Now that I have free time again, I'm going to focus on drawing from life. I've never been particularly good at it, and I want to improve. I've never taken any sort of classes, so advice on how to improve learning and advice on techniques etc... alongside critique would be really helpful.
Okay, so this took me about an hour and a half before I gave up on it.
I need to improve. I'm going to try and keep this up through the break, and then next semester I start my 'freehand illustration' course (which I'm told is mostly life drawing). I aim to be at least little less terribad by then. I'm also going to look in to some live figure drawing classes, if I can find any relatively inexpensive ones.
The only way is up from here.
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@Treytor: Thanks. No criticism to offer?
Well, I know criticism is a good thing, but to be honest Im not that good myself so I couldnt really give you many tips. Like Coleman said if we had some pictures it might be easier to critique.
Here are a couple of contour drawings I just finished of the same dragon statuette:
After having another look at 'The Natural Way to Draw' I kind of get the idea of connecting what you see with te sensation of touch now. It's difficult, but I think I understand it at least.
I don't think I have the hang of it just yet.
Keep at it!
I've been lazy in keeping this thread up to date, so here's what I've been drawing:
19/06/2010
20/06/2010
21/06/2010
22/06/2010
@Paradise: I've scanned all the guestures I did on that day, hopefully that gives you a good idea of where I'm at.
Probably work on proportion and balance, preferably without using contour lines. Thick charcoal is great for signifying mass in a few swoops.
The bottom figure in this third image was from imagination.
Sorry about the terrible scans, I'm not sure why that happened...
EDIT: Might as well throw these up for crits as well...
EDIT: Updated slightly. The text is a placeholder, there'll be more stuff down the bottom.
I'm interested to see what you'll do with the bioshock postere. Where you have it now is about (or better) what I can do in illustrator.
Speaking of which...
This isn't a final layout, more a proof of concept. Also, I need to start charging for these things.
BTW what typo font is that?
I agree. It took me a while, but I made a vector of both the bottle and the games (although I used a stock vector as the base for the bottle). The font is and imitation of one of the official Bioshock fonts called 'The Cult of Rapture'; you can find it here.
Update:
It's not exactly wall of text, it's readable, but none of it except for the ticket price exactly draws the eye.
Otherwise I quite like the design of it.
Thanks!
I agree, but that's what they want, so I don't have much of a choice but to put it there. :?
Is there another logo to go in the bottom right? I'd make those logos smaller (they'll be plenty big enough when this is poster sized) and make them the same cream as the wine label, or bronze colour of the Daddy.
I think the text could do with some love -- not a fan of small, centered text like that, as it just looks Word-ish. You also could do with looking at the information heirarchy here, i.e. details of when the prizes are drawn isn't as immediately important as the details of the prizes themselves, or the word 'WIN', or even the low ticket price, etc.
Is the information that the games are for PS3 or 360 just as important as the rest of the prize info, or is it merely enough to say there are 3 copies of the game up for grabs, and the platform specifics can be addressed in a different heirarchy layer (i.e. some small print at the bottom)?
The way you have it all laid out, a casual glance makes it look like there's far more information to take in than there actually is.
I still think it's a nice piece, but with a few improvements could be even stronger.
Agreed on all points. I did my best to fix them up in the final layout, but I think I started to get lazy in the end, especially since this was an unpaid comission. In the final layout I did my best to give the text a better heirachy, but typography has never been my strong suit. :P
(Also, sorry it took so long to reply! I can beextremely forgetful. :?)
Anyways, here's what I'm up to with uni nowadays:
The top was fifteen minutes, and the other two were twenty (they're actually in reverse order, the last one I did is at the top). Unfortunately I ran out of time with all of them, especially the middle one; I had only just started to find the blacks.
Unfortunately I think this is the one and only time we get to do figure drawing.
(Click for a larger version)
I intentionally made the text somewhat small, since it's a large-format image (the printed version will be 891mm x 420mm, the length of three portrait A4s and the width of two), but I think I took it a bit too far. And yeah, I have a tendency to make things more complex than they need to be (not a good thing with infographics). I suppose I'm afraid my tutors will equate simplicity with laziness, but really I just end up giving myself more work to do. :?
EDIT: BotP'd
I agree with MT though, the first graphic is my favorite and I like the second one visually anyways, and at least for internet viewing, the image (or text) needs to be larger.
At the bottom of the pyramid, I think you misspelled "Physiological"
Always remember that the act of refining, is the act of taking away.
When you're at a stage where you know you're just adding things 'to see how it looks', remind yourself of the above. Remove the clutter until all that is left is the essence of what you need to communicate. Justify each and every element of your design and understand how it fits into a cohesive and communicative whole.
You don't need to literally scrape things down to their bare-bones - aesthetic and colour is still a hugely important factor, for instance - but get yourself into this mindset and you'll find yourself spending less time overworking things and you'll develop the confidence to know when something is done.
Also, re. your tutors - if they know anything, ANYTHING, about graphic design, they will know that refining and editing and thoughtfully approaching your work from a UX (User eXperience) point of view is not the easy way out. Chucking as much as you can into the design is lazy. :P
OK, my crits:
I would be tempted to increase the point size of your introductory text a touch.
Also, the vertical key indentifier text on the top of your long graphic -- I would change these to angled text, so they read diagonally top left to bottom right. As it stands you're sort of forcing the viewer to turn their head 90-degrees to the right.
The radar graph at the bottom, at first glace, looks more complicated that it is. Could do with lessening the 'grid' or at least having some key to explain why it's as busy-looking as it is.
But otherwise, I think this is pretty solid work. I like the colour choices very much (probably would fail an accessibility test, but meh... I still like 'em).
Good work sir!
Yup. The first graphic is the only one I feel had a strong concept behind it, the other two were focused too much on the visuals. I'm still a novice, but I'm learning!
Right you are! Luckily, I picked up on that before I handed it in.
I've never had much experience with infographics before, certainly never in making them, but I'm beginning to understand how true this is. It's a learning experience, like I said.
Bah! Why didn't I think of that?
Agreed, that was probably a poor choice.
I spent way too much time selecting the perfect colour scheme. To be honest, it's really the first time I've given it a great deal of attention.
Thanks everyone! It's a shame the crits I get here are often a lot more effective than the ones I get in tutorials. :P
It's an ocelot, her favourite animal. Fur is damn hard to draw.
Some stuff from a live figure drawing session last night, focusing on guesture and overlapping forms.
Approximately half an hour. The feet are probably the worst part, but hopefully with enough practice I'll start getting things right.
A shading study that I gave up on about 2.5 hours in:
This was something I doodled in about five minutes during class, but I'm posting since it looks like I might actually be learning some things:
Still got a long way to go.
this is a thing that I also catch myself doing a lot. I think it's mostly because I am indecisive and I had a not-great art teacher in middle school who believed little tiny sketchy lines = good, bold decisive lines = bad. (it wasn't the worst thing she could have taught us, she was trying to get us not to waste paper and erasers, but it is hard to unlearn that style of drawing!)
I really like your life drawing studies and your later ones don't seem to have as much of the line lightness issue that some of the earlier ones have so maybe someone already said it and I missed it or something.
Uncanny Magazine!
The Mad Writers Union
No, you're right, it's a problem I really need to correct! I always worry about making something stand out too much, or not being able to erase it (which is bad practice in itself). I might try drawing in pen for a while, get myself used to using darker lines.
Thanks!
Uncanny Magazine!
The Mad Writers Union
The left one here is pretty sucky; I was trying to draw with the whole arm and not just my wrist, which I'm not very good at:
I gave up on this one when I realised I was making things worse rather than better: