even by a tiny bit.

[Kaytara]

I"d be interested if only I understand what this thread is about even by a tiny bit.

As far as I understand, it will go something like this:

- Let's draw something involving lots of dramatic lighting, people!
One week later:
- Okay, here's mine!
- Here's what I did.
- OMG, that sucks!



..Except, you know, with more constructive criticism. :smallamused:

[Saeyan]

As far as I understand, it will go something like this:

- Let's draw something involving lots of dramatic lighting, people!
One week later:
- Okay, here's mine!
- Here's what I did.
- OMG, that sucks!

..Except, you know, with more constructive criticism. :smallamused:
haha! A little bit, but probably more boring for now. Basic shapes, lines, simple perspective...I'm thinking the first one will be on lines and line quality - a very basic 'varying line weight' kind of thing. (Feel free to skip the earlier things Kay; I'll be forcing myself to go through all of them because I really need to work on foundations)

I'm considering keeping technical exercises like that in this thread, but also getting you guys to draw things specifically applying what you learned from an exercise, posting that in your own art threads, and linking them back here. Was sick and can't really think straight so I'll come back later with some diagrams to make things clearer.

Fri, think "Drawing 101".
SiuiS, what do you mean by 'depth'?

[Remmirath]

It sounds like fun (and useful). I've been rather busy with school of late, so I might not be able to participate very consistently, but I'd like to take part.


Art: My website (http://familylees.net/morgan/) hasn't been updated in some time, as you can see, but there's still a lot on there.
Interested In: People in fantasy settings, armour, weapons, fight scenes, dragons, that sort of thing. Occasionally other things as well.
Media: Mostly I just use a mechanical pencil, but I'm interested in other things also. Digital painting, for instance.

[ninja_penguin]

I think I'd like to pitch my hat into this; I've been trying to work on drawing again, and this would help the motivation/inspirations, I guess.

All my stuff is going to look hilariously extra horrible though, due to lame scanners and the like.

[Zorg]

I'm in, when I can. I like having a set timeframe to do it in, forces me to get on with the job :smallsmile:

Art: Some on my blog (http://collegiatitanica.blogspot.com/search/label/Drawing).

Interested In: I can draw people - I need to draw people in action more, with more expressions and that sort of thing. Drawing dudes. Also working without line art into a more realistic style than semirealistic (think the face at the end of this post (http://bittersweetdisease.deviantart.com/art/MANGA-to-REALISTIC-PART-SIX-243618573)).
Better shading.

Media: Pencils - B&W as well as watercolour, felt tip pens. No didgital except minor touchups.

[Saeyan]

great, more people! I have two exams, two interviews and one university application due soon so maybe we'll only get started proper around 2nd Dec. Everyone interested is still welcome to throw their hat into the ring.

ninja penguin do you have any art posted online?
zorg, that's a decent tutorial which covers many points I'm also planning to go through. But I am not a fan of the erase-the-lines-later approach. If you can help it, start light and let your shading overtake the lineart as the picture progresses.

[Fri]

Ah, I understand what this is about now.

Anyway, my gallery is in my sig, and what I'm interested in is slightly different.

What I'm interested in is constructive criticism. For a while, I've been feeling that my drawing isn't improving. I've been stuck in this amateur level for a long time, and I want to know, what's missing from my drawings to make it looks professional.

A lot of artist community are stuck in 'if you don't have anything good to say don't say anything.' I wish to know what do I miss to make my drawings looks more professional because I can't find it myself.

[Saeyan]

A lot of artist community are stuck in 'if you don't have anything good to say don't say anything.'
/cups hand next to ear
What's that you say? deviantART?

Don't worry, I'll crit you hard (though that may be difficult for the simpler exercises) and hopefully set the tone for the whole thing.

First exercise will be on line weight and line quality, how about that?

[Sean Mirrsen]

I can probably try and participate.

Art: I'm a pretty haphazard kind of artist, so I rarely keep everything in any one place. For the occasion however, I've thrown just about everything I could remember together and stuck it into my Dropbox gallery (https://www.dropbox.com/gallery/4152380/1/Sketches?h=214e30).
Interested in: Anything and everything. My focus shifts with time, and right now it's somewhere on shading and lighting. I do know I still need to improve some of the basics too, but I'm a little too random to actually get to working on it. Right now I'm interested in ponies, so I'm drawing that, and practicing shading while I'm at it.
Medium: Initially Paper&Pencil, still do doodle periodically. Right now I got a tablet, but still prefer thin softened brushes to keep "sketching".

[Domochevsky]

Iunno, you might wanna start off with something easier than lineweight, since you need to understand weight first for that to work. Maybe go for "break a body down into basic shapes" first? :smallsmile:

[Glass Mouse]

/cups hand next to ear
What's that you say? deviantART?

Do you know of any moderately-big places where a budding artist can network and get critisism? Like deviantart, just serious about it. I know of conceptart.org, but the overall skill level is sliiiiiiiiiiiightly above mine, and I had very little succes here on gitp.


@Fri, if you come to DA, I'll be more than willing to exchange critisisms (same with any other online art gallery, but I don't know any better). I suspect Domo would be delighted, too - he's great at kicking my butt, at least :smallwink:

[Saeyan]

Maybe go for "break a body down into basic shapes" first?
Line weight does require some knowledge of weight but that comes in mostly in gesture drawing, which we are nowhere near yet. For now it is more about creating a visual effect (light and shade, some rhythm) instead of conveying the weight distribution of the object. And most of us need to work on line quality. But that is a good idea, maybe for the second exercise.:smallsmile:


Do you know of any moderately-big places where a budding artist can network and get critisism? Like deviantart, just serious about it. I know of conceptart.org, but the overall skill level is sliiiiiiiiiiiightly above mine, and I had very little succes here on gitp.
Networking, yes, DA is valuable. Crit, hardly. CA is starting to become a bit of a mixed bag now...there are more people coming in who crit without the art to back it up. But it's a good place. Love it to bits.

[SiuiS]

haha! A little bit, but probably more boring for now. Basic shapes, lines, simple perspective...I'm thinking the first one will be on lines and line quality - a very basic 'varying line weight' kind of thing. (Feel free to skip the earlier things Kay; I'll be forcing myself to go through all of them because I really need to work on foundations)

I'm considering keeping technical exercises like that in this thread, but also getting you guys to draw things specifically applying what you learned from an exercise, posting that in your own art threads, and linking them back here. Was sick and can't really think straight so I'll come back later with some diagrams to make things clearer.

Fri, think "Drawing 101".
SiuiS, what do you mean by 'depth'?

Difficult to explain. A sense of three-dimensionality in a single figure; I create 'depth' between different subjects, but I can't create depth in a single subject, even though logically parts of a body are further back that others. Instead, they come out flat.

Does that make sense?

Also, I need this sort of thing more than I thought; you only Wen into line weight and you've already lost me.

[ninja_penguin]

ninja penguin do you have any art posted online?

I do not, I'm afraid. I used to draw a bit, and tried to do a webcomic in high school. It was one of those godawful things that you do in high school and thank the gods that keenspace crashed and blew it up so nobody ever saw it.

I'm a bit of an incurable doodler, and I've been working at trying to develop my creative stuff to some unknown extent as a hobby. I understand basic proportion, but fail hard at shading and implying 3-dimensionality. I also have the problem that my eyes see things in realistic detail, but I draw in rather simplified ways so there's a serious disconnect with what I see, what I draw, and how happy I am with it.

As for a 'medium', right now my art supplies consists of a mechanical pencil with .5mm HB lead. My theoretical goal is to get my drawings up to the point where I can theoretically ink and color them on a computer, I guess. That help a bit?

[SiuiS]

I do not, I'm afraid. I used to draw a bit, and tried to do a webcomic in high school. It was one of those godawful things that you do in high school and thank the gods that keenspace crashed and blew it up so nobody ever saw it.

I'm a bit of an incurable doodler, and I've been working at trying to develop my creative stuff to some unknown extent as a hobby. I understand basic proportion, but fail hard at shading and implying 3-dimensionality. I also have the problem that my eyes see things in realistic detail, but I draw in rather simplified ways so there's a serious disconnect with what I see, what I draw, and how happy I am with it.

As for a 'medium', right now my art supplies consists of a mechanical pencil with .5mm HB lead. My theoretical goal is to get my drawings up to the point where I can theoretically ink and color them on a computer, I guess. That help a bit?

who are you and how have you lived my life?
I couldn't remember that keenspot URL if I tried...

This is basically what I'm working with, if it helps at all Saeyan.

[Savannah]

I may be interested... Well, I'm interested in getting better at art, but I tend not to do well with structured activities and am quite busy, so no promises.

[ShadowySilence]

I would be very interested in joining, I really want to improve my abilities.

Art: In my signature. DA Link (http://shadowysilence.deviantart.com/)
Interested in: Overall improving my abilities, like some of the other posters have said I feel as though I am stuck in a rut and can't really improve.
Media: Inkscape (what I mainly use), pencil, colored pencils, markers, calligraphy set (I have one somewhere, but don't know how to use it), pens

[Saeyan]

Cool, anyone else?

Looking through everyone's work, first exercise is definitely going to be about line quality. Will get it up over the weekend. Is this load for homework okay, too much or too little? --> A page of line exercises, one observational drawing and optionally one drawing from imagination.

[ninja_penguin]

*raises hand*

I think that sounds all right, could you define line exercise?

[Zorg]

Looking through everyone's work, first exercise is definitely going to be about line quality. Will get it up over the weekend. Is this load for homework okay, too much or too little? --> A page of line exercises, one observational drawing and optionally one drawing from imagination.

Depends on the timeframe but if given, say, a week that doesn't seem very much at all. Two or three days it might be if they happen to be busy ones.

[ShadowySilence]

That sounds good to me, but like Zorg said it depends on the amount of time given.

[Glass Mouse]

Looking through everyone's work, first exercise is definitely going to be about line quality. Will get it up over the weekend. Is this load for homework okay, too much or too little? --> A page of line exercises, one observational drawing and optionally one drawing from imagination.

In my (albeit limited) Challenge experience, it's difficult to keep people hooked on a large workload. It seems to me that long deadlines and/or smaller task are much more likely to be followed. And a lot of people seem to prefer quality over quantity, so they can perfect whatever they put up.

So...
Week 1: A page of line exercises.
Week 2: One observational drawing.
Week 3: One drawing from imagination(?).

One moderately big exercise is also easier to remember and plan for than many small, but maybe that's just me.

Dunno. I'd be fine with those three exercises for one week, but I'm... kinda obsessive about stuff like this (*cough*56weekChallengestreak*cough*).
Of course the workload depends a lot on the required quality of the works. Big difference between this (http://fc05.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2010/353/b/7/train_compartment_by_glassmouse89-d3572lk.jpg) and this (http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs13/f/2007/055/8/e/Skin_Deep_by_YoukaiYume.jpg). Maybe a few quidelines on how much we should draw, and how much effort is expected? An estimate of time, fx?

[Saeyan]

I think you're right, Glass Mouse. I'll be pretty busy so this is a better arrangement for me too hehe.


Line Quality, Part 1
Here is a drawing by Paul Gustave Doré. There are several types of lines here, serving different purposes. For instance, the thin, even and somewhat bland lines suggesting the background make the foreground figures, who are depicted with far more vigorous and bold lines, come forward.http://laurashefler.net/arthistory2010/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/453px-Paul_Gustave_Dor%C3%A9_1832-1883_-_Baron_von_M%C3%BCnchhausen_1862_-_0091.jpg

Another example of different line quality, this time by R.O. Blechman. Squiggly, broken, fairly even lines.
http://sigmaplus.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/roblechman_lhc.jpg
Line weight (thickness), shape, etc. is known as line quality. Hopefully you can tell that having some variation in line quality generally makes things look more interesting.

http://sigmaplus.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/1-linetypes.jpg

Here's a drawing - bonus points if you can identify who it is - done with three different types of line. The leftmost is an even line, an effect you can see in the way OOTS figures are outlined or if drawing digitally without pressure sensitivity turned on. Even lines can be used to great effect but they tend to make work look lifeless and coldly precise. Good if you're a technical illustrator, less so for what we're trying to achieve here. Even lines are usually caused by pressing down too hard (because it's harder to maintain even lines with a lighter touch), so lighten up.

In the middle is the infamous fuzzy line. This appears a lot in expressionist art - Kathe Kollwitz, Willem de Kooning etc. - but again, should be avoided unless you are intentionally going for that look.

On the right is my attempt at drawing with variations in line weight. The way I do it is to imagine I'm physically tracing the contour of the subject with my crayon. Where it turns (e.g. the curve of the nose), I generally press harder to get a better 'feel' of the form.

I don't have much more to say so let's go on to the exercises.


Exercises
These are really just to get you familiar with your tools, and to give you some practice with controlling your hand and arm.

http://sigmaplus.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/1-setup.jpg
Get a largish piece of paper (no smaller than A4/letter size) and put it up on a wall if you can. Otherwise just draw on a flat or slightly inclined surface. You could do this with a large tablet, say Intuos4's medium size or above, but I strongly discourage it if you have little experience controlling your lines traditionally.

I used china marker (trying to use up the stubs of my broken one) on newsprint (because it's cheap and big). Any support (the surface you're drawing on) will do, and you can try this exercise with pencil, charcoal/conte, pen (not technical pen/fineliner), brush, digital ink or all of the above.

Okay UPDATE after the first few images came back: general rule - the further away you are from the support, the larger the tip of your drawing instrument should be. Also something soft, like 2B (or 4B if you can get it) pencil (for the finger pivot) and crayon/oil pastel/charcoal (for the elbow/shoulder pivot) is best.

http://sigmaplus.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/1-posture.jpg

These three positions apply whether you are standing or sitting. The size of the stroke you want to draw determines which part of the arm you use - keep the highlighted part relatively rigid and pivot from the joint on the other side. For large lines draw from the shoulder, using your back/waist/knees (for really big lines) etc. to help. As the lines get smaller we move to drawing from the wrist and finally the fingers.

Fill up a few pages with line exercises. That just means draw different kinds of strokes, try using different pressure, hold your pencil differently etc. Avoid the even line and fuzzy line - keep strokes as long and smooth as you can. Some examples below:
http://sigmaplus.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/1-ski.jpghttp://sigmaplus.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/1-boat.jpg

Lines can convey speed. As something gets slower or heavier the lines get weightier too.
http://sigmaplus.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/1-examples.jpg

Exercises to practice arm motion. Don't forget to do these in all directions - left-right, up-down, corner-corner.


Deadline
Next Sunday, 11th Dec. You can post your tries before that too! If you have questions post them here and we'll try to answer them together. Everyone should try and leave some comments on other people's work. There is no need to pad criticism as long as it is constructive.

Next exercise (tentative): Basic shapes and solids.

[Zorg]

A good way to start, shall get on it right away :)

[SiuiS]

Cool, anyone else?

Looking through everyone's work, first exercise is definitely going to be about line quality. Will get it up over the weekend. Is this load for homework okay, too much or too little? --> A page of line exercises, one observational drawing and optionally one drawing from imagination.

Ach! It's all the stuff I told Thanqol I'd try eventually. Looks like I wasn't bluffing after all...
The load-out seems a little above undertandable. Our current assignment seems a little below. I'd suggest sticking to just under what you think is a credible assignment, because that way instead of dashing off something 'acceptable' we can take our time to try and perfect what we're learning.


Assignment Stuff

Oki doki Loki! This is going to murder my self esteem, but horrible self image is like, what? A full 80% of being an artist? Guess it's time to get over that scribe's grip...

Thanks for the message, Saeyan. I'll subscribe this time so I can keep track from now on.

Ohoho this is going to destroy me XD

[the_druid_droid]

Hmm, this sounds like a plan! Since I can't get enough drawing practice anyway, count me in.

Info
Art: Probably will be posting in Ponythread Learns to Draw (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=220815)

Interested in: Well, as you can guess from the art thread, I like drawing ponies and other cartoon characters, but I'm interested in drawing in general and I really want to work on developing familiarity and ability with shading and color.

Media: Currently just pencils, pens and a tablet, though I'm hoping to expand that list in the future to include chalk/pastels or colored pencils as well.

[ninja_penguin]

Well, I had a ton of time today. I get the feeling I might be slightly missing the point of a line exercise, so feel free to maul away if I've done so.

I'm a bit miffed with my scanner, it only will save things as .jpgs, and it's lost a lot of the overall darkness of the lines.

The things I've noticed:

-I'm really, really not used to the wrist pivot. I keep on going to my fingers or elbow. It's like trying to lift my ring finger when my middle one is tied down.

-I don't really see any variation beyond 'light' and 'dark' with the mechanical pencil via pressure.

-I'm most used to using the fingers to pivot to draw lines. This might explain why I've had a problem of drawing almost too small; unless I can default to the elbow to move instead, there's probably a dead zone in there.

So, anyway, lines. Woo.
Big picture warning
http://img220.imageshack.us/img220/9122/assn1page3.jpg (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/220/assn1page3.jpg/)
http://img829.imageshack.us/img829/3670/assn1page2.jpg (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/829/assn1page2.jpg/)
http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/3180/assn1page1.jpg (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/171/assn1page1.jpg/)

[Savannah]

-I don't really see any variation beyond 'light' and 'dark' with the mechanical pencil via pressure.

That would be your problem, I believe.

[Saeyan]

I'm a bit miffed with my scanner, it only will save things as .jpgs, and it's lost a lot of the overall darkness of the lines.

they're showing up pretty all right on my end.


-I'm really, really not used to the wrist pivot. I keep on going to my fingers or elbow. It's like trying to lift my ring finger when my middle one is tied down.
the wrist pivot is a weird one. I hardly use it too because there's nothing the wrist can do that the elbow can't.

I don't really see any variation beyond 'light' and 'dark' with the mechanical pencil via pressure.
as Savannah pointed out, the mechanical pencil might be a factor. (Are you using a 2B or softer lead? How thick is the lead?) But I think you're either rushing through the lines or doing them too slowly with a death grip on the pencil.
try and really focus on controlling the amount of pressure you use. For instance tell yourself that on the wave shapes, the peaks are going to be heavy and the troughs are going to be lighter, then try to achieve that effect.


I'm most used to using the fingers to pivot to draw lines. This might explain why I've had a problem of drawing almost too small; unless I can default to the elbow to move instead, there's probably a dead zone in there.

ugh I feel your pain, I draw way too small as well.

[ninja_penguin]

as Savannah pointed out, the mechanical pencil might be a factor. (Are you using a 2B or softer lead? How thick is the lead?) But I think you're either rushing through the lines or doing them too slowly with a death grip on the pencil.

.5 mm lead, I think I'm using HB lead. And I'm probably doing both? I used to be so heavy handed you could do sketch reveals on pages beneath in the pad. Now I just draw on one at a time.

[Trazoi]

I've had a crack at this. I'm not sure if I'm doing the exercise right.
(cross-posted on my drawing thread).

These are all drawn on A4 paper stuck to the wall (using magnets on a whiteboard). Using a wooden HB pencil:

http://www.trazoi.net/images/ext/giantitp/daily/111205/scan1.jpghttp://www.trazoi.net/images/ext/giantitp/daily/111205/scan2.jpgThese two were done at an arm's distance, trying out sweeping strokes. I'm not that good at keeping the lines straight.


http://www.trazoi.net/images/ext/giantitp/daily/111205/scan0.jpgThis one is a more medium distance, using the elbow.


http://www.trazoi.net/images/ext/giantitp/daily/111205/scan3.jpgThis one is a lot closer, similar to the distance I'm used do drawing on a clipboard.

[Kasanip]

It is a post from Kasanip:

I tried [River] exercise. It was fun, but after sketching river, it became changed.

http://i1015.photobucket.com/albums/af275/umbrellako2/01.jpg


A digital practice is difficult to do with this lesson I think. But to learn to control on tablet is different with [Computer Display]. It is good to practice with your computer display and tablet.

Here is one exercise. :smallredface: I do as starting exercise:


http://i1015.photobucket.com/albums/af275/umbrellako2/00.jpg

Start a white canvas.
①Use big motion of Arm to make the first lines.
②The space can be used for different direction. I drew arrows to show direction of arm motion.　

Try to draw inside of lines, it is practice of controlling [Start] and [Finish] of the lines.　Of course try [Wrist] and [Finger].

Because start with different big motion, it will always be different. Think of all directions to draw.
Looking carefully of skill, it can be seen what hand is used for sketching because of direction. :smallredface::smallredface:

[Saeyan]

ninja_penguin: yeah, that is probably it. Lighten up! The pencil's not going to fly out of your hand.
Trazoi: I can see some weight variation in the last image which is good. For the first two try keeping the lines straighter? You share a problem with ninja_penguin which is the pressing too hard bit. Try doing the weight scale and see how light a pencil can actually go.

Kasanip: haha! that's a good idea, practicing starting and stopping neatly.

Everyone: I updated the exercise post but it just says that using soft media is better.

[Trazoi]

Trazoi: I can see some weight variation in the last image which is good. For the first two try keeping the lines straighter? You share a problem with ninja_penguin which is the pressing too hard bit. Try doing the weight scale and see how light a pencil can actually go.
Thanks. What do you mean by "doing the weight scale"?

I'll need some more wooden pencils. I've got a lot of HB and some 2H, but nothing darker.

[the_druid_droid]

Alrighty, the line drawing exercise got finished tonight! It'll most likely be cross-posted in the pony drawing thread. Any and all feedback is appreciated!

http://i1225.photobucket.com/albums/ee385/the_druid_droid/img008.jpg
http://i1225.photobucket.com/albums/ee385/the_druid_droid/img009.jpg
Two pages, since my paper was relatively small

The elbow and shoulder pivoting actually seems to be fairly effective for large strokes, but it's taking some getting used to, for me at least.

[SiuiS]

Well, I had a ton of time today. I get the feeling I might be slightly missing the point of a line exercise, so feel free to maul away if I've done so.

Well, the point is to try different strokes and pressures, just to see what happens. So don't feel like you have to get anything right; just screw around and do things you normally wouldn't and see what happens :smallsmile:



-I'm most used to using the fingers to pivot to draw lines. This might explain why I've had a problem of drawing almost too small; unless I can default to the elbow to move instead, there's probably a dead zone in there.

Another reason is the scribe's grip. When you hold the pencil way down, close to the lead? I have consistently seen that folks who draw by using this grip or by guiding with the fingers consistently draw on a smaller scale, where most folks who use a more medium grip and who use the shoulder and elbow tend to just use massive canvases and shrink them.


That would be your problem, I believe.

Well horseapples. That means I'm gonna have the same trouble...

-

My own work! Had some time at work where couldn't do anything but sit there and hope nopony came inside, so I doodled lines and compared them to today's art efforts. I didn't quite do anything successfully with linework - I was too busy focused on weird cartoon anatomy with no skeletons, curse those d-dogs to the moon! - but I see how I could have used line weight. That's a bi improvement!


first up, preliminary line works.


http://i1229.photobucket.com/albums/ee468/WizardPony/artist%20training%20grounds/art%20Study/da832901.jpg

Right Hand, small hatching. I just cannot coordinate my arm; apparently I use shoulder, elbow and wrist together when working, because I had a hard time isolating the movements. I still ended up pivoting my shoulder a bit, or wrist, when using the elbow.

Top wavy is combo wrist, shoulder. I think; it was supposed to be just shoulder. Look! Light and dark with a .5mm mechanical!
Left hatches were wrist, far right were shoulder. Center are elbow, and remarkably straight all things considered...

And here we have an aborted storyline, wherein the only existing scene is Applejack kicking a d-dog mook in the face.


http://i1229.photobucket.com/albums/ee468/WizardPony/artist%20training%20grounds/art%20Study/1500c419.jpg

I'm think that if if I had added more weight to the back hooves, and under the front right (stage left) leg, I could have drawn the eye from the ground into the target's face along the line of power transfer; would have added some mental weight to it. As is, the kick looks pretty false, set up.

I also need to undo a lot o the lineweight on the face; it draws the eye sure, but doesn't really mesh with the rest of the picture at all.

There we are, my preliminary works. My work weekend is tomorrow though, so I'll try and tak a big piece on the wall and give that a go. I fear that switching to an actual useful pen grip will be a Herculean effort...

[Zorg]

I've done the exercises and hit a slight technical hitch - working on A2 paper is great, until you have to scan it... hopefully takign some photos will work, but it's currently very overcast outside so we'll see how they go.

It seemed to do the trick as I could immediately see where I was lacking consistency and the angles I was having trouble with. Still, they seemed to really loosen me up as I immediately did a drawing and was very relaxed about it! Even seemed to do better on some things that I normally struggle with :smallsmile:

Pics (hopefully) tomorrow.

[Zorg]

As promised, a picture (the pics of just pencil didn't show up, so I went over with a felt tip):

http://i147.photobucket.com/albums/r314/Gotthammer/40k/Ex01a.jpg

One thing that's consistent 'tween the pencil and ink is that my curves going from 12 o'clock to 3 o'clock are terrible, and my lines radiating from 6 o'clock to 9 o'clock are rather naff too. In the pencil work these also have poor consistency of colour, despite my trying to maintain an even tone.

Also, the picture I did after the excercises (still a WiP):

http://i147.photobucket.com/albums/r314/Gotthammer/40k/Urs01.jpg

I shall hopefully repeat the homework on an A4 sheet tomorrow so I can scan it in.

[Thanqol]

Hopefully I'll be getting my entry done this weekend :smallsmile:

[Saeyan]

Trazoi, weight scale means that thing with lines going from heaviest to lightest. it helps you find the extremes of pressure you can exert when making marks.

SiuiS and droid (is it ok to call you that), those look pretty good :smallsmile: and that analysis is exactly what we're going for SiuiS.



One thing that's consistent 'tween the pencil and ink is that my curves going from 12 o'clock to 3 o'clock are terrible, and my lines radiating from 6 o'clock to 9 o'clock are rather naff too.
ah yeah, that's because us right-handers (?) are not used to making marks in those directions. It's not very natural for the wrist.


Also, the picture I did after the excercises (still a WiP)
it's a bit late to say this, but watch the fuzzy lines!

myself, I'm currently freezing my fingers off in China with an A5 sketchbook only so...yeah. I can't do my own assignment at the corrct size :smallannoyed: hopefully I can get my grandfather to lend me his calligraphy materials and do the exercises with a brush instead.

[the_druid_droid]

SiuiS and droid (is it ok to call you that), those look pretty good :smallsmile: and that analysis is exactly what we're going for SiuiS.


I'm fine with droid, druid, DD, and many other combinations. Go with whatever strikes you at the time.

[Zorg]

ah yeah, that's because us right-handers (?) are not used to making marks in those directions. It's not very natural for the wrist.

Right handed indeed. Good to know it's not just me.

It's interesting reading SiuiS' self analysis, as I tried to think about what I was doing and how I was doing it, but couldn't.
Looking back and seeing how I draw normally I think I do some of this but have never really noticed. For instance if I'm going to draw a long straight line I lock my elbow and draw from the shoulder - something I picked up doing technical drawing many years ago - but I've never thought about it.

Deep :smallcool:




it's a bit late to say this, but watch the fuzzy lines!

Ha, ha, well it's not finished yet and I was partly aiming to practice my blending and drawing sans lines (something I need to work on a lot), so that's a big contributor to the fuzzyness. Hopefully I'll get some time to smooth things out :smallsmile:



myself, I'm currently freezing my fingers off in China with an A5 sketchbook only so...yeah. I can't do my own assignment at the corrct size :smallannoyed: hopefully I can get my grandfather to lend me his calligraphy materials and do the exercises with a brush instead.

Hope you can work something out!

[SiuiS]

Trazoi, weight scale means that thing with lines going from heaviest to lightest. it helps you find the extremes of pressure you can exert when making marks.

SiuiS and droid (is it ok to call you that), those look pretty good :smallsmile: and that analysis is exactly what we're going for SiuiS.

Ok. I will try and keep that up, then.



ah yeah, that's because us right-handers (?) are not used to making marks in those directions. It's not very natural for the wrist.

That would explain a lot actually. It's easier to do 3/4 profile facing left, because I start from the brow and go down to the chin. Facing the other direction brings my arm up into positions it's just not normally comfortable with.



myself, I'm currently freezing my fingers off in China with an A5 sketchbook only so...yeah. I can't do my own assignment at the corrct size :smallannoyed: hopefully I can get my grandfather to lend me his calligraphy materials and do the exercises with a brush instead.

Ooh, exotic.

Does the size matter overmuch? I know you're aiming for a certain canvas space for movement range, but wouldn't a similar but smaller size yield same results over a larger number of sheets?


Right handed indeed. Good to know it's not just me.

It's interesting reading SiuiS' self analysis, as I tried to think about what I was doing and how I was doing it, but couldn't.
Looking back and seeing how I draw normally I think I do some of this but have never really noticed. For instance if I'm going to draw a long straight line I lock my elbow and draw from the shoulder - something I picked up doing technical drawing many years ago - but I've never thought about it.

A side effect of my hobbies. I may not be very good at martial arts or massage, but a better bodymind connection is pretty ace. The downside is it makes me a sort of pain hypchondriac. When I stub my toe, I'm very aware of it, and how it hurts, what directions, color and temperature the pain is... Im a wise XD

Thanqol, when you post, could you throw out an explanation of the learning to examine your own thoughts bit? I think it would be relevant but I'm out o time to try and explain.

[Eleanor_Rigby]

I haven't bowed out of this or anything but I'm not sure how I'll get the exercise up on the forum when I've done it (the plan's to do it tomorrow) as my scanner's at my term time residence and I have a sneaking suspicion my camera cable may be as well although at least I have access to A3 paper and soft media here. If nothing else I'll post some commentary on other folk's work on Sunday.

Has anybody identified Saeyan's "sitter" yet, by the way? The varied line one on the far right reminded me of David Attenborough but it could well be that I've forgotten what he looks like... :smalltongue:

Also, am I alone in not knowing what a china marker is? Google search coming up... [ETA] Oh I see... sounds nice...

[Saeyan]

The 'sitter' is not David Attenborough, he doesn't stop hiding in tall grass long enough for me to draw him :smalltongue: it is female and has been in the news all too often lately.

No luck with the calligraphy materials. Busy here, visitors popping up left and right.

no worries about the china marker, I didn't know the 'kids' crayon with the string' was called that till this year.

[ShadowySilence]

I will try to get my sketches up tomorrow (hopefully that does not count as late), but depending on various circumstances that may or may not work out.

[Remmirath]

Well, I've been rather busy this week, but I finally managed to give it a try. So:

http://familylees.net/morgan/one.gif

I was using the china marker, which I'm not really very used to (I think it could maybe also have used sharpening, in retrospect). I forgot to do one or two of the things there, apparently, but I did try some varying arm lengths and all - the longer ones were from further away. Overall, it did make me think more about line weights, so that's a good thing. I think the later marks were better than the first.

I think perhaps I should've gone for something I was more familiar with - such as pencil - since I spent the first few strokes thinking 'huh, right, that's what the china marker is like'.

In the end I tried to draw a pocketknife lying near me. The lines didn't quite work out there, but I can still see that it looks more interesting than if the lines were all the same.

[Kindablue]

Difficult to explain. A sense of three-dimensionality in a single figure; I create 'depth' between different subjects, but I can't create depth in a single subject, even though logically parts of a body are further back that others. Instead, they come out flat.

Does that make sense?

I heard a Michelangelo quote once along the lines of "a good painting will trick you into thinking it's a sculpture."

[Capt. Ido Nos]

Phew! Just got this all done. That was a good crazy time drawing lines over and over again! No seriously, that was a really interesting though exercise trying to do full arm motions, normally my drawing movement is limited to my wrist and fingers only.


Drawn in digital ink, on four "sheets" of A3, 300 dpi. Warning, these images are HUGE.
http://img820.imageshack.us/img820/1321/day58.png
http://img205.imageshack.us/img205/9543/day582.png
http://img710.imageshack.us/img710/7469/day583.png
http://img815.imageshack.us/img815/1281/day584.png

I'm sorry I haven't been commenting, I'm not at all very knowledgeable about line weight, arm movements, and that sort of thing. Also: if these pictures I posted are way too big (which I suspect they are), then what is the more ideal size and resolution that I should be posting?

[Domochevsky]

Ido, try "half" for size. Even that is still pretty damn big, but more manageable than what you got now. :smallwink:

[Eleanor_Rigby]

So I'm going to be posting the images of this exercise late. I have a tablet but it's a little Graphire 2 with a drawing area that's not as wide as a portrait sheet of A4, let alone A3 and at its age tis not always as responsive as could be hoped for either, poor dear. So. Maybe tomorrow but possibly later. :smallfrown:

Capt. Ido Nos.
Those are indeed very big images :smalleek:
It probably sounds pretty blunt but I think really only the final image was worth all the scrolling to look at it. The first three were no doubt worth doing but I'm not sure how much constructive advice one can give about a bunch of straight lines. That said, artistic criticism isn't something I'm great at anyway, especially for an exercise like this. :smalltongue:

As for resolution... I don't know. 300dpi is a standard sort of resolution but A3 is pretty big - I've got a reasonably sized screen and even with the GitP window maximized the avaliable window holding an A5 sheet in front of the monitor obscures the bulk of the forum content window, and an A4 one conceals all the text apart from the Sidebar. Which I never hide, even temporarily, on the offchance that a new OotS comes out whilst I'm posting I don't really understand how dpi works though, I rarely deal with it as the GIMP measures things in ppi and just regular pixels and it's the pixels that I tend to be looking at. I've been out of the computer arting loop for a bit but I'd probably not reccommend posting pictures wider than 1000 pixels here?

As for the exercise itself: I like the swirlies and the sets of lines that graduate in height and width. The former reminds me of woodgrain and the latter almost has a neat little perspective effect going on when you look at it the right way.

PS: I lurk in your stealing ideas thread and some of your stuff is pretty neat.

Remmirath
Your sheet looks rather pretty!
For a medium you're not used to or comfortable with I think you manged to get quite a nice spectrum of line weight, plus you've done a great job of avoiding the fuzzy line, even on your observational drawing - something that can be tricky when you're not confident with a medium. I think you're right that the line weights don't look quite right on the pen knife drawing but the lines themselves are confident: nice and sleek.
I like your ripple practice because it looks like you've placed the epicentre offcentre, so to speak, which, combined with the spacing of the ripples, gives it a good perspective effect.

Zorg
It's a shame the photo of the line exercise sheet didn't work out so well. :smallfrown:
From what I can see, the shapes are interesting and genreally speaking the lines are nice and smooth and flow well. I can't really see and variation in what I understand to be line weight though: all the lines seem to be about the same breadth and about the same tone, even in the original pencil, although obviously that's not completley clear since the photo didn't work out...
The drawing's pretty good although the linework is mostly pretty shaky looking and could do with a bit more variations and quite a few fewer stops and starts. I don't know if you're wanting feedback with the 'anatomy' (I'm not great at that) of the figure or not so I'll put a couple of things in a further spoiler.
-the neck looks a little thick to me, for a woman of her apparent build at least.
- I'm leaning towards thinking that the parting indents a little too deeply into the head but the weird effect could possibly be caused by the following point that I realised after staring at the picture for a while
- The head and the face are at different angles. They're both fairly well drawn but at a rough guess for her hair to be in the place where it is and with her neck in that position, the centre of her chin ought to line up with about the half way mark of her shoulder width. That's probably the thing that's most 'off' with the piece. (Although thinking about it, actually, taking that flaw and running with it altering the rest of the model and cleaning up the lines a little you could have a pretty interesting Picasso-esque portrait there. Alternate finished version?)
- the collars could use a bit of work: I suck at drawing collars without a reference but if you look at a few photos of folk in suits and the like and compare them with the drawing, particularly the shirt collar you'll probably notice a few interesting things. The tie's a little too stylised as well, I think. The lower part of the jacket collar's actually all right though, I think...

I hope that's constructive stuff and doesn't read as harsh. :smallsmile:

the_druid_droid

I really like the way the pastelly/chalky/crayon medium looks. What are the red and black marks made with? I can't seem to tell. I think trying a few different mediums out is a good idea, it also made the page look more interesting, shakes things up a bit after quite a few predominately grey lined pieces.
No fuzzy lines on the sheet, although I guess they are a lot easier to avoid when you're not aiming to draw something specific... still they're not wobbly either so good job there. And it seems to fulfil the criteria of the exercise pretty nicely, you've got plenty of variation in tone and breadth of line.

SuiS: sorry for misspelling your name!Not much to say on the line exercise really apart from the fact that the variations are pretty subtle although if I look close enough I can see that there is variation, at least in line breadth. I think you were one of the people using a mechanical pencil though so if you didn't get a softer lead for it this exercise was always going to be a bit tricky.
The shapes on the pony piece are pretty much all just about right, for Applejack at least (I've not got a great understanding for the dog thingum) and most of the lines are pretty smooth, which is impressive given the accuracy of the shapes even if it is a simplistic style. The line weight is kind of lacking but you've made your own observations about it already so... yeah.

Kasanip:
Not a fuzzy or jagged line in the picture and just two cases of overlap as far as I can see. :smallsmile:
The changes in line breadth are pretty well handled but I think the picture (which is really neat) would be elevated by a slightly wider/ more evenly applied spectrum of tone. I really like the variation in spacing between lines/ differences in scale of fillers - it reminds me a lot of needlework that I do, which is always a good thing. :smallwink:
I think though that if you did the following:
-extended the "fillers" to the edges of the path/river, the characters and the motifs to emphasise the shape and even out the tone
-added some sort of shading elements to the character and/or sunburst in the top righthand corner
-solid filled the sky (although that would obliterate your stars unfortunately, it's a pity you can't just delete the stars and leave similarly sized negative space ones in a solid fill...:smalltongue:)
-possibly filled in the centres of the foremost filler, or the outer edges of the same... I don't know, one but not both though.
....it would improve the picture


Anyone and everyone I didn't comment on:
Tired of typing now. :smallredface:
(I may comment on the rest later but I was mostly working backwards so I think the people I've skipped have at least received some feedback.

I'm sad to say I still can't place the mysterious "sitter", it's possible I suppose that I'm not actually aware of the person in question despite her having been in the news a lot. I'm fairly un-media savvy, unfortunately. Having seen images of Attenborough since my last comment though, I realised it couldn't have been him as the evidence of aging under his eyes is more of the sunken quality and he doesn't have that slightly puffy thing going on there.

NB: I've not really proof-read this long post so there may be some weird slip ups.

[Capt. Ido Nos]

Ido, try "half" for size. Even that is still pretty damn big, but more manageable than what you got now. :smallwink:
Yeah, seriously, haha! I've got a 1900x1080 screen, and I can never tell if the size of anything that I'm working on will translate well to other screens D: I figured for this, where everyone comments, I'll just start off on the "way to freaking big" scale and prune it back until we find the sweet spot :smalltongue: Thanks! Next time we'll try A4 300 dpi and see what people say :smallbiggrin:



So I'm going to be posting the images of this exercise late. I have a tablet but it's a little Graphire 2 with a drawing area that's not as wide as a portrait sheet of A4, let alone A3 and at its age tis not always as responsive as could be hoped for either, poor dear. So. Maybe tomorrow but possibly later. :smallfrown:

Capt. Ido Nos.
Those are indeed very big images :smalleek:
It probably sounds pretty blunt but I think really only the final image was worth all the scrolling to look at it. The first three were no doubt worth doing but I'm not sure how much constructive advice one can give about a bunch of straight lines. That said, artistic criticism isn't something I'm great at anyway, especially for an exercise like this. :smalltongue:

As for resolution... I don't know. 300dpi is a standard sort of resolution but A3 is pretty big - I've got a reasonably sized screen and even with the GitP window maximized the avaliable window holding an A5 sheet in front of the monitor obscures the bulk of the forum content window, and an A4 one conceals all the text apart from the Sidebar. Which I never hide, even temporarily, on the offchance that a new OotS comes out whilst I'm posting I don't really understand how dpi works though, I rarely deal with it as the GIMP measures things in ppi and just regular pixels and it's the pixels that I tend to be looking at. I've been out of the computer arting loop for a bit but I'd probably not reccommend posting pictures wider than 1000 pixels here?

As for the exercise itself: I like the swirlies and the sets of lines that graduate in height and width. The former reminds me of woodgrain and the latter almost has a neat little perspective effect going on when you look at it the right way.

PS: I lurk in your stealing ideas thread and some of your stuff is pretty neat.

Yeah, three solid pages of straight lines probably doesn't merit all that much to comment on, unless someone here is a artistic wizard genius and can tell me everything about me and how to fix my technique just by how I draw my straight lines, which isn't something I'm expecting, but if someone here is able to do that, then BY ALL MEANS FIRE AWAY, hehe :smallbiggrin:

A3 is pretty darn big! I've never used it before. I was just sort of going with Saeyan's advice on going for a big sheet, I didn't realize how big it was until I'd finished, haha! I'm not going to lie, I don't really have a good mental picture of the A-sized pages, all I can really conceive of is the 8.5x11 inches, which is pretty close to A4, but past that I'm clueless, so this is all just experimenting on my part. Good idea on the 1000px mark, I will see if I can shoot for that next exercise! I'll also say that I tend to use dpi and ppi interchangeably, even if they might not actually mean the same thing. They might though? >_>;; I'll just wait for someone who knows what they're talking about to learn me some knowledge.

I'm glad you like the rest of the exercise all the same! The swirls and funky perspective lines were a lot of fun to play with, and an excellent breather after the shoulder/elbow/wrist marathon. Felt good, too! And thanks for lurking! I appreciate it :smallredface:

[Glass Mouse]

I'm sorry I didn't do the exercise. I thought I'd manage to snatch it with me before I left for no-internet-land, but I was too busy, and I forgot :smallfrown:

On the upside, that was an AWESOME "exercise 1" post, Saeyan, very thought-out and educational. I love the amount of work you put into it.
I'll see if I can get the line exercise down today or tomorrow (and throw some comments after other people). I know it's past the deadline, but... better late than never, no?

[Saeyan]

One A5 sheet of lines and another page of drawings, trying to consciously vary line quality.
http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b229/krysjez/051.jpg
It's hard for me to keep shoulder-pivot lines straight. They always follow the natural curve of the arm. The rest of the pivots are okay.
http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b229/krysjez/052-1.jpg
I tried to use heavier lines for things coming forward or the shadow side of things. I think it makes the birds' claws feel more rooted to the page.


Ido, your images are so huge that my browser refuses to load them :smallamused: also...A3 was a guideline for, um, paper >_< to force you to move your arm more than you'd normally do when drawing in small books. Large tablet would be better than large monitor/drawing area. (sigh, one day I'll upgrade from my 13" laptop...)

ER, wow thanks for going in with those detailed crits already.

Remmirath - I can see where you weren't quite used to things yet. China marker does have an interesting texture. (when I first used it on newsprint I was expecting some kind of near-orgasmic experience - waxy crayon on waxed paper you know - and was sorely disappointed...but that's just me rambling) Overall it looks quite nice.

Zorg, how's the drawing of the lady going?

Next exercise we'll draw some basic shapes. Stupidly busy now so for now let's just look at each others' squiggly lines and comment :smallcool:

[Eleanor_Rigby]

Some gorgeous stuff there, Saeyan.
If you don't mind me saying, the anatomy looks somewhat off on the wood pigeon - I think it's mostly in the breast and underside/ legs but I'm not sure and don't have time for a detailed analysis just now. I can't see any problems with the rock dove, on the other hand.

[the_druid_droid]

Note: spoilers are there to make this post less massive...


Well, I had a ton of time today. I get the feeling I might be slightly missing the point of a line exercise, so feel free to maul away if I've done so.

I'm a bit miffed with my scanner, it only will save things as .jpgs, and it's lost a lot of the overall darkness of the lines.

The things I've noticed:

-I'm really, really not used to the wrist pivot. I keep on going to my fingers or elbow. It's like trying to lift my ring finger when my middle one is tied down.

-I don't really see any variation beyond 'light' and 'dark' with the mechanical pencil via pressure.

-I'm most used to using the fingers to pivot to draw lines. This might explain why I've had a problem of drawing almost too small; unless I can default to the elbow to move instead, there's probably a dead zone in there.


My big suggestion for you, ninja, is to look into getting a set of drawing pencils. You don't need a ton, maybe just 4H, 2H, HB, 2B, 4B, but you will see a difference with them versus the mechanical pencil; in particular, it's much easier to vary line weight and make more expressive strokes.


I've had a crack at this. I'm not sure if I'm doing the exercise right.
(cross-posted on my drawing thread).

These are all drawn on A4 paper stuck to the wall (using magnets on a whiteboard). Using a wooden HB pencil:

http://www.trazoi.net/images/ext/giantitp/daily/111205/scan1.jpghttp://www.trazoi.net/images/ext/giantitp/daily/111205/scan2.jpgThese two were done at an arm's distance, trying out sweeping strokes. I'm not that good at keeping the lines straight.


http://www.trazoi.net/images/ext/giantitp/daily/111205/scan0.jpgThis one is a more medium distance, using the elbow.


http://www.trazoi.net/images/ext/giantitp/daily/111205/scan3.jpgThis one is a lot closer, similar to the distance I'm used do drawing on a clipboard.

I think you definitely got the feel of changing line weight for this exercise. I know you're interested in cartoon art, and I'm curious if you've tried using the tablet with pressure set to change the line width, rather than darkness. I think Domochevsky (not sure I spelled that right... <.<) did an example in another thread, and I though it was a neat effect for that sort of style.


It is a post from Kasanip:

I tried [River] exercise. It was fun, but after sketching river, it became changed.

http://i1015.photobucket.com/albums/af275/umbrellako2/01.jpg


A digital practice is difficult to do with this lesson I think. But to learn to control on tablet is different with [Computer Display]. It is good to practice with your computer display and tablet.

Here is one exercise. :smallredface: I do as starting exercise:


http://i1015.photobucket.com/albums/af275/umbrellako2/00.jpg

Start a white canvas.
①Use big motion of Arm to make the first lines.
②The space can be used for different direction. I drew arrows to show direction of arm motion.　

Try to draw inside of lines, it is practice of controlling [Start] and [Finish] of the lines.　Of course try [Wrist] and [Finger].

Because start with different big motion, it will always be different. Think of all directions to draw.
Looking carefully of skill, it can be seen what hand is used for sketching because of direction. :smallredface::smallredface:

*waves* Hi Kasa! Nice to run into you outside the PbP threads!

Have you considered trying this exercise on paper? I ask because it seems like it's harder to get the full benefit on a tablet, even with line pressure settings on.




Well, the point is to try different strokes and pressures, just to see what happens. So don't feel like you have to get anything right; just screw around and do things you normally wouldn't and see what happens :smallsmile:



Another reason is the scribe's grip. When you hold the pencil way down, close to the lead? I have consistently seen that folks who draw by using this grip or by guiding with the fingers consistently draw on a smaller scale, where most folks who use a more medium grip and who use the shoulder and elbow tend to just use massive canvases and shrink them.



Well horseapples. That means I'm gonna have the same trouble...

-

My own work! Had some time at work where couldn't do anything but sit there and hope nopony came inside, so I doodled lines and compared them to today's art efforts. I didn't quite do anything successfully with linework - I was too busy focused on weird cartoon anatomy with no skeletons, curse those d-dogs to the moon! - but I see how I could have used line weight. That's a bi improvement!


first up, preliminary line works.


http://i1229.photobucket.com/albums/ee468/WizardPony/artist%20training%20grounds/art%20Study/da832901.jpg

Right Hand, small hatching. I just cannot coordinate my arm; apparently I use shoulder, elbow and wrist together when working, because I had a hard time isolating the movements. I still ended up pivoting my shoulder a bit, or wrist, when using the elbow.

Top wavy is combo wrist, shoulder. I think; it was supposed to be just shoulder. Look! Light and dark with a .5mm mechanical!
Left hatches were wrist, far right were shoulder. Center are elbow, and remarkably straight all things considered...

And here we have an aborted storyline, wherein the only existing scene is Applejack kicking a d-dog mook in the face.


http://i1229.photobucket.com/albums/ee468/WizardPony/artist%20training%20grounds/art%20Study/1500c419.jpg

I'm think that if if I had added more weight to the back hooves, and under the front right (stage left) leg, I could have drawn the eye from the ground into the target's face along the line of power transfer; would have added some mental weight to it. As is, the kick looks pretty false, set up.

I also need to undo a lot o the lineweight on the face; it draws the eye sure, but doesn't really mesh with the rest of the picture at all.

There we are, my preliminary works. My work weekend is tomorrow though, so I'll try and tak a big piece on the wall and give that a go. I fear that switching to an actual useful pen grip will be a Herculean effort...

I'm impressed you managed to get line variations that were visible after uploading with a mechanical pencil, although my suggestion to ninja about a pencil set goes for you as well! (You can totally find a small set for under $10, and I promise, it'll be like a breath of fresh air)

I really envy your ability to analyze what's going on as you draw, and that's something I'm going to try and work on more as these exercises progress. 'Fraid I don't have much else to contribute - you're the one who should be teaching me about drawing AJ anyway...


As promised, a picture (the pics of just pencil didn't show up, so I went over with a felt tip):

http://i147.photobucket.com/albums/r314/Gotthammer/40k/Ex01a.jpg

One thing that's consistent 'tween the pencil and ink is that my curves going from 12 o'clock to 3 o'clock are terrible, and my lines radiating from 6 o'clock to 9 o'clock are rather naff too. In the pencil work these also have poor consistency of colour, despite my trying to maintain an even tone.

Also, the picture I did after the excercises (still a WiP):

http://i147.photobucket.com/albums/r314/Gotthammer/40k/Urs01.jpg

I shall hopefully repeat the homework on an A4 sheet tomorrow so I can scan it in.

Hmm, I think the felt tip kind of killed any visibility of line variation, which is unfortunate. Might I suggest using a darker lead next time, or something even softer, like charcoal? It might make things more visible, and from my own practice with various media, line thickness seems easier to control with softer tools.


Well, I've been rather busy this week, but I finally managed to give it a try. So:

http://familylees.net/morgan/one.gif

I was using the china marker, which I'm not really very used to (I think it could maybe also have used sharpening, in retrospect). I forgot to do one or two of the things there, apparently, but I did try some varying arm lengths and all - the longer ones were from further away. Overall, it did make me think more about line weights, so that's a good thing. I think the later marks were better than the first.

I think perhaps I should've gone for something I was more familiar with - such as pencil - since I spent the first few strokes thinking 'huh, right, that's what the china marker is like'.

In the end I tried to draw a pocketknife lying near me. The lines didn't quite work out there, but I can still see that it looks more interesting than if the lines were all the same.

I think you did a good job with incorporating weight variations into the exercise, and I agree that the pocket knife is definitely more interesting with the variations included; it lets you show something about the edges and weight that single-thickness lines don't seem able to accomplish.


I'm sorry I haven't been commenting, I'm not at all very knowledgeable about line weight, arm movements, and that sort of thing. Also: if these pictures I posted are way too big (which I suspect they are), then what is the more ideal size and resolution that I should be posting?

My suggestion to you is similar to the one I had for Kasa. Try to do the exercises on something other than a tablet, at least at first. I know you tend to do most of your work digitally, but especially for practicing the basics, it seems like there's a pretty big difference in feel between traditional and electronic media, and at least for me, the traditional ones are easier to manipulate into the form I want.


the_druid_droid

I really like the way the pastelly/chalky/crayon medium looks. What are the red and black marks made with? I can't seem to tell. I think trying a few different mediums out is a good idea, it also made the page look more interesting, shakes things up a bit after quite a few predominately grey lined pieces.
No fuzzy lines on the sheet, although I guess they are a lot easier to avoid when you're not aiming to draw something specific... still they're not wobbly either so good job there. And it seems to fulfil the criteria of the exercise pretty nicely, you've got plenty of variation in tone and breadth of line.


I think some of the visual effect might be an artifact of my scanner, which I'm still figuring out how to optimize for art scans...However, the thicker black and red lines were made with charcoal and sanguine sticks, respectively. I actually really like the feel they offer, and they seem like they have to potential to be very expressive, but my abilities are not really to the point of being able to use them effectively yet. Still, they are fun to play around with...

[Eleanor_Rigby]

Have you considered trying this exercise on paper? I ask because it seems like it's harder to get the full benefit on a tablet, even with line pressure settings on.

Poor Trazoi may rankle at me bringing this up, but for non-Mac users (apparently :smallredface:) something for digital artists to look into might be MyPaint, an opensource art program which aims to mimic traditional media. I've not used it extensively but from my understanding of it, it lacks imitators of canvas or papers with a 'tooth' and the canvas itself is textureless but its mimicry of the media it does provide is pretty nice, particularly for a program you can pick up for free (if you can install it). It's the best program I've dabbled in for line art both in terms of avoiding a pixelly look and in terms of actually responding in sync with my somewhat venerable tablet. My own lineart is shaky, but I was impressed to learn that it's the program the artist of True (http://www.true-magic.com/view.php?id=151) Magic (http://www.true-magic.com/blog/page-150-panel-process.php) uses to ink her work.
The single-key keyboard shortcuts for varying brush size, zooming in and out etc. are appreciated as well.

Also, late at night and when I was just looking at the images, I totally managed to miss that Kasanip had done hers digitally - I honestly thought that was a pale grey marker pen/felt tip/brush pen. Doy.

Also also, when I mentioned K's piece reminded me of needlecrafts I was thinking specifically of Blackwork (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackwork_Embroidery) and free motion quilting (http://freemotionquilting.blogspot.com/p/start-here.html) (the second link might look rather commercial at first glance but if you browse the 'site a little there's actually some rather interesting stuff in there, honest) I suppose these are more related to shading techniques than to line weight specifically but the techniques are still relevant to non-fibre artists. The 365 free motion project actually transfers over to drawing really nicely as a warm up exercise for giving you confidence with your line-art and inking in a similar way to the line exercises that we've just done. :smallsmile:



I think some of the visual effect might be an artifact of my scanner, which I'm still figuring out how to optimize for art scans...However, the thicker black and red lines were made with charcoal and sanguine sticks, respectively. I actually really like the feel they offer, and they seem like they have to potential to be very expressive, but my abilities are not really to the point of being able to use them effectively yet. Still, they are fun to play around with...

My lack of art knowledge is showing here, but sanguine sticks is another medium I had to google. Again though, I have seen these things now that I think about it, just never used them.
Darned if looking at neat stuff like this doesn't make me angrier that the lovely art shop on North Bridge Street had to close up during my year out only to be replaced by yet another tacky souvenir flogger. I haven't checked yet but the art shop near Greyfriar's Bobby could still be around - it just that it always seemed pricier, was a smaller site and you have to dice with death to reach it because of the lack of crossings and pavements. :smallyuk:
...but I digress.:smallredface:

I've yet to familiarise myself with my scanner either, thus far I much prefer my family's one to my own (although I believe mine was a pricier model, typically). I've also put it in the most ridiculous place in terms of accessing the scanning bed: I have to rearrange at least a third of the furniture to use it as a scanner. I've only had time to use it for printing essays, forms, lecture notes and the like so far it seems.

Capt. Ido:
If you can actually get it to download, (honestly, I didn't have any issues with it at all, Trazoi, so I was a bit mortified that it ended up leeching around 48 hours of your life away and still failed to download after I reccommended it to you) MyPaint might actually be a good one for you to play with if your scanner isn't huge in that the zooming facility is pretty good for compensating for a small physical 'canvas' of a less-than-gigantic tablet. (One of its key selling points is the theoretically infinite canvas. It's very much a drawing/painting program and not an image editor: it doesn't crop, to my knowledge there aren't any filters, selection tools or fill buckets.
As for dpi vs. ppi it's one of those things that I would dearly like to learn and remember (I've looked it up before, vaguely understood and then almost instantly forgotten a couple of times). I know they stand for dots per inch and pixels per inch... I suppose I associate ppi more with printed or scanned traditional art and ppi more with the purely digital (well duh)? I seem to recall somebody explaining dpi to me as being physical dots of ink like with a newspaper... so I dunno, maybe they're essentially the same thing, it's just the situation you use the terms in that varies? I do not know.



ER, wow thanks for going in with those detailed crits already.


:smallredface: Haha, I misread/misinterpreted 'ER' as a really emphatic uurr.. and was slightly confused for a moment there.
I'm an English Lit student so practicing on crits and analysis is technically in my own best interests. :smalltongue:



China marker does have an interesting texture. (when I first used it on newsprint I was expecting some kind of near-orgasmic experience - waxy crayon on waxed paper you know - and was sorely disappointed...but that's just me rambling)

You've just broken my heart: that's pretty much what I was imagining after I googled china marker, particularly on newsprint. :smallbiggrin:

[Trazoi]

Poor Trazoi may rankle at me bringing this up, but for non-Mac users (apparently :smallredface:) something for digital artists to look into might be MyPaint, an opensource art program which aims to mimic traditional media.
There's now a MyPaint install package for Macs too. :smallsmile:

I use ArtRage (http://www.artrage.com/) for mimicking traditional media, because I like the interface. There's a limited free version but the pay version isn't too expensive.

ArtRage does allow the tablet pressure to affect the size of the pen too. I'm not sure if MyPaint does that - I've quickly trialled it out and the line width appears fixed.

[Eleanor_Rigby]

I don't think that's the case, not with the inking brushes in any event. I didn't have to make manual adjustments whilst doing my rather dodgy 'inking' and 'colouring' of Mazeburn's lovely pencil sketches she did for playgrounders.
If you go on a little link following trail from my last post to Aja's 'True Magic' tutorial to the Photoshop vs. MyPaint example you'll see an example of how the inking tools can respond to stylus pressure, I believe she also reccommends a specific brush with specific settings. My experience with it is limited though and I can't really compare it to art programs that are available for retail because I've essentially never used one and tend to avoid free trial versions for some reason(s) or other...

I'm also not sure how well my laptop would respond to artRage: it looks a bit like the program's swisher than the laptop likes. It tends to overheat pretty quickly even after I've cleaned the fans. Plus, you know, I'm fairly tight fisted I think... [cringes]

[Zorg]

Being but a padawan in the arts of knowing technical stuff about drawing I'm afraid I don't have much constructive to add to what others have already said.



Zorg
It's a shame the photo of the line exercise sheet didn't work out so well. :smallfrown:
From what I can see, the shapes are interesting and genreally speaking the lines are nice and smooth and flow well. I can't really see and variation in what I understand to be line weight though: all the lines seem to be about the same breadth and about the same tone, even in the original pencil, although obviously that's not completley clear since the photo didn't work out...
The drawing's pretty good although the linework is mostly pretty shaky looking and could do with a bit more variations and quite a few fewer stops and starts. I don't know if you're wanting feedback with the 'anatomy' (I'm not great at that) of the figure or not so I'll put a couple of things in a further spoiler.
-the neck looks a little thick to me, for a woman of her apparent build at least.
- I'm leaning towards thinking that the parting indents a little too deeply into the head but the weird effect could possibly be caused by the following point that I realised after staring at the picture for a while
- The head and the face are at different angles. They're both fairly well drawn but at a rough guess for her hair to be in the place where it is and with her neck in that position, the centre of her chin ought to line up with about the half way mark of her shoulder width. That's probably the thing that's most 'off' with the piece. (Although thinking about it, actually, taking that flaw and running with it altering the rest of the model and cleaning up the lines a little you could have a pretty interesting Picasso-esque portrait there. Alternate finished version?)
- the collars could use a bit of work: I suck at drawing collars without a reference but if you look at a few photos of folk in suits and the like and compare them with the drawing, particularly the shirt collar you'll probably notice a few interesting things. The tie's a little too stylised as well, I think. The lower part of the jacket collar's actually all right though, I think...

I hope that's constructive stuff and doesn't read as harsh. :smallsmile:

It's tres constructive, though I'm going to spoiler myself for thread brevity:

Re: lines - the weight variation is there, but that's the problem with lack of scanning (and working on it at 4am). Alas I haven't gotten time to do another, scannable one.
Still, the advice has made me think about how line bredth and such as I do it.

Re: figure - Her hair needs a fair bit of reworking (it's based off this design (http://www.revampvintage.com/40sringletcurl.html), but I didn't use any references for the pic so it's a bit off).
I'm afraid I can't see what you see with the angles of the face. Her mouth and jaw are possible a little off centre (I was using myself in the mirror as a rough reference and my jaw's a bit off centre, so that could be it). Look any better to you with the improved version below?
Yeah, I drew her without references (aside from brief look at myself in mirror), so her collar is rather craptacular :smalltongue: The right of picture really needs a re-do, and that's probably not helping with the neck thickness either. She doesn't have a tie, its a blouse with a cover over the buttons (I have no idea what that's called) and a fancy brooch.

Thatnks for the great feedback! :smallbiggrin:



Zorg, how's the drawing of the lady going?


Here's the current version:
Few alterations and more, hopefully smoother, shading now:

http://i147.photobucket.com/albums/r314/Gotthammer/40k/Urs02.jpg

Spent around an hour on her today, so she's at an hour and a half time so far.


Hmm, I think the felt tip kind of killed any visibility of line variation, which is unfortunate. Might I suggest using a darker lead next time, or something even softer, like charcoal? It might make things more visible, and from my own practice with various media, line thickness seems easier to control with softer tools.

I think I've got some charcoal around here somewhere, or at least some sort of wax crayony things. I'm probably going to mostly use pencil though as that's my primary medium, so best to practice with that.
Still, I think next time I'll jsut cut up the sheet and scan the bits in - it's not like I'm goin got need to keep them is it? :smalltongue:

[Eleanor_Rigby]

Re: figure - Her hair needs a fair bit of reworking (it's based off this design (http://www.revampvintage.com/40sringletcurl.html), but I didn't use any references for the pic so it's a bit off).
I'm afraid I can't see what you see with the angles of the face. Her mouth and jaw are possible a little off centre (I was using myself in the mirror as a rough reference and my jaw's a bit off centre, so that could be it). Look any better to you with the improved version below?


Here comes the sciencey bit!*

OK. Yeah, when you said that, I went back and looked and thought, 'gee, he's right - I went and made a bit of a prat of myself with that comment!' (My inner voice is all kinds of cheesy, ok?) but after thinking about it again, and more importantly, studying the picture you linked as a reference for the hair I think I stand by what I said earlier. Problematically enough, humans have an incredible ability for recognising faces and facial expressions at any angle and from any position.
This is why people see Jesus in toast and stuff - (well, it's Jesus specifically for cultural rather than biological reasons) we can make a face out of almost anything. If you look at things like these:
:smallsmile: :smallfurious: :smallfrown:
...and actually think about it, the similarities to human faces are very tenuous suggestions - and yet we recognise those instinctively and very strongly identify them with human emotions. You can even abstract that even further with the keyboard emotions.
:D
...That's nothing like a face but to me that colon and upper case letter 'd' looks overjoyed! I think this is part of what makes evaluating what's off in artwork, particularly of a human face, so difficult: our brains are hard wired to see faces, so we fill in the gaps and compensate for incongruities subconsciously. Research into facial recognition's demonstrated that you digitally flip or otherwise reorientate facial features on a photo and then turn the photo so the head's upside down and it will take people a surprisingly long time to realise that anything's wrong or at least why the face looks a bit odd until it's been turned the right way up again.
Example (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-n0FwA9SLQw)


Take a look at the photo you linked as a hairstyle reference. The edge of her right eye touches the "outline" of her face but on the left side of her face you can see about the same amount of "face" as is shown on the side in your drawing.
Take a look at her chin, then take a look at her torso. The face and head in your drawing are in a very similar position to the one in the photo sans Disney-Princess-Head-Tilt but the torso's angled in a drastically different way. Taking depth into account, I'd guess that with the torso in the position it's in in your drawing the centre of her chin should align roughly with the centre of her shoulder.
Edit:Ooh no... because that's flipped, isn't it? You actually maybe need to move the centre of that chin maybe an eye-width in the other direction. Curséd dyslexia... :smallsigh:

You really have to stare at a drawing to figure stuff like that out, and I find it much harder still with stuff I'm actually working on at least if I haven't done that thing where you put the sketch in a drawer and then come back later to look at it objectively.



Yeah, I drew her without references (aside from brief look at myself in mirror), so her collar is rather craptacular :smalltongue: The right of picture really needs a re-do, and that's probably not helping with the neck thickness either. She doesn't have a tie, its a blouse with a cover over the buttons (I have no idea what that's called) and a fancy brooch.

I think the button cover is called a placket (I made a jacket with snaps for a design project in secondary school, that is the only reason I know this) and it looks much less dodgy with this knowledge although I believe generally you'd have a different style of collar with that kind of shirt. The combination of the collar style and the way the brooch is drawn threw me into thinking it was a tie - a lot of people draw ties like that.
The fancyness of the brooch really doesn't come across - perhaps if you have a fine enough pointed pencil you could put some strong shading in there because as it is it looks flat.
Edit:Looking back, and I don't know if this is one of the changes you made or not, but the brooch is actually ok.

The idea to cut up large scale exercises in future is a clever one. In fact, I think that's how a lot of artists end up scanning larger pieces, even really nice ones. If you get the join, or "stitching" (I think?) right then you don't even see it, surprisingly enough.

*DISCLAIMER: Eleanor_Rigby is not a scientist. Do not subscribe to Eleanor_Rigby's verbose espousings as Actual Science. Eleanor_Rigby does not take legal responsibility for the consequences of treating Eleanor_Rigby's verbose espousings as Actual Science

[Thanqol]

Thanqol, when you post, could you throw out an explanation of the learning to examine your own thoughts bit? I think it would be relevant but I'm out o time to try and explain.

Sure. When you're feeling something or doing something you have to be able to stop and ask yourself why you're thinking that, why you're doing that. Figuring out that you're upset because you feel socially threatened is often all you need to know to stop being upset. Emotions are fragile and skittish things; look too hard at them and they crumble. If you respond to negative emotions with relentless self-examination you can - *Thanqol pauses, realises that he's totally channelling Charger here* - master your own emotional state and begin a drive towards a better equilibrium.


Apologies for my delay on posting this here and the half-done-ness of the exercise. I'm intending to go back into it in a bit more detail when I have time, but I booked my own drawing schedule out for the next few days so I'll just post what I got to be safe.

http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/8903/img0007ow.jpg

Thoughts and reflections:

Firstly, I've been practising line weight a fair bit recently due to repeated pony drawings; the lines are very thick around the nose, for instance, and taper off along the chin. The lineart layer interacts slightly strangely with line weight exercises and I'm as-yet unsure what my relationship with it is going to be.

Other discoveries:
Thick lines look thicker next to thin lines.
Thick lines are instinctively foregrounded. Something I knew intellectually but didn't realise properly until I reflected on it just now.
Extremely thin lines don't even look like things at all; they look like background cross-hatching.
Straight lines and right angles look more distinct when pressed hard than circles.

[Zorg]

Here comes the sciencey bit!*

OK. Yeah, when you said that, I went back and looked and thought, 'gee, he's right - I went and made a bit of a prat of myself with that comment!' (My inner voice is all kinds of cheesy, ok?) but after thinking about it again, and more importantly, studying the picture you linked as a reference for the hair I think I stand by what I said earlier. Problematically enough, humans have an incredible ability for recognising faces and facial expressions at any angle and from any position.
This is why people see Jesus in toast and stuff - (well, it's Jesus specifically for cultural rather than biological reasons) we can make a face out of almost anything. If you look at things like these:
:smallsmile: :smallfurious: :smallfrown:
...and actually think about it, the similarities to human faces are very tenuous suggestions - and yet we recognise those instinctively and very strongly identify them with human emotions. You can even abstract that even further with the keyboard emotions.
:D
...That's nothing like a face but to me that colon and upper case letter 'd' looks overjoyed! I think this is part of what makes evaluating what's off in artwork, particularly of a human face, so difficult: our brains are hard wired to see faces, so we fill in the gaps and compensate for incongruities subconsciously. Research into facial recognition's demonstrated that you digitally flip or otherwise reorientate facial features on a photo and then turn the photo so the head's upside down and it will take people a surprisingly long time to realise that anything's wrong or at least why the face looks a bit odd until it's been turned the right way up again.
Example (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-n0FwA9SLQw)


Take a look at the photo you linked as a hairstyle reference. The edge of her right eye touches the "outline" of her face but on the left side of her face you can see about the same amount of "face" as is shown on the side in your drawing.
Take a look at her chin, then take a look at her torso. The face and head in your drawing are in a very similar position to the one in the photo sans Disney-Princess-Head-Tilt but the torso's angled in a drastically different way. Taking depth into account, I'd guess that with the torso in the position it's in in your drawing the centre of her chin should align roughly with the centre of her shoulder.
Edit:Ooh no... because that's flipped, isn't it? You actually maybe need to move the centre of that chin maybe an eye-width in the other direction. Curséd dyslexia... :smallsigh:

You really have to stare at a drawing to figure stuff like that out, and I find it much harder still with stuff I'm actually working on at least if I haven't done that thing where you put the sketch in a drawer and then come back later to look at it objectively.



I think the button cover is called a placket (I made a jacket with snaps for a design project in secondary school, that is the only reason I know this) and it looks much less dodgy with this knowledge although I believe generally you'd have a different style of collar with that kind of shirt. The combination of the collar style and the way the brooch is drawn threw me into thinking it was a tie - a lot of people draw ties like that.
The fancyness of the brooch really doesn't come across - perhaps if you have a fine enough pointed pencil you could put some strong shading in there because as it is it looks flat.
Edit:Looking back, and I don't know if this is one of the changes you made or not, but the brooch is actually ok.

The idea to cut up large scale exercises in future is a clever one. In fact, I think that's how a lot of artists end up scanning larger pieces, even really nice ones. If you get the join, or "stitching" (I think?) right then you don't even see it, surprisingly enough.

*DISCLAIMER: Eleanor_Rigby is not a scientist. Do not subscribe to Eleanor_Rigby's verbose espousings as Actual Science. Eleanor_Rigby does not take legal responsibility for the consequences of treating Eleanor_Rigby's verbose espousings as Actual Science

It's funny you mention coming back to something as when I got home today, read your post, and looked at teh picture I was "Aiiieee, her face is totally wroooong!" :smallyuk:

So I fixed it (which is honestly a big improvement for me as I've got lots of unfinished or half finished works I've given up on):

http://i147.photobucket.com/albums/r314/Gotthammer/40k/Urs03.jpg

Nose is a bit long, with the attendant issues that brings, I need to fix her jawling up a bit (I think it looks fine as is [correct me if I'm wrong :smallwink:] but it's wrong for the character) and the shading on her neck just under her chin needs touching up.
Still, got her hair right at least, but I'm nowhere near attempting the plaid pattern her jacket's meant to have!

Also - placket! Of course I knew what it was called all along, having worked in fashion for many years. Derp.

[Kasanip]

Thank you for advice and comment!

Maybe this first exercise I have seen some idea of it in art club.
Actually for first assignment, Kasanip's homework is [try to learn English words for art]. :smallredface:



Kasanip:
Not a fuzzy or jagged line in the picture and just two cases of overlap as far as I can see. :smallsmile:
The changes in line breadth are pretty well handled but I think the picture (which is really neat) would be elevated by a slightly wider/ more evenly applied spectrum of tone. I really like the variation in spacing between lines/ differences in scale of fillers - it reminds me a lot of needlework that I do, which is always a good thing. :smallwink:
I think though that if you did the following:
-extended the "fillers" to the edges of the path/river, the characters and the motifs to emphasise the shape and even out the tone
-added some sort of shading elements to the character and/or sunburst in the top righthand corner
-solid filled the sky (although that would obliterate your stars unfortunately, it's a pity you can't just delete the stars and leave similarly sized negative space ones in a solid fill...:smalltongue:)
-possibly filled in the centres of the foremost filler, or the outer edges of the same... I don't know, one but not both though.
....it would improve the picture


Thank you for advice. However, it is just to draw a line practice, so I have no plan to finish the sketch. It's not a real picture. :smallredface:




*waves* Hi Kasa! Nice to run into you outside the PbP threads!

Have you considered trying this exercise on paper? I ask because it seems like it's harder to get the full benefit on a tablet, even with line pressure settings on.

Hello! It is nice to see you too. :smallsmile:
I understand difficulty of exercise on computer. Actually it is difficult to understand assignment of the exercise. It seems the goal is "try use lines." But it is uncertain for me. I want to improve digital art. I would like to try it sometime on paper, but there is no time recently.

I'm sorry, I am very slow in this thread, so maybe I cannot give good advice now. I don't know how to give advice for this exercise. Winter vacation will begin December 27th, so I will have more time to draw and read soon :smallredface:. I will try to become more useful for next exercise.

[SiuiS]

So I'm going to be posting the images of this exercise late. I have a tablet but it's a little Graphire 2 with a drawing area that's not as wide as a portrait sheet of A4, let alone A3 and at its age tis not always as responsive as could be hoped for either, poor dear. So. Maybe tomorrow but possibly later. :smallfrown:

Hm. I myself have a tablet (couldnt tell you the brand... I think a cheap-o wacom) that's like, got a 6"x8" drawing area. I'll have to bust that out, and see if I have the Gumption to not break it or my teeny laptop out of frustration...



SuiS: sorry for misspelling your name!Not much to say on the line exercise really apart from the fact that the variations are pretty subtle although if I look close enough I can see that there is variation, at least in line breadth. I think you were one of the people using a mechanical pencil though so if you didn't get a softer lead for it this exercise was always going to be a bit tricky.
The shapes on the pony piece are pretty much all just about right, for Applejack at least (I've not got a great understanding for the dog thingum) and most of the lines are pretty smooth, which is impressive given the accuracy of the shapes even if it is a simplistic style. The line weight is kind of lacking but you've made your own observations about it already so... yeah.

Aye, I think the trouble is I'm using two bad mediums - both the mechanical pencil, and then having to photograph rather than scan the work.

The comment on the shapes got me thinking; I notice a certain, definite difference in line quality between planned and spontaneous works. Applejack was planned. I formed the concept in my mind, Imago, drew the lines of energy, a skeleton, sketched the flesh, rounded and perfected it to a degree. The diamond Dog, however, was done entirely free-hand. The result is a more uniform line, with details (such as the knuckle ridge on the stage-left fist) done in smaller, thinne lines because I don't have to be as careful as with the bulk of the outline (which is rather steady, actually). But the diamond dog looks flat, compared to AJ's rounded depth. A nice touch, as it makes the mook look like an expendable piece of scenery... But it wasn't as intentional as I'd like.

Whenever I draw something in a rush, I feel dissatisfied with the end result. I can now trace that to this uniform line drawing like on the mook. That's good to know, but it means that any art worth doing, is worth doing right. And that means that unless I have the full amount of time to dedicate to the work, I'm just not going to draw much at all :smallfrown:
I always double take when someone says they did a speedpaint in only like, Seven hours :smalleek:


Yeah, seriously, haha! I've got a 1900x1080 screen, and I can never tell if the size of anything that I'm working on will translate well to other screens D: I figured for this, where everyone comments, I'll just start off on the "way to freaking big" scale and prune it back until we find the sweet spot :smalltongue: Thanks! Next time we'll try A4 300 dpi and see what people say :smallbiggrin:


A quick lark (http://www.andrewdaceyphotography.com/articles/dpi/) shows my original understanding was correct; dots per inch is used by a printer, where pixels per inch is image resolution. they can interact, certainly; a dot is one pixel as produced by a printer. A 100 pixel by 100 pixel image can be printed at 1", or 100ppi, or it can be printed at 10", or 10ppi. The size of a dot won't increase though, so a high resolution image printed at a very low ppi but high dpi will look like a pointillism painting.

Or that's what I got from it at least; it's the difference between R/B/Y as light, and R/B/G as pigment; it's all color, but from different directions.

Cue second thoughts on which is supposed to be color and which is supposed to be pigment XD


Note: spoilers are there to make this post less massive...
I'm impressed you managed to get line variations that were visible after uploading with a mechanical pencil, although my suggestion to ninja about a pencil set goes for you as well! (You can totally find a small set for under $10, and I promise, it'll be like a breath of fresh air)

It's a hold-over from an OCD habit when writing. I have a very distinctive method of gouging deep bleeding wounds into my paper rather than just making a line. The pressure folds the edges of the line inward like a crevasse, creating a crispness I find pleasing.

Which of course I will have to actively work against, along with my grip technique and posture, and paper placement, in order to make any strides. *sigh* XD

On the pencils... I've tried them before. I think I will have to continue wiu this exercise a fair bit longer, before I can really switch. So far, I get different lines by actively sharpening or dulling my lead, and applying different pressure or different nib-to-paper angles, or even just going over the line a lot. Until I have a clear idea of what other lineforms are like and how to use them, I'd just ge. Frustrated again over the fact that I have to keep changing out and sharpening all five of these wooden pencils, when my robot pencil is doing just as well.

But old habits are part of what I'm here to break, so... *shrug*


I really envy your ability to analyze what's going on as you draw, and that's something I'm going to try and work on more as these exercises progress. 'Fraid I don't have much else to contribute - you're the one who should be teaching me about drawing AJ anyway...

Simple.
Draw a pony, probably in the act of kickin' something.
Add a hat.

Bonus points if you make "pony kicking something" sound effects while drawing the legs and/or impact effects.



Thoughts and reflections:

Firstly, I've been practising line weight a fair bit recently due to repeated pony drawings; the lines are very thick around the nose, for instance, and taper off along the chin. The lineart layer interacts slightly strangely with line weight exercises and I'm as-yet unsure what my relationship with it is going to be.

Other discoveries:
Thick lines look thicker next to thin lines.
Thick lines are instinctively foregrounded. Something I knew intellectually but didn't realise properly until I reflected on it just now.
Extremely thin lines don't even look like things at all; they look like background cross-hatching.
Straight lines and right angles look more distinct when pressed hard than circles.

Interesting. Some of those I've been working with, but couldn't put my finger on. Thanks.

-

Somewhere in my house are a set of 'china markers' of the almost-mechanical pencil variety. I pinched them from Starbucks, and there are like, three of them. And I'll be darned if I can locate a single one! Alas.

What would these be good for? What would make me take one of these to a canvas rather than just using a pencil? Especially given my tendency to draw small, and the 'markers tendency to make big lines...

Second, a bit of advice if you could.
When drawing, I naturally and instinctively rotate my pencil. I don't know why; I may be an artifact from using my Fingers to maneuver, or it may be an unconscious method of keeping the lead sharp and pointy, but it happens. It happens even when using a stylus for a tablet (especially if said stylus is bulky next to a normal pen/pencil) and it really throws off my ability to use said tablet, because I keep accidentally hitting buttons on the side for like, undoing and selecting and stuff. How can I get this under control? Has anypony else experienced it before?

I do want to work with digital media, but the conversion curve is currently so steep... Between lag of stylus to screen interface, soft disconnect in stylus use compared to a pencil, not being able to actually see the line come oub o the stylus (or conversely, see where my hand is relative to the lines on the screen), and using the wrong grip, I think I have quite a lot to work through... Any suggestions, other than fight through the pain? :smalleek:

[Capt. Ido Nos]

A quick lark (http://www.andrewdaceyphotography.com/articles/dpi/) shows my original understanding was correct; dots per inch is used by a printer, where pixels per inch is image resolution. they can interact, certainly; a dot is one pixel as produced by a printer. A 100 pixel by 100 pixel image can be printed at 1", or 100ppi, or it can be printed at 10", or 10ppi. The size of a dot won't increase though, so a high resolution image printed at a very low ppi but high dpi will look like a pointillism painting.

Or that's what I got from it at least; it's the difference between R/B/Y as light, and R/B/G as pigment; it's all color, but from different directions.

Cue second thoughts on which is supposed to be color and which is supposed to be pigment XD
Ah, that makes sense actually! Dots for the actual ink, points for the more or less mathematical points that pixels represent! So long as it makes sense in my head that's all that matters :smallsmile:





Second, a bit of advice if you could.
When drawing, I naturally and instinctively rotate my pencil. I don't know why; I may be an artifact from using my Fingers to maneuver, or it may be an unconscious method of keeping the lead sharp and pointy, but it happens. It happens even when using a stylus for a tablet (especially if said stylus is bulky next to a normal pen/pencil) and it really throws off my ability to use said tablet, because I keep accidentally hitting buttons on the side for like, undoing and selecting and stuff. How can I get this under control? Has anypony else experienced it before?

I do want to work with digital media, but the conversion curve is currently so steep... Between lag of stylus to screen interface, soft disconnect in stylus use compared to a pencil, not being able to actually see the line come oub o the stylus (or conversely, see where my hand is relative to the lines on the screen), and using the wrong grip, I think I have quite a lot to work through... Any suggestions, other than fight through the pain? :smalleek:
From my own tablet transition trials and tribulations, I initially had some issues with accidentally hitting buttons, but eventually I found that making sure that I had all the right buttons mapped to something logical (to me) ended up solving more of my problems than not. The buttons I hit the *most* accidentally are my touch-wheel and the second click on the stylus (which are mapped to zoom/brush size and undo, respectively), and those I've managed by making *well* sure that my hands and fingers were where I thought they were. It ends up being a good side practice for the hand-eye-screen coordination. I still can't press *all* the buttons without looking at the tablet, but it's easier than before. Basically: practice not hitting buttons, as lame as that sounds as I say it :C

You're always going to have some lag with a stylus, that's just a fact of the matter, but I've found that different models can have greatly differing amounts of lag to them. My first tablet experience was with my HP laptop/tablet dealy in college. I could make a stroke in paint.net, and then watch the actual line form well after the fact. I found that it made my lines artificially smoother when I used this to my advantage. Big fat lines and sweeps that almost looked intentional on my part. Currently I'm using my Intuos, and it is MUCH rougher, because it actually has the fidelity and sensitivity to pick up all the shakes and quivers in my hand as I hesitate my way across the page. Those are now finally starting to go away, but that took me a full month into my drawthread challenge and several months of the odd sketch here and there to get fully used to it. Again, as everything, I guess this just has come down to "practice" and developing the hand-eye-screen coordination. You don't NEED to look at the stylus, but you DO need to see what's happening on screen. And keep the strokes fast, all my hesitations that worked on pencil now look awful on screen. You can tell how fast or slow my own drawings are based on how wobbly everything is, it's an instant indicator of my confidence and speed. Usually poor, but that's how it goes?

[Thanqol]

http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/3453/day213.jpg

Took a shot at applying line density for the purposes of foregrounding and perspective. The piece isn't great but it's definitely a proof of concept.

[Domochevsky]

Btw, Thanqol, remember my drawing challenges, where people are at different distances to the camera? Just asking. :smallwink:

[Fri]

Sorry saeyan. I just want to post this to say that I'm still interested at this project, and feel bad for not doing the excercises yet. But it turned out that I'm busy this month, I got a surprise new job which expect me to move to another city. I hope I can start doing the excercises next month, after I'm settled down. I still can't promise though, you know how hard is it to find a new place to live in another city.

[Thanqol]

Btw, Thanqol, remember my drawing challenges, where people are at different distances to the camera? Just asking. :smallwink:

Right. Yes. Obviously not well enough.

[Saeyan]

hi! :smallsmile: I'm back from visiting another couple of cities in China. Will try and get the next thing up soon.

Fri - it's ok.
SiuiS - I have no idea about the pencil rotating. It sounds quite handy for keeping pencils sharp as you said, but terrible for a tablet. I honestly can't remember having much trouble with my tablet...but I got one when I was 11, maybe youth makes it easier. something I remember doing was putting a picture on top of the tablet and tracing that, looking back and forth between screen and paper.
I don't have stylus lag at home but on the school's more powerful machines (with crappy graphics cards) I lag quite a lot. It depends on your computer and the program as well. Photoshop CS4 and up gave me TERRIBLE lag.


Somewhere in my house are a set of 'china markers' of the almost-mechanical pencil variety. I pinched them from Starbucks, and there are like, three of them. And I'll be darned if I can locate a single one! Alas.


What would these be good for? What would make me take one of these to a canvas rather than just using a pencil? Especially given my tendency to draw small, and the 'markers tendency to make big lines...
Starbucks? o_o use them for shading.

[SiuiS]

Aye, Starbucks coffee. The waxy texture is good for nonporous materials; they used them to mark the clear plastic cups so the barroom could properly make them. Except most folks just used sharpies instead, so I asked for a box and took em home.

And... I think it's a matter of bad habits. As an eleven-year old you would have less to unlearn; Thanqol had an easy time with a tablet, because he learned it alongside traditional media. Myself, I've been solidly pencil and paper and recently pen when I'm feeling adventurous, and... That's pretty much it.

I'll see what's what, though. Better bust out the equipment now...

What was that program? myPaint?

EDIT: got ahold of MyPaint. Man, that thing is awesome. It really drives home how much of my skill relies on a back-and-forth feel between pencil and paper. Braz's tablet laptop has this weird thing where the closer over to the edge of the canvas space, the bigger the discrepancy between stylus as mouse icon Thingy. I think you'd like it DD, and it's a far cry easier to use that any and every other art program I've ever used. I think once I get back into the swing of drawing things that aren't ponies I will love the hay put of it.

[Eleanor_Rigby]

Haven't had time to read people's posts, but I'm just dropping in to say:

I got to a stationers the other day and purchased two "sketching sets"...

One is a set of 6 Pure Graphite Sticks, in their own metal tin (and these things are gorgeous, gorgeous I had one and I almost burst into tears when it rolled off a table and broke on the floor - if you do get some, do keep them in a tin or box, because they're very fragile) ranging from HB to 9B

The other includes: a pure graphite stick (dunno what grade), a soft carbon pencil (don't even fully understand what it is yet) a soft charcoal pencil, a "white sketching pencil" a sanguine oil pencil, a sepia light pencil (again, not completely sure what it is, but have a vague idea) a sanguine dry stick, a 'broad carbon dry stick', a stump (that's like an eraser made of paper, yeah? but pencil shaped?) and a putty eraser (I like these, they're lovely and squidgy)

There was a sale on given the time of year and all these resources set me back roughly eleven pounds sterling... Not super cheap, but for stuff I got off the high street... Very nice.

If it hadn't been for this thread, I wouldn't have dreamed of treating myself to this stuff, so thanks, guys! Now to test them out... :smallcool:

PS: Saeyan, I'm sorry if the bit of crit I did for you was disappointing. It was the last one I got round to and so I was fairly exhausted at that point. Also, you're just so good that it's really tricky to tell what the "problem areas" are with your stuff. I blabbered on about birds because I'm particularly fond of ...opportunistic... birds and I am hoping to work with the RSPB in future. So I wanted to "identify" the birds you drew. They looked like a wood pigeon and a common street pigeon (descended from the rock dove) to me. If I was right, it only goes to show what a good job you did. If I was wrong... that's probably got more to do with my bird identification skills than your art skills. :smallredface: Plus, bird anatomy was hardly the point of the exercise, was it? For the record - I couldn't find anything to fault, line quality-wise, which is another reason I put off critting you. (There's probably something but I couldn't see it, I just went "ooooh!" in my head)

PS: Am I the only one who saw the title of OotS 882 and thought immediately of this thread? It's most likely a co-incidence but still... [insert pondering smiley here]

[SiuiS]

Just finished a project wherein I experimented with using line weight. It was interesting; more conscious effort would have helped. But in the end the work benefitted greatly.

http://i1229.photobucket.com/albums/ee468/WizardPony/22f3c77e.jpg

This panel had the most conscious effort. The sides of the lid especially; I tried to leave the thinner, more decorative metal bits thin-lined, and the shadowy wood gaps bigger. There is also some work where I heavily outline (or evenly, I guess) the characters and foreground but add additional thinner, lighter lines to details within that figure. I really liked the effect it had on the hair.

[Eleanor_Rigby]

That's really nice, SiuiS. The line weight variation is subtle but nicely done. The angle of the planks on the lid doesn't look right to me though. Surely they should still be a bit more ... I dunno, level? It's the kind of thing that confuses me a lot, so excuse me if I'm wrong on that. And also if you were already aware of that.
You may also want to thicken up the lines on the delving pony a little... it kind of fades out compared to the chest... the chest is probably your focus since it's in the foreground and everything though so... it's quite subjective. It'd probably be less jarring to me if the image were cleaned and coloured.

[SiuiS]

That's really nice, SiuiS. The line weight variation is subtle but nicely done. The angle of the planks on the lid doesn't look right to me though. Surely they should still be a bit more ... I dunno, level? It's the kind of thing that confuses me a lot, so excuse me if I'm wrong on that. And also if you were already aware of that.
You may also want to thicken up the lines on the delving pony a little... it kind of fades out compared to the chest... the chest is probably your focus since it's in the foreground and everything though so... it's quite subjective. It'd probably be less jarring to me if the image were cleaned and coloured.

Indeed, nuance was hard to get. I've found supposed fine-point ball point pens are still too thick for my tastes. That I managed slightly is why I'm so proud of the differences in line weight XD

The chest did sort of skew; the lid and the base each have different angles of perspective. The base, drawn first and oriented carefully, works well enough. The lid is instead seemingly level, defying the obvious upturn of the base at the right. The planks on the lid are the biggest indicator (except for the side panels, which are predominantly decorative).

Part of the trouble is something I'm thinking of discussing with Thanqol; this is the second of around ten panels. I started out specifically sloppy, hoping to use surface details to make up for not investing as much time in preproduction; a circle, some lines and a curve or two for the base. As I went, I started naturally putting more and more effort into the skeletons, and composition - I zeroed in on details I'd previously left blank.

Here, it didn't occur to me to change up the pony's lines. Later on, I was striving to vary the detail lines in the tail, the clothes, and the outline. I'm not sure how this applies to artists who regularly spend multiple hours on a single piece, but as someone who got his start making comics, I know that this productivity curve skewed my composition such that the heaviest details showed up about halfway down the page, and petered out about 5/6ths in.

[Saeyan]

Somebody send me a personal message if I forget to put the new exercise up within the next 36 hours.
Replies to Eleanor:


I got to a stationers the other day and purchased two "sketching sets".../art material envy. btw you'll want to wrap about half of your graphite sticks in plastic or paper, or wear disposable gloves while drawing with them.

"white sketching pencil" a sanguine oil pencil, a sepia light pencil a sanguine dry stick, a 'broad carbon dry stick'
Pictures? :> I don't know what those are but they sound cool.

a stump (that's like an eraser made of paper, yeah? but pencil shaped?) Not really an eraser, more of like a tool for shifting graphite or crayon particles around on paper. Some use them extensively for blending.

eleven pounds sterlingis super cheap (either that or my currency is getting too strong)

They looked like a wood pigeon and a common street pigeon (descended from the rock dove) to me.Sorry I don't know anything about birds haha. I think they were the same species? One was the traditional pure white dove and the other was like some iridiscent-feathered pigeon...thing.

Plus, bird anatomy was hardly the point of the exercise, was it?No, but getting it wrong is indicative of other...problems...mutters to self

PS: Am I the only one who saw the title of OotS 882 and thought immediately of this thread?Nope :smallcool:


SiuiS, nice work on the chest. As for perspective we'll go over it soon...ish. Ballpoint pen - just keep pressing lighter! It's possible to get pencil-like line consistencies out of a 0.7 ballpoint.


I started out specifically sloppy, hoping to use surface details to make up for not investing as much time in preproduction; a circle, some lines and a curve or two for the base.
That's one way to do it.


As I went, I started naturally putting more and more effort into the skeletons, and composition - I zeroed in on details I'd previously left blank.
To me those aren't really details, they're the backbone of the panel. Paying attention to these doesn't conflict with the sloppy/surface detail thing either.

[ninja_penguin]

So, one thing I've been slowly plugging away at over time is practice on the parts of figure drawing that I suck at (namely, about all of it). So I've been focusing efforts on looking at photos and some books and trying to find what works for me, and what I can do.

I've been sliding toward a more simplified/cartoon-ish style; mostly because I cannot into shading due to a combination of technique and patience. And it's a seperate thing because I'm capable of drawing for a good two hours on end, but once I start trying to do nothing but shade my brain goes 'my gaaaawd, can we stop now?'. but that's also stemming from the fact that my shading looks like unerased scribbles.

I also managed to dig up some old high school bits and pieces that I did. once I find one presentable enough that isn't so faded it can't be photographed well, I'll toss it up.

The one thing that I did notice, however, was that in my drawings back then, the heads were basically identical, and you'd have to go off of body type and presence/lack of breasts to properly identify gender.

So, my general goals for face drawing has been:

1. Obvious physical differences in each gender face. (I don't have a male face yet that I"m happy with)
2. Actual presence of lips, nose, and ears.
2a. Don't make lips turn people into freaky fish people
2b. Learn to get both eyes the same size/positioning unless its intended to be different.
3. Better angles then 'front looking left-ish' and 'front looking right-ish'

So anyway:
http://img513.imageshack.us/img513/1248/femface1.jpg

Going left to right, even though it's not the order I drew them in, so I can end on a good note.

Oh, and one other thing I noticed I forgot to mention; I've been trying to work on eyebrows, too. I'd often gotten good marks for stuff like body language and posing when I took official classes, and I'm noticing a general lack of real facial movement reactions of anything beyond stereotypical expressions when I look at the old stuff I have.

Anyway, the one all the way on the bottom left was an attempt at a 3/4 view looking down and left-ish. It also is being used as a reminder to myself that I should go stop and eat and not try and draw another face if I'm getting pretty hungry. I couldn't keep my hands very still and I ended up rushing it toward the end once things started going bad, and it looks bad. I had to redraw the mouth entirely. I'm pretty sure I goofed on the guidelines as to proper orientation for where things should be pointing. I'm not 100% sure if the other ear should be visible or not. Second attempt at a simplified nose fail.

Middle of the page! First one I did, half warm up, half determining the general face because I was planning to try and use the same one for all face drawings so I can learn to do different viewpoints a bit better, and not just 'okay, this is my face that looks in X direction'. I'm planning on trying to do the same for the male face once I get that down a bit better. Suffers from derpy uneven eyes, and my attempt at trying to try some sort of eyelash flare thing to not have the eyes start and end as just a big oval. Attempt at trying to simplify the nose kinda meh. I'm currently omitting the bridge of the nose as an experiment to stop making it look like a nasty scar on the face, and drawing attention to a weird nose. I'm not very happy with this, but I'll have to work on it. I'm also trying to include the bottom of the nose, I'm not just going to put a little triangle or something down there, I think that looks worse. Also lips kinda ended up weird and pointy during inking, would need to go over that again. I think in general I could have made the mouth/lips a little bit bigger.

Side view on the right! Second drawing I did on the page. I'm overall pretty pleased with this one. No derpy eyes because there's only one. I kind of like that eye design with the open part on the left, but I feel like something is off with it overall, even if I do like it the best on the whole page. I feel happy with the eye/nose/ear placements (feel free to point out if I"m wrong), and I'm very, very pleased with how the ear in general came out. I was playing with a way I'd seen somebody else draw the ear, took out a part of two that I thought I'd biff, and I'm rather happy with the result. Tried to modify it for the ear down in the lower left, but again, an unsteady hungry hand makes for crap. Happy with the general face profile as well. I think I want to experiment with that one for general emotions first right now, even if it's just for me to work on practicing having the jaw move, and not just the mouth flapping about on the end of the face.

[Eleanor_Rigby]

ninja_penguin: I can see some problem areas with your sketches there (although they are pretty good, generally speaking) but don't have time to figure out exactly what they are or how to say that coherently, sorry. :smallfrown:
Best advice I have for improving your facial expressions is this: gurn in the mirror a lot and concentrate on the way that looks. Drawing from life is usually preferable to drawing from photos, apparently but it can be a bit of a faff to set up properly and takes some getting into, so taking photos of yourself gurning can help too. Also, screencaps of live action movies and films. Look out for really expressive people like Christopher Eccleston or Hugh Laurie. Doodling while watching dvds and hitting pause everynow and again can have interesting effects (I don't do this often enough myself).

Your goals sound pretty reasonable too.

Saeyan: I can upload photos of the art materials but it may be some time. Thanks for clarifying about the stump. There are some art books about the house that explain this sort of thing, but I haven't paid them proper attention yet. I was quite pleased to find that the graphite sticks had actually been wrapped in some kind of tight film as well. The set with the sanguine materials has lots of warnings about staining clothes and furniture too which made me chuckle.

The woodpigeons (http://www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdguide/name/w/woodpigeon/index.aspx) that essentially live in my garden are much plumper than the ones in the RSPB profile. They'd probably be a game eater's dream, poor 'little' idiots...

Zorg:
Do you/ did you really work in fashion? What was that like? [is intrigued]

It also occurs to me that most of the links I put up to my artwork are probably broken or require passwords. I'll try and put up some evidence that I do actually draw on occaision and don't just like to waffle on about other people's work in the next few days. :smallredface:

[Zorg]

The selling end, with a bit of buying - not the Bold and the Beautiful side of things! :smallbiggrin:

This lack of projects is somewhat well timed as I'm currently completely re-organising (ie throwing out half of) my hobby room, so everything is, ironically, in more of a mess than usual.

[the_druid_droid]

Alright, I have some stuff to upload finally. I just recently got a book on anatomy, so I've been trying to copy some images from those sources. The results have been mixed so far, but I don't entirely hate the work and comments will be helpful, so here it is:
http://i1225.photobucket.com/albums/ee385/the_druid_droid/sketch1-1.jpg
http://i1225.photobucket.com/albums/ee385/the_druid_droid/hand.jpg
http://i1225.photobucket.com/albums/ee385/the_druid_droid/foot.jpg
The big lesson from doing these, I think, was that shading does a lot to help define what's going on in a picture. When I had just the outlines down, things looked very flat and undefined, but when I started trying to add shading similar to what I was seeing in the examples, everything became much better defined, even if I'm still not entirely happy with the final result.

[SiuiS]

Alright, I have some stuff to upload finally. I just recently got a book on anatomy, so I've been trying to copy some images from those sources. The results have been mixed so far, but I don't entirely hate the work and comments will be helpful, so here it is:
http://i1225.photobucket.com/albums/ee385/the_druid_droid/sketch1-1.jpg
http://i1225.photobucket.com/albums/ee385/the_druid_droid/hand.jpg
http://i1225.photobucket.com/albums/ee385/the_druid_droid/foot.jpg
The big lesson from doing these, I think, was that shading does a lot to help define what's going on in a picture. When I had just the outlines down, things looked very flat and undefined, but when I started trying to add shading similar to what I was seeing in the examples, everything became much better defined, even if I'm still not entirely happy with the final result.

Horseapples!
I shall have to step up my game, it seems, and like, put forth effort and stuff.
That's actually really impressive, DD. blows me away. And you've never really drawn before? You've a good eye, then...

[the_druid_droid]

Horseapples!
I shall have to step up my game, it seems, and like, put forth effort and stuff.
That's actually really impressive, DD. blows me away. And you've never really drawn before? You've a good eye, then...

Honest to Celestia, the last time I drew things with any consistency was in art class in 7th grade, and even then, most days consisted of a fair bit of skimming through my friend's Monster Manual, rather than doing actual work...

I have been hunting around for some good art instruction books though, and those have helped, as I finally found some that were philosophically oriented, and curiously enough I tend to need a philosophical orientation before I'm any good at a subject...

[Eleanor_Rigby]

...

...


Whelp.

I guess that just goes to show how much good a responsive medium and a bit of concentration and focus can do, because those studies are excellent Druid_Droid.

Admittedly, it's considerably easier to draw an accurate representation of something from a "still" than from "life" but it's still pretty nice. [/thinly veiled envy]

Looks like you've got "a good eye". Maybe two. :smallbiggrin:

Question though: were the source images photographs or illustrations? Just curious.

Saeyan:
Having opened up both sketching tins, it appears that the materials are: a putty eraser, a paper stub, a charcoal stick thingum, a sanguine stick thingum, a film wrapped graphite stick and the rest are wooden pencils with cores of whatever it is it was talking about on the tin. I'm still pleased with my purchases, mind. :smallsmile:
There were a few raised eyebrows at home when I was boasting about them, mind ("what's wrong with regular pencils? Did you honestly need to spend all that money on these 'graphite sticks'??"). They're all pretty artsy or at least creative, but I'm the only one so far that's actually looking into doing this stuff professionally (apart from one parent, who was a draftsman, but that's a whole 'nother area).

Oh, and Zorg: that still sounds like it would be fairly interesting, even if it wasn't as glamourous. Personally if it weren't for all the snobbery and such people go on about in the fashion industry, I'd probably be quite interested in a job like that. With the right company, it could probably be pretty pleasant, as far as Actual Work goes... [is possibly romanticising the concept]

[the_druid_droid]

...

...


Whelp.

I guess that just goes to show how much good a responsive medium and a bit of concentration and focus can do, because those studies are excellent Druid_Droid.

Admittedly, it's considerably easier to draw an accurate representation of something from a "still" than from "life" but it's still pretty nice. [/thinly veiled envy]

Looks like you've got "a good eye". Maybe two. :smallbiggrin:

Question though: were the source images photographs or illustrations? Just curious.


Thanks for the compliments! Though in looking back, I see that there are some proportion issues, and I really dislike the fingernails in that one picture...

You ask a good question though! The pictures in my source are illustrations, which has both pros and cons. On the upside, it means that they can reproduce muscles and bones, rather than just surface features. Also it means that someone else has figured out where the shadows and highlights go initially, so I can focus more on reproducing them and trying to understand why they're placed as they are, instead of tinkering and getting frustrated.

On the flip side, someone else has already figured out how to translate what they've seen into a drawing, so I lose some of the practice of seeing the shapes and shadows for myself. Still, I'm trying to learn from multiple sources and do a lot of my own observational drawing, so if I don't get that sort of practice from the anatomy book, hopefully it'll come from somewhere else. I am getting an appreciation for just how neat the human body is, at the very least.

Oh! I also realize I fibbed just a bit in answering SiuiS. Although I haven't drawn seriously in a long time, I did often sketch things out for my science classes to figure out what was going on in the problems I was assigned. Of course, the geometry involved was usually pretty simple, circles and cylinders and so forth, but every little bit helps, and in the interest of full disclosure I guess it counts as 'drawing' too...

[Eleanor_Rigby]

Thanks for the compliments! Though in looking back, I see that there are some proportion issues, and I really dislike the fingernails in that one picture...

You ask a good question though! The pictures in my source are illustrations, which has both pros and cons. On the upside, it means that they can reproduce muscles and bones, rather than just surface features. Also it means that someone else has figured out where the shadows and highlights go initially, so I can focus more on reproducing them and trying to understand why they're placed as they are, instead of tinkering and getting frustrated.

On the flip side, someone else has already figured out how to translate what they've seen into a drawing, so I lose some of the practice of seeing the shapes and shadows for myself. Still, I'm trying to learn from multiple sources and do a lot of my own observational drawing, so if I don't get that sort of practice from the anatomy book, hopefully it'll come from somewhere else. I am getting an appreciation for just how neat the human body is, at the very least.


:smallredface:

Yes, drawing from a drawn reference and drawing from a photographic reference can be pretty different. That's basically why I asked.

I suppose if I scrutinise the fingertips I can see a few possible errors and the hand looks a little short, but that could be some sort of perspective trick, or someone with "non-standard hands" it's very impressive on the whole, is the thing.

I've yet to get into the whole anatomy thing in detail, it'll be interesting when I get 'round to it, I'm sure.

[Saeyan]

I'm here! I'm here! Long post ahead! Spent AGES formatting the post...ignore the random asterisks, they got put in accidentally.
---
My apologies for the long delay - there was much more to do in China than I'd anticipated, and then some stuff over the new year. Thanks to those who sent me reminder messages :) Quite a substantial number of exercises in this post to make up for the delay, so the deadline is in 2 weeks, 18 Jan. The illustrations for this post are done digitally and are hopefully easier to see. I'm crap at drawing from scratch on the computer though, might have to look into getting a proper scanner.

So, basic shapes. These are the building blocks of pretty much everything that can be drawn, so taking some time to understand them is important. The three big shapes (2D) are the rectangle, triangle and ellipse (oval). From these you can get basic forms (3D): cuboid, prism (many kinds), cylinder, sphere and ovoid.
http://sigmaplus.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/2-23d.jpg
Why think in terms of simple solids? With basic forms we can break things down into planes, which helps immensely with shading. It's hard to shade a horse from imagination, but it's easier to do the same thing with ovoids and prisms. A poorly executed example:
http://sigmaplus.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/2-head.jpg
'Random shading' looks sort of right, but also sort of iffy - 'Semi-random shading' looks a little bit more solid. The shadows cast by the nose and hair are wrong, by the way - sorry, wasn't really thinking.

Aside:

When just starting, it's easier to copy from pre-drawn samples, because a) they usually show 'pure' basic forms, and b) the artist has already translated the 3D form to a 2D image for you. Copying then helps familiarize you with the actual process of drawing those forms. Attempting to draw directly from life may result in a lot of flailing about and wasted time because you don't know what to do. But drawing from life is also one of the best ways to progress in drawing once beginning hurdles are out of the way, and pretty much the onlyway beyond a certain standard. Anyway, if you have access to books or images (e.g. the ones in assignment I) , you can try doing some copies.
Exercises
I. Look at these renders of basic shapes under strong light sources: (these renders (http://conceptart.org/forums/attachment.php?attachment)*by ChristerMLB and these by Henrik Wann Jensen:1 (http://graphics.ucsd.edu/~henrik/images/imgs/cornellbox.jpg),2 (http://conceptart.org/forums/attachment.php?attachment)). You can draw copies of them if you have the time - should be pretty useful.

II. Find some objects that closely resemble the basic shapes, e.g. book (cuboid), computer mouse (ovoid), tall glass (cylinder). If you have a table lamp (like the kind in the Pixar logo) or a flashlight, set the objects up, dim the lights and just move the light around, watching what happens to the shadows - which sides get darker? Where does the light fall? If you want to draw them, assignment IV has instructions.

III. Now get a photo of a fairly simple subject - simple buildings, stuff on a desk etc. It can be digital or physical, doesn't matter as long as you can see what you are doing over the photo. Try breaking the forms in the photo down into the basic forms covered above. Architecture is good for this, because you have not only blocky cuboids but also spheres/hemispheres (domes) and prisms (pediments, roofs) to work with. If you're using more organic subjects, like a pony or a person, you'll be working more with circle-based forms: sphere, ovoid, cylinder.

An example. This is a photo of a lovely hotel in Hangzhou, which I'll be posting 5-star reviews of once I remember its name. First, draw in shapes that face the same direction (the right):
http://sigmaplus.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/2-photo-1.jpg
Breaking 3D forms down into 2D shapes isn't enough. So add in the sides to turn the shapes into forms.http://sigmaplus.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/2-photo-2.jpg
We also have to actually be able to imagine what they are like in 3D space. What would it look like from another angle? With a different lighting setup?

Here is the fun bit, which is easy to do on a computer and a bit harder if you weren't working on tracing paper: choose a direction for light, and use just one dark tone to put in shadows. Ignore cast shadows (= shadows cast by something on another object) for now - they're complicated and hard to do without reference. In my first image the light comes from the right; in the second it shines from the left.
If you have trouble figuring out where to put the shadows, try using the objects from assignment I to construct an approximation. That provides a model for shadows, and also helps you to feel the depth and relative position of the basic forms. This is also why 'drawers' see improvement after trying out sculpting - it makes you think in 3 dimensions,*not*'one curved line here, an ellipse there, some hatching, another line...'.

http://sigmaplus.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/2-photo-3.jpg?w=300 http://sigmaplus.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/2-photo-3b.jpg?w=300

Another useful thing to remember when breaking down weird forms is that all polygons can be broken into a number of triangles.

IV. Try to draw one of the objects from assignment I...from life*(dun dun dun!). If you're up for a challenge, pick a more complex object that's made of several basic forms joined together. Eleanor has also suggested an alternative of sorts, which you can also apply the basic form idea to:

one or more careful studies of a stuffed toy. They're brilliant subjects for wannabe cartoonists as the proportions are made but they still have their own sense of weight. One can pose them, or, if one knows a child, scatty toy collector and/or dog one can likely find one ready posed in an hilarious 'crime scene' like fashion. I'll own that there's a possibility that not everybody in the thread has accesss to a stuffed toy but you can get some goofy ones dirt cheap or usually find somebody to lend one to you. Temporarily.
First draw in basic shapes, then build up to the basic forms underlying the object (post a photo and ask if you're not sure), and then add details on top in a darker color. You can shade as well, but keep it simple and only shade the large masses. For instance, there was a lighter shadow on the unshaded side of the harmonica case, but it only made things look confused, so I didn't include it.

http://sigmaplus.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/2-rl.jpg

Ellipses are my nemesis, so naturally I picked two cylinder-based forms for the demo -_-||| Also sometimes drawing a basic form container doesn't actually help, as in the cup handle, so just use them as you see fit. Here's another example (which ended up deviating significantly from what I saw - bad!):

http://sigmaplus.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/2-rl-demo.jpg

By the way, construction isn't something that comes naturally when drawing from life. For more rigid forms (buildings, manufactured objects) like in the example above, constructing the basic forms before laying on details is a great way to ensure things look more or less 'right' in the final drawing. But doing it for organic forms is, in my opinion, a waste of time, and isn't going to get you anywhere. When drawing from imagination, however, construction is your best friend.

Example of what I do when drawing from life (or in this case, a photo I took):
http://sigmaplus.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/2-cat-1.jpg?w=300
Get rough outline - I recently started doing the enclosing-box thing, and it helps for irregular shapes.
http://sigmaplus.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/2-cat-2.jpg?w=214
Add details.
http://sigmaplus.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/2-cat-3.jpg?w=201
Sigh and hit Delete (or you can continue refining and shading).

Aside:

No seriously, one of my goals is to get accuracy to a passable level. I don't believe in measuring obsessively (sight-size, I'm looking at you) because it generally screws things up for me and takes all the life out of a drawing. But this level of inaccuracy is really quite unacceptable, especially for someone who's setting exercises and doling out advice.
Resources
http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/*is a place to find pictures to draw from, though I've stopped going there as it's usually overrun by pictures of babies and/or family gatherings and/or weddings. Also try looking under Stock/Resources on deviantART, www.sxc.hu (http://sxc.hu) and Google Images for private practice. (If you're going to post it publicly, make sure you credit the photographer - if you don't know who did it, best not to post).

Whew! Long post. Have fun - I'm looking forward to doing these.

P.S. I have Skype and MSN in case anyone wants to talk about drawing. Just send a PM.
P.P.S. Don't forget the line quality thing from before! At the very least, try to use continuous lines.

[Thanqol]

That post blew my mind.

No, really. I think I understand how to draw buildings and landscapes now, something I previously could not get my head around period. I'll give it a try and keep you informed.

[Saeyan]

Thanks. Took me 10 years to figure out what the actual use of basic solids was.

droid: good work. But remember that your objective is not just to copy shading and lines, it is to learn how to draw a thing.

[ninja_penguin]

Neat. I'm probably not going to be able to look at this in depth until Monday or so.

[Remmirath]

This is the last week for some months that I'll have much time, but I did have some - so I got something done. Hopefully I'll have at least a little time in the next few months, but I'm going to be rather busy, so I figured I'd make sure and do this one.

http://familylees.net/morgan/chal2.png
Ignore the writing. I was tired, and I get a bit loopy when I'm tired, I'm afraid. :smalltongue:

At the top I did the basic shapes and solids, which were good to do as a refresher certainly. I hadn't done much with triangles before, so that took a little longer. I tend to work from right to left, being left-handed, so the faces were the next thing. I think that did help me with what to do with the side of the face when shading it.

I tried to copy (at rather small size, since I didn't have much of the page left) one of the renders linked, and then for the still lifes I drew a glass of wine, a book, and a teddy bear with mixed results. I think the bear was helpful, since that's the largest thing I've tried to break down into shapes yet.

For the building, since I have no interesting buildings near me and it was too cold (and late at night) to go out, I just searched for pictures of the Sears Tower and used one. The shadow in the middle there ended up too dark, I think.

This time I was using my usual mechanical pencil with the printer paper we have lying around all the time. I'm sure things would've ended up better if I'd taken more time - that's something I'm always having troubles with, rushing things too much - but I did find some of it useful, especially breaking the building down, which I'd never done before.

[Eleanor_Rigby]

You know... I took Art (and Design for the first three) as a specific subject at school which I had to take exams for for four years and I never got any lessons like these. I don't regret having taken art, because I still learned quite a lot, but the department at my school was very much into the "self discovery" side of things. We did a heck of a lot of observational drawings, and we did get 'crits' on occaision, but I can't really recall having received a single lesson once Art stopped being a compulsary part of the curriculum.

So I guess it's no small wonder that when I finally came to do my own line weight exercise last night it ended up looking like this:
http://i1196.photobucket.com/albums/aa405/Zomp_Jorr/Upgrade%20Your%20Art/poorlystitchedlineexerciseforuya.jpg

...I guess it was still valuable because a) I enjoyed doing it, even though I wasn't happy with the way it was working out and b) I did a whole lot of experimenting there. A lot of those scribbles are me playing with various media (including bits of the sketching sets I was going on about) more than anything else. It was difficult to do because I don't usually draw on walls like this and I had to kneel as I was doing it instead of stand because that's just how things worked out space-wise. I don't think 'paper taped to the wall' is a drawing position that works for me, really, but I'm glad I tried it. Actually, I can do sketches on whiteboards and stuff, so maybe if the height hadn't been so silly then this wouldn't have been so shaky/lame.
I was good and used a big sheet of paper but then I was silly and drew really tiny sized doodles again for the most part. I tend to work on too small a scale and then it's difficult to get details and nuances in...
Anyway. I digress...
Also: the exercise was done on very pale green "sugar" paper - by which I mean paper with a slight tooth. So if it looks kinda green but not quite, that'd be why. (The split is because it didn't fit in my scanner, I couldn't be bothered to photograph it and I also couldn't be bothered to learn to 'stitch' is nicely... [Eleanor_Rigby is laaaaazy])

Saeyan's exercise looks much more instructional (is that a word?) than the one I PM'd her as a possible fill-in exercise, but here's one of my sketches just to show that not all my stuff is as horrible as that line weight exercise (in which I made the lines heavy where they ought to have been light and vice-versa)
http://i1196.photobucket.com/albums/aa405/Zomp_Jorr/Upgrade%20Your%20Art/cuddlytoysketchdec2011forweb.jpg
Points to people who can name both the licenced characters, many more points to anyone who can identify what the backdrop cuddly beast might be. Backdrop cuddly beast is mostly fudged, but the head and tail are about right.
I drew one toy first and then put the others in around him and the first toy is not in the right position or scale in relation to the others at all (well, I'm being a little hard on myself, but he was not at that angle and he would have been a bit smaller and ...blah)

@ Remmirath: I did not ignore the text on your exercise and I "LOLed". Quite quietly, but "LOLed" nonetheless. They look really great to me so far, although I'll confess I haven't scrutinised them thoroughly yet.
I'm sure I'll think of something to criticise.
:smalltongue:
Your teddy bear looks pretty cross, I've got to say. Did you ask his/her permission before beginning the portrait? (the expression is subtle, but if you look for it, it is there, probably not what the manufacturer was aiming for)

[Saeyan]

Is that Eeyore?

[Thanqol]

Oh yes, I almost forgot about this. I'm going to try the mobile lighting exercise tomorrow, we'll see how that goes!

[Eleanor_Rigby]

Is that Eeyore?

It is. The E.H Shepherd version, which, in my opinion, is the right version. He is lavender with a purple mane and tail and a little pink button for some reason, and I think he's much fluffier than the Eeyore from the books but still, he's the right shapes. :smallsmile:
(I like Disney Eeyore ok, just not so much. Shepherd Eeyore feels more 'real' and is much funnier, in my opinion. Same is true for all the cast - although I particularly dislike Disney tigger's look: the EH Shepherd version's just so much sweeter...)

The other character (whose head I did not leave enough room for and so has been drawn twice) is
Just because I feel I ought to give credit, and he's quite a British characterAardman Studio's Hutch from Wallace and Gromit and the Curse of the Wererabbit. He's fatter in the film, or at least in the later part of the film, and I still want to knit him a little green tanktop so he can wear it sometimes, but that's who he is. He's very true to the style of Aardman films and he's very floppy/pliable. His eyes are hard plastic to mimic the beads they use in their animation, I'm sorry to say that his pupil paint's a bit scratched up.

I still intend to do the object exercise, we'll just see whether I manage it before the deadline. Also, only the middle link to 3D object studies worked for me (2. 1 and 3 were broken.) I'm not sure why that was... :smallconfused:

Was the stab at the line exercise any good? I kind of got distracted from the objective.:smallredface:

[Zorg]

Working on the assignment... turns out I've lost the ability to draw a cube square freehand :smallannoyed: On the plus side my line weights are really consistent! :smallamused:

Filling up quite a few pages though, and done another 'proper' sketch. Will scan tomorrow.


Eleanor, I'm with you on the suckage of 'Art' in schools and their failure to actually teach anything about doing art.
Drawing on the wall, so to speak, was a bit odd for me but I've now got space in my hobby room to set up an easle so having some more foot room and a slight incline will hopefully make it more comfortable (or even able to do sitting down).

Your line work really reminds me of May Gibbs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_Gibbs)' artwork.


Remmirath, is that the John Hancock tower? Your psi-power person is awesome, solid work (har har) all round with the shading too.

[Eleanor_Rigby]

Drawing on the wall, so to speak, was a bit odd for me but I've now got space in my hobby room to set up an easle so having some more foot room and a slight incline will hopefully make it more comfortable (or even able to do sitting down).


Yes, I think a slope as opposed to straight up and down is easier, although it's trickier to set up for a lot of people without specialist materials. My personal drawing habits are usually somewhat odd as I am somebody who's always surrounded by clutter so I draw in some slightly unorthodox positions. (I couldn't find a way to make that not sound double-entendre-y)



Your linework really reminds me of May Gibbs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_Gibbs)' artwork.


: 0

I'm going to take that as a complement because I'd never heard of her before but her stuff's brilliant. Two of my key influences are Tove Jansson (glances at avatar) (and by extention her little brother who took on the Moomin comics after she moved on from them) and E.H Shepherd, hence me owning a plush Eeyore (well, people have also frequently compared me to Eeyore for my cheery remarks and demeanor - but that's another matter). I really wish I could do linework like John Tenniel and Chris Riddell but I'm not exactly there yet. At all. I need to understand my fundamentals better. So... part of why I'm here, really. :smallredface:

[Zorg]

Please, be complimented :smallsmile:

My problem is that while I admire the works of Da Vinci and Monet in particular, my style has always been influenced by comic artists such as Adrian Smith, Paul Bonner, William Gibson, Geoff Senior and prettymuch anyone you'd find drawing 2000AD. Not very good for doing realistic pictures - which is why I'm here :smallsmile:

My exercises:

Part 1, in which I learn I can't draw parralel or perpendicular lines anymore:

http://i147.photobucket.com/albums/r314/Gotthammer/40k/Ex02a.jpg

Part 2, in which mine perspective doth suck:

http://i147.photobucket.com/albums/r314/Gotthammer/40k/Ex02b.jpg

So yeah... not the best effort here. Still, I'll hopefully find time to give it another go and get on to the shading.

Still, I did do some other pictures:

Continuation of the sketch from earlier:

http://i147.photobucket.com/albums/r314/Gotthammer/40k/Urs04.jpg

I think her eyes are a fraction too large and a tad too high.

A new one, which I built up with shapes to get perspective on her chin and nose:

http://i147.photobucket.com/albums/r314/Gotthammer/40k/Urs05.jpg

Hairline needs to come just a leeeetle bit lower methinks. But - big thing here for me - aside from a few remaining construction lines on the unfinished bits there are no solid lines! All the detailing on her face is all shaded, which is the first time I've ever been able to get it to work :smallbiggrin:

[Hyoumu Yau]

I have a little question :
As far as I understand, this thread is about improving the quality of art, which I am theoretically interested in (meaning that I have little time, at least in the next month and two weeks, but would try to participate as often as I can.)
The question - do you require that participants have had some amount of experience with art? Because I can't really draw good, most of the things I did that may be considered art (well besides music) were done with vector graphic programs, and I mostly just doodle abstract things in class when I'm bored, so I haven't really drawn much. Or drawn anything resembling something real, for that matter.

[Thanqol]

I have a little question :
As far as I understand, this thread is about improving the quality of art, which I am theoretically interested in (meaning that I have little time, at least in the next month and two weeks, but would try to participate as often as I can.)
The question - do you require that participants have had some amount of experience with art? Because I can't really draw good, most of the things I did that may be considered art (well besides music) were done with vector graphic programs, and I mostly just doodle abstract things in class when I'm bored, so I haven't really drawn much. Or drawn anything resembling something real, for that matter.

No requirements at all. This is about your own journey of self improvement.

[Saeyan]

the department at my school was very much into the "self discovery" side of things. We did a heck of a lot of observational drawings, and we did get 'crits' on occaision
Ha mine too! My first-year teacher tried getting us to do observational drawings but after that it was just 5 years of fumbling around on our own. At any rate, I'm of the belief that art is a particularly easy subject to learn on your own (the technical side at any rate), hence this thread.

The line exercise looks fine. You can control weights, which was pretty much the point of the exercise really :smallsmile:


I think a slope as opposed to straight up and down is easier
Oh yeah I kind of forgot about that...I've been in the bad habit of drawing flat on the table since forever, and found a slanted board easier to work with for mid-size pieces. But I still think vertical is the way to go for large stuff.



My problem is that while I admire the works of Da Vinci and Monet in particular, my style has always been influenced by comic artists such as Adrian Smith, Paul Bonner, William Gibson, Geoff Senior and prettymuch anyone you'd find drawing 2000AD. Not very good for doing realistic pictures - which is why I'm here

I recently saw a Monet study in the flesh. Very lovely paint handling.

Comic artists rank way up there in my 'respect' list (Tracey Emin is near the bottom) - they have to capture motion/emotion, do effective storytelling and most of all work at a crazy pace. Maybe you think it's not a good influence for doing realistic pictures but 2000AD is much closer to realism in terms of anatomy (that is, limbs are still made of muscles as opposed to bendy pipes in some other styles).

Part 1 - what if you...used a ruler? :smallbiggrin: I imagine it'd be very useful for the building in pt. 2 especially.

New sketch - fuzzy line! nononono if you need to 'feel out' the outlines at least use less pressure so the fuzzy outline doesn't distract from the drawing later on. There are some underlying head construction issues which it's too late to resolve, but comments for this stage: Hairline *and* top of head both need to be shifted down. I can sort of see what you did with the nose though. Her nose and mouth still feel like they are surrounded by solid outlines, but that should hopefully resolve itself as you continue working. Don't forget that you can use an eraser to lighten up some parts.

Hyoumu: What Thanqol said. Welcome! If you doodle abstract things in class you may already have a handle on line quality.

[Hyoumu Yau]

Well, in that case, I would like to join :smallsmile:
I will participate as often as I can (next 6 weeks will be a little hard, but I'll try).

Art : Currently, I can only present my avatar, signature and these (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8212150&postcount=31) two (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8214592&postcount=37) pictures. Nothing I drew on paper exists in digital form.
Interested in: Well, just getting better at drawing (from people and animals to everyday objects).
I would like to someday be able to draw a fanatasy comic (maybe similar to Oots-style, but I don't like constructing vector art the way I do it with Oots fanart, takes up too much time), so probably leaning towards a style that would be appropriate is one of my goals.
If someday I will get decent at drawing, I would like to try to paint (I am amazed by this persons paintings (http://www.youtube.com/user/marydoodles/videos))
Media: Right now just pencil&paper. If I get better I might get a tablet.
(I also have some old paint(the package says something about tempera and wax-oil), not sure if it is still usable, though)

[Mina Kobold]

Uhm, hi? I would like to join too! :smallsmile:

I am not entirely sure what to post when I do the exercises, though. Are we supposed to draw anything in step I and II?

Sorry for the inconvenience. ^_^'

Art: Usually my DeviantArt (http://keveak.deviantart.com/) but sometimes my Imageshack (http://imageshack.us/homepage/?user=keveak) if it is a small or context-heavy piece.
Interested in: Lots of things, but primarily improving my inking abilities and learning more about digital painting. ^_^
Media: Usually a tablet, but I do many pencil sketches as well.

[Remmirath]

@ Remmirath: I did not ignore the text on your exercise and I "LOLed". Quite quietly, but "LOLed" nonetheless. They look really great to me so far, although I'll confess I haven't scrutinised them thoroughly yet.
I'm sure I'll think of something to criticise.
:smalltongue:
Your teddy bear looks pretty cross, I've got to say. Did you ask his/her permission before beginning the portrait? (the expression is subtle, but if you look for it, it is there, probably not what the manufacturer was aiming for)

Thanks! Amusing is good, I suppose, so I'm glad that amused you. :smallsmile: The teddy bear does look like that. I've no idea if it was intentional on the part of the manufacturer, but I've had him for twenty years and he's always had that same surly expression. Gives him character, at least.

I like your line weight excersize. The scribbles are pretty interesting, I took a while looking at those. The only ones that look off to me are the inner set of large lines meandering across the whole page.

The stuffed animals look good. I recognise Eeyore (I have one of the same type that I was given after I played the role in a show), but I've no idea who the others are.



Remmirath, is that the John Hancock tower? Your psi-power person is awesome, solid work (har har) all round with the shading too.

Thanks! :smallbiggrin: It's the Sears Tower, but the two buildings are at least somewhat similar, I suppose. The angle is very much looking up at it.

The objects are a bit lopsided in your part one, but I think that they look good other than that - if they aligned properly, I think they would look fine.

I think the second one with the house works, perspective-wise, but it's not the same perspective as in the picture. The fact that the picture's slanted probably made it a bit difficult.

The sketch certainly seems to be coming along. Her eyes might be a little bit too wide, although I don't think they're too large necessarily - they look a bit too oval to me. They could probably also use being a bit further down, although I believe that they're within the realm of possibility.

The second sketch looks pretty good. The hairline looks completely normal to me in relation to the eyebrows, maybe even almost low - but hairlines vary a great deal, and I don't know what you're going for. I think it might help with the eyes if you thought more about the underlying shapes of them, the orb and the socket - there's something odd about them to me, but I can't place exactly what it is. Eyes are usually about halfway down the head/up the head, depending on which direction you look at it from.
The whole head does look a bit long to me - are you by any chance drawing with the paper flat on the table and looking down at it? I find that always skews things to be too long and thin. I think that most parts would need to be squished closer to each other, but it's probably something to keep in mind for the next time and too late to fix.



I am not entirely sure what to post when I do the exercises, though. Are we supposed to draw anything in step I and II?


Going back and doing the earlier ones seems like it shouldn't be a problem. I mostly just do as many of the excersizes as I can remember/will fit on the page. :smallsmile:

[Mina Kobold]

Going back and doing the earlier ones seems like it shouldn't be a problem. I mostly just do as many of the excersizes as I can remember/will fit on the page. :smallsmile:

I did not actually think of going back. ^_^'

I was trying to ask if there was a an drawn results expected from the first few steps of the latest one, since they are about looking at references and moving items to see the shades.

Sorry for my confusing lingua Anglica (and random Latin) m(_ _)m

[Remmirath]

I did not actually think of going back. ^_^'

I was trying to ask if there was a an drawn results expected from the first few steps of the latest one, since they are about looking at references and moving items to see the shades.

Sorry for my confusing lingua Anglica (and random Latin) m(_ _)m

Ah, sorry I misunderstood. No, I don't think it's expected to do drawings for the second step. At least, I hope not; I didn't do it. :smalltongue: I'm sure it's fine if you want to do it, too. The first one, with looking at the renders, you'd just draw the shapes you see, but that one's also optional. The third one I believe is expected.

[Eleanor_Rigby]

Thanks! Amusing is good, I suppose, so I'm glad that amused you. :smallsmile: The teddy bear does look like that. I've no idea if it was intentional on the part of the manufacturer, but I've had him for twenty years and he's always had that same surly expression. Gives him character, at least.


This is why I suggested cuddly toys - they very frequently have highly comical yet often completely incidental expressions. (From the photos I've seen the general expression of a My Little Pony official plush toy line is: I am going to eat your soul the moment you fall asleep. The plastic ponies were usually a bit insipid in times gone by (heresy!) but the plush line for FiM is just plain hideous. Could make for some pretty funny sketches, but I wouldn't buy one for the purpose. :smalltongue:)



I like your line weight excersize. The scribbles are pretty interesting, I took a while looking at those. The only ones that look off to me are the inner set of large lines meandering across the whole page.

The large lines were meant to be the river exercise (geography's never been my strong point) and were actually what I started with. At least two of the scribbles close by the meandering lines were bits where I failed to follow my imaginary river, I decided that: one boat was grounded after veering horribly off course and spontaneously combusted (because I thought that would be funnier to draw and easier to draw at that scale even though it made no sense whatsoever) but the survivor of this terrible accident rebuilt the boat and tried again; the second boat just stopped at the bank to camp for the night.



The stuffed animals look good. I recognise Eeyore (I have one of the same type that I was given after I played the role in a show), but I've no idea who the others are.

Apparently the film that the other licensed character was from was not too popular in the US, possibly not even outside the UK. It's a very British sort of film, and series. One of them is just a big, extremely generic teddy bear that my family won in a raffle when I was 10 who I'd put a Christmas cracker crown on. his head's about a foot wide.
Background toy is a leosco brand Black and White Ruffed Lemur. I couldn't find a photo of the same toy online, but he's a fair sized and looks a bit weighty, ergo, his name is Bombur.
I was a big fan of lemurs years before 'Madagascar' the dreamworks film came out [/hipster] I'm still very fond of them, mind. I also still haven't watched that film though - I didn't like the fact that the ringtails had a king/emperor instead of a queen/empress, for one thing... (yeah, it don't bother me none if you have penguins flying a plane, but make a clanger like that and I'll turn my back on you) :smallredface:

I think playing Eeyore in a play would be fun.
When doing babysitting with my cousin not very long ago, we tried reading Winnie the Pooh to the kids and I provided the voices for Eeyore and Piglet (or Henry Pootle, as some know him, I believe). I started off doing all the reading but then delegated most of it to my cousin, apart from some of the dialogue for conversations. Unfortunately the kids then decided it would be more fun to listen to Stephen Fry's Harry Potter audiobook, and us reading from Harry Potter - and then we were chided for not voicing the weather reporter just like Mr Fry does... and so on and so forth... And people say kids have no attention span these days. :smalltongue:

Will provide more Art Talk (and my art exercises for this week's lesson, I hope) soonish. :smallbiggrin:

[Mina Kobold]

Ah, sorry I misunderstood. No, I don't think it's expected to do drawings for the second step. At least, I hope not; I didn't do it. :smalltongue: I'm sure it's fine if you want to do it, too. The first one, with looking at the renders, you'd just draw the shapes you see, but that one's also optional. The third one I believe is expected.

Well, I could draw an eye looking at moving objects, but that might be a bit silly. :3

On that note, Exercise 2 postingness!

Starting with random shapes and figures
http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/5807/sketches11a.png
(Sorry about the nearly invisible lines in the first row, I forgot to make them noticeable ^_^')

Then on to a building! The Dai Temple, in fact!
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/83/Dai_Temple_%281489%29.JPG/450px-Dai_Temple_%281489%29.JPG http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/8158/sketches11b.png http://img268.imageshack.us/img268/1429/sketches11bb.png
(Far too narrow in the centre gateway, I know. But I learnt something from that mistake! ^_^)

And iLast, but not iLeast, an iPhone drawn from life! Or electronic existence, in this case.
http://img252.imageshack.us/img252/7597/sketches11c.png
(Sketchy lines!)

Hope I did it correctly. I will try my paw at the first exercise once I get hold of a decent pencil, which should be this Friday! :smallsmile:

[Thanqol]

Just wanted to add I've done a few of these exercises by this point but it all worked out fairly shonky even though I learned some interesting stuff. I'm going to try and apply and produce some finished exercises before long though!

[Zorg]

I recently saw a Monet study in the flesh. Very lovely paint handling.

It's amazing how much of a difference seeing paintings in person can make - I recently went on a trip to europe going to Rome, Florence London and Paris with my girlfriend to look at all the art mostly. Though the Louvre was closed the day we were in Paris. Again. I've been to Paris twice and am yet to see the Mona Lisa. It took my dad four visits.


Comic artists rank way up there in my 'respect' list (Tracey Emin is near the bottom) - they have to capture motion/emotion, do effective storytelling and most of all work at a crazy pace. Maybe you think it's not a good influence for doing realistic pictures but 2000AD is much closer to realism in terms of anatomy (that is, limbs are still made of muscles as opposed to bendy pipes in some other styles).

Yes, I think it's why I'm not too shabby at figures (I think :smallwink:), but it's the next step from comic to 'real' that's the hurdle - refining everything that little bit more.


Part 1 - what if you...used a ruler? :smallbiggrin: I imagine it'd be very useful for the building in pt. 2 especially.

Rulers are for the weeeeeeak!

But seriously, it's because I used to be able to draw squares / cubes and the like really well. And I don't actually own a decent ruler for some reason. It's a little depressign I seem unable to draw a straight line now, but I think once I get an easle set up it'll be easier.



New sketch - fuzzy line! nononono if you need to 'feel out' the outlines at least use less pressure so the fuzzy outline doesn't distract from the drawing later on. There are some underlying head construction issues which it's too late to resolve,

I'm honestly not sure what you mean by the first comment about fuzzy lines. Is it that my shading is not smooth? I'm working on that for sure but part of it is just how I draw, so there's always going to be some fuzzyness.
And please tell me of these underlying issues as if you don't I'm just going to do them again next time :smallsmile:



but comments for this stage: Hairline *and* top of head both need to be shifted down. I can sort of see what you did with the nose though. Her nose and mouth still feel like they are surrounded by solid outlines, but that should hopefully resolve itself as you continue working. Don't forget that you can use an eraser to lighten up some parts.

I think the hairline 'error' is due to faffing about with the hairband placement. The nose / mouth possibly do have outlines, but only because I shaded too much rather than because I drew one, if that makes sense. I did lighten up some areas, such as the length of the nose and cheeckbones, but I don't think the scanner picked it up very well.



Apparently the film that the other licensed character was from was not too popular in the US, possibly not even outside the UK. It's a very British sort of film, and series.

Curse of the Were-Rabbit is the only Wallace and Grommit I've not seen (Wrong Trousers is still the best). I did recognise him from somewhere though, and can see the resemblance now I know who it is. Saw the trailer for The Pirates yesterday, and very much looking forward to it.




Thanks! :smallbiggrin: It's the Sears Tower, but the two buildings are at least somewhat similar, I suppose. The angle is very much looking up at it.

I meant Sears, I've even been to the top of both of them. Derp. That said I've only been to Chicago once, so most of what I know of it comes from the Blues Brothers (I went to Lower Wacker Drive so I could stand there and say "This is definitely Lower Wacker Drive".)



The objects are a bit lopsided in your part one, but I think that they look good other than that - if they aligned properly, I think they would look fine.

I think the second one with the house works, perspective-wise, but it's not the same perspective as in the picture. The fact that the picture's slanted probably made it a bit difficult.

I think what happened in pic 2 is that I defaulted to the terribly common three quater view that I use waaaaay too much (something else I need to work on). On the plus side it showed I could draw an object from another view semi-accurately :smallamused:



The sketch certainly seems to be coming along. Her eyes might be a little bit too wide, although I don't think they're too large necessarily - they look a bit too oval to me. They could probably also use being a bit further down, although I believe that they're within the realm of possibility.

I think de-ovalifying her eyes would provide the necessary size changing. That said if I was to change them I'd re-do completely and move them down a fraction.


The second sketch looks pretty good. The hairline looks completely normal to me in relation to the eyebrows, maybe even almost low - but hairlines vary a great deal, and I don't know what you're going for. I think it might help with the eyes if you thought more about the underlying shapes of them, the orb and the socket - there's something odd about them to me, but I can't place exactly what it is. Eyes are usually about halfway down the head/up the head, depending on which direction you look at it from.

I think the oddness of the eyes is not the eyes themselves but the surrounding skull shape. Giving the area around the eye depth and shape is something I struggle with, so I think it possibly looks a bit flat which is making the eyes look weird. Maybe, or I could be overthinking it :smallbiggrin:


The whole head does look a bit long to me - are you by any chance drawing with the paper flat on the table and looking down at it? I find that always skews things to be too long and thin. I think that most parts would need to be squished closer to each other, but it's probably something to keep in mind for the next time and too late to fix.

She is meant to have a longer face than average, and I did draw at an angle. I've learnt about drawing on a flat surface the hard way many years ago :smalltongue:



In exercise related news I've done some more shapes and my linework has improved in terms of wonkyness, but I won't have time to scan it in by the looks of things.

[Hyoumu Yau]

(Somehow, I could only open the second link in Exercise 2 part I)

I actually had time to try the second exercise)

III. I tried to draw this building:
http://www.bustler.net/images/gallery/international_architecture_awards_2009_03.jpg
It seems to be located somewhere near Luwdigsburg, Germany.
The first time it didn't quite work, and had to be turned into this:
http://s018.radikal.ru/i508/1201/e8/02e701724036.png
At first, I thought it's a pig-bot. At second glance it looked more like a cow, though.
Better have fun trying out dark/soft pencils than waste paper)
The second time the proportions weren't quite right, but I finished it anyway, even if a little bit wrong:
http://s018.radikal.ru/i527/1201/02/d56e624ea28e.png

IV. If I understood it right, the task was to draw an object from life build from basic shapes. Because I'm not that good and I didn't have that much time, I chose to draw a mug that was a birthday present many years ago:
http://s018.radikal.ru/i502/1201/11/4520e3d6c01a.png

All pictures where drawn with a Faber-Castell Grip 2001 2H.
My scanner doesn't seem to be very good (it's not that new), so I fiddled around with contrast a bit. I hope the quality isn't too bad)

[Saeyan]

Don't forget the shading thing in III - it's the most fun bit :smallsmile:

I've started work so kind of...didn't...do...them...in advance...again BUT I get off work early today and will do them tonight.

[Capt. Ido Nos]

Here is my entry!

I actually enjoy doodling around with geometric shapes, though straight, crisp lines elude me on most occasions. I did try my best with the wrist/arm sweeps from last exercise though! Hopefully it's showing to some extent.

http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/4910/day73plus.png
I totes forgot to actually break this up into multiple images for classifying, but it should be pretty straightforward which parts are which (otherwise i'd fix them right now, but I need to get to bed so that I'm not totally dead for work in the morning). The only two things I can really say are, first off, I was pretty amused to find a basic shape-to-solid combination that you hadn't demonstrated in your original examples, Saeyan: cones! I think this amused me more than it should have at the time.

Secondly, I feel like my shading of the building was pretty much crap, but Ima go ahead and post it here for the sake of getting told why it's crap. This is one of those things that just feels totally beyond me at some unknowable level. I understand the deal about shading to the basic shapes that make up the larger model, but for whatever reason, whenever I set about that myself, it just feels wholly and completely wrong, and I don't know why. Oh well, strive to learn, I suppose?

[Eleanor_Rigby]

I wrote a pretty long post a while before my most recent one that talked about When Young Eleanor_Rigby saw the sketches of Leonardo da Vinci and a Fair Bit More Besides, Including Various Responses to Various Persons but either the forum ate it or I accidentally just closed the window instead of posting it (I was pretty tired at the time).

Speaking of tiredness - I very much intend to do this exercise, because geometric shapes are among my greatest enemies and I'm almost completely clueless about how light sources work in practice so it's definately one I want to brush up on, buuut my course stuff means I won't be able to upload it today. And loathe though I am to say it, the coursework kinda needs to take precedent as far as deadlines go. :smallbiggrin:

But when I'm less busy I'll pop in with comments and stuff and maybe even some art [rolls eyes]

Interesting stuff so far, guys. :smallsmile:

Ooh! But,
a)Welcome to the thread Keveak and other newcomers I'm not so familiar with and
b) I like your new... Powerpuff...Man...? avatar Thanqol? Or is that one of your recurring female characters and I've just mistaken her for a man because she looks determined and I'm a dufus? [has a sinking it's one of the ladies from the art thread. Will probably check later]

[Thanqol]

Ooh! But,
a)Welcome to the thread Keveak and other newcomers I'm not so familiar with and
b) I like your new... Powerpuff...Man...? avatar Thanqol? Or is that one of your recurring female characters and I've just mistaken her for a man because she looks determined and I'm a dufus? [has a sinking it's one of the ladies from the art thread. Will probably check later]

The avatar is a female, she's Charger one of my three OCs, and thanks ^^

Alright. I've been working on this week's projects in disconnected fragments all over the place. I may as well throw up what I have, but what's not pictured is 5-10 pages of failed architectural drawings that I deleted in pique even though I should have kept them to show how I was progressing.

Oh well, I pay for my short sightedness with humiliation. Here's what I got; one really quick light and solid shapes, and one example of a drawpage that shared this thread's exercises with half a dozen other things.

Sorry; I'll produce a more focused result next time.

http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/1651/day243.jpg

http://img337.imageshack.us/img337/4996/day245.jpg

[Saeyan]

ha ha so much for getting home early. Students' exam scripts came in and spent the afternoon marking.

Spheres:
http://sigmaplus.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/005.jpg
This helped a lot. Cleared up some misconceptions about form shadows on spheres.

Building as seen from my window. The first try was very messed up (the second one slightly less):
http://sigmaplus.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/004.jpg
Trying to break down a photo (left side) and a disproportionate study on the right:
http://sigmaplus.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/006.jpg

The silly thing is that I forgot to add shading (probably the biggest use of breaking things into basic forms) afterwards!
Will get to what has been posted so far, and Zorg's drawing, later.

[Saeyan]

Hey hey, let's not die now :smallsmile: what should we do next? Another one of these? Shading techniques? Drawing from imagination?

REPLIES:
Thanqol: you seem to be having some issues with drawing longer lines on a tablet...?

Capt Ido Nos: Ah cones yes! That's actually pretty good. The light is consistent and there is a good sense of solidity. One thing preventing it from looking 'right' maybe is the shading on the dome.
http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS-4XKd0T1FuMF3A0T-e4FG4cW2Kawvlh_j6Nl4dOrBSxLbP6U8
Circular forms are hard to shade convincingly without observation.
But hopefully this helped you see the usefulness of breaking stuff down. It's quite well done.

Hyoumu: See Capt Ido Nos' submission for an example of what the building exercise is about. For the cup - well, it looks like a cup, but I can tell you did not look properly at what was in front of you when you drew the shadow.
Zorg: Fuzzy line meaning the strokes used to draw were not clear and sinuous, more of short semi-haphazard strokes overlapped frequently. http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/6333/zorgface.jpg

Keveak: OK you have the fuzzy line thing going on too. The great thing about working in digital is that you can feel out the outlines first, then do cleaner lines on a separate layer on top. You seem to have been shading based on the photo, which makes things a bit complicated as the light is pretty diffuse and coming from all directions except the ground. Angles of lines on the iPhone look correct but the proportions are off.

Eleanor: Try the Lazarus extension for Firefox. Has saved my ass a couple of times.

[Mina Kobold]

Hey hey, let's not die now :smallsmile: what should we do next? Another one of these? Shading techniques? Drawing from imagination?

Keveak: OK you have the fuzzy line thing going on too. The great thing about working in digital is that you can feel out the outlines first, then do cleaner lines on a separate layer on top. You seem to have been shading based on the photo, which makes things a bit complicated as the light is pretty diffuse and coming from all directions except the ground. Angles of lines on the iPhone look correct but the proportions are off.

I do usually do that, but I was mostly sketching for this one to see how well I could do with those. I have a bit of a problem with fuzzy lines in my sketches. ^_^'

But I will make sure to ink them properly for the next exercise!

Proportions are indeed something I need to work with, perhaps the practice with these exercises will help! :smallsmile:

On what the next one should be, shading sounds more essential. But that might be because I do most of my art from imagination and have learnt to miss all my errors in doing so. :smallredface:

[Thanqol]

Hey hey, let's not die now :smallsmile: what should we do next? Another one of these? Shading techniques? Drawing from imagination?

I'd love a lesson on drawing from imagination because I've got no idea what the protocol is on that. I'm also unsure on how much you have to change something before it's 'yours'.




REPLIES:
Thanqol: you seem to be having some issues with drawing longer lines on a tablet...?

I do? Hm, now that you mention it, there is a bit of an audible mental clunk when I decide 'big sweepy line time' and start drawing from the elbow. I should observe that. Hmmm.

EDIT: Oh! And I just heard of such a thing as a 'posing mannequin' which is basically a doll for artists. I intend to seek one out unless there's a compelling reason not to, and I mention it here in case it helps anyone else :smallsmile:

http://i.imgur.com/U0Zfe.jpg

[Eleanor_Rigby]

I don't know about anybody else but whilst I find 'posing mannequins' adorable I also find them to be essentially worse than useless. I mean for one thing, they're usually gender neutral, or assumed to be: you can get male ones or female ones, but not in every store and the difference tends to be slight. For another they're very generalised and they have no chin, jawline or neck which is... well at the very least it's weird. Putting an actual head or a face on one of those things would be awkward because then you've just made a sweeping generalisation on head and face shapes... but then, you get fairly different shapes and sizes of the other parts of people too, so... The feet bother me because they might as well not be there and appear to be really fairly random/wacky shapes for feet - I guess they're in shoes? The one in the picture has more reasonable feet than the ones I'm remembering, but even then they're a bit ...not really right. They're generally pretty hard for me to morph into a picture that looks like a person...

The worst thing about my posing mannequin, however, and this may be a fault that's more specific to mine than the mannequins in general, is that I cannot pose it. It holds surprisingly few poses and most of the ones it does deign to stay in are impossible or very uncomfortable for a human to mimic or at least make it fall over. Being made of wood and lacking muscles and a flexible spine probably doesn't help with the avoidance stiff poses either. I think I have a particularly bad one (it has weird articulation in the torso, and tends to sproing out of poses) but somebody else in my house has one too (a more traditional one) and it's really not a whole lot better. (At least I don't think it is - I'm not really allowed to mess with it :smalltongue:) I'm sure they help some people, but they haven't helped me (I do think they're amusing though).

On the subject of sweepy lines, I tend to avoid them because I'm not comfortable with them. When 'inking' some of Mazeburn's pencil sketches on MyPaint I tended to reduce the piece a bit when a big line came up. On the other hand - I kind of needed to see where it was on the screen so I had to reduce it a bit, but couldn't reduce it until it was tiny or else I'd be pretty sure to deviate a fair bit from it. Also, my tablet's not quite as wide as a portrait sheet of A4, so there's that... But I tend to draw too small in real media too...

As for what the next exercise should be... I've not managed to get this exercise done yet! I draw a lot from imagination but I don't tend to know where shadows would fall (largely because I don't tend to shade anything in the first place, even when drawing from life), I'm also quite nonplussed by perspective. I get the general idea, but I need more practice at it and I've not had a lesson on how you're supposed to figure it out. I need to practice at a lot of things though so... I don't know where I'm going with this...

[looks up lazarus extension]

[Zorg]

Sorry, while I've been about I've not been in much of a state to deal with much drawing stuff.



ha ha so much for getting home early. Students' exam scripts came in and spent the afternoon marking.

Spheres:

This helped a lot. Cleared up some misconceptions about form shadows on spheres.

Something about the sphere on the right looks off to me. I think it's to do with the lower lighter point, like it's slightly too square. Maybe :smallconfused: :smalltongue:




Building as seen from my window. The first try was very messed up (the second one slightly less):

Trying to break down a photo (left side) and a disproportionate study on the right:

The leftmost figure reminds me of the way some anime/manga/comics are drawn - as they (sometimes) use two tone shading in such a fashion. It's not a bad way of getting used to shading things.



Hey hey, let's not die now :smallsmile: what should we do next? Another one of these? Shading techniques? Drawing from imagination?

Something on drawing from imagination sounds fun :smallsmile:



Zorg: Fuzzy line meaning the strokes used to draw were not clear and sinuous, more of short semi-haphazard strokes overlapped frequently.

That's what I thought you meant :smallsmile: I think much of that is actually my rubbish shading in that pic.
Much thanks for the info on the construction lessons, at least I'd identified a few of them myself so I guess I'm learning something :smalltongue:

Applied knowledge:

http://i147.photobucket.com/albums/r314/Gotthammer/40k/Aela.jpg

Also went shopping at Eckersley's and picked up some 'paper stumps' to blend the shading, which seemed to have worked rather well. Got an easle set up too.

The tip of her nose isn't perfect and I think her mouth and maybe chin is a little off centre. Still, a bit of an improvement if I do say so myself :smallbiggrin:





I don't know about anybody else but whilst I find 'posing mannequins' adorable I also find them to be essentially worse than useless.

...

The worst thing about my posing mannequin, however, and this may be a fault that's more specific to mine than the mannequins in general, is that I cannot pose it. It holds surprisingly few poses and most of the ones it does deign to stay in are impossible or very uncomfortable for a human to mimic or at least make it fall over.

One thing I've used to slightly more success than mannequins (who I agree with you on) are 12" action figures - Action Man, old skool GI Joe, Dragon figures or the like. They're often much more poseable and come in a variety of physiques, but still have some of the same limitations.

[glemis1]

I would love to get better but don't have much time so i'll casualy do it.

Art: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=230768
Interested in:[B]: Everything
[B]media: pencil,soon tablet

[Zorg]

Glemis, your newer stuff has improved hugely, those flowers in particular - and I echo Saeyan about the line weight, it's what makes them stand out so much.

'nother drawing, this time done blocking out shapes geometrically, either with sketching or the power of my mind to help with shading and positioning:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-SadfObqnNTU/TzAL_RntxmI/AAAAAAAABUE/qnr9JTqb-fc/s1600/Urs06.jpg

Also, different perspective and (hopefully) natural looking posing. Her boots aren't quite right, but you can't win them all :smalltongue:


And earlier I commented my dismay about not being able to draw straight lines, the reason for that is that this pic:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qosCgwI9ZNo/TOE_3ZxL7bI/AAAAAAAAAwA/edk65qgNnTc/s1600/LisbD01.jpg

was done completely without a ruler (or pencils [and mostly on my lap at Florence Airport]). So, not even being able to draw a square, let alone a cube, was a bit of a bummer.
Still, I've set up an easle and got some white gloves (sans a couple of fingers now) so am applying the line / arm exercises as well.

[SiuiS]

I have been working on the exercises, but I don't have anything to show for it, really. I am breaking down things I perceive as monotone into their shades and shadows. I can't quite bring them to mind yet, and it's been frustrating drawing stuff knowing I should be able to figure it out from memory... I'm getting there though.

[Saeyan]

I have been working on the exercises, but I don't have anything to show for it, really.
Just show it anyway!:smallbiggrin:

Zorg, the second head is an improvement. Hair is a bit unnatural though. And the drawing with two figures is quite nice.

Something about the sphere on the right looks off to me. I think it's to do with the lower lighter point, like it's slightly too square.
I think I got a bit frustrated with the shading and just randomly put a reflection in there. But yeah it does look a bit weird now that you mention it.

Mannequins - I agree with Eleanor, pretty useless. Action figures are a good idea, there was this ultra-poseable Spiderman figure (no longer in production) that many illustrators used to help with foreshortening.



Also went shopping at Eckersley's and picked up some 'paper stumps' to blend the shading, which seemed to have worked rather well. Got an easle set up too.Stumps...not a huge fan of them, but mostly because they get horribly misused by beginners copying celebrity photos in pencil :smallannoyed:

Stuff people have suggested for next exercise. Can we have a vote?

Proportions
Shading
Drawing from imagination
Perspective


Proportions - of what? People? Learning to gague proportions accurately? (It's painful...I just started doing a proportion drill during my breaks at work and it's so very torturous)
Shading - Like shading techniques? That's pretty medium-specific and really the best way to learn is just play around with what you have :smallsmile:
Imagination - I think that's our ultimate goal here, but it's pretty hard to cover in one exercise. I was thinking maybe every few 'regular' exercises we could have one round of drawing from imagination - that way we can see if the exercises from observation are helping in drawing from imagination, and it would be a bit more interesting than drawing spheres and wiggly lines.

[Domochevsky]

Hm... yeah, voting for perspective here. Specifically forshortening and its extremes. :smallsmile:

[SiuiS]

I'm with Domo. Perspective seems like a natural next step.

[Zorg]

Zorg, the second head is an improvement. Hair is a bit unnatural though. And the drawing with two figures is quite nice.

Thanks, I was mostly focussing on the face (obviously) so just stopped when that was done as hair isn't something I've quite got the hang of so didn't want to stuff up the rest as I was very happy (true story).

Weirdly the duet pic started at at a different POV angle with Ursula (on the floor) sitting with her knees up and arms wrapped around. Kept fiddling and it just kinda morphed... :smallconfused:



Stumps...not a huge fan of them, but mostly because they get horribly misused by beginners copying celebrity photos in pencil :smallannoyed:

Like all tools they can certainly be overused. I'm loving them because I can't blend shading to save my life otherwise.


Stuff people have suggested for next exercise. Can we have a vote?

I'm going to go perspective as well. I did technical drawing in high school so have the mechanical version, but dynamic perspective and things like foreshortening are not in my skillset.

[Thanqol]

But guys. Guys. Perspective is hard.

Nah, you're right, it's something I haven't been doing enough of recently. Let's do it.

[SiuiS]

Ok, so on a lark I started drawing from a photo and found that I was using it as a study of shapes and shadow. And since it's applicable here, I figured I should post it :3

Original image:

http://i1229.photobucket.com/albums/ee468/WizardPony/73c5084a.jpg

Copy Image:

http://i1229.photobucket.com/albums/ee468/WizardPony/e7ed745b.jpg

http://i1229.photobucket.com/albums/ee468/WizardPony/c7a346a1.jpg

Normally I would not be so proud of this, but seeing as it was a casual sketch with ball point... Oh, and I did use some suggestions on how to Se a ballpoint pen lightly? Too. So thanks for that.

You can't see the underlining blue very well, but I built out the shape using a combination of skeletal structure and musculature, represented by planes in the same way Thanqol said he uses red boxes. It worked pretty well, methinks, though the left half of his face doesn't have enough definition.

[the_druid_droid]

Hmm, haven't posted directly here in a while, but I could use some suggestions from you folks. Lately I've just been drawing various subject to try and get some practice in, and the most recent thing I've finished has been a profile drawing, based on a photo. (Suddenly I realized that timing and juxtaposition make this seem like a rip-off of SiuiS' post... <.<)

Anywho, here's the drawing:
http://i1225.photobucket.com/albums/ee385/the_druid_droid/head.jpg

And the original:
http://i1225.photobucket.com/albums/ee385/the_druid_droid/profile.jpg

Lot of issues here, especially with regard to the nose and eyes, although there are some things I also like about it. Overall, I really feel like it was a mixed bag, and a reminder at the very least to pay close attention to what I'm actually seeing as I'm drawing.

[Zorg]

[color="darkgreen"]Ok, so on a lark I started drawing from a photo and found that I was using it as a study of shapes and shadow. And since it's applicable here, I figured I should post it :3

The most obvious thing is that either his face is too large, or his head is too small. Looking at it as a sketch of anyone, rather than someone specific you could probably get away with just the eyes being shrunk down a bit and moved closer together.
To match the specific picture his jawline needs to be much longer - the tip of his collar is blocking a fairly large part of it. Your pic looks to have just as much jawline visible, but without the collar tip spacing it out it becomes compressed.
Could also be that he's missing his neck so it's throwing my perception off a bit.

The right side of his face has a sketch line where you've mapped him out to have a convex cheek, but the final line is concave. I'd put that down to ballpoint being a PITA to work with sometimes.

The musculature lines seemed to work well .



Normally I would not be so proud of this, but seeing as it was a casual sketch with ball point... Oh, and I did use some suggestions on how to Se a ballpoint pen lightly? Too. So thanks for that.

Don't press so hard. I can draw lightly with a ballpoint, and that's the way I do it, but I'm not sure how I do it more than that, sorry.




Anywho, here's the drawing:

In pure copying terms the things I'm seeing most are his eye is a fraction too far forward (left of page) and the top of his ear is too high. There's something going on with his forehead, I think the brow ridge is different and it might be a tad short overall.
Or maybe it's that his nose is too short (the tip looks smaller) and it's shrinking his face.

Shading wise the whole piece is very monotone. If you had a lighter background and also lightened parts of some areas (nostrils, sinuses, above the eyebrow, top of forehead, neck and on the ear) it would brign out the defenition of the parts.

[Saeyan]

Just a quick update that I have not forgotten about this thread. Just that I came to the brutal realization that I only have about 2 weeks left to secure enough money to go to a university I actually want to go to so I'm going to be restricting myself to 90 minutes of internet until I come up with halfway-decent scholarship applications.

The good news is that I decided not to extend my work contract after March, and am taking a 2-month sabbatical to paint and learn HTML5/Javascript/Python/Qt/to drive => free time and I will put up a perspective thing.

The art in the last few posts is a bit old by now so I didn't comment on it, but if anyone wants feedback just let me know.