Talk is Cheap, Drawing is Hard (NSFW)

Chiral_Spiral

Hey people.

I've been drawing on and off for a few years during my college time. Now that that's finished and I have the prospect of a whole summer of free time I want to really knuckle down and start drawing till my fingers bleed. My goal is to get good enough to create my very own webcomic.

Here's what I've been doing lately, mostly from photo references (except the last one, obviously). Any criticism/advice very appreciated.

(taken with a camera phone due to lack of scanner)

EDIT: some of these are a lot bigger than I was intending, sorry about that. Still getting used to uploading images.

Halen

Is there any reason you didn't attempt faces on your figure studies? Your grasp of form is really solid. Very impressive

Chiral_Spiral

Gonna be honest, drawing the faces on full figures is a weak spot I've been avoiding getting over for awhile. I really have to do something about it. I feel like even getting the shape of the head is beyond me at the moment, as you can probably tell. I'll have to seriously work on it.

Learning the basics of photoshop, I painted a sphere:

Chiral_Spiral

More drawings:











Also more spheres:





I feel like my spheres are too dark. Are they too dark?

Kallisti

This video by Sam Nielson does a pretty good job explaining the purpose of a sphere test.

Chiral_Spiral

Kallisti wrote: »

This video by Sam Nielson does a pretty good job explaining the purpose of a sphere test.

Thanks, I'll check that out.

Halen

Seems your grasp of the structure of the face is pretty solid. I'd like to see you take it to the next step - erasing your structure lines and drawing some shading and finished form.

Chiral_Spiral

Moar drawings. Tried to do a slightly more polished looking face as per your suggestion, Halen. Even after all this time I still can't get the face symmetrical.

wahay

I wouldn't worry about a lack of faces on figures. They're not portraits, after all.

Great volume in these images. If you can convince people with simple visual cues that your characters are existing in a cohesive environment, you're already good-enough at drawing to do a webcomic.

Chiral_Spiral

wahay wrote: »

If you can convince people with simple visual cues that your characters are existing in a cohesive environment, you're already good-enough at drawing to do a webcomic.

Thanks for the critique! I'll admit though, I'm not entirely sure what you mean by this? Do you mean portraying the characters existing in a solid space rather than just floating in the void?

nuttydino

Excellent sketches! I do recommend not to sketch from photos though. Just go out, go to a mall or a park and sketch poses as you see them because there are constraints to photos especially with the lack of movements. Have fun!

Iruka

The spheres don't have a convincing shadow under them, which is ruining the effect. You may want to try a spherical real life object, and try a few studies on it.

I think wahay may be getting at the fact that you clearly have some skills. You should probably start applying them to problems that actually have more to do with comic making, as in, you should make a comic. Just a page or a strip, for starters. The problems that will arise from doing so are separate from those of just figure drawing.

When you hit snags, then you can flip back to doing academic studies.