Dayvan Cowboy and the Quest for Talent [NSFW]

Dayvan Cowboy

Hi! This is my first time posting in this part of the forum, as I'm pretty new to this whole 'art' thing. I started practicing earlier this year using Drawspace as suggested by the sticky here, and then signed up for a 10 session drawing course to get some more personal help. That's over now, so here are some of the fruits of my labor.

First up, a blind contour drawing of my hand. Obviously a bit abstract, but still a fun exercise:

These are a few random picks from the Drawspace tutorials:

A couple of bigger (A2) charcoal pieces from the drawing course:

Random doodlings since the course finished:

At the moment I'm just looking to find my artistic feet, and get some of the basics down. I'm becoming more interested in learning to draw people specifically, and to that end have signed up for a life drawing course running for four evenings this week.

Any comments, critiques and suggestions welcome. I'm from a design background, so I know how to take crit - do your worst!

lyrium

Are those drawings in the doodle spoiler of your own hand? If so, keep it up because that is a good way to practice, and no one can ever have practiced drawing too many hands. If people are what interest you, then you should look at tutorials more focused on things that will be helpful to you. Basics like value, perspective, and drawing simple shapes will help. For more specifically people drawings, you might be interested in these concerning the head and facial features: http://www.stanprokopenko.com/blog/category/portrait/page/2/
I'm sure you will have a blast in that life drawing class, and remember that you can also take a sketchbook with you to public places and sketch the folks you see. It's good fun and helps you notice things about the way people look and pose. Try doing them in pen and this may help with your line confidence also.
Good luck!

Dayvan Cowboy

Yeah, those are my own hand - albeit slightly disproportionate. Thanks for the link, it definitely looks helpful for the future, although I'm obviously still getting to grips with the very basics.

I've picked up a smaller sketchbook to keep with me, and also potentially found a group of people who meet up around London to draw on location. While the focus is generally on drawing the locations, I don't see any reason why I couldn't get some practice drawing the people around too.

Dayvan Cowboy

So! It's been about a month since I made this thread and I've been trying to keep up drawing when I can. I went to the life drawing class:


I've been copying people from dvd covers and game manuals:




And today I found a group that meets up every week for life drawing:


The current plan is to keep on going to the life drawing group, and get good!

bobsbarricades

Dayvan Cowboy wrote:

...The current plan is to keep on going to the life drawing group, and get good!

me too! minus the life drawing group =,( FOR NOW! keep up the work man. I notice you have confident strokesl you don't do what I do and do like 10 strokes to make a line. ya? I'm told it's necessary for this 'good' achievement

Dayvan Cowboy

I'm back! And I brought doodles...


(copied from a bag of chips)




(using a single line)

...and paintings?







(bottle and pineapple still in progress)


(some weird exercise from a painting course)

Crit/suggestions more than welcome

earthwormadam

Your def on the right track, doing figure studies, still life, and doodles! Keep it up and see results.

I'm really not a good person to offer advice on figure drawing, but I think you're focusing too much on the making the lines, and then doing the shading. You should be focusing only on light and dark, highlights and shadows. Build your forms through the shades that you see. You can start to learn by maybe only doing a few shades, like a light, a mid-tone, and a dark. This will help you be able to break things down in a more manageable way. Just my 2 cents!

Mustang

You may also at this stage want to concentrate on the specifics of the human body rather than the incredibly challenging whole lot. Eg hands, eyes, mouths and lips, noses.
You're getting there, but your still dropping back into symbology when drawing faces in a couple of the examples you posted.

Dayvan Cowboy

Thanks for the tips guys! I've got some time off over the holidays so I plan to get practicing more, and you've definitely given me some things to think about while I do so.

Dayvan Cowboy

A new update, this time mostly life drawing. I've been using a lot of charcoal to try and get a better range of values, although I still need to get better at not emphasizing the outline too much.

But first, a painting in progress:

Reference:

Life drawing - I've tried to keep them in chronological order but they only go back a month or so, so it's not that important:



I like the head on this one, and most of the torso down to the arms. The rest not so much...


Go foreshortening!




This one was originally only going to be a 5-10 minute pose so I was rushing to start with. It turned into about a 15 minute job, so I think I overdid some of the shading.


Really messed up the couch on the right hand side.




Tried not to smudge the charcoal on this one and really liked the end result.

As always, comments and crits welcomed. Thanks!

Arden Canelo

Don't forget to stick a NSFW tag in the title. :winky:

Dayvan Cowboy

Oops! Nice catch, thanks.