Oh no, no that's just planning. I should had made that more apparent. Would it be better if I posted the black and white pic instead? I need to redo the whole stuff with the chairs, as I messed up and drew them in a square formation rather than a circular formation. Right now, I want to know if I got the story down, and to what degree. Would it be ok if I game more direction to my criticism, by asking the questions I feel I need answer to right now regarding these pieces?
Oh no, no that's just planning. I should had made that more apparent. Would it be better if I posted the black and white pic instead? I need to redo the whole stuff with the chairs, as I messed up and drew them in a square formation rather than a circular formation. Right now, I want to know if I got the story down, and to what degree. Would it be ok if I game more direction to my criticism, by asking the questions I feel I need answer to right now regarding these pieces?
Personally, I always think its okay to state your intent when you are looking for critiques, but for someone like you who needs to lock down and focus on the basics, I would be careful with this. I say that from experience. I went back through one of my old threads and looked at my responses to critiques when I was waaaay outside of my technical depth. If I had slowed down and focused on the issues at hand, I would have progressed forward faster. I can read those posts and know the exact mindset I was in at the time, which was busy, stressed out, and not really patient with the process of improvement.
For instance, the problem with trying to nitpick these to death is that some of the issues are still with basic technique. Things like, when your black outlines are too thick, or your brush choices are making for a mushy, non descriptive drawing. Its a lot easier to explain those parts of the issue when you don't have to deal with, literally, multiple planes of existence and glass floors and shit. Its like you are asking "What wood stain should I use on this table top?" while we are trying to say ""It it doesn't matter, the legs are broken"
You are never going to stop trying to tackle these more complex illustration, it's just part of the nature of being an artist and being excited to get your ideas down, but the more you hear "Do these studies" the more likely you are to actually do them.
Oh no, no that's just planning. I should had made that more apparent. Would it be better if I posted the black and white pic instead? I need to redo the whole stuff with the chairs, as I messed up and drew them in a square formation rather than a circular formation. Right now, I want to know if I got the story down, and to what degree. Would it be ok if I game more direction to my criticism, by asking the questions I feel I need answer to right now regarding these pieces?
Personally, I always think its okay to state your intent when you are looking for critiques, but for someone like you who needs to lock down and focus on the basics, I would be careful with this. I say that from experience. I went back through one of my old threads and looked at my responses to critiques when I was waaaay outside of my technical depth. If I had slowed down and focused on the issues at hand, I would have progressed forward faster. I can read those posts and know the exact mindset I was in at the time, which was busy, stressed out, and not really patient with the process of improvement.
For instance, the problem with trying to nitpick these to death is that some of the issues are still with basic technique. Things like, when your black outlines are too thick, or your brush choices are making for a mushy, non descriptive drawing. Its a lot easier to explain those parts of the issue when you don't have to deal with, literally, multiple planes of existence and glass floors and shit. Its like you are asking "What wood stain should I use on this table top?" while we are trying to say ""It it doesn't matter, the legs are broken"
You are never going to stop trying to tackle these more complex illustration, it's just part of the nature of being an artist and being excited to get your ideas down, but the more you hear "Do these studies" the more likely you are to actually do them.
Completely understand what you mean and I truly appreciate your comments, but what am I supposed to do? Stop doing the piece all together and not get payed for it, thus not being able to pay my rent? I'm trying my best to improve as an artist but it becomes incredibly difficult to sit down and work on studies for 2-3 hours, if you also have to work on stuff for people in order to survive. I'm trying my best here, waking up earlier than usual so I can do studies and such things, because I want to improve as an artist, but I can't go back and re-learn everything and put, well my whole life in jeopardy. So with this in mind, what do you suggest I do? Cause even though I feel like I'm understanding things much more clearly and I actually feel like I'm making huge leaps in my art with these new pieces, I haven't heard actual criticism on them, just "stop and do studies" but to what degree will that help me give life to my idea? If all I do is do studies and carry on with the actual ideas. Shouldn't there be a balance between research and output? I feel like that's what I can do, I would love to spend the next 3 months doing studies, but I'll probably shoot myself in the head halfway through it. A bit from boredom and a bit from not getting any money. And don't get me wrong, but in sitting and trying to understand what I want to do with my art, not just visually but in every sense of the word, as I don't just only do art, but I also do music, and animation. Is tell stories, which is what I'm trying to focus on right now, I would love to have the greatest understanding of say light and mass, and other technical things but that's simply not possible for me at the moment. I'm trying my best to figure it out by painting new pieces and doing research on them, but going back and re-learning basics will currently set me back a ton.
I don't mean to come off as an ungrateful asshole, but if I want to improve it kinda has to be inside my parameters, otherwise I lose all I've built for myself till now, and that's not something I can afford. I took a huge leap when I decided to make art my life, and I do not regret it. Which is why I want to get better, but I ask that you take these things into consideration when suggesting I just do studies.
Because from my point of view, and I may be beating a dead horse now, I am doing studies with these new pieces. I'm trying to learn how to properly shade, and I feel like I'm getting better at understanding how light shade figures. Especially the tankman, neither of the pieces are done, and I posted them for that same reason. So I could see what wasn't working and I could move forward with them, and bring them to a point where I am satisfied with them and I can create a new piece, and tackle a different thing that I feel I lack knowledge or technique in. Is that not studying?
And I learned that at the end of the day, people just see art, like art. Museums and galleries, see art as just that, art. They don't see our mistakes and our troubles our lack of knowledge on certain things. So they don't care and people pay for what they like, period. Even if it technically it makes no sense. If they like it, they'll buy it. And I'm not at all saying that I'm doing this for the money, but if it's not up to me what sells and what doesn't, why should I care about making a "picture perfect, realistic image, with perfect shading" and at the end not feel good about making it? I'll be broke and unhappy?
I sincerely hope I don't come off as arrogant or an asshole, because that's not what I want. I am simply trying to explain myself. And if there's nothing I can do to further myself within the parameters that life has given me, then I'll have to do it on my own, and that's completely ok as well.
I'm not saying "stop" I'm saying "whats wrong with these is whats generally wrong with all your work".
You want help with what you're posting, I get that. I also get that you are doing client work and it demands your attention. It was similar when I was at school and I had art I had to make for assignments and the stuff I was putting down on the forum was secondary work and I just didn't feel like I had the time to focus on it. I would be lying if I said that "I dropped everything and started doing only academic work for a year and then improved" I didn't. I certainly focused on making sure each thing I did was trying to address an actual problem in my work, though.
I did material studies, I started doing master studies, I tried art camp, all of those things helped me actually improve. I'm not saying you aren't improving, I was just advising you to police yourself when it comes to deflecting critiques that are about your core skills. The truth is I spent maybe a week on material studies and got more useful feedback in terms of how to render that then informed my work for the next... two years? You will not be able to do that while tackling client work, so you have to do both.
Let me address this though:
I haven't heard actual criticism on them, just "stop and do studies" but to what degree will that help me give life to my idea? If all I do is do studies and carry on with the actual ideas. Shouldn't there be a balance between research and output? I feel like that's what I can do, I would love to spend the next 3 months doing studies, but I'll probably shoot myself in the head halfway through it. A bit from boredom and a bit from not getting any money. And don't get me wrong, but in sitting and trying to understand what I want to do with my art, not just visually but in every sense of the word, as I don't just only do art, but I also do music, and animation. Is tell stories, which is what I'm trying to focus on right now, I would love to have the greatest understanding of say light and mass, and other technical things but that's simply not possible for me at the moment. I'm trying my best to figure it out by painting new pieces and doing research on them, but going back and re-learning basics will currently set me back a ton.
First, You have received some crits that directly relate to the work at hand. The robot sketch is difficult to read, that's because the basic forms aren't quite lit or constructed in a way that makes it identifiable as to whats going on. That's a solid statement, but if you don't understand whats actionable about it, its kinda hard to get into without talking about lighting principals on basic forms. Lamp is talking about the disjointed nature of your buildup process, as you go along, you can for sure try and make sure people see what you are trying to do and know where the painting is going to go.
For instance, I often don't often concern myself with the colors early in my painting process, but I still use them generally. That's fine, but to a certain degree I know if a critique being made will be invalidated or not. If I want help through the process of a piece, its easier to make a concentrated effort in doing so. For example, I did that when working on my twitch illustration last fall: http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/31086870/#Comment_31086870. In lieu of studying this gave me good insight on my process and allowed me to actually implement feedback, it was a process of being both clear in my intent so people could actually help, and taking the time to implement feedback as it was given. I don't do that when I'm working on a more fluid painting, like the experimental dogs and such, because my process is a lot less informed and the feedback wouldn't be able to see inside of my head and know what I may completely wipe down and change.
The studies break these down problems into smaller parts. You don't have to stop and start doing oil paintings, you do have to actually tackle the issues though, that's all we are tying to get at. Its not an accusatory stance on your choices as an artist, so try and really take the the emotions out of it, if you can. I work multiple ways, you can also work multiple ways.
You cant let the fear of making money and the risk of choosing art as an actual career get in the way of making every critique you get productive, and working on your technical fundamentals. With the kinds of illustrations you want to do, its not optional. If you wanted to draw characters standing around with flat backgrounds and no lighting, you could maaaybe get away with skipping some of these basics, possibly with just learning some better construction. But you want to draw high flying crazy robots in the sky. Does it really "Hold you back" to slow down and force yourself to draw a rectangle with strait lines? Even if that means every illustration you do for the next five years will be better constructed?
Think about your work in the long term, think about what you really want to do with yourself. When I had commissions and worked 60hr weeks in retail and wasn't making my loan payments, I still did art camp. Its not really a sacrifice of your time to try and improve your skills, you don't have to drop anything, (well, maybe your social life for a little while.).
Does any of that make sense? You don't sound like an asshole, but you sound pretty defensive. Telling you to study shouldn't threaten your future as an artist, it should give you directions and goals.
You can try to fit your studies in to finished pieces that you intend to sell, but you'll get less out of that than specifically focusing on one thing, grinding it till you know it, and then moving on to the next thing to learn. What Iruka is saying is that you will progress more quickly if you back up, focus on the basics, and then build on top of that. Her table analogy is great, so I may be beating a dead horse when I present another, but here goes: You're trying to build a castle on sand. It would be wiser to build the castle on bedrock, even if it takes a little longer to find a good plot. There is something to be admired in perseverance, but it can get very frustrating if you're ultimately making more work for yourself (insert Holy Grail 'built the castle in a swamp' scene here). The castle is your art career (or a complex piece, whatever fits in whatever context you want to apply), the sand is poor fundamentals, and you can probably guess the rest. Sure, art is subjective, and people like what they like, but you're talking to a room full of artists here. We're going to nitpick when we see shit that's wrong, and we know how to fix it.
We're not pushing for realism, just believability. A big step towards believability, even if your figures aren't realistically proportioned or human or whatever, is a good sense of lighting. A good sense of lighting comes from understanding how things occupy space, how they will catch light or cast shadow. A good way to understand how things occupy space is to do studies of basic objects sitting in front of you, in space, and observing how THEY catch light or cast shadow. A can, a ball, a book, whatever. Everything you will ever draw can be broken down into those basic shapes, and if you can draw a 3D shape with lighting on one side and shadow on the other, consistently, you can scale that knowledge up to everything else you'll ever want to draw.
Edit: Iruka got to it before I did, I don't mean to pile on, I just want you to understand that it's not a waste to learn fundamentals -- it may feel like it as you're doing it, but it informs everything you do after.
double edit: The gesture drawings look really good. Do more!
Maybe this is all just a problem of how the process is being perceived. I actually am trying things with like drawing rectangles and everything so I can understand how light works, which is what I was talking about when I said the "planes" thing. Here's my actual process layer by layer. The colors are just gradient maps, I don't actually paint anything in color. If this is the issue that you think that I'm just shooting from the hip and not slowing down to think this was simply a huge misunderstanding ans I'm not trying to deflect anything. Like these two pieces I've been trying to slow down and focus on things slowly. I've put about 3 hours into the client piece and about 2 into the robot piece and I'm still not done, with it. There's still much more I want/need to do.
3 hours for a scene that complex is really not much at all, I don't think anybody thinks you're nearly done or anything.
Nobody's accusing you of not drawing rectangles, but maybe they're not particularly good rectangles? They robot piece especially is frankly a mess. That's fine, drawings are often a mess at the start, but you're already starting to paint in light etc, when the underlying structure of the buildings and upper parts of the robot is not really defined properly, or in the right perspective. It's more of a thumbnail then a base to work from. The light is going to be wrong and it's going to look wrong and it will be a pain to fix. If you take this starting point and try to polish it up to something that looks finished, it will actually take you way longer than if you go back now, take the time to draw out your perspective (as you did more with the client piece), take the time to build up the forms properly, and then lay down your lighting and start painting in.
If you genuinely don't care about improving because "people pay for what they like" then why are you here?
And I'm not saying that it is, I know that. Which is why I posted the WIP. Because I wanted to know how to move forward with, for 3 hours, I think it's good where it's at, but there's much more work to keep doing on it.
I know the robot piece is a mess, it's not done, I'm just laying down marks so i can later fix the perspective and everything. The robot is not defined because I first need to design it, but I know I want it to be in the background towering like that. Right now, I'm trying things out on the foreground and just laying down minor stuff for the background so I know what's going to be there at a certain point. Look at this, it's the layer by layer gif, as you can see I've been focusing on mostly the foreground right now. http://gifmaker.cc/PlayGIFAnimation.php?folder=2015070800IzbaCCWwRO6nrUwgyWiHKE&file=output_PzvBSl.gif
And like I said, I do care about improving but I care about improving for myself, not for what people want. But if I want to improve for myself then I need to ask the questions that pertain to what I'm trying to achieve the best right now, and we're here talking about lighting when I don't even know if the idea is being conveyed in the first place. I don't want to spend 10hours on a painting only to at the end that what I had in mind as an idea, was being conveyed wrong from the start. No amount of proper shading, will help when at the end of those 10hours, all that reads is that I learned how to shade.
Oh, well, then no, the idea is not being conveyed.
I agree there's no point spending a lot of time on polishing the lighting of a fundamentally flawed piece, I don't think that's what people are saying. I think they're saying you need to figure out how to unflaw the piece before you take it further.
Well that's what I'm trying to figure out, but it's not the lighting because that's all just extra icing on the cake. It's probably the three different perspectives I'm trying to put into the image, I want to have the tank coming in with the barrel all the way up on the camera but slightly to the left so there's some space to put the character on top of the barrel about mid way on the length of the whole thing. Then I want the background to stretch back and ground the whole piece, and finally I want to give a sort of worm's eye view to on the robot, while still maintaining him really off to the distance.
For the other piece, I want the glass to look like glass. Which I can probably achieve by having a reflection of the sky and capture the light that's shinning on God better, but behind all that I want to have the sky seem like it stretches into the distance while also appearing like you're looking at the clouds from above.
I think you're kind of fixating on the word 'light' which Iruka used exactly once in her initial crit, and it was as an afterthought to the word 'construct'. And that's what your perspective, etc is all about - the image construction. All these recent comments have been about "hey maybe step back and figure out the perspective and forms before diving in", not lighting.
My apologies then, I thought since I was told to one of my worse problems was my shading, and was suggested to do studies so I would understand light better, I assumed we were still talking about light.
This is the essence of what I'm getting at, though. I don't think we are on the same page. You've got 99 problems and lighting is just one. You are trying to get at such high level technical achievements, this is a like an Escher painting where you want to paint this glass surface and replicate all this light, but right now its all a wash because of the root issues. When I look at your sketches I have all these questions:
and looking at the robot thing, same thing:
Its a little unfair to us, though, to say we aren't critiquing what you are putting up considering this is all stuff we've been saying, through out your thread. I cant really begin to get into how you would render a glass floor, because its really a struggle to get you to level with us on these basic concepts. I can't teach you how to bake bread if you don't understand how to measure flower. You cant be upset that you cant do one, if you feel like you don't have time to do the other. Doing the studies is what gets you to understand these problems in a way that is solvable, right now you literally don't have the perception or vocabulary needed to get at the larger issues.
Maybe if I had time I could do some paint overs, but thats really just trying to help you see something on top of what we know are a lot of structural issues. For instance, right now my only indication of your understanding of glass is this: https://us.v-cdn.net/5018289/uploads/editor/3q/zsshwbn5dt1j.jpg
But its done so quick and the shading is non descriptive, I cant really drill down to tell you whats accurate and whats not. I know its supposed to be a glass, but it didn't get any closer to actually observing what that means. Where was the light coming from, in this piece? Why isn't it strait? What are the two shadows on the rectangle its sitting on? Why are the rectangles lines slightly curved? I honestly cant tell if its because you did it super quickly just to get it over with, or if you honestly cant see the issue. Or maybe its a combination of both.
These aren't questions that are about you drawing the best glass on a cube to appease us, its because ultimately not being able to render a glass on a table is the reason you cant make up a glass floor in a sky or draw a robot foot in perspective. Its so much more difficult to tackle these issues when they are piled into the most complicated work you can possibly tackle.
The painting is for a client, I get it. But the reason we are telling you to study your fundamentals isnt because we want you to stop and not make money, its because you don't seem to get how important it is for literally everything you are trying to do. You are going to finish the piece, finish it. But you need to take just as seriously your basic exercises. I easily spent 20 hours on that rat, for instance. I probably spent that long on my material studies perhaps more, and I have a day job. You aren't a hobbyist, so I don't think its out of line to tell you cant just not study because it makes you bored and you'd rather try to make money.
You need to put the time in, and we are going to try to help, but you have to have an attitude shift on what you think is helping you. You are on a journey that requires no small amount of effort. You cannot simply allow yourself to believe that the path of countless artists working on their fundamental skills and slowly applying that to their work, concentrating on their forms and accuracy, and putting a heaping fuck load of time into refining their skills, somehow does not apply the same to you.
After a shit ton of contemplation, you're all right. So yeah, let's do it. What now? I understand I have a lot of problems with my fundamentals. But I can't work on it all at once, so what should I focus on at this moment? Should I focus on my lines and draw a bunch of figures in order to improve that aspect of my basics, or should I do light? What should I work on first?
Nice dude. I was worried you wouldn't come around.
I know you dont want to hear anything about eggs, but the reason we're so hardcore about these basic shape studies is that they can teach you fucking everything.
Look at kel's thread: http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/199013/kels-comic-art#latest the rapid improvement there spans like, a week? But she really put some effort into those shape studies and in turn we were able to tell her precisely what was wrong with her initial attempt.
If you do these calmly and accurately it will teach you multiple things. Like how to set up a box in perspective without wiggling lines and how to observe light and shadow. These are the basic building blocks you will take to everything else. Just take it seriously, take it slow, and we can begin to tell you what you need to read/practice to improve. If you can focus all your energy for 8 hours on how to render a cube and an egg that looks legit, I promise you will actually take something away from it.
I think it would be good for you to step back from really complicated, ambitious compositions. Try scenes that are more straightforward and just have less stuff going on. One character and a building, or a tree on a hill in front of mountains and a river, etc. Keep your lighting and perspective setups for them simpler, not at this art poster or comic-book-cover level of difficult.
And like Iruka keeps reminding, you need to do studies from reference. Need to develop that internal, intuitive understanding of how light, perspective and composition work.
There's unfortunately just no shortcut for that. But improving that stuff is totally within your power. It's like sports, the work you do on exercising empowers you for the part you really enjoy. You do get *some* exercise just by playing the sport all the time, but that won't help you reach the next level. Sports analogy aside, if doing some of the really core, classic studies just takes more willpower than you think you can muster, it can still help a lot to simply recreate the work of your favorite artists.
Nice dude. I was worried you wouldn't come around.
I know you dont want to hear anything about eggs, but the reason we're so hardcore about these basic shape studies is that they can teach you fucking everything.
Look at kel's thread: http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/199013/kels-comic-art#latest the rapid improvement there spans like, a week? But she really put some effort into those shape studies and in turn we were able to tell her precisely what was wrong with her initial attempt.
If you do these calmly and accurately it will teach you multiple things. Like how to set up a box in perspective without wiggling lines and how to observe light and shadow. These are the basic building blocks you will take to everything else. Just take it seriously, take it slow, and we can begin to tell you what you need to read/practice to improve. If you can focus all your energy for 8 hours on how to render a cube and an egg that looks legit, I promise you will actually take something away from it.
It took some time, but in the end I understood, I just though there was an innate problem with my idea and you were like jabbing at it, but that was just me being dumb and scared of judgement. And you're fucking right, if every other artist did it, why the hell do I think I'm exempt from it.
I'll do that, cubes and eggs are boring as fuck, but the idea of rendering light efficiently and correctly is enticing, so I'll do it for sure!! Thanks for everything and I'm sorry for my dumbness.
I think it would be good for you to step back from really complicated, ambitious compositions. Try scenes that are more straightforward and just have less stuff going on. One character and a building, or a tree on a hill in front of mountains and a river, etc. Keep your lighting and perspective setups for them simpler, not at this art poster or comic-book-cover level of difficult.
And like Iruka keeps reminding, you need to do studies from reference. Need to develop that internal, intuitive understanding of how light, perspective and composition work.
There's unfortunately just no shortcut for that. But improving that stuff is totally within your power. It's like sports, the work you do on exercising empowers you for the part you really enjoy. You do get *some* exercise just by playing the sport all the time, but that won't help you reach the next level. Sports analogy aside, if doing some of the really core, classic studies just takes more willpower than you think you can muster, it can still help a lot to simply recreate the work of your favorite artists.
Thanks so much for that mate, I understand what you mean, and I think for now I'm going to get really good at light, I'm pretty good and "drawing" simple stuff like characters but I really need to actually spend time on my studies. I feel like I actually know how to draw, I mean I made a living drawing but that's about it. My coloring is horrible and my lighting even worse, not to mention perspective. I'll definitely do all of this. And fuck it, I don't have a reason why I should do ten awesome pieces now, if in the end they're gonna end up a mess I might as well take some time and actually learn fundamentals so I can apply them to everything. I'm also starting to learn how to actually study or rather on the practical level, it's all about breaking it down. You don't have to know every single in one sitting, just slowly build up my repertoire of knowledge. If I know the core basics of how perspective works, and shading that means I'll be able to draw 3d images efficiently and that's already a huge weapon in my artistic arsenal. Then I can go crazy and start breaking barriers in my own art.
Hi there. I hope you'll take this in the spirit of encouragement that's intended, but your drawing skills need as much work as anything else. Not to worry, knowing that just means you can focus your efforts more effectively.
Specifically what you need to work on is constructive drawing. I know that this is hardly a new concept for you, I can see you building your characters out of basic shapes like cylinders and boxes here and there, such as that robot/tank piece. That's good! But you need to take that and push it much further.
The best way to study constructive drawing is by really digging into figure drawing. That's because there are a lot of resources that specifically break down how to construct the human figure, and learning how to build the human figure out of simple parts will teach you heaps about drawing in general. Pick up Michael Hampton's book Figure Drawing Design and Invention, it's the best primer on constructive figure drawing I know of, as well as being more accessible than a lot of classic figure drawing books. Supplement that text with texts that are less construction-focused such as Andrew Loomis's Figure Drawing for All It's Worth, which is good for things like gesture and proportion. Do your best to apply that information to drawing the figure from reference and seek feedback. Figure drawing from a live model is really the best thing you could do, but I know not everyone has a figure drawing group in their neighborhood, nor the expendable income to pay for that every week. But if you do a web search and find a group nearby then I can't recommend it highly enough.
The basic lighting exercises that Iruka recommended are REALLY good, because you'll apply all that information to your figure drawings (as well as every other drawing!). If you learn to construct an arm as a cylinder, and the head as an egg shape, then you'll know how to light those organic shapes on the human body because you studied those shapes on their own already!
Speaking of reference, I think it would REALLY help you if you most gave up the idea of drawing from imagination for a while. Inventing figures and worlds is fun, and you can feel free to doodle to break up your studies, but for now that's not going to teach you anything if you haven't studied the real thing by doing simple still lives and drawing from photo reference as the bulk of your drawing time. Otherwise, you'll just be repeating your mistakes and incorrect preconceived notions about how things look.
But that doesn't mean you can't do imaginative work! It just means, USE REFERENCE even when you want to make up a fantasy scene or character. If you want to draw a figure, find reference for the pose and lighting, or shoot your own with your smartphone or computer webcam! If you want to draw someone sitting in a throne, sit your butt down in a chair, set up a lamp for lighting, and have someone snap your picture! Yeah, you probably don't want every character you ever draw to look like you, but just getting the basic basic pose and lighting information is invaluable.
Not to mention that reference will help you expand your visual library. For example, look at that mushroom character exercise you started on the last page. The mushroom element on every character just looks like basically the same simple cartoon Super Mario mushroom that you have in your head. But mushrooms come in all shapes and sizes! Think of the variety you could have gotten if you had used more reference, which you could get from a simple Google search.
@Lamp I'm going to go a little against that advice. Not everyone is looking to paint figures and anatomy realistically, and I dont think thinks there's a ton of examples in this thread that made me go "man this guy needs to start doing some live figure drawing"
I tend to be in two camps, you can get really serious and get into hardcore figure drawing if you want to start painting that kind of stuff, and I would recommend it if you were trying to be a concept artist. As more of an illustrator, and a cartoonist, simple shapes, still lives, perspective, and golden age cartoon studies are going to be a more economical use of time. Studying isn't an arbitrary endeavor, you have to look at your work and and think about what your intent is. John K has excellent advise when it comes to cartooning and construction, I suggest checking out his blog.
I agree on using reference, of course, and its not like loomis will hurt anybody. I just don't Meb here to feel like his only recourse is a year of figure drawing when that's not necessarily where he needs to spend his time.
Haha, fair enough. Sometimes it's hard for me to see outside my little box of what works for me. I still think that figure learning realistic figure drawing is by far the best (and maybe the quickest!) way to learn how to draw well, regardless of whether or not you want to end up doing cartoons in the end. That's just my perspective though, so I'm glad you're here to offer a counterpoint, I am sure I have tunnel vision
I will say that while most of this thread is cartoons, the last two images (the robot and the thrones in heaven) kind of gave me the vibe that Mabelma is eager to dip his toe into some more fully rendered sci-fi/fantasy ish scenes. Which is where I was coming from with that advice. SO, I'd really love to ask, Mabelma, what kind of art DO you want to produce ultimately? What's your dream art job?
This is going to sound very dumb, but I don't have a set goal with my art. I want to be able to have all the skills possible to create whatever idea I have in mind. And you're right, right now I want to make cool sci-fi scenes and stuff like that mixed with pretty colors and cool stories but I also want to make comics. And sculptures, and characters and environments, I just want to make art, in every sense of the word, from music to poetry and everything. And being a freelancer gives me a lot of room, if I manage my time correctly; I will get plenty of time to practice things. So is it cool if I do all three things? Dedicating two hours daily to all three things? I get bored fast but I feel two hours will keep things fresh for me. So figure drawing? Perspective? Shading? Coorect?
Working on some animation stuff for a game, I'd love to et some feedback on one of the chraracters but I'm not sure how to post in this thread anymore, should I post studies or animations and paintings or just studies for a while?
You're going to have to dedicate longer blocks of time to certain pieces, but in general switching around isn't too problematic. The thing you have to avoid is not studying something because two hours in you discover its frustrating and hard. You're going to have to hold yourself accountable for a certain level of concentration and quality.
Like, when you get down into these shape studies, I would spend a couple sessions on them, post for crits, and then walk away for a sec. Absorb the advice while you try something related, but different (like perspective) and then go back to shading shapes. You will juggle subjects, but don't abandon them. 2 hours is rarely going to be enough for a study. Theres a reason my old studio classes were 5 hours long. Dumping 20-40 hours into something just ain't no thang, its something you should try to get used to.
I relly do want to do it and I will. Should I look into stuff like videos and tutorials about certain subjects to complement the texts I'll also be reading and the actual drawing? I took some classes in college but I didn't really pay too much attention. Teenage rebellion I guess.
In the spirit of transparency, my arm hurts! I had no idea that drawing from the arm was a thing, but after watching Proko and reading some stuff on it, I thought I'd give it a try, I already see a lot of improvement on my shaky lines and such things. Spent most of today's first 2hours session doing some line stuff to get my arm accustomed to the whole thing, and it hurts but I think it'll be worth it in the end. Here's some of that though, it's just scribbles but maybe you guys will have pointers on how to improve it or make it hurt less. I assume it just aches because I've been drawing with my wrist all my life and only inking with my arm, but drawing with my arm is a new thing, so that's probably why.
Also spent about an hour drawing eggs and trying to render them. I don't have a good set-up for life drawing but I managed to get an egg and light it from the back because the bendable lamp I had broke. Gonna try and get a better set-up in the coming weeks but in the mean time I figured I shouldn't stop because of such a trite reason. Here's some eggs. I can definitely already see improvement from egg 1 to egg 9 but tons of stuff to do and learn.
Here's the stuff from the figure drawing session, contemplation led me to understand some stuff about what happened to me as an artist. And I narrowed it down to the six months I spent in college "studying art" instead of learning the basics I was thrown into a world of galleries and traditional artists who saw my work as mind boggling and inspiring to a certain point, and that felt incredible and instead of doing what I had been doing for years before which is what I filled most of my sketchbooks with, which was study my craft and try my best tot move forward. I went into a sort of "people like me, I'm awesome and great" mode which cloud my vision and caused me to forget a shit ton of things I had forgotten. Which explain the shitty attitude I had when I came back into the future. Anyways I was bitching about doing studies but holy fuck this is proving to be really fun! I did a figure drawing session over on pixel-lovely and this is what I came up with. Looking forward to you guys ripping it apart
The figures are really out of proportion. You'll need to pick up some anatomy books if you want to continue into that realm. The figure is probably not going to get improved until you lock down on those shapes, so I think you should focus on that for a lot longer.
Also spent about an hour drawing eggs and trying to render them. I don't have a good set-up for life drawing but I managed to get an egg and light it from the back because the bendable lamp I had broke. Gonna try and get a better set-up in the coming weeks but in the mean time I figured I shouldn't stop because of such a trite reason. Here's some eggs. I can definitely already see improvement from egg 1 to egg 9 but tons of stuff to do and learn.
All those eggs are pretty terrible. If you spent an hour on that entire page that means you spent barely 7 minutes on each egg? Come on dude. Draw AN egg for 2 hours. One. If you are cranking these things out in minutes you are not spending any time thinking. You need to start thinking. If you were in a class with one of my old drawing teachers, he would take the paper away and force you to stare at the egg for 30 minutes.
How was the egg standing up, by the way? did you prop it on a wall or something? you dont need to over complicate this. Just put it down on the table.
This goes back to this image:
Your digital egg was all lumpy and unrefined, you didn't take the time to use your tools to make it an egg. Well now you don't any technical hoops to jump through, just the sureness of your hand, and your patience. Is that news print? Why is everything so smudged?
I'm going to pull all this from kels thread, its pretty relevant:
One thing that can help with these is to get some real blocks and set up a real lamp. At school, we had a bunch of blocks, bottles, and other simple geometric objects that had been fully painted white. As an exercise, that was Ideal, because you would only focus on the value.
The benefit of getting physical objects is you can move them around, and move yourself around, to get a full understanding of how light works. Approach it like a science project. Let me try and illustrate.
here's two objects, the best I could find off hand. What you want to do is analyze these objects, looking for the following elements:
What you want to do is take your objects and configure them and observe them. At first you don't even have to draw them, keep your light source the same and move the blocks so you can see how the different faces interact when being rotated under the light. keep your light simple (this is one, flexible neck desklamp) and focus in on trying to recreate what you see extremely accurately. Ask yourself whats going on as you go. So with arrangements like these:
Why does the chapstick on the top middle have a white line on the shadow side? On the bottom right, why does the shadow from the eraser appear to wrap around the cylinder? I suggest using bigger objects, if you can get your hands on some plain wooden blocks, that's ideal.
You could spend an hour just arranging blocks like this and looking at it, seriously, and that would be better practice than just pushing these drawings out as fast as possible. Stop rushing! STOP.
Also spent about an hour drawing eggs and trying to render them. I don't have a good set-up for life drawing but I managed to get an egg and light it from the back because the bendable lamp I had broke. Gonna try and get a better set-up in the coming weeks but in the mean time I figured I shouldn't stop because of such a trite reason. Here's some eggs. I can definitely already see improvement from egg 1 to egg 9 but tons of stuff to do and learn.
The figures are really out of proportion. You'll need to pick up some anatomy books if you want to continue into that realm. The figure is probably not going to get improved until you lock down on those shapes, so I think you should focus on that for a lot longer.
All those eggs are pretty terrible. If you spent an hour on that entire page that means you spent barely 7 minutes on each egg? Come on dude. Draw AN egg for 2 hours. One. If you are cranking these things out in minutes you are not spending any time thinking. You need to start thinking. If you were in a class with one of my old drawing teachers, he would take the paper away and force you to stare at the egg for 30 minutes.
How was the egg standing up, by the way? did you prop it on a wall or something? you dont need to over complicate this. Just put it down on the table.
This goes back to this image:
Your digital egg was all lumpy and unrefined, you didn't take the time to use your tools to make it an egg. Well now you don't any technical hoops to jump through, just the sureness of your hand, and your patience. Is that news print? Why is everything so smudged?
I'm going to pull all this from kels thread, its pretty relevant:
One thing that can help with these is to get some real blocks and set up a real lamp. At school, we had a bunch of blocks, bottles, and other simple geometric objects that had been fully painted white. As an exercise, that was Ideal, because you would only focus on the value.
The benefit of getting physical objects is you can move them around, and move yourself around, to get a full understanding of how light works. Approach it like a science project. Let me try and illustrate.
here's two objects, the best I could find off hand. What you want to do is analyze these objects, looking for the following elements:
What you want to do is take your objects and configure them and observe them. At first you don't even have to draw them, keep your light source the same and move the blocks so you can see how the different faces interact when being rotated under the light. keep your light simple (this is one, flexible neck desklamp) and focus in on trying to recreate what you see extremely accurately. Ask yourself whats going on as you go. So with arrangements like these:
Why does the chapstick on the top middle have a white line on the shadow side? On the bottom right, why does the shadow from the eraser appear to wrap around the cylinder? I suggest using bigger objects, if you can get your hands on some plain wooden blocks, that's ideal.
You could spend an hour just arranging blocks like this and looking at it, seriously, and that would be better practice than just pushing these drawings out as fast as possible. Stop rushing! STOP.
Got it, got it. Fuck this is difficult. I'm relearning everything I've ever done artistically, please take it easy on me, jajajaja I got it though, I actually spent an hour on the last figure drawing, the whole session was two hours long. Which I know doesn't sound like much but I've never really done that, it felt really good though and it's a small victory, which makes me happy, though I nowhere near close to where I want to be. Not gonna quit, just happy for myself. But I got it, I propped it up against a black hat I had, the table I had was also black and I figured the black hat would help it pop out to and make it easier for me to see.
As for learning anatomy, should I dive into the books Lamp suggested now, and take a break from the figure drawing sessions and instead take those two hours to read up on the theory of it?
Yeah it's newsprint. Everything's smudged cause for some dumb reason I think smudging helps me blend, but calling me out on it actually helps me a ton. Cause I was thinking the same thing when I saw it reflected on the mirror.
Also about the blocks, is there anyway for me to do this without a proper set-up? It'll be about a week till my next paycheck and I'll be able to get a better set-up and some blocks and cylinders to draw.
I would focus the entirety of your energy on trying to draw an egg that looks like an egg before you start sectioning off parts of your day to read books on the figure. Lamps advice is good but honestly its the next step, not part of the first one.
If you venture to actually draw whats there, your lamp wont matter. A "proper set up" will better position you to understand these concepts because you cant distract yourself with dumb things like wood grain and secondary light sources until you are good and ready to take on those subjects. If you focus, you can draw literally everything on your desk with accuracy, so if you put your egg on a hat I should be able to tell. Propping your egg against a black surface would have completely eliminated the reflected light, and I feel like the cast shadows must be made up then. Don't make anything up, draw what you see, understand what you see.
For blocks, If you have some white paint around, find the simplest objects you have and dunk them in it. Cans, balls, small boxes, whatever. You can do this all insanely cheaply. Use that creative mind of yours, man, put some effort into it.
I would focus the entirety of your energy on trying to draw an egg that looks like an egg before you start sectioning off parts of your day to read books on the figure. Lamps advice is good but honestly its the next step, not part of the first one.
If you venture to actually draw whats there, your lamp wont matter. A "proper set up" will better position you to understand these concepts because you cant distract yourself with dumb things like wood grain and secondary light sources until you are good and ready to take on those subjects. If you focus, you can draw literally everything on your desk with accuracy, so if you put your egg on a hat I should be able to tell. Propping your egg against a black surface would have completely eliminated the reflected light, and I feel like the cast shadows must be made up then. Don't make anything up, draw what you see, understand what you see.
For blocks, If you have some white paint around, find the simplest objects you have and dunk them in it. Cans, balls, small boxes, whatever. You can do this all insanely cheaply. Use that creative mind of yours, man, put some effort into it.
That's what I was thinking about the set-up. I'll focus on this egg for now, and I think I have some white paint somewhere, if not that idea does seem super cost efficient so I'll definitely do that Thanks for that.
The hat was behind, not below it. Below it was the white surface, but maybe I did make it up.
Btw: I am understanding the whole theory behind the shapes thing you're trying to teach me, understood some of the concepts (the idea not the actual doing yet) while I did the figure drawings.
Pretty much agree with everything that Iruka is saying. I think the main thing to focus on right now is to calm down and take your time and stop scribbling. An hour on a figure study is really nothing at all, especially when you're just starting out. Take as much time as you need to get these studies as accurate as you can possibly make them. Producing one slow, carefully observed study that you really slaved over is going to teach you a lot more than rushing through dozens of small scribbly studies. The biggest problem with your egg studies, for example, isn't the final result of any of them, results will come in time. The problem is that it looks like you are rushing. All you can control for now is that you're being mindful and careful and really giving each one your all. Study smart, not hard.
See that photo that Iruka posted with the elements of light and shadow on a sphere? THAT is what you are trying to capture in your egg study. Those labeled elements are what is going to give anything you ever draw a sense of 3D form, no matter what shape you're drawing. You can't draw an arm (which is basically a cylinder), for example, until you can draw a simple cylinder sitting on your desk. Carefully observe and draw those elements of light (highlight, halftone, core shadow, bounce light, cast shadow, occlusion shadow). Don't just draw scribbly gradients.
Remember that everyone here is eager to help with no judgement. Looking forward to seeing more from you
Thank you for the comments @Lamp. I really do appreciate them. I had a bit of time today, and I sat down and well drew an egg. Really tried to just slow down and figure it out. I saw the Proko stuff and a couple of other things and learned some stuff I had no idea about, hopefully it shows on this egg. Rip it apart
Apologies for the horrible quality, I'm using newsprint, charcoal (white/black) and a shitty phone camera to take the picture.
Its looking better! Do you have anything other than newsprint? Its better suited for the sort of "working out your arm" exercises where you pretty much plan to toss it out. I would think that a just the slighted upgrade to drawing paper will help you not have such messy smudging going on. If you are dragging your hand all over the paper (does the side of your hand turn black from charcoal as you go?) try to stop that.
That thing actually looks like a form, so thats a huge step forward. Keep the momentum going.
@Iruka
I got some other papers. I'll give it a try on a new surface, for sure. You really don't know how happy it makes me to hear that. I've learned to not drag my hand over the paper so I don't usually end up with a messy hand now a days, but I do tend to try to blend with my finger that might be the problem; should I cut that out all together? Is there any situation where that would actually be beneficial? Blending with my fingers I mean.
Also I have a bit of problem/question with highlights, I understand how they work, but on say this image where there wasn't a clear highlight. Was I just looking wrong, was it the light or are highlights more prominent on shinier surfaces?
@Iruka
I got some other papers. I'll give it a try on a new surface, for sure. You really don't know how happy it makes me to hear that. I've learned to not drag my hand over the paper so I don't usually end up with a messy hand now a days, but I do tend to try to blend with my finger that might be the problem; should I cut that out all together? Is there any situation where that would actually be beneficial? Blending with my fingers I mean.
Also I have a bit of problem/question with highlights, I understand how they work, but on say this image where there wasn't a clear highlight. Was I just looking wrong, was it the light or are highlights more prominent on shinier surfaces?
On the paper thing, I think newsprint is perfectly fine, though if you're working on rough-grain newsprint (looks like you might be), you may want to try a smoother surface. When I was at Watts they used this for basically any drawing that took 3 hours or less to draw: http://www.amazon.com/18-Inch-24-Inch-Smooth-Newsprint-Paper/dp/B0027A7DBU
It's up to you and your budget, of course- but I personally like to work on cheaper surfaces for practice, because it allows me to do a lot of work without getting too 'precious' and nervous about each one- and it serves as a reminder that hey- yeah I may have spent 3 hours on this thing, but that doesn't mean it's a gallery piece. It just means I put in the time to practice. I've had to toss away garbage bags full of drawings that took that long, just getting the practice in.
On blending with your finger- it's not the end of the world or anything, but there are some issues to consider.
-The oils on your fingers will mix with the charcoal and the paper, making it harder to erase or work over. If you want to do blending, a smooth surface and a tortillion, or working with a brush and charcoal powder would probably work better.
-Blending allows you to be a bit vague in your observations (or many times, it simply allows people to convince themselves they're being more precise than they actually are)- not blending forces you to be more observant and precise in the values you put down throughout the value range, rather than estimating. Which means, it's more of a pain short-term, but helps a lot more in developing your skills long-term.
On highlights, yes, you're correct- a shiner surface will have a more defined reflection than a matte surface.
The simple version: imagine that you've got a ball, and the surface of that ball is mirror-shiny.
You've got a light pointed at it- you can see the refelction of that light on the surface of the ball, just as you would in a mirror.
This is, in a nutshell, what any highlight is. It's where the surface is directly reflecting the origin point of the light.
With a mirrored ball, you can see that highlight very directly. As you can with other very shiny surfaces.
Take the same lighting setup and viewpoint and replace that mirror ball with a more diffuse surface- like say, a raquetball- and looking at it you probably won't see anything that directly reads as a 'highlight'. This is because the surface is rougher on a microscopic level- there's all these tiny little pits and divots that have their own little highlights, cast their own little shadows. When viewed with the naked eye, all those highlights and shadows blend together to create a diffused look, where there is no obvious 'highlight' to point out.
Now, many surfaces are neither wholly diffuse or wholly shiny, which is why people don't immediately hit on the 'highlight=refelection' idea themselves. Highlights can be very spread out and softly defined or very crisp, depending on the properties of the material, and the lighting setup.
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Personally, I always think its okay to state your intent when you are looking for critiques, but for someone like you who needs to lock down and focus on the basics, I would be careful with this. I say that from experience. I went back through one of my old threads and looked at my responses to critiques when I was waaaay outside of my technical depth. If I had slowed down and focused on the issues at hand, I would have progressed forward faster. I can read those posts and know the exact mindset I was in at the time, which was busy, stressed out, and not really patient with the process of improvement.
For instance, the problem with trying to nitpick these to death is that some of the issues are still with basic technique. Things like, when your black outlines are too thick, or your brush choices are making for a mushy, non descriptive drawing. Its a lot easier to explain those parts of the issue when you don't have to deal with, literally, multiple planes of existence and glass floors and shit. Its like you are asking "What wood stain should I use on this table top?" while we are trying to say ""It it doesn't matter, the legs are broken"
You are never going to stop trying to tackle these more complex illustration, it's just part of the nature of being an artist and being excited to get your ideas down, but the more you hear "Do these studies" the more likely you are to actually do them.
Completely understand what you mean and I truly appreciate your comments, but what am I supposed to do? Stop doing the piece all together and not get payed for it, thus not being able to pay my rent? I'm trying my best to improve as an artist but it becomes incredibly difficult to sit down and work on studies for 2-3 hours, if you also have to work on stuff for people in order to survive. I'm trying my best here, waking up earlier than usual so I can do studies and such things, because I want to improve as an artist, but I can't go back and re-learn everything and put, well my whole life in jeopardy. So with this in mind, what do you suggest I do? Cause even though I feel like I'm understanding things much more clearly and I actually feel like I'm making huge leaps in my art with these new pieces, I haven't heard actual criticism on them, just "stop and do studies" but to what degree will that help me give life to my idea? If all I do is do studies and carry on with the actual ideas. Shouldn't there be a balance between research and output? I feel like that's what I can do, I would love to spend the next 3 months doing studies, but I'll probably shoot myself in the head halfway through it. A bit from boredom and a bit from not getting any money. And don't get me wrong, but in sitting and trying to understand what I want to do with my art, not just visually but in every sense of the word, as I don't just only do art, but I also do music, and animation. Is tell stories, which is what I'm trying to focus on right now, I would love to have the greatest understanding of say light and mass, and other technical things but that's simply not possible for me at the moment. I'm trying my best to figure it out by painting new pieces and doing research on them, but going back and re-learning basics will currently set me back a ton.
I don't mean to come off as an ungrateful asshole, but if I want to improve it kinda has to be inside my parameters, otherwise I lose all I've built for myself till now, and that's not something I can afford. I took a huge leap when I decided to make art my life, and I do not regret it. Which is why I want to get better, but I ask that you take these things into consideration when suggesting I just do studies.
Because from my point of view, and I may be beating a dead horse now, I am doing studies with these new pieces. I'm trying to learn how to properly shade, and I feel like I'm getting better at understanding how light shade figures. Especially the tankman, neither of the pieces are done, and I posted them for that same reason. So I could see what wasn't working and I could move forward with them, and bring them to a point where I am satisfied with them and I can create a new piece, and tackle a different thing that I feel I lack knowledge or technique in. Is that not studying?
And I learned that at the end of the day, people just see art, like art. Museums and galleries, see art as just that, art. They don't see our mistakes and our troubles our lack of knowledge on certain things. So they don't care and people pay for what they like, period. Even if it technically it makes no sense. If they like it, they'll buy it. And I'm not at all saying that I'm doing this for the money, but if it's not up to me what sells and what doesn't, why should I care about making a "picture perfect, realistic image, with perfect shading" and at the end not feel good about making it? I'll be broke and unhappy?
I sincerely hope I don't come off as arrogant or an asshole, because that's not what I want. I am simply trying to explain myself. And if there's nothing I can do to further myself within the parameters that life has given me, then I'll have to do it on my own, and that's completely ok as well.
You want help with what you're posting, I get that. I also get that you are doing client work and it demands your attention. It was similar when I was at school and I had art I had to make for assignments and the stuff I was putting down on the forum was secondary work and I just didn't feel like I had the time to focus on it. I would be lying if I said that "I dropped everything and started doing only academic work for a year and then improved" I didn't. I certainly focused on making sure each thing I did was trying to address an actual problem in my work, though.
I did material studies, I started doing master studies, I tried art camp, all of those things helped me actually improve. I'm not saying you aren't improving, I was just advising you to police yourself when it comes to deflecting critiques that are about your core skills. The truth is I spent maybe a week on material studies and got more useful feedback in terms of how to render that then informed my work for the next... two years? You will not be able to do that while tackling client work, so you have to do both.
Let me address this though:
First, You have received some crits that directly relate to the work at hand. The robot sketch is difficult to read, that's because the basic forms aren't quite lit or constructed in a way that makes it identifiable as to whats going on. That's a solid statement, but if you don't understand whats actionable about it, its kinda hard to get into without talking about lighting principals on basic forms. Lamp is talking about the disjointed nature of your buildup process, as you go along, you can for sure try and make sure people see what you are trying to do and know where the painting is going to go.
For instance, I often don't often concern myself with the colors early in my painting process, but I still use them generally. That's fine, but to a certain degree I know if a critique being made will be invalidated or not. If I want help through the process of a piece, its easier to make a concentrated effort in doing so. For example, I did that when working on my twitch illustration last fall: http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/31086870/#Comment_31086870. In lieu of studying this gave me good insight on my process and allowed me to actually implement feedback, it was a process of being both clear in my intent so people could actually help, and taking the time to implement feedback as it was given. I don't do that when I'm working on a more fluid painting, like the experimental dogs and such, because my process is a lot less informed and the feedback wouldn't be able to see inside of my head and know what I may completely wipe down and change.
The studies break these down problems into smaller parts. You don't have to stop and start doing oil paintings, you do have to actually tackle the issues though, that's all we are tying to get at. Its not an accusatory stance on your choices as an artist, so try and really take the the emotions out of it, if you can. I work multiple ways, you can also work multiple ways.
You cant let the fear of making money and the risk of choosing art as an actual career get in the way of making every critique you get productive, and working on your technical fundamentals. With the kinds of illustrations you want to do, its not optional. If you wanted to draw characters standing around with flat backgrounds and no lighting, you could maaaybe get away with skipping some of these basics, possibly with just learning some better construction. But you want to draw high flying crazy robots in the sky. Does it really "Hold you back" to slow down and force yourself to draw a rectangle with strait lines? Even if that means every illustration you do for the next five years will be better constructed?
Think about your work in the long term, think about what you really want to do with yourself. When I had commissions and worked 60hr weeks in retail and wasn't making my loan payments, I still did art camp. Its not really a sacrifice of your time to try and improve your skills, you don't have to drop anything, (well, maybe your social life for a little while.).
Does any of that make sense? You don't sound like an asshole, but you sound pretty defensive. Telling you to study shouldn't threaten your future as an artist, it should give you directions and goals.
We're not pushing for realism, just believability. A big step towards believability, even if your figures aren't realistically proportioned or human or whatever, is a good sense of lighting. A good sense of lighting comes from understanding how things occupy space, how they will catch light or cast shadow. A good way to understand how things occupy space is to do studies of basic objects sitting in front of you, in space, and observing how THEY catch light or cast shadow. A can, a ball, a book, whatever. Everything you will ever draw can be broken down into those basic shapes, and if you can draw a 3D shape with lighting on one side and shadow on the other, consistently, you can scale that knowledge up to everything else you'll ever want to draw.
Edit: Iruka got to it before I did, I don't mean to pile on, I just want you to understand that it's not a waste to learn fundamentals -- it may feel like it as you're doing it, but it informs everything you do after.
double edit: The gesture drawings look really good. Do more!
Nobody's accusing you of not drawing rectangles, but maybe they're not particularly good rectangles? They robot piece especially is frankly a mess. That's fine, drawings are often a mess at the start, but you're already starting to paint in light etc, when the underlying structure of the buildings and upper parts of the robot is not really defined properly, or in the right perspective. It's more of a thumbnail then a base to work from. The light is going to be wrong and it's going to look wrong and it will be a pain to fix. If you take this starting point and try to polish it up to something that looks finished, it will actually take you way longer than if you go back now, take the time to draw out your perspective (as you did more with the client piece), take the time to build up the forms properly, and then lay down your lighting and start painting in.
If you genuinely don't care about improving because "people pay for what they like" then why are you here?
I know the robot piece is a mess, it's not done, I'm just laying down marks so i can later fix the perspective and everything. The robot is not defined because I first need to design it, but I know I want it to be in the background towering like that. Right now, I'm trying things out on the foreground and just laying down minor stuff for the background so I know what's going to be there at a certain point. Look at this, it's the layer by layer gif, as you can see I've been focusing on mostly the foreground right now.
http://gifmaker.cc/PlayGIFAnimation.php?folder=2015070800IzbaCCWwRO6nrUwgyWiHKE&file=output_PzvBSl.gif
And like I said, I do care about improving but I care about improving for myself, not for what people want. But if I want to improve for myself then I need to ask the questions that pertain to what I'm trying to achieve the best right now, and we're here talking about lighting when I don't even know if the idea is being conveyed in the first place. I don't want to spend 10hours on a painting only to at the end that what I had in mind as an idea, was being conveyed wrong from the start. No amount of proper shading, will help when at the end of those 10hours, all that reads is that I learned how to shade.
I agree there's no point spending a lot of time on polishing the lighting of a fundamentally flawed piece, I don't think that's what people are saying. I think they're saying you need to figure out how to unflaw the piece before you take it further.
For the other piece, I want the glass to look like glass. Which I can probably achieve by having a reflection of the sky and capture the light that's shinning on God better, but behind all that I want to have the sky seem like it stretches into the distance while also appearing like you're looking at the clouds from above.
and looking at the robot thing, same thing:
Its a little unfair to us, though, to say we aren't critiquing what you are putting up considering this is all stuff we've been saying, through out your thread. I cant really begin to get into how you would render a glass floor, because its really a struggle to get you to level with us on these basic concepts. I can't teach you how to bake bread if you don't understand how to measure flower. You cant be upset that you cant do one, if you feel like you don't have time to do the other. Doing the studies is what gets you to understand these problems in a way that is solvable, right now you literally don't have the perception or vocabulary needed to get at the larger issues.
Maybe if I had time I could do some paint overs, but thats really just trying to help you see something on top of what we know are a lot of structural issues. For instance, right now my only indication of your understanding of glass is this:
https://us.v-cdn.net/5018289/uploads/editor/3q/zsshwbn5dt1j.jpg
But its done so quick and the shading is non descriptive, I cant really drill down to tell you whats accurate and whats not. I know its supposed to be a glass, but it didn't get any closer to actually observing what that means. Where was the light coming from, in this piece? Why isn't it strait? What are the two shadows on the rectangle its sitting on? Why are the rectangles lines slightly curved? I honestly cant tell if its because you did it super quickly just to get it over with, or if you honestly cant see the issue. Or maybe its a combination of both.
These aren't questions that are about you drawing the best glass on a cube to appease us, its because ultimately not being able to render a glass on a table is the reason you cant make up a glass floor in a sky or draw a robot foot in perspective. Its so much more difficult to tackle these issues when they are piled into the most complicated work you can possibly tackle.
The painting is for a client, I get it. But the reason we are telling you to study your fundamentals isnt because we want you to stop and not make money, its because you don't seem to get how important it is for literally everything you are trying to do. You are going to finish the piece, finish it. But you need to take just as seriously your basic exercises. I easily spent 20 hours on that rat, for instance. I probably spent that long on my material studies perhaps more, and I have a day job. You aren't a hobbyist, so I don't think its out of line to tell you cant just not study because it makes you bored and you'd rather try to make money.
You need to put the time in, and we are going to try to help, but you have to have an attitude shift on what you think is helping you. You are on a journey that requires no small amount of effort. You cannot simply allow yourself to believe that the path of countless artists working on their fundamental skills and slowly applying that to their work, concentrating on their forms and accuracy, and putting a heaping fuck load of time into refining their skills, somehow does not apply the same to you.
I know you dont want to hear anything about eggs, but the reason we're so hardcore about these basic shape studies is that they can teach you fucking everything.
Look at kel's thread: http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/199013/kels-comic-art#latest the rapid improvement there spans like, a week? But she really put some effort into those shape studies and in turn we were able to tell her precisely what was wrong with her initial attempt.
If you do these calmly and accurately it will teach you multiple things. Like how to set up a box in perspective without wiggling lines and how to observe light and shadow. These are the basic building blocks you will take to everything else. Just take it seriously, take it slow, and we can begin to tell you what you need to read/practice to improve. If you can focus all your energy for 8 hours on how to render a cube and an egg that looks legit, I promise you will actually take something away from it.
And like Iruka keeps reminding, you need to do studies from reference. Need to develop that internal, intuitive understanding of how light, perspective and composition work.
There's unfortunately just no shortcut for that. But improving that stuff is totally within your power. It's like sports, the work you do on exercising empowers you for the part you really enjoy. You do get *some* exercise just by playing the sport all the time, but that won't help you reach the next level. Sports analogy aside, if doing some of the really core, classic studies just takes more willpower than you think you can muster, it can still help a lot to simply recreate the work of your favorite artists.
It took some time, but in the end I understood, I just though there was an innate problem with my idea and you were like jabbing at it, but that was just me being dumb and scared of judgement. And you're fucking right, if every other artist did it, why the hell do I think I'm exempt from it.
I'll do that, cubes and eggs are boring as fuck, but the idea of rendering light efficiently and correctly is enticing, so I'll do it for sure!! Thanks for everything and I'm sorry for my dumbness.
Thanks so much for that mate, I understand what you mean, and I think for now I'm going to get really good at light, I'm pretty good and "drawing" simple stuff like characters but I really need to actually spend time on my studies. I feel like I actually know how to draw, I mean I made a living drawing but that's about it. My coloring is horrible and my lighting even worse, not to mention perspective. I'll definitely do all of this. And fuck it, I don't have a reason why I should do ten awesome pieces now, if in the end they're gonna end up a mess I might as well take some time and actually learn fundamentals so I can apply them to everything. I'm also starting to learn how to actually study or rather on the practical level, it's all about breaking it down. You don't have to know every single in one sitting, just slowly build up my repertoire of knowledge. If I know the core basics of how perspective works, and shading that means I'll be able to draw 3d images efficiently and that's already a huge weapon in my artistic arsenal. Then I can go crazy and start breaking barriers in my own art.
Specifically what you need to work on is constructive drawing. I know that this is hardly a new concept for you, I can see you building your characters out of basic shapes like cylinders and boxes here and there, such as that robot/tank piece. That's good! But you need to take that and push it much further.
The best way to study constructive drawing is by really digging into figure drawing. That's because there are a lot of resources that specifically break down how to construct the human figure, and learning how to build the human figure out of simple parts will teach you heaps about drawing in general. Pick up Michael Hampton's book Figure Drawing Design and Invention, it's the best primer on constructive figure drawing I know of, as well as being more accessible than a lot of classic figure drawing books. Supplement that text with texts that are less construction-focused such as Andrew Loomis's Figure Drawing for All It's Worth, which is good for things like gesture and proportion. Do your best to apply that information to drawing the figure from reference and seek feedback. Figure drawing from a live model is really the best thing you could do, but I know not everyone has a figure drawing group in their neighborhood, nor the expendable income to pay for that every week. But if you do a web search and find a group nearby then I can't recommend it highly enough.
The basic lighting exercises that Iruka recommended are REALLY good, because you'll apply all that information to your figure drawings (as well as every other drawing!). If you learn to construct an arm as a cylinder, and the head as an egg shape, then you'll know how to light those organic shapes on the human body because you studied those shapes on their own already!
Speaking of reference, I think it would REALLY help you if you most gave up the idea of drawing from imagination for a while. Inventing figures and worlds is fun, and you can feel free to doodle to break up your studies, but for now that's not going to teach you anything if you haven't studied the real thing by doing simple still lives and drawing from photo reference as the bulk of your drawing time. Otherwise, you'll just be repeating your mistakes and incorrect preconceived notions about how things look.
But that doesn't mean you can't do imaginative work! It just means, USE REFERENCE even when you want to make up a fantasy scene or character. If you want to draw a figure, find reference for the pose and lighting, or shoot your own with your smartphone or computer webcam! If you want to draw someone sitting in a throne, sit your butt down in a chair, set up a lamp for lighting, and have someone snap your picture! Yeah, you probably don't want every character you ever draw to look like you, but just getting the basic basic pose and lighting information is invaluable.
Not to mention that reference will help you expand your visual library. For example, look at that mushroom character exercise you started on the last page. The mushroom element on every character just looks like basically the same simple cartoon Super Mario mushroom that you have in your head. But mushrooms come in all shapes and sizes! Think of the variety you could have gotten if you had used more reference, which you could get from a simple Google search.
Good look, and hope to see some studies from you!
I tend to be in two camps, you can get really serious and get into hardcore figure drawing if you want to start painting that kind of stuff, and I would recommend it if you were trying to be a concept artist. As more of an illustrator, and a cartoonist, simple shapes, still lives, perspective, and golden age cartoon studies are going to be a more economical use of time. Studying isn't an arbitrary endeavor, you have to look at your work and and think about what your intent is. John K has excellent advise when it comes to cartooning and construction, I suggest checking out his blog.
I agree on using reference, of course, and its not like loomis will hurt anybody. I just don't Meb here to feel like his only recourse is a year of figure drawing when that's not necessarily where he needs to spend his time.
I will say that while most of this thread is cartoons, the last two images (the robot and the thrones in heaven) kind of gave me the vibe that Mabelma is eager to dip his toe into some more fully rendered sci-fi/fantasy ish scenes. Which is where I was coming from with that advice. SO, I'd really love to ask, Mabelma, what kind of art DO you want to produce ultimately? What's your dream art job?
Like, when you get down into these shape studies, I would spend a couple sessions on them, post for crits, and then walk away for a sec. Absorb the advice while you try something related, but different (like perspective) and then go back to shading shapes. You will juggle subjects, but don't abandon them. 2 hours is rarely going to be enough for a study. Theres a reason my old studio classes were 5 hours long. Dumping 20-40 hours into something just ain't no thang, its something you should try to get used to.
Sounds good, I'll check it out. I was also thinking of taking some online classes on fundamentals, like the stuff over at https://svslearn.com/
But anyways I'll start my studies today, hope to post some stuff during the night.
Also spent about an hour drawing eggs and trying to render them. I don't have a good set-up for life drawing but I managed to get an egg and light it from the back because the bendable lamp I had broke. Gonna try and get a better set-up in the coming weeks but in the mean time I figured I shouldn't stop because of such a trite reason. Here's some eggs. I can definitely already see improvement from egg 1 to egg 9 but tons of stuff to do and learn.
All those eggs are pretty terrible. If you spent an hour on that entire page that means you spent barely 7 minutes on each egg? Come on dude. Draw AN egg for 2 hours. One. If you are cranking these things out in minutes you are not spending any time thinking. You need to start thinking. If you were in a class with one of my old drawing teachers, he would take the paper away and force you to stare at the egg for 30 minutes.
How was the egg standing up, by the way? did you prop it on a wall or something? you dont need to over complicate this. Just put it down on the table.
This goes back to this image:
Your digital egg was all lumpy and unrefined, you didn't take the time to use your tools to make it an egg. Well now you don't any technical hoops to jump through, just the sureness of your hand, and your patience. Is that news print? Why is everything so smudged?
I'm going to pull all this from kels thread, its pretty relevant:
You could spend an hour just arranging blocks like this and looking at it, seriously, and that would be better practice than just pushing these drawings out as fast as possible. Stop rushing! STOP.
Got it, got it. Fuck this is difficult. I'm relearning everything I've ever done artistically, please take it easy on me, jajajaja I got it though, I actually spent an hour on the last figure drawing, the whole session was two hours long. Which I know doesn't sound like much but I've never really done that, it felt really good though and it's a small victory, which makes me happy, though I nowhere near close to where I want to be. Not gonna quit, just happy for myself. But I got it, I propped it up against a black hat I had, the table I had was also black and I figured the black hat would help it pop out to and make it easier for me to see.
As for learning anatomy, should I dive into the books Lamp suggested now, and take a break from the figure drawing sessions and instead take those two hours to read up on the theory of it?
Yeah it's newsprint. Everything's smudged cause for some dumb reason I think smudging helps me blend, but calling me out on it actually helps me a ton. Cause I was thinking the same thing when I saw it reflected on the mirror.
Also about the blocks, is there anyway for me to do this without a proper set-up? It'll be about a week till my next paycheck and I'll be able to get a better set-up and some blocks and cylinders to draw.
I'd still love to hear your advice mate, when it comes to critique I think it's better to have too much rather than too little.
If you venture to actually draw whats there, your lamp wont matter. A "proper set up" will better position you to understand these concepts because you cant distract yourself with dumb things like wood grain and secondary light sources until you are good and ready to take on those subjects. If you focus, you can draw literally everything on your desk with accuracy, so if you put your egg on a hat I should be able to tell. Propping your egg against a black surface would have completely eliminated the reflected light, and I feel like the cast shadows must be made up then. Don't make anything up, draw what you see, understand what you see.
For blocks, If you have some white paint around, find the simplest objects you have and dunk them in it. Cans, balls, small boxes, whatever. You can do this all insanely cheaply. Use that creative mind of yours, man, put some effort into it.
That's what I was thinking about the set-up. I'll focus on this egg for now, and I think I have some white paint somewhere, if not that idea does seem super cost efficient so I'll definitely do that
The hat was behind, not below it. Below it was the white surface, but maybe I did make it up.
Btw: I am understanding the whole theory behind the shapes thing you're trying to teach me, understood some of the concepts (the idea not the actual doing yet) while I did the figure drawings.
See that photo that Iruka posted with the elements of light and shadow on a sphere? THAT is what you are trying to capture in your egg study. Those labeled elements are what is going to give anything you ever draw a sense of 3D form, no matter what shape you're drawing. You can't draw an arm (which is basically a cylinder), for example, until you can draw a simple cylinder sitting on your desk. Carefully observe and draw those elements of light (highlight, halftone, core shadow, bounce light, cast shadow, occlusion shadow). Don't just draw scribbly gradients.
Remember that everyone here is eager to help with no judgement. Looking forward to seeing more from you
That thing actually looks like a form, so thats a huge step forward. Keep the momentum going.
I got some other papers. I'll give it a try on a new surface, for sure. You really don't know how happy it makes me to hear that. I've learned to not drag my hand over the paper so I don't usually end up with a messy hand now a days, but I do tend to try to blend with my finger that might be the problem; should I cut that out all together? Is there any situation where that would actually be beneficial? Blending with my fingers I mean.
Also I have a bit of problem/question with highlights, I understand how they work, but on say this image where there wasn't a clear highlight. Was I just looking wrong, was it the light or are highlights more prominent on shinier surfaces?
On the paper thing, I think newsprint is perfectly fine, though if you're working on rough-grain newsprint (looks like you might be), you may want to try a smoother surface. When I was at Watts they used this for basically any drawing that took 3 hours or less to draw: http://www.amazon.com/18-Inch-24-Inch-Smooth-Newsprint-Paper/dp/B0027A7DBU
It's up to you and your budget, of course- but I personally like to work on cheaper surfaces for practice, because it allows me to do a lot of work without getting too 'precious' and nervous about each one- and it serves as a reminder that hey- yeah I may have spent 3 hours on this thing, but that doesn't mean it's a gallery piece. It just means I put in the time to practice. I've had to toss away garbage bags full of drawings that took that long, just getting the practice in.
On blending with your finger- it's not the end of the world or anything, but there are some issues to consider.
-The oils on your fingers will mix with the charcoal and the paper, making it harder to erase or work over. If you want to do blending, a smooth surface and a tortillion, or working with a brush and charcoal powder would probably work better.
-Blending allows you to be a bit vague in your observations (or many times, it simply allows people to convince themselves they're being more precise than they actually are)- not blending forces you to be more observant and precise in the values you put down throughout the value range, rather than estimating. Which means, it's more of a pain short-term, but helps a lot more in developing your skills long-term.
On highlights, yes, you're correct- a shiner surface will have a more defined reflection than a matte surface.
Science!:
http://www.physicsclassroom.com/class/refln/Lesson-1/Specular-vs-Diffuse-Reflection
The simple version: imagine that you've got a ball, and the surface of that ball is mirror-shiny.
You've got a light pointed at it- you can see the refelction of that light on the surface of the ball, just as you would in a mirror.
This is, in a nutshell, what any highlight is. It's where the surface is directly reflecting the origin point of the light.
With a mirrored ball, you can see that highlight very directly. As you can with other very shiny surfaces.
Take the same lighting setup and viewpoint and replace that mirror ball with a more diffuse surface- like say, a raquetball- and looking at it you probably won't see anything that directly reads as a 'highlight'. This is because the surface is rougher on a microscopic level- there's all these tiny little pits and divots that have their own little highlights, cast their own little shadows. When viewed with the naked eye, all those highlights and shadows blend together to create a diffused look, where there is no obvious 'highlight' to point out.
Now, many surfaces are neither wholly diffuse or wholly shiny, which is why people don't immediately hit on the 'highlight=refelection' idea themselves. Highlights can be very spread out and softly defined or very crisp, depending on the properties of the material, and the lighting setup.
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