Thanqol Learns To Draw Five: Polymath

[DigoDragon]

Links

Is he a fisherman? Looks pretty built.

[Thanqol]

Is he a fisherman? Looks pretty built.

Less built than he looks when that other guy draws him.

Bus sketching continues to be awesome; I'm knocking off four sketchbook pages per day as a baseline.

I've also made an important resolution! I'm going to bring back/modernize early modern fashion! It's been a sub-goal of mine for a while to update my wardrobe and look and I now know how I want to do that. I'm going to get some suits of wildly different colours and get a tailor to switch the sleeves around, so I'd have a black suit with one white sleeve etc. If I do it right it'll be tasteful, eye-catching and unique. Maybe a bit garish, but not clownsuit level. I spoke to a guy and got an idea for prices (within the range of $100 so expensive but not prohibitively so) so it's something I can do within the next six months.

This plan shall be my foray into fashion! A polymath must express all forms of art!

[Artman77]

Not gonna lie; That. Sounds. Really. Awesome.

[Thanqol]

Not gonna lie; That. Sounds. Really. Awesome.

Yeah! Simple, catchy and I can be guaranteed I will not show up in the same suit as anyone else.

Still going with bus sketching, still enjoying it, but I'm getting a bit worried that it's making me neglect this thread. I am still working on the Primarch lineup but it's all minor iterations and not super worth uploading either. What should I do? I'll think on it.

I find myself drawing this one old guy with, like, a dingo fang necklace and sunglasses a lot because he's the most interesting looking dude on my daily bus.

Bird pooped on me. I discovered that literally everyone in Canberra, from my colleagues to my family to the dry cleaning guy, all believes that this is 'good luck'. I have never heard this before but I had to go through this surreal deja-vu conversation with everyone I mentioned it to.

Little Witch Academia is worth a look on the grounds that it's a short for Japanese animators to push their limits. Normally anime makes a lot of shortcuts to save money but Little Witch is a really cool example of what happens when they really detail out every frame and movement.

[goto124]

I can be guaranteed I will not show up in the same suit as anyone else.

Or the same anything as anyone else, really

[DigoDragon]

Little Witch Academia is worth a look on the grounds that it's a short for Japanese animators to push their limits. Normally anime makes a lot of shortcuts to save money but Little Witch is a really cool example of what happens when they really detail out every frame and movement.

I think that depends on the anime. I've seen some very pretty shorts.

Also, a short has the advantage of basically being like one episode as opposed to 13-26 episodes. You can put a lot of detail into one small episode without killing your budget or staff. Plus, you can do it as a side project, or be a crowdfunded new studio to make it. Making a long-running series? That'll get too pricey without sacrificing something for it. Animation is a business too, with all the politics and annoyances therein. You gotta think of how to make enough money to keep your shareholders/investors happy and meet deadlines to get your series on the air.

[Thanqol]

Day 1737: VistaView

Phew. Too long without an upload. Gonna try and do some digital stuff this weekend!

Links

[Thanqol]

I'm trying to break into a new style but it's really, really hard. The hand-eye co-ordination, the artistic vision, I've got that. What I don't have is an understanding of the techniques I'm meant to be using. Brush shapes and setting, which part of the layers to colour first, what I need to translate from sketching to inks... just generally how to structure the process of doing the picture.

I've got some ideas. I've tracked down some tutorials and am going to give one a try tomorrow. Really hope that this gets me somewhere because this is easily my least favourite part of learning how to draw and was a big reason why I was struggling a few months ago. Only working on hard stuff like this for two days a week and being able to do more relaxing sketches during the week has done a great deal for my mental capacity though, and I'm able to come at it from a better rested point of view.

[Thanqol]

The art continues at a steady clip, but dang is it dragging on this thread.

But the sketchbook is an amazing conversation starter. I made two friends and got a date out of it this week alone!

[DigoDragon]

and got a date out of it this week alone!

Really? Whoa cool. Hope you have fun with that! :D
It's good to be social.

[Thanqol]

Day 1745: NewPaints

Okay. Trying out a new painting/sketching style based on a tutorial. It's very 'first draw a circle then draw the rest of the pony' but I think I've figured it out. Looking forward to seeing how this resolves!

Links

[Thanqol]

Day 1747-1749: Grapevine

This is a really odd one to work on. Still in progress.

Links
Two

[DigoDragon]

Two

I like the choice of colors. The suit contrasts nicely with the mane.

[Thanqol]

So in the absence of uploads, let me talk about some of the people I'm drawing regularly on the bus. I mostly draw men, particularly older men because like I've said before I think they have more interesting faces. Everyone's either white or Asian, though, I wish I had some more diverse models.

The Cynic: Fat, long raggedy hair, weedy moustache, smoker.
The Hunter: A muscled old man with a fang necklace
The Doctor: A gaunt, pale, sleep-deprived man who gets on at the hospital
Gordon Freeman: A guy who looks like the HL2 guy
The Prince: A handsome man with a square jaw and confident stare
The Eccentric: An old lady with futzy hair and shiny sunglasses
The Jamaican: A guy rocking the Rastafarian look, dreds and shades
The Model: An absurdly pretty Asian man
The Tracker: An old guy with a beard and Akubra hat
The Psychopath: A kid with big grey-blue eyes and a baseball cap who I'm constantly afraid is gonna kill everyone
The Neckbeard: A young man with no moustache, a long beard and greasy hair
The Officer: A guy in a crisp white Navy uniform and a Col. Sanders look to him


This sketchbook is not looking half bad at this point. I'm mostly stuck on drawing faces but I've got some good experiments with posing there too. Since everything is on A6 and a lot of it's in 2H it's not going to upload gracefully though.

[Deadly]

Everyone's either white or Asian, though, I wish I had some more diverse models.

At least you're looking. I've been looking for art and high-quality pictures of black people for years, and it's amazing how little there is, especially of the really deep black.

[Thanqol]

At least you're looking. I've been looking for art and high-quality pictures of black people for years, and it's amazing how little there is, especially of the really deep black.

A few seconds of googling gets me this.

[goto124]

If someone drew black people (I myself am not sure what it means) in black-and-white sketches where skin color is left as the color of the canvas (typically... er... white), how would they look different from sketches of white people or Asians?

[Thanqol]

If someone drew black people (I myself am not sure what it means)

People of African descent.

in black-and-white sketches where skin color is left as the color of the canvas (typically... er... white), how would they look different from sketches of white people or Asians?

The noses and lips are very differently shaped. Hair often follows very different styles too. I particularly like how older African men look; their faces develop lines in very different way from Europeans.

[Deadly]

A few seconds of googling gets me this.

Thanks. Those are good, and there are several I don't recall seeing before.

I've been Googling and Googling and Googling for exactly that sort of thing. It's not that there aren't plenty of results, but I find that very little of it is actually what I'm looking for, and I've spent hours sometimes sifting through results for the few good ones. Maybe my search terms have been wrong, sometimes that happens, but I feel like I've certainly tried a whole bunch of different options. There are occasional treasures, though, no doubt about it.

It's even worse on dA. Part of the problem may be the general uselessness of dA's search, but even if it wasn't so terrible I'm sure I'd still be struggling to find just ten good pictures. Even when you do find something ...

The noses and lips are very differently shaped. Hair often follows very different styles too. I particularly like how older African men look; their faces develop lines in very different way from Europeans.

... yeah, people often forget or ignore that.

[Madcrafter]

Maybe you should take a vacation to Papua New Guinea. Huge variety of people there and I bet you lots of interesting faces.


Also kind of puzzled how someone could not know what the term black person means. You'd have to be really remote from US news media somewhere with a very low black population, because even never hearing the term it shouldn't be hard to make the association. North Europe or East Asia maybe?

[Thanqol]

New people:
- The Anime; a cute Japanese university student with bright pink hair.
- The Salesman; a cool black guy with a white shirt and stylish white headphones

I love that I'm building up these names and narratives for my bus people.

I finished my first sketchbook! I had lots of fun doing this bus sketching and intend to do a lot more. I've been thinking about digital art a lot in between; currently contemplating cell-shading. In June I'm thinking of finally taking some time off and then I might get to shift back to digital.

[Thanqol]

Days 1750-1775: Cycle

I underestimated how well pen and paper drawing and bus sketching was going to fit into my schedule. It perfectly solves multiple time-related problems and I'm enjoying it to the point where I'm just not even thinking about digital art right now. It feels relaxing not having to worry about brush settings and colour composition and it naturally expands to fill a time which is otherwise empty.

It's a bit troublesome because I've got nothing to really upload for the past few months! I'm working on A6 pages (a6 notebooks fit perfectly in my pocket) and going through 3-8 pages a day; lots of short sketchy things which can't be scanned and aren't worth the trouble of photographing. With the year end video coming up I'm going to try and make it my business to get at least a few more digital pictures in the running. But this isn't without precedent; I've gone to pen and paper while working I the past and to a degree it's just the cost of being gainfully employed.

[DigoDragon]

Well, having nothing to upload does make it a bit difficult to critique the work.

[Thanqol]

Well, having nothing to upload does make it a bit difficult to critique the work.

I know it's so inconvenient!

I always mentally pronounce your name as 'DiggleDragon' by the way.

[Anarion]

I know it's so inconvenient!

Is there any way to do a short upload process of the sketchbook? Scan the whole thing in one go maybe?

I always mentally pronounce your name as 'DiggleDragon' by the way.

*Snort*

[DigoDragon]

I always mentally pronounce your name as 'DiggleDragon' by the way.

Sounds like a Pokemon.

Well, I've also been called DidoDragon, DiegoDragon, and DigDug. So mispronounced names are nothing new to me. :3

[Madcrafter]

Sounds like a Pokemon.

They look kinda like pokemon too.

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Uploading paper stuff is a pain; maybe just do a few choice pieces so we get a sense of what you're doing.

[Thanqol]

Is there any way to do a short upload process of the sketchbook? Scan the whole thing in one go maybe?

It's tiny A6 wirebound pages often done in 2H pencil; even if I had a scanner it would be uncooperative. Everything that makes it easy to do on the go also makes it a pain in the butt to post online.

[Anarion]

It's tiny A6 wirebound pages often done in 2H pencil; even if I had a scanner it would be uncooperative. Everything that makes it easy to do on the go also makes it a pain in the butt to post online.

Hang onto them, and in another 5 years or so, the price and effectiveness of the hand scanners they use to digitize old books will get low enough and good enough respectively to make sense for the average consumer. Then you can do it all.

[goto124]

DiegoDragon

Here you go.

It's tiny A6 wirebound pages often done in 2H pencil; even if I had a scanner it would be uncooperative. Everything that makes it easy to do on the go also makes it a pain in the butt to post online.

Take an image with your phone and upload them online?