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Anybody out there? Now that I can use the internet from my apartment I get to post again
I will get a scanner soon, so in the near future there won't be any more blurry photos from weird angles and such. Here are a few drawings from school anyhow, about 4 or 5 hours each.
Hey remember when I said there would be internet in my apartment? Never happened after all. However, I managed to go to a scanner, so that's a plus. These are new figure drawings, and I replaced the images in the other figure posts as well. They are all 4 hour poses except the most recent, which is at the bottom and was a 6 hour pose.
School is teaching me a lot but I obviously still want input from the AC
Nice stuff! Definitely a lot of improvements here.
One thing I might mention is that with some of these latest ones you're starting to let you half-tone values get too close to your shadow values, which can weaken the structure a bit- you had some two-tone drawings earlier that had the right idea, so what you probably should look at more is fluctuating the hardness/softness of the edges between the light and shade areas to get the form, rather than putting a lot of work into the mid-tone areas.
You might also consider pushing your cast shadows to have hard edges, to distinguish them from form rolling into shadow.
Another thing (that I struggle with myself so I'm not sure my explanation is going to be adequate) is trying to work to design your shapes a bit more. an easy example I did in my paintover is boxing off the contour of her right knee a bit. Is that the most accurate way to draw that knee, probably not. But what it does is to make a clearer statement about how the knee works than a more curved contour would- it tells you clearly where the knee bends, and the box form makes the structure a bit more clear (my drawover might be a bit too simple for the final result of a very long pose drawing, but it's good to think in these terms for shorter drawings/lay-ins). Subtle things like that, or pushing a line a bit further than you'd be able to observe because it'd make a stronger statement about foreshortening, or hardening an edge to make a form that emphasizes the perspective, etc. can really make a big difference to the overall read. (I really wish I had some better examples to give you here to explain this. :?) Sometimes the model gives you enough information that you don't really need to think much about this, other times it really needs to be mulled over.
For example, you look at the picture up there with the guy with his hand on the pedestal- the proportions are good and there's nothing wrong with it per se, but there's a lack of structural information in the mid torso and the leg in the shadow there, and it winds up weakening the read. Now, there may not have been a whole ton of information to work with there- the lighting setup may have made things hard to read, or he might have had a sort of proportion of fat that smoothed over the muscles and bones you could normally use to play up that structure. That's the point where you kind of have to force some design in there and use your anatomy knowledge so if you need to force there to be a harder edge between the front plane of side plane of the torso, you can do it and make it still look legit. (God I hope some of this made sense.)
Wow, thank you so much, Bacon! When you distinguished between working on edges versus mid tones, it may have sounded simple to you but it actually kind of blew my mind and I ended up talking to my instructor for a long time about it, which helped a lot. So thank you!
As far as designing shapes, I think I have an idea what you are talking about. Have you read the drawing master class by Beverly-Hale? I am pretty sure he is talking about the same kind of stuff in there. It is pretty hard to grasp so I appreciate you giving examples. That will take a lot of practice for sure.
I finished another two day pose today while thinking about what you said about the guy with his hand on the pedestal. It was a pretty nice coincidence that the model was the same man in a similar pose, even! I will post that tomorrow.
Thanks again!
I've read "Master Class on Figure Drawing", is that the book you mean? Though I haven't really given it a read it in like 10 years, so I'm not sure what it says on shape design specifically...skimming through it, it looks like it goes more over showing how masters used construction, which is a related topic but not entirely the same thing...maybe it goes into it more in the text (I'm more just skimming through the pictures here), but it really needs a visual example to bring it home.
To show off what's meant by shape design I think it'd probably be necessary to show drawings which don't have good shape design and redoing them with better shape design, and obviously there won't be too many mediocre drawings in a book that exclusively uses master drawings as examples.
So I guess I'll give it a shot- even if you already get it, I think I might be able to teach myself something by trying to articulate it better that I did above (so try to indulge me here ).
What I did here is take a photo and traced over it 4 times, each showing a different take on the same thing (I probably should have spent more time polishing this so the drawings weren't so mediocre, but whatever). If you want to know why I didn't draw it for reals, I just didn't want to bring any of my own proportional issues and such into the mix and distract from the point at hand.
In the first drawing, it's a a straight line tracing- it's relatively accurate (the reference and my lightbox aren't that great so it's not super accurate), but it's ultimately pretty boring and doesn't have a lot of strength to it.
The second drawing is another line drawing, but here some thought has been given to shape design- the point of the elbow and the fingers have been squared a bit to emphasize the joints there. Near joints there are more straight lines (because the bone is closer to the surface), and in more muscley/fatty areas, the outline is defined more by curves. I threw in a just a little hint of a line on the inner elbow to make the bending there more readable. Now, in terms of proportion and everything, this drawing is very similar to the first- but it feels much stronger because of how it's being designed.
The third and fourth drawings are more about the shading issue mentioned previously (I'm glad your teacher could give some insight into the matter), but there's also shape designing going on here as well- making shadow shapes that are clear and articulate, rather than trying to draw in every single variation in tone that happens within the light areas and dark areas.
The third drawing is an exaggerated version of the problems I mentioned before- now, your drawings aren't anywhere near as bad as this, but a lot of people would make drawings like this because they're just trying to get every bit of tone in there right from the get-go, which can easily lead to half-tones being too close to shadow tones, and too many tones in general.
The last drawing strips everything down to two tones- everything is either lit, or shaded, with no tonal variation within the lit and shaded areas. There's a clear shape defining each (I probably should have done an example with just hard edges, Mike Mignola style to make the point clearer...but it would look similar to the second panel in this previous example: http://bacon.iseenothing.com/otherpeoplestuff/McD.jpg). The only thing rounding the forms off here is changing up the edges between those shapes- again, there are harder edges near joints, bony structures, and where forms are butting against other forms, and softer edges in fatty/muscley areas, where the the forms are smoother. This sort of thinking is edge design.
Now, for longer drawings, you probably won't stop with two tones- you'll probably have in addition a highlight, mid-tone, terminator shadow, and reflected light in shadow sorta tones. But even with all these tones floating around, the principles would be the same- each form discreet shapes, and have edges that need to be articulated with their adjacent tonal shapes. This is why starting with the simpler two-tone version can be good practice, because it forces you to really get the most out of your basic shapes and edges, which both gives you a strong initial read, and lets you bring that skill over as you develop the drawing with more tones.
It also should be said that, I've done some designing here, but the designing I've done isn't necessarily the right or wrong way to go about it- it's my own personal opinion of what I want to get across in a drawing. If one were trying to make a figure appear more masculine, one might favor harder edges, and a harsher, more chiseled forms, while a more feminine figure would have softer, more graceful edges and contours. It can also be a personal thing- a Bouguereau take on the same subject would have more soft, subtle edges and tones, a Phil Hale version would likely have more hard edges, bolder tones, etc. This is an area where it helps to do master studies to figure out how other artists have tackled the issue, and figure out how they got across whatever it is you find appealing about their work, and try to bring that sense to your own drawings.
Gosh, Bacon, you're awesome. I am familiar with what you are talking about after all; on those shorter poses I spent at least 3 out of the 4 hours trying to get down information like you have in the second and fourth drawings, and then I kind of try to fill in a little more value for the midtones. This is one thing that seems really helpful about working mainly from life, it is probably easier to slip into trying to draw like the first and third drawings if your mindset is 'copying the photo image'. What was confusing me about the edges vs midtones thing was that when softening an edge, you end up putting down lighter values where the transition is, and then I was getting confused because I would see that value elsewhere just as a midtone (because people aren't white like paper), so I thought if I put it down in one place then I should put it down in the other place too. But all of this has helped me a lot to see the purpose of putting down the value when you soften an edge is different; it's just to help the shadow describe the form. Looking at the Bargue plates helped a lot as well. Oh, and that is indeed the book I was talking about by Hale. It's full of good stuff, even if the guy seems pretty snooty sometimes.
Here is another 4 hour pose of the same guy as the hand-on-pedestal drawing, and I drew it after reading our first post but before reading your second one. In this one I spent a lot more time designing the contours and shadow shapes, which is tough because the guy is rounder than our other male models. I tried to convey the planes better than in the last drawing, and then I threw down some midtones in the last bit of time.
(as a side note: to hell with his right arm )
Here is a 2 hour head study I did right after posting my last drawings.
Seriously Bacon, thank you so much for your input. It has been extremely helpful and I want to make you a present.
I now have two things that I haven't had in a very long time: a working laptop, and internet in my home. To celebrate, I'm going to dump more school work into this thread.
I realize that I never posted my second cast drawing, so this is that...
...and it has been a while, because I have already finished my third charcoal cast drawing as well...
...which means that I got to move on to painting! I painted eggs first.
Other than that I have been enjoying using toned paper and such.
Thanks guys! I spent a long time on those casts and learned a lot, so I'm glad they look nice to you because I am totally blind to them after so many hours.
Here are some things I am working on right now:
Just started this yesterday
This one I have been working on for a little bit because it's pretty big. It's the long-pose for the semester so she's there twice a week in the same pose. I just started this one recently though because up until then I was working on a different drawing, but I finished it early.
May as well post that one too:
I feel like my drawings look different now, even just between that drawing and the new one for the same pose.
And a little arm study I found when looking for that picture:
I will try to get better pictures in the future, I just never remember to bring my camera to school, and I can only use a scanner for the little pencil ones
Thanks dudes. Here's an update on what I am working on. The figure is probably almost finished, but there are still a few things left on it that I want to fix. The hand cast is further from being finished, and I need to finish it before my work space is obliterated by building work
Also I got some better pictures of my other big things from this semester.
Thanks for the encouragement, guys. It really does help. Being in school is awesome because we learn so much, but working so hard for such long stretches can kind of burn you out. On top of that, when you're surrounded by drawing and paintings by people you really admire it can be frustrating on some days, when it's hard to see your own progress over how far you remain from your goals. So hearing this encouragement is helpful, especially as the school year is drawing to a close and it is harder and harder to keep pushing this painting along. Thanks.
Alright here comes kind of a harsh critique and paint-over. I don't know if that is something you are looking for so I am going to go ahead and spoiler it. If you want to read it go ahead but I won't be offended if you choose to ignore it.
Ah man. Your values are looking really strong, and your edges are pretty good though I think they are leaning quite a bit on the soft side. I would try to work more edge variation in and find more crisp/hard edges. But one thing that is bugging me is that you seem to just let drawing errors go. For instance, in this drawing her head is a bit on the large side, and it looks a little like the right side (our left) of her face is melting. It really doesn't matter if she is the wicked witch of the west and it was raining on her way to work that day, in the end the only person who gives a shit what your model actually looked like is you.
So let's talk more specifically about what I think is wrong. Her head is getting a little wide I think, particularly on the right side of her head. This is in turn doing more damage to things like her mouth, which is becoming extremely wide and drooping on her right side, as well as her right ear getting large probably because of the relative feel to the side of her face. Some of the features are all going different directions as well. I will put red lines through them to show you what I mean. We really need to straighten these out. The entire mouth is probably drifting a little to her right as well.Part of the problem with drawing solely from observation is that you concentrate too much on what you are looking at and not enough on what you are drawing. Feature drifting is really common in life drawing because models can never return to exactly the same position they were in before, so if you draw the nose in one sitting, and then the eye in the next you might get two features which don't relate to each other very well. Remember to back off from your drawing often and just look at it to make sure things are feeling right.
Be careful with the over all droopy feel of the features and face as well. She may have had puffy/boney features but they are unlikely to have been as extreme as you made them. Try to remember when you are observing that what you are focused on is always going to look more extreme than it is in world the average person perceives. For example. If she had a dark mole on one side of her face, when you stare at that mole it will be your instinct to draw it quite dark. But in reality, when you are focused on her eyes you can probably barely see the mole at all. Unfortunately the way we look at a drawing or a photograph is quite different than the way we see the world itself. That's why some people are very photogenic, and others like myself are well... less so.
More things that bother me are some of the ambiguous/floating shapes you are creating below/between her breasts, and at the clavicle. Try to sure up those shapes, be decisive and make them work even if they seem somewhat ambiguous on the model. Ambiguity works fine on her, it doesn't work so well in a drawing. Her eyes or what I am assuming is the iris is also getting pretty large. Again, try to be more decisive here, it's obviously an extremely important area and largely sets the mood of the drawing. In fact probably most of the shapes in the eyes/eye sockets need to be more carefully controlled in the future. I circled some of what I think are the problem areas.
Nope, your critique didn't keep me away, don't worry about it! My absence was just because I have been moving around Chicago looking for a living situation I can manage, but now hopefully I am settled for a year or so. It's a house with 8 or 9 or 10 people and 4 cats, but so far so good (surprisingly enough).
As far as the paintover goes, I really appreciate you taking the time to go through and be so thorough, so thank you for that. I'm not entirely sure how to react to the paintover itself though, because you have never seen this girl before so it really doesn't look like her. I think you made a good point when you were talking about extremes, because when I was reading your points I was thinking to myself- "but this girl really did have big droopy eyes, a poofy floppy face and a body that was bony and gnarly", so I realized that if that was my main impression of her then I probably made somewhat of a caricature without meaning to. And then not having the features lined up threw it out of whack and so it couldn't stand well as a drawing.
As far as the ribs below the breasts and the clavicle, those were challenging areas but I really would prefer to keep them as indicators of her bony/skinny-ness as opposed to smoothing them out. That would work as long as I am able to draw them better, right? Her right shoulder area was always a total mess though. In fact that might have been the most challenging thing about this drawing, is that I was fighting with that area the entire time trying to make it very clear and simple without making it cartoonish, with that constantly changing shadow. Do you think I might have had more luck If I had drawn the shoulder in seperately, using the model only as a reference for the structure but taking some freedom to make it look nice in the context of the drawing without the model?
In other news, I did a couple drawing copies from my boy Harold Speed, to try focus on pencil treatment:
Here is a drawing I'm working on at school. The idea was for us to make a drawing kind of like a Bargue drawing, where everything was very carefully articulated to fit together across the form so that we make sure the things we are drawing make sense. For the shadow we are supposed to keep it one flat tone but vary the hardness/softness of the edge.
I'm still going to spend one more session on this, so any thoughts? I think the assignment has been really beneficial, and kind of hits on a lot of the stuff Bacon mentioned earlier, as far as using knowledge of anatomy to design structure and focusing more on edges to make the shadows describe the form. Something I'm struggling with though is the belly/chest. Right now I have some value on the belly and none on the chest, where I see in nature that those two areas are kind of a value group, so if one is there the other should be also. This is supposed to be a high key drawing so I think they should maybe be left out, but to me it looks a little odd without the belly stuff. I don't know...
Cripes, where have I been?? Your improvements are amazing, Lyrium. Really, really excellent work.
[edit] First off, this is starting out great. Now on to some critiques: The supporting hand and wrist look very tiny and thin, and the hand that's resting on the top board also seems very thin in the wrist. It also looks like she's losing a bit of her chin/jawline in that shadow.
IMO (though I'd take Bacon's or Ryan's word over mine) it doesn't look odd to me right now to have the belly shading, and none on the chest. I think if you were to change anything, it would be to simplify/remove some of the belly shading, but I'm guessing you can make that call later on in the drawing too, if you're unsure about it now.
Thanks for the encouragement, folks. I will definitely check out those hands, ND; I was worried the one was a little small but was having a hard time figuring it out.
My teacher moved me on to a different study today so this drawing is finished. I put a lot more work into the face, hands, and foot in particular, and also tried to sort out the chest/belly situation. This drawing taught me a lot and is probably better than the other pencil drawings that I've done so far, so that's nice.
Also I drew one of the kitties that lives in my house. Even though I'm very mad at them right now, they are still pretty cute.
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I will get a scanner soon, so in the near future there won't be any more blurry photos from weird angles and such. Here are a few drawings from school anyhow, about 4 or 5 hours each.
edit: scanned!
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edit: re: Thread title: Is it me you're looking for?
Hey remember when I said there would be internet in my apartment? Never happened after all. However, I managed to go to a scanner, so that's a plus. These are new figure drawings, and I replaced the images in the other figure posts as well. They are all 4 hour poses except the most recent, which is at the bottom and was a 6 hour pose.
School is teaching me a lot but I obviously still want input from the AC
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One thing I might mention is that with some of these latest ones you're starting to let you half-tone values get too close to your shadow values, which can weaken the structure a bit- you had some two-tone drawings earlier that had the right idea, so what you probably should look at more is fluctuating the hardness/softness of the edges between the light and shade areas to get the form, rather than putting a lot of work into the mid-tone areas.
You might also consider pushing your cast shadows to have hard edges, to distinguish them from form rolling into shadow.
Another thing (that I struggle with myself so I'm not sure my explanation is going to be adequate) is trying to work to design your shapes a bit more. an easy example I did in my paintover is boxing off the contour of her right knee a bit. Is that the most accurate way to draw that knee, probably not. But what it does is to make a clearer statement about how the knee works than a more curved contour would- it tells you clearly where the knee bends, and the box form makes the structure a bit more clear (my drawover might be a bit too simple for the final result of a very long pose drawing, but it's good to think in these terms for shorter drawings/lay-ins). Subtle things like that, or pushing a line a bit further than you'd be able to observe because it'd make a stronger statement about foreshortening, or hardening an edge to make a form that emphasizes the perspective, etc. can really make a big difference to the overall read. (I really wish I had some better examples to give you here to explain this. :?) Sometimes the model gives you enough information that you don't really need to think much about this, other times it really needs to be mulled over.
For example, you look at the picture up there with the guy with his hand on the pedestal- the proportions are good and there's nothing wrong with it per se, but there's a lack of structural information in the mid torso and the leg in the shadow there, and it winds up weakening the read. Now, there may not have been a whole ton of information to work with there- the lighting setup may have made things hard to read, or he might have had a sort of proportion of fat that smoothed over the muscles and bones you could normally use to play up that structure. That's the point where you kind of have to force some design in there and use your anatomy knowledge so if you need to force there to be a harder edge between the front plane of side plane of the torso, you can do it and make it still look legit. (God I hope some of this made sense.)
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As far as designing shapes, I think I have an idea what you are talking about. Have you read the drawing master class by Beverly-Hale? I am pretty sure he is talking about the same kind of stuff in there. It is pretty hard to grasp so I appreciate you giving examples. That will take a lot of practice for sure.
I finished another two day pose today while thinking about what you said about the guy with his hand on the pedestal. It was a pretty nice coincidence that the model was the same man in a similar pose, even! I will post that tomorrow.
Thanks again!
facebook.com/LauraCatherwoodArt
To show off what's meant by shape design I think it'd probably be necessary to show drawings which don't have good shape design and redoing them with better shape design, and obviously there won't be too many mediocre drawings in a book that exclusively uses master drawings as examples.
So I guess I'll give it a shot- even if you already get it, I think I might be able to teach myself something by trying to articulate it better that I did above (so try to indulge me here ).
What I did here is take a photo and traced over it 4 times, each showing a different take on the same thing (I probably should have spent more time polishing this so the drawings weren't so mediocre, but whatever). If you want to know why I didn't draw it for reals, I just didn't want to bring any of my own proportional issues and such into the mix and distract from the point at hand.
In the first drawing, it's a a straight line tracing- it's relatively accurate (the reference and my lightbox aren't that great so it's not super accurate), but it's ultimately pretty boring and doesn't have a lot of strength to it.
The second drawing is another line drawing, but here some thought has been given to shape design- the point of the elbow and the fingers have been squared a bit to emphasize the joints there. Near joints there are more straight lines (because the bone is closer to the surface), and in more muscley/fatty areas, the outline is defined more by curves. I threw in a just a little hint of a line on the inner elbow to make the bending there more readable. Now, in terms of proportion and everything, this drawing is very similar to the first- but it feels much stronger because of how it's being designed.
The third and fourth drawings are more about the shading issue mentioned previously (I'm glad your teacher could give some insight into the matter), but there's also shape designing going on here as well- making shadow shapes that are clear and articulate, rather than trying to draw in every single variation in tone that happens within the light areas and dark areas.
The third drawing is an exaggerated version of the problems I mentioned before- now, your drawings aren't anywhere near as bad as this, but a lot of people would make drawings like this because they're just trying to get every bit of tone in there right from the get-go, which can easily lead to half-tones being too close to shadow tones, and too many tones in general.
The last drawing strips everything down to two tones- everything is either lit, or shaded, with no tonal variation within the lit and shaded areas. There's a clear shape defining each (I probably should have done an example with just hard edges, Mike Mignola style to make the point clearer...but it would look similar to the second panel in this previous example: http://bacon.iseenothing.com/otherpeoplestuff/McD.jpg). The only thing rounding the forms off here is changing up the edges between those shapes- again, there are harder edges near joints, bony structures, and where forms are butting against other forms, and softer edges in fatty/muscley areas, where the the forms are smoother. This sort of thinking is edge design.
Now, for longer drawings, you probably won't stop with two tones- you'll probably have in addition a highlight, mid-tone, terminator shadow, and reflected light in shadow sorta tones. But even with all these tones floating around, the principles would be the same- each form discreet shapes, and have edges that need to be articulated with their adjacent tonal shapes. This is why starting with the simpler two-tone version can be good practice, because it forces you to really get the most out of your basic shapes and edges, which both gives you a strong initial read, and lets you bring that skill over as you develop the drawing with more tones.
It also should be said that, I've done some designing here, but the designing I've done isn't necessarily the right or wrong way to go about it- it's my own personal opinion of what I want to get across in a drawing. If one were trying to make a figure appear more masculine, one might favor harder edges, and a harsher, more chiseled forms, while a more feminine figure would have softer, more graceful edges and contours. It can also be a personal thing- a Bouguereau take on the same subject would have more soft, subtle edges and tones, a Phil Hale version would likely have more hard edges, bolder tones, etc. This is an area where it helps to do master studies to figure out how other artists have tackled the issue, and figure out how they got across whatever it is you find appealing about their work, and try to bring that sense to your own drawings.
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Here is another 4 hour pose of the same guy as the hand-on-pedestal drawing, and I drew it after reading our first post but before reading your second one. In this one I spent a lot more time designing the contours and shadow shapes, which is tough because the guy is rounder than our other male models. I tried to convey the planes better than in the last drawing, and then I threw down some midtones in the last bit of time.
(as a side note: to hell with his right arm )
Here is a 2 hour head study I did right after posting my last drawings.
Seriously Bacon, thank you so much for your input. It has been extremely helpful and I want to make you a present.
facebook.com/LauraCatherwoodArt
Looks like you're headed in the right direction- pushing the box form on the knee of the latest drawing really helps in articulating the joint there.
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between 6 and 7 hours- I am very happy with this one
2 hours
2 hours
4 hours
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I have been doing a lot of toned paper drawings too but no scans/photos of them yet.
I left this one in the scanner at fedex, woops. Haha.
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I now have two things that I haven't had in a very long time: a working laptop, and internet in my home. To celebrate, I'm going to dump more school work into this thread.
I realize that I never posted my second cast drawing, so this is that...
...and it has been a while, because I have already finished my third charcoal cast drawing as well...
...which means that I got to move on to painting! I painted eggs first.
Other than that I have been enjoying using toned paper and such.
facebook.com/LauraCatherwoodArt
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yeah no shit... I thought it was a photo, even after looking at it for a few minutes....
Here are some things I am working on right now:
Just started this yesterday
This one I have been working on for a little bit because it's pretty big. It's the long-pose for the semester so she's there twice a week in the same pose. I just started this one recently though because up until then I was working on a different drawing, but I finished it early.
May as well post that one too:
I feel like my drawings look different now, even just between that drawing and the new one for the same pose.
And a little arm study I found when looking for that picture:
I will try to get better pictures in the future, I just never remember to bring my camera to school, and I can only use a scanner for the little pencil ones
facebook.com/LauraCatherwoodArt
Also I got some better pictures of my other big things from this semester.
facebook.com/LauraCatherwoodArt
Here is where I am at right now on that cast:
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Closer for some detail
Looks like the photo kind of blew out her titty a little.
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So let's talk more specifically about what I think is wrong. Her head is getting a little wide I think, particularly on the right side of her head. This is in turn doing more damage to things like her mouth, which is becoming extremely wide and drooping on her right side, as well as her right ear getting large probably because of the relative feel to the side of her face. Some of the features are all going different directions as well. I will put red lines through them to show you what I mean. We really need to straighten these out. The entire mouth is probably drifting a little to her right as well.Part of the problem with drawing solely from observation is that you concentrate too much on what you are looking at and not enough on what you are drawing. Feature drifting is really common in life drawing because models can never return to exactly the same position they were in before, so if you draw the nose in one sitting, and then the eye in the next you might get two features which don't relate to each other very well. Remember to back off from your drawing often and just look at it to make sure things are feeling right.
Be careful with the over all droopy feel of the features and face as well. She may have had puffy/boney features but they are unlikely to have been as extreme as you made them. Try to remember when you are observing that what you are focused on is always going to look more extreme than it is in world the average person perceives. For example. If she had a dark mole on one side of her face, when you stare at that mole it will be your instinct to draw it quite dark. But in reality, when you are focused on her eyes you can probably barely see the mole at all. Unfortunately the way we look at a drawing or a photograph is quite different than the way we see the world itself. That's why some people are very photogenic, and others like myself are well... less so.
More things that bother me are some of the ambiguous/floating shapes you are creating below/between her breasts, and at the clavicle. Try to sure up those shapes, be decisive and make them work even if they seem somewhat ambiguous on the model. Ambiguity works fine on her, it doesn't work so well in a drawing. Her eyes or what I am assuming is the iris is also getting pretty large. Again, try to be more decisive here, it's obviously an extremely important area and largely sets the mood of the drawing. In fact probably most of the shapes in the eyes/eye sockets need to be more carefully controlled in the future. I circled some of what I think are the problem areas.
Problem areas:
Paintover:
Comparison Gif
Anyways, I hope this helps.
As far as the paintover goes, I really appreciate you taking the time to go through and be so thorough, so thank you for that. I'm not entirely sure how to react to the paintover itself though, because you have never seen this girl before so it really doesn't look like her. I think you made a good point when you were talking about extremes, because when I was reading your points I was thinking to myself- "but this girl really did have big droopy eyes, a poofy floppy face and a body that was bony and gnarly", so I realized that if that was my main impression of her then I probably made somewhat of a caricature without meaning to. And then not having the features lined up threw it out of whack and so it couldn't stand well as a drawing.
As far as the ribs below the breasts and the clavicle, those were challenging areas but I really would prefer to keep them as indicators of her bony/skinny-ness as opposed to smoothing them out. That would work as long as I am able to draw them better, right? Her right shoulder area was always a total mess though. In fact that might have been the most challenging thing about this drawing, is that I was fighting with that area the entire time trying to make it very clear and simple without making it cartoonish, with that constantly changing shadow. Do you think I might have had more luck If I had drawn the shoulder in seperately, using the model only as a reference for the structure but taking some freedom to make it look nice in the context of the drawing without the model?
In other news, I did a couple drawing copies from my boy Harold Speed, to try focus on pencil treatment:
and have been enjoying a summer in Chicago
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I'm still going to spend one more session on this, so any thoughts? I think the assignment has been really beneficial, and kind of hits on a lot of the stuff Bacon mentioned earlier, as far as using knowledge of anatomy to design structure and focusing more on edges to make the shadows describe the form. Something I'm struggling with though is the belly/chest. Right now I have some value on the belly and none on the chest, where I see in nature that those two areas are kind of a value group, so if one is there the other should be also. This is supposed to be a high key drawing so I think they should maybe be left out, but to me it looks a little odd without the belly stuff. I don't know...
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[edit] First off, this is starting out great. Now on to some critiques: The supporting hand and wrist look very tiny and thin, and the hand that's resting on the top board also seems very thin in the wrist. It also looks like she's losing a bit of her chin/jawline in that shadow.
IMO (though I'd take Bacon's or Ryan's word over mine) it doesn't look odd to me right now to have the belly shading, and none on the chest. I think if you were to change anything, it would be to simplify/remove some of the belly shading, but I'm guessing you can make that call later on in the drawing too, if you're unsure about it now.
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Also I drew one of the kitties that lives in my house. Even though I'm very mad at them right now, they are still pretty cute.
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Areas that are behind right now are the hands and legs, and obviously the props.
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