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Well I've never done this before. Drawing from life (well, photos of life) is hard.  So it's pretty atrocious. I especially need to get the head proportions right and I can't draw that hand without it looking like a pig hoof. Also the left hard got cut off because I ran out of room on the paper  Critiques/help greatly appreciated 
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Nov 20, 2011 01:02
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Kikka posted:If you make a lovely line, just erase it and make a new one. Pretty sure that's his blind contour, which is this week's assignment.
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Nov 20, 2011 01:12
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Little Miss RKO posted:Pretty sure that's his blind contour, which is this week's assignment. ...  hers. But yes, that's my blind contour.
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Nov 20, 2011 06:27
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Brick Shipment posted:Well I've never done this before. Drawing from life (well, photos of life) is hard. I wouldn't worry too much about that hand; foreshortening can lead to what we interpret as rather bizarre shapes at times. Honestly I think the shape of the hand is pretty accurate. One thing you might want to try for accuracy is finding a unit of measurement within the figure; I tend to use the height of the head when drawing a full body. For instance, if we're using the width of her head, her right leg is about 1 and 3/4 heads long extending from the rightmost part of her stomach, whereas in your drawing it's at or just a tiny bit over 1 head long. If I'm drawing a figure I tend to do a very quick gesture drawing to start me off, then going back and using relative measurements to get everything accurate. Hope that helps, I know I don't explain it nearly as well as my figure drawing instructor does.
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Nov 20, 2011 19:59
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Brick Shipment posted:Well I've never done this before. Drawing from life (well, photos of life) is hard. I second the suggestion above to do a quick gesture beforehand. The pose you have in that photo is pretty dynamic and extreme. Your drawing, on the other hand feels not quite so energetic, which I think is in part due to the less bendy quality of your figure versus the woman. For example, notice the negative space between her back and butt. It's almost a ninety degree angle. In your drawing, you really took this harsh angle down a lot and made it more of a curve. She no longer looks like she's contorted in an extreme way, so it doesn't affect the viewer as much to see this pose. A similar thing is going on with the curve made by her breasts, hips and stomach. In the photo, it is very bendy, but in your drawing, it's almost a straight line. Doing a quick sketch beforehand will probably also help you with the problem of having her extremities run off the paper. I have to kick myself in the butt over that a lot myself  .
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Nov 20, 2011 20:22
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NerdyNautilusGirl, you need to find a way to adopt an attitude of not being afraid of your lines. One thing that helped me out with this, and to just get better with lines in general, was to work in a permanent medium. Use a pen and just draw things. If you make a lovely line, then just get over it and move on. You don't want to obsess over it. You might be able to adapt to that lovely line and work around it. Adapting your mistakes is really a huge skill set when you're using traditional media, and it can carry over into digital if you prefer that. The more lines you draw, the better you'll get at them. You just need to develop your confidence with them, and as you keep practicing your fine motor skills/hand eye coordination/whatever you call it, will get more refined. Some of the exercises that Kikka listed would be great. Just draw some basic shapes and lines over and over again to get your confidence up. Even doing that before you start working on an actual piece can really help to just warm up your hand and make it steadier. I usually do that before I start inking something because I know my hand can be shaky sometimes, especially if I haven't drawn in a while. You need to be able to strike a balance between drawing lines and just saying "gently caress it, I'll do better next time" if they're not perfect, and knowing when a line is really bad enough that it needs to be erased. It's sort of like writing in a way. You can either write out a mediocre paragraph and learn from it what you need to do better next time or spend hours rewriting the same sentence over and over again. Me, I'd rather have a lovely paragraph I can refine later than one lonely little sentence that might be perfect but doesn't really mean anything on its own.
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Nov 20, 2011 20:39
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DurianGray posted:NerdyNautilusGirl, you need to find a way to adopt an attitude of not being afraid of your lines. One thing that helped me out with this, and to just get better with lines in general, was to work in a permanent medium. Use a pen and just draw things. If you make a lovely line, then just get over it and move on. You don't want to obsess over it. You might be able to adapt to that lovely line and work around it. Adapting your mistakes is really a huge skill set when you're using traditional media, and it can carry over into digital if you prefer that. The more lines you draw, the better you'll get at them. You just need to develop your confidence with them, and as you keep practicing your fine motor skills/hand eye coordination/whatever you call it, will get more refined. In three short paragraphs you just laid down learning how to draw stripped to the bare bone.
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Nov 21, 2011 16:22
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Brick Shipment posted:Well I've never done this before. Drawing from life (well, photos of life) is hard. I know you have been critiqued to death but I want to know your outlining process to better understand how you draw. How do you lay out the shapes, do you draw a quick gesture?
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Nov 21, 2011 22:00
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Here, have some terrible gesture drawings. I still need to figure out how to get better scans of pencil stuff. edit: Now with better scan! Medenmath fucked around with this message at 01:17 on Nov 23, 2011 |
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Nov 22, 2011 02:15
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Third Murderer posted:Here, have some terrible gesture drawings. Perhaps this will help: http://browse.deviantart.com/?qh=§ion=&q=scanning+sketches#/d2koibb It looks like you scan at a very low DPI. I usually scan at 700-750.
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Nov 22, 2011 02:39
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Every blind contour I ever do comes out like this. That is ok because they are always very fun to color.  
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Nov 22, 2011 03:41
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Don't know if this is a good place to ask, but would you guys say that using a traditional pencil is vitally important to properly learning to draw? I ask because I find mechanical pencils more comfortable, but I always feel that my drawings feel too clean. Would you recommend switching to a traditional wooden pencil or is there nothing inherently wrong with using mechanical pencils?
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Nov 22, 2011 07:35
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pandaK posted:Don't know if this is a good place to ask, but would you guys say that using a traditional pencil is vitally important to properly learning to draw? I ask because I find mechanical pencils more comfortable, but I always feel that my drawings feel too clean. Would you recommend switching to a traditional wooden pencil or is there nothing inherently wrong with using mechanical pencils? It depends what kind of a line you want to achieve. With a mechanical you're going to have to go over certain lines many times to make them thicker. With a conventional pencil, you get more control over thick and thin lines. If that line weight variation is not a major part of the look you're going for, I don't see any serious problem with using mechanical pencils exclusively. You might also consider a lead holder (clutch pencil), which is pretty much a giant mechanical pencil with bigger leads. Those are nice because the grip is the same as a regular mechanical pencil, but because the lead is broader, you can sharpen it to a point or use its sides for thicker lines or shading. Also, you can swap out leads of different hardnesses.
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Nov 22, 2011 13:29
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pandaK posted:Don't know if this is a good place to ask, but would you guys say that using a traditional pencil is vitally important to properly learning to draw? I ask because I find mechanical pencils more comfortable, but I always feel that my drawings feel too clean. Would you recommend switching to a traditional wooden pencil or is there nothing inherently wrong with using mechanical pencils? As a goon who likes his materials just for owning the materials, you should use what you are comfortable with and what makes you draw more. Sooner or later you will find that some things you want to do, you cannot do with a mechanical pencil and you will start messing around with a normal pencil anyway. I have no clue about the learning how to draw.
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Nov 22, 2011 13:55
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I'm not the best artist in the world but I think it's really important to not limit yourself to one medium early on. Mechanical pencils are a good tool for certain situations but if that's all you can use I think it will limit you. Try to use charcoal for a different end of the spectrum. Use vine charcoal and draw on a very large sheet of paper. You will get a different style and will be able to do a lot of different things. It will make you rely a lot less on line and force you to use more value compared to the strengths of a mechanical pencil.
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Nov 22, 2011 20:04
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I use both. My drafting pencil and ordinary mechanical one is for if I am doing illustrations that get scanned in. For drawing life, it's best to use drawing pencils, I have several of each kind. It's good to try all mediums.
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Nov 22, 2011 21:25
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Derringer posted:Perhaps this will help: http://browse.deviantart.com/?qh=§ion=&q=scanning+sketches#/d2koibb Aha, thanks. I think that was the main problem; I'm using Paint.NET and the DPI setting is in a weird place so I didn't even think to fiddle with it. New scan uploaded. thousandcranes posted:Every blind contour I ever do comes out like this. That is ok because they are always very fun to color. I like this one, it's pretty neat. 
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Nov 23, 2011 01:20
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I continue to creep out my art class! Clearly we were one scene away from realizing it was the necronomicon not the bible.
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Nov 23, 2011 19:46
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I kinda fell off the map for a while, but I'm back! Here's my 1 minute gesture drawings.  How do people do these? I barely have time to see the pose in a single minute. None of these are accurate and most are barely human looking. This is my blind contour. It's supposed to be a plush bunny rabbit.  And here's just some cartoony scribbles I did without lifting my pen from the paper.  I'm trying to stick to drawing straight with pen and letting the lines fall where they may. Pen scans much better too.
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Nov 23, 2011 21:24
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Keetron posted:In three short paragraphs you just laid down learning how to draw stripped to the bare bone. Thanks? I'm guessing that's a good thing? Nessa! Great to see your exercises, I especially like the cartoony things in the third picture. I think that you're really starting to come into your own style. About your gesture drawings, I've seen this a lot before and I know I've done it before. You might not realize it, but it looks like you're focusing more on the outline than you are the form. For really short gestures, you need to focus on capturing the volume of a figure, not the outline. You know about the cartooning concept of Line of Action, right? Gesture drawings are more about Line of Action than silhouette. Instead of trying to draw people when you're doing a gesture, just try to draw the basic blobs that make them up. What parts are heavy, where is the weight distributed, what's the motion of the pose, etc. Here's a gesture drawing I pulled from GIS/Flickr:  Can you see how the focus is on the volume and shapes that make up the figure, rather than on the outline? A few of them even look like they have the Line of Action drawn in. They're still recognizable as human in the end, but it's not because of details. Next time you do a gesture drawing, try making ovals or loose shapes to represent the figures, not just outlines, and see what happens.
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Nov 24, 2011 01:53
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Nessa posted:
I was doing 30 second gesture drawings last night (way less time) and I generally just looked and decided what was the defining part of the gesture. If it was the positioning of the limbs I would usually draw them as circles really fast, if it was the contour of hips or back I would spend the 10 or so seconds needed to do a fairly accurate blind counter of it. I never just tried to outline everything; you won't have time to do that well enough even in a minute.
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Nov 24, 2011 03:24
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DurianGray posted:Thanks? I'm guessing that's a good thing? I'm glad you posted this because I wanted to reply to that but I couldn't find the words. Great post. My own two cents: When you look at anything, you're seeing two things. There's the way it exactly looks in reality, then there's the way it hit your brain. A huge reason to do gestures besides getting the volume is finding the simplest way your brain interprets the pose so you can build an infinite variety of complexity onto it later. You're looking at how the pose hit you emotionally and then translating the emotion rather than the rational image. Human brains are peculiar in that emotions almost always trump logical interpretation. Looking at your gesture picture, it's great that you got the whole body down in a minute, but it looks like you're getting sort of a tunnel vision and prioritizing the angle of every limb and edge separately instead of the simple curves that make something a drawing and not a photo. I did a visual aid in case my words failed. Even if you just think of these lines in your head, as long as your consciously aware of them they help gesture drawing immensely because they're the guidelines for the rest of the drawing.  http://i.imgur.com/W7tYD.jpgI guess the advice I could give would be: Try to pick these lines out before you start drawing, then try to adhere to their general curves as much as possible, even if it doesn't feel right because of an apparent angle. Second, try to use long sweeping lines across whole limbs or even bodies, even if those lines aren't 100% the reality. Here are some drawings I did of people all around this week, to lend myself some credibility or to destroy what credibility I might have had. These were all probably about 30 seconds to a minute. Would love to hear any advice on it. 
Diseased Dick Guy fucked around with this message at 04:12 on Nov 24, 2011 |
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Nov 24, 2011 04:10
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Thanks. I had never really attempted drawing a full figure in 60 seconds, so I'm not surprised that I didn't do it right. I'll try to do more "line of action" work the next time.
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Nov 24, 2011 05:09
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So I remember that I got some really good advice about line confidence, so I decided to do a small exercise to see if I could start trusting my hand more. So I did something where I'd have to learn to trust myself to do shapes. In this, I didn't erase a single line, and relied on the shapes themselves to make everything pop, instead of scribbling all over the place. I'm going to probably do several versions of this, with different line styles to build confidence, but I decided basic is the way to go at first.
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Nov 24, 2011 06:41
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 That is looking pretty great! One thing I'd suggest is that you make the robe a little lighter because it's sort of hard to see it against the background. It's all really dark. I like the look/style of this thing though, seems like it'd make a good stencil or something. Looking forward to seeing the variations!
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Nov 24, 2011 07:36
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Derringer posted:I know you have been critiqued to death but I want to know your outlining process to better understand how you draw. How do you lay out the shapes, do you draw a quick gesture? To be completely honest, I kind of don't. I do plot out general basic 3 dimensional shapes before I draw, but they're nothing like the ones posted above mine, and that is something I need to work on, as others have said. I find them quite difficult because I have trouble breaking down the object into basic shapes I think. And I absolutely do not mind being critiqued to death, I'd be disappointed if I wasn't     I think I more or less made the same mistakes I did last time. I tried measuring with heads, and I'm not certain if that's improved anything or not. e:spelling Brick Shipment fucked around with this message at 09:37 on Nov 25, 2011 |
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Nov 25, 2011 09:27
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NerdyNautilusGirl posted:So I remember that I got some really good advice about line confidence, so I decided to do a small exercise to see if I could start trusting my hand more. So I did something where I'd have to learn to trust myself to do shapes. In this, I didn't erase a single line, and relied on the shapes themselves to make everything pop, instead of scribbling all over the place. I'm going to probably do several versions of this, with different line styles to build confidence, but I decided basic is the way to go at first. I don't really have much a critique beyond what you already got, but I just wanted to say I really love this picture and this style. I think it would make a really cool shirt design (anything in this style would.)
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Nov 26, 2011 01:04
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Its a good sign that wherever I go if I see something interesting my hand just sorta twitches and I think "Hrrm, how would I go about drawing that..."
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Nov 26, 2011 19:42
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So I have no idea what to do with the weird skeleton guy. So I did an owl instead. I didn't erase a single line. I think I did pretty well- it made me commit to lines instead of always worrying about screwing them up.
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Nov 30, 2011 12:34
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Hello thread. I hope you all had a good American turkey festival, and that nobody is being hammered too hard by finals season. Here are the collected blind contour drawings from the last assignment! (NerdyNautilusgirl) (Third Murderer) (thousandcranes) (Nessa) (Kismet)thousandcranes, I really really love the look of those coloured. I might nick that idea in future. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  Challenge Six: Wed Nov 30th - Wed Nov 7th Theme Challenge: The Ugliest Animal  Time for another open theme! You know the drill by now, anything goes so long as you can plausibly relate it to the keyphrase 'the ugliest animal'. I look forward to recoiling in horror and/or delight. Any style, any medium, and no technical limitations this time.
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Nov 30, 2011 13:31
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NerdyNautilusGirl posted:So I have no idea what to do with the weird skeleton guy. So I did an owl instead. I didn't erase a single line. I think I did pretty well- it made me commit to lines instead of always worrying about screwing them up. I really like that. For me its a lot better than your skeleton, more confident and natural. Stick to being bold! Here is a picture I did from this mornings paper. Talking of being bold, I should probably return to colouring in real life.  Since I feel guilty at not doing more assignments, and being the first post and all... So here is the start of my campaign to reduce the pressure the mainstream dog-fashion media places on young hounds.  Click for bigger Withers fucked around with this message at 16:04 on Nov 30, 2011 |
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Nov 30, 2011 13:39
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I'm glad this thread isn't ded. I'm sorry we made you this way, pug. I am sorry. Tried this in Photoshop with my mouse since I don't have a tablet and I'm tired of putting up ugly phone pictures of my stuff. edit:  Ugly sharks need love too. Goblin shark loves bask shark. Astro-Zombie fucked around with this message at 09:54 on Dec 2, 2011 |
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Dec 2, 2011 07:12
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 It needed a partyhat. Nobody will know it was an ear that went wrong. Also, he might be really fugly, if you look into those eyes you are sold. Pentel pocket brush on some cheap sketching paper.
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Dec 2, 2011 21:46
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I've decided to take my art education in my own hands, so - having discovered this thread a few weeks ago - I've finally worked up the nerve to start posting. I'm going through the exercises in order, so here's my "Fill a page":  (Photoshop via a Bamboo tablet. Deliberately limited myself to black "ink", although I played around with brush size a bit.) Be aware: It is entirely possible that my purpose in this thread is to serve as a warning to others and make "atrocious" (like I see at the top of this page) not look quite so bad. 
SneezeOfTheDecade fucked around with this message at 04:10 on Dec 6, 2011 |
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Dec 6, 2011 04:05
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Decided to try drawing something all in pen for a change of pace. I like how it forced me to work with whatever I just did instead of allowing me to constantly second guess myself. Plus it scans way better than pencil.
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Dec 9, 2011 02:53
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 (Withers) (Astro-Zombie) (Keetron) (Third Murderer)I started on an ugly duckling kinda thing, but it spiralled out of control a little and now I want to finish it as an illustration project, so I'll just concede this challenge and get the next one up. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Challenge Seven: Fri Dec 9th - Fri Dec 16th Theme Challenge: All I Want This is a very special time of year. As the days grow colder and the nights grow longer, it's impossible not to hark back to the days of childhood and the feelings that were kindled in us so long ago. Yes, that's right. It's the season of late shopping, scraped budgets, hastily recycled secret santa contributions and In these hard economic times, let's celebrate consumerism the old fashioned way - by fantasising unrealistically about what we really, really want this year. 
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Dec 9, 2011 15:38
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Heh, seems pugs are universally regarded as being unsightly.
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Dec 10, 2011 16:39
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I am doing figure drawing from this site http://www.pixelovely.com/gesture/figuredrawing.php I was using vine charcoal on large newsprint, but after I got into the 30 minute poses I noticed that when I started with vine charcoal and tried to go over it with regular, darker charcoal that the charcoal didn't seem to really mix with the vine charcoal. For instance I used the vine to fill in a large area with some medium value, then when I went in to do highlights with a darker charcoal, it just kind of floated on top and didn't blend at all. How are you supposed to use vine charcoal? I like it a lot for what it does, but I can't get it to mix with other kinds of charcoal.
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Dec 10, 2011 19:37
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systran posted:I am doing figure drawing from this site http://www.pixelovely.com/gesture/figuredrawing.php Harder charcoal isn't going to blend with vine because vine is more of a chalk. It can't get as dark, and the vine will always just kinda sit on top of the paper. Unless you mean something else and I'm way off.
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Dec 11, 2011 07:04
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So if I use vine what can I use afterward?
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Dec 11, 2011 08:27
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