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Questions/Discussion/Tutorials Thread
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If you have Photoshop it should have come with a program called Image Ready. When you finish designing something in PS, click "File" then "Edit in Image Ready"
...in Image Ready you can optimize your image for premium quality...set the colors, the amount of dither, the type of file, etc....you can also make animated gifs fairly easily.
Photoshop:
1.) Select the marquee tool (dotted rectangle). Click and drag a box around the pumpkin.
2.) Hit "Image" at the top...click "Crop"
3.) Hit "Image" again...click "Image Size" select size you want it to be.
4.) Save!
Ah, see I never used image ready except to play around a few times with animating gifs.
"There is not a man of us who does not at times need a helping hand to be stretched out to him, and then shame upon him who will not stretch out the helping hand to his brother."
Starting my freshman year, my art teacher says my life drawing looks cartooney.
I didn't misshape the proportions or anything, so my question is:
How do you prevent from making a life drawing turn cartooney when you're trying to draw realistically?
Try to use tone directly to define your forms. A suggestion that I find works well is to use a broader tool to define the tone before locking in on outlines- in my life drawing classes, I use a piece of medium vine characoal about 1-1.5" in length, and use the broad side of it to lay in tones and gesture quickly, then use a chamois cloth to take away any mistakes. This only really works if you have actual 'charcoal' paper, not sketchbook stuff...otehrwise it won't wipe away clean. By working back and forth without focusing on linework, if should help you shake the 'cartoony' aspect of your work.
Edit: Heh.
My deviantART gallery | DarrenMAC on Xbox Live | My Twitter | My Tumblr
My scanner messes up my contrast a whole lot. I tried getting it right, but it got a tiny bit dark than the original.
My deviantART gallery | DarrenMAC on Xbox Live | My Twitter | My Tumblr
It really is a caricature - people don't have black holes for eyes, for one. It looks like you've elongated the most prominent features (upper lip, jaw), which is fine as a styalistic decision but completely wrong for any kind of realism. It also looks like you're treating the picture as two-dimensional, rather than a 2d representation of a 3d image, which is always going to make it look cartoony. What's your general approach? Are you mapping out the shape in light lines before you draw heavy ones?
Tynic:
I didn't really use the grid method, the teacher told us to, but I wanted to just use guidelines to kinda follow the picture I showed with the gridlines. So it was used with guidelines, basically.
Also, what do you mean I'm treating it 2d instead of 2d in a 3d image? My general approach is usually draw it lightly, then shade it in. But my later pictures that I couldn't take home with me doesn't really have so many outlikes like this one.
EDIT: She had a ruler, to kinda match why she was supposed to look all evil-ish, but I could see it, cause it was a dark photo.
And if you haven't noticed, it was a two-day project, andI didn't really get to finish the background.
A reference would be awesome. Or, if you can't find it, get another reference and do a picture, then post both. It's easier to understand what's wrong if we can see what's meant to be right.
(If she really looks like that, then day-amn, that's one ugly nun).
Ok, so the problem here, as I perceive it, is defining artistic effort.
So it saves time to paint over an image? It also saves time to just paint right on the image. Or to just apply a filter to the image. Fuck, save the most time and just use the image. Do you see where I'm going with this? I don't really participate in the paintover accusations, but I do hold much more respect for artists that produce good work without the aid of an underlying image to trace.
Megamau, we are not paying clients. This forum ideally exists to improve ourselves as artists. Are you telling me that if a seven year old traces a photo that would take DMAC longer to recreate in markers and ink, he is just as good an artist as DMAC? Simply because he used a shortcut process?
Fuck that. Nascar drivers aren't better athletes than runners just because they figured out a faster way around the track.
Werd. (btw - I effin LOVE that comparison).
Tracing kills the artists personality.
Every stroke an artist lays on the paper is a processed piece of information... it's the object as PERCEIVED by the artist.
When you tracy - you don't perceive, thus you don't create original work.
Now...
Is tracing bad? HELLLLL NO! Excellent exercise, be it line practice, line weight practice, etc. etc. However, CLAIMING a traced piece to be an original piece of work is pushing limits.
(btw - I'm not talking about lalulelo here, just the topic in general).
Banky Edwards : Who should I sign it to?
Little Kid : I don't want you to sign it. I want the guy who draws Bluntman and Chronic to sign it.
[snatches the comic away]
Little Kid : You're just a tracer.
Collector : Tell him, little shaver.
The point you make about people paying clients not caring about how you did something is interesting. Should that then be the acme of our achievement as an artist? To have paying clients? As I said before, people will pay for almost anything if you spin it right. Does that make it art? There are any number of works of art that focus hugely on the process of creation. I use this example all the time, but the American Flag by Jasper Johns comes immediately to mind. Yes I agree that there are professionals that use photos for their work, to name a few: David Mack, Alex Ross, Tim Bradstreet. In those cases though they take the pictures themselves. That creates a mixed media piece that is still wholly original.
Edit: What paper works best with pastels and is it expensive?
My pic.
I would also like to thank DMAC, Angel, and Tynic for helping me with these questions.
And the reason you're getting a cartoony vibe from your work (besides the fact that the real-life reference is kind of cartoony in this case) is because you're sort of simplifying in the wrong way. Notice the creasing in the skin on her nose? The lines follow the form of the nose, it's a three dimensional object. But it looks like you sort of just saw lines and randomly stuck them on the nose in your drawing, causing it to look flattened, and thus less realistic.
Aah, I see. The lines on the nose need to be more curvy, yes? Because the middle of the nose(The bridge?) it curves on the left and right, and there's a small space in the midde where it's straight?
Are you saying that I have a train of thought like "Okay, there's a bunch of wrinkles near her nose. I'll draw some lines their to accomplish that look" and I'm not really thinking about the form of the nose and stuff?
Yes.
goddamn that's one frightening ass nun.
For example, since childhood, we've come to know that curly lines can represent smoke coming out of a pipe or chimney. But when you want to render that realistically, it has to be so much more. You are no longer using a symbol to represent something, you are using a rendering of the thing itself.
And yeah, with the nose, you know what I'm talking about. Consider the lines to follow the contours of the nose, so they should be curved up a little instead of just jabbing into the center like you've drawn.
Weeeeerd!
8)
I think I'm making her friggin rich. YOU OWE ME BETTY! YOU OWE MEE !!!!!
The book bacon mentions all the time that is not Betty Edwards?
>_< I've had this book for almost 3 months, I think. Probably more. But the problem was I could never fully get into it. I got as far as doing the practices with the signatures, Self Potrait, Doing the hand, and doing something from memory. Afterwards Band Camp became my number 1 problem. I was too tired(I underestimated how heavy the damn sousaphone would be!) to read the book, nor was I interested. Then school came up. And now I'm planning to read it at least once every week.
I bought the book based on optics comments a good deal of time ago, and I made it to about the drawing of the guy looking through a grid at a nude reclining. Then I stopped. I also bought Burne Hogarths's Dynamic Anatomy, and it sits on my bedroom floor, somewhere under the weeks worth of newspaper and a seasons worth of pringle cans and reesees wrappers.
And a question:
What the hell is bittorent, and where can I get some?
Edit: Google is your friend, Fuzy.
So what would you think about when you're, say, drawing a finger? Do you try to/not to think "Long cylinder thing that has flesh on it, a nail, and curves" Would you think what type of bones are inside the thumb, or index finger? The proportions?
Argh. If anyone else wants to answer, please do so, I hope I'm not hogging this thread up TOO much...
That is bad, because then you're just working off of simplistic generalizations. You need to forget that they are wrinkles. Just look at what is there. "Ok, in the photo there is a line here that is sort of perpindicular to this side of the finger, and then it sort of disappears in this shadow."
You want to look at things very literally in the picture, don't think that you can check out the reference and then have your head down in your page for five minutes drawing what you "know" is on a finger. You have to always be inspecting what you're drawing, and breaking it down into shapes, forms, and lines. Sorry if I'm being really confusing, does anything I've said make sense yet?
Also, less relevantly in this case, but interesting: "When you draw a line, don't be afraid to completely remove it if it isn't contributing to the drawing. Every line should have meaning." Of course, I've also been told never to even have an eraser in the house. People give all sorts of advice.
This is the book to have.
I don't know, it seems to go "Drawing on the right side of the brain" until you get to novice, maybe early intermediate level, then you need to drop that book and start thinking about the above.
"There is not a man of us who does not at times need a helping hand to be stretched out to him, and then shame upon him who will not stretch out the helping hand to his brother."
When you're drawing something, try looking at what you're drawing for a second or two before you draw it, but REALLY look. Dont look and say "thats a nun", look at relationships between lines and where shadows start/end. Dont think about what you're drawing, just kinda....draw and try to shut that part of your mind up that thinks way too goddamned much(trust me I know how THAT goes :S). You'll know its working when you start a sketch/drawing and not even realise that you're drawing until you see that the time has flown 3 hours into the future. Its hard for me to explain, but when the left side of your brain is shut off you wont realise it until after.