I really like what you did there, and its a very good excercise, I was always terrible at cloth, and that is mainly because I never actually excercise drawing anything like what you have been doing.
I hope you dont mind this, but I just felt that eventhough its a great egg a few things can be improved.
Basically, I just put that very fine line on the left side of the egg, I think its reflected light from the white cloth, but I see it in the reference and its like a perfect negative line, that gives you the chance to push the contrast of the cloth, to get way deeper shadows, while still keeping the easily recogniceable shape of the egg intact. Also smudging your stuff a bit could help get a sense of soft or (insert english word that I cant remember here), like the surface of the egg.
Disclaimer: Its a quick paintover from the office just to exsacerbate what I wanted to explain, and in way means this is the "right way to go".
[img][/img][img]http://i.imgur.com/UmpOi.gif
Man this is what happens to my brain whenever you guys reply, thank you so much Fantomas for the awesome advice and taking your valuable time to do a paintover! I appreciated it a lot. That look so good compared to what I did too, I still have a long way to go.
Halen I guess I am using eggs because I feel that they are simpler for me to observe and practice on tone/value. Also sometimes I just find it hard to squeeze time to practice so I will also use an egg. As you can see I am still screwing up with simple stuff like this so I guess there will be more egg drawings appearing in this thread. :P
Another egg for the night, I realise that I tend to draw things much slimier than it really is. Not really happy with tonight's progress, but I'm tired as hell so I will just sleep it off.[/img]
The photo is much darker compared to what I see for some reason. Should be because of the lamp.
It's been a slow day at work, also I have not posted something new in a while. Here are some really awful doodles of my perspective training for these past few days.
Man I feel pretty ashamed that I was not able to keep on drawing and practising like I say I would, no excuses at all
Here's to a better and more productive year ahead.
Also please be free to say whatever you think or feel.
I accept all criticisms and judgement for the crappy stuff I'm churning out.
But, welcome back to drawing land. It's cool place. Lay your sacrifices/drawings at the altar of the dark god, and you will be granted power. I think that's the way it works anyway.
Mastery is the result of ceaseless error, combined with ruthless self-appraisal.
I have this image in my head a few days ago but unfortunately I am not skilled enough to create the drawing as of now (nope it's not another egg!)
Need to draw more urghbmewuhbvuqie
I used reference for all the drawings above, they actually look waaaay off
Drawing white items in diffuse light is actually really hard, because even the darks aren't very dark. And towels and stuff are tricky anyway. But it's good to see you tackling difficult stuff! The problem is you're trying to make up for the lack of value range in the initial image by artificially inflating it in your drawing.
The egg is probably a much better subject, and it's also easier to pick out the 'off' areas. For example, I can see you're getting fooled by relative light/shadow contrasts. The transition area of the egg - the part facing us between dark side and lit side - does not contain the deepest shadows - in fact by definition they are getting lighter. However that's where your blackest blacks are in the image. It can seem darker, when shadow is right next to light, because we see the relative value rather than the absolute. You've also ended up with this very hard shadow edge when it should be much more of a gradient, albeit a rapid one. But overall the value ranges in your drawing are much closer to the ones in the image - good work on that!
On these still life pieces, I'm noticing a lot of the time you're stretching objects to be a little too vertical, a little too horizontal, or you're overexaggerating certain features. I suspect this is because you're just going straight ahead and trying to replicate the contours, without first establishing your general layout/proportions. This is something that learning how to measure properly can help a lot with.
If you're not familiar with measuring, it basically consists of holding out your pencil at arms length, in between your thumb and forefinger, and using the side of the pencil to figure out the angle between points- the side of the pencil creating a virtual line connecting those points- and then drawing a matching line on your page.
You can also use measuring to figure out distances- between the top of the pencil and where you place the end of your thumb, you can establish a known distance. For example, if you were drawing a person, you might place the top of the pencil to mark where the top of the head was, and then use your thumb to mark where the bottom of the chin is. Now, you have a distance to measure other things, like how far it is between the chin and the nipple (generally one head length), or you can rotate your hand 90 degrees, and figure out how wide the head is compared to how tall it is.
I took one of your refs and did a sketch to give you some idea how this idea works in practice.
If you look at your drawing, you can see that it's pretty consistently stretched vertically, the bottom was a bit squished down to a more horizontal angle, and the size of the corner on the right got a bit exaggerated, which in turn distorted the surrounding areas. By taking a step back from working piecemeal, area by area, and measuring the whole first, you can sort these issues out pretty quickly.
This is the part of drawing that consists purely of just being diligent (well, this and most other things involving art, really)- so the more diligent you are, the better the results will be.
(Embarrassingly, my initial measurement was actually not that accurate as you can see, but by double-checking I managed to get a relatively accurate final result.)
I am really grateful of you to do such a detailed and wonderful tutorial for me. I am sorry that I took so long to reply, I've had some anxiety issues and basically ran away from the forums for a bit.
The lines are still fairly erratic and feathered. You'll want to focus hard on reducing that, and you may have to spend time going back and forth between just lines and boxes. Getting that controls very important, and these are the exact exercises for it, so push for accuracy when tackling the exercise. Try to think of it as a bit of a game, to help take the pressure off
The boxes have gotten significantly better since the first go! I hope you see when drawing them that avoiding going over uncertain lines again and again and instead focusing on drawing a more accurate and confident line the first time yields much better results. Working in ink during practice has its advantages but one of the big ones is trying to make that "one shot" the best you can. Keep it up
19th of July 2016
Spent yesterday reading up tutorials on light and forms, I remember the forums having a ton of resources but regretably they have fallen into a state of disrepair over time.
Updating the enrichments is on the to do list, but I have not had a ton of time. I went back into the simple shape one and at least rooted out the broken images for you.
No worries. The resources mostly got broken by a lapse in hosting. I have some of the images on my hard drive, and others I just know what to look for. Over the next few months I'd like to rewrite them and make them more robust mini-lessons. If you have questions you'd like to see addressed in the OPs of those threads, feel free to post in them. I will see the notifications.
I'd love it if you cross posted your boxes over there too. Trying to make that part of the forum come to life.
21st July 2016
More of the same stuff I have been practicing lately, added elipse excercises to the mix since I have been neglecting them for quite a bit
Still not happy with my lines so more lines for me
Cubes wise I tried to do them faster but the overall quality dropped quite a bit as a result
For the tone scale I settled on having 9 values, I don't have the skills currently to go beyond that
Lastly oh boy I have no idea what I am doing for the light and shadow practice half the time. Oh well more for me tomorrow
03 Micron
01Micron
Around 250 elipses and 300 circles
Cubes speedrun 200 boxes
Tones values, light and shadow
I think I am going to toss in some still drawing practice soon. Do you guys have any recommendations on what I should better do next though?
These exercises are all good, and people don't normally suggest this as we see a lot of non-exercise drawings posted, but draw something fun that you want to do every once in a while just so you don't get burnt out on lines and spheres.
I spent most of the day just relaxing and doodling on my A5 notebook but it's kinda alarming how fast I went back to my erratic drawing habits on a subconcious level
Dont get crazy hung up on it. When I doodle sometimes I repeat the same mistakes I've been making for 20 years. Its frustrating, sure, but the important thing is that you are now identifying it. If you can see the issue while its happening that's the first step to self correcting. Its one of the reasons these lessons can help so much. Eventually the better habits will settle in, but it takes time.
Still grinding my skills over here
I was kinda embarrassed to show my doodles because they are really messy but here you go folks, stuff from the past few days until today in mostly chronological order:
29th of July
My core foundations are not there yet but I would it would be nice to start properly draw a simple figure so I can try placing and positioning them for some doodling fun later this week.
I still have some trouble properly rotating cubes from a certain angle, specifically when they are tilted at around 45% with a corner on the ground and I want to draw a bunch of cubes spinning sideways like a top in correct
perspective. Anyone in here can recommend me a tutorial to solve this? It's been bothering me for quite a while.
Do you have a computer that could run some free 3d software, like blender? It maybe easier to draw if you have some reference in front of you. You can make some cubes and then look at the wire frames.
Hi everyone my phone died, borrowing someone's phone now
I have been reading up on mainly light and shadow stuff in my local library these past few days
Man I really need to do more of these, I can barely wrap my mind around the cast shadow stuff in the first chapter of Scott Robertson's book
2nd of August 2016
Didn't manage to do much today, trying to figure out foreshortening stuff and rotating figures. Time for me to read up on anatomy after I get a little more comfortable with posing and rotation.
I think I should focus more on light and shadows because It feels like I am going to take a very Long time to even remotely grasp the concept and techniques
It's great to see you doing all these studies - you're totally inspiring me to revisit cast shadow perspective.
You said you were interested in doing some more still lifes soon, and I think that would be a great idea, to apply and cement some of the things you're learning. I'd pay special attention to the relative value of things: look for the darkest dark in your image and don't let anything else go darker than that on your drawing. Instead of telling yourself, 'a core shadow is really, really dark,' look at it closely and see whether it's truly as dark as you think it is, or whether there might be part of the cast shadow that's darker. Do the same thing with edges. Where is the hardest edge? Where is the softest edge? Is the core shadow really as sharp as I've drawn it?
Not that you shouldn't hit the books - that's really important, too. For me, at least, trying to see on an actual sphere or egg something I've read about, and then apply it to a drawing can help things stick better.
This looks interesting and I wouldn't have guessed you used a mechanical pencil!
Shading with a mechanical pencil is kind of complicated if you aren't doing hatchwork. It looks interesting but you might get better practice using a regular leaded pencil-- even a school #2 (HB) might give you some easier time smoothing if you're looking to practice gradients and things like that.
Great work, though, you are really pushing yourself and the improvements are starting to accumulate!
Posts
[img][/img][img]http://i.imgur.com/UmpOi.gif Man this is what happens to my brain whenever you guys reply, thank you so much Fantomas for the awesome advice and taking your valuable time to do a paintover! I appreciated it a lot. That look so good compared to what I did too, I still have a long way to go. Halen I guess I am using eggs because I feel that they are simpler for me to observe and practice on tone/value. Also sometimes I just find it hard to squeeze time to practice so I will also use an egg. As you can see I am still screwing up with simple stuff like this so I guess there will be more egg drawings appearing in this thread. :P Another egg for the night, I realise that I tend to draw things much slimier than it really is. Not really happy with tonight's progress, but I'm tired as hell so I will just sleep it off.[/img]
The photo is much darker compared to what I see for some reason. Should be because of the lamp.
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
It's been a slow day at work, also I have not posted something new in a while. Here are some really awful doodles of my perspective training for these past few days.
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
Did this during my free time at "work" today, or the lack of it. I totally have no idea on how to do legs.
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
Man I feel pretty ashamed that I was not able to keep on drawing and practising like I say I would, no excuses at all
Here's to a better and more productive year ahead.
Also please be free to say whatever you think or feel.
I accept all criticisms and judgement for the crappy stuff I'm churning out.
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
But, welcome back to drawing land. It's cool place. Lay your sacrifices/drawings at the altar of the dark god, and you will be granted power. I think that's the way it works anyway.
Man I barely improved because of my lack of practice, hopefully I will be able to draw more frequently from now onwards
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
I have this image in my head a few days ago but unfortunately I am not skilled enough to create the drawing as of now (nope it's not another egg!)
Need to draw more urghbmewuhbvuqie
I used reference for all the drawings above, they actually look waaaay off
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
Drawing white items in diffuse light is actually really hard, because even the darks aren't very dark. And towels and stuff are tricky anyway. But it's good to see you tackling difficult stuff! The problem is you're trying to make up for the lack of value range in the initial image by artificially inflating it in your drawing.
The egg is probably a much better subject, and it's also easier to pick out the 'off' areas. For example, I can see you're getting fooled by relative light/shadow contrasts. The transition area of the egg - the part facing us between dark side and lit side - does not contain the deepest shadows - in fact by definition they are getting lighter. However that's where your blackest blacks are in the image. It can seem darker, when shadow is right next to light, because we see the relative value rather than the absolute. You've also ended up with this very hard shadow edge when it should be much more of a gradient, albeit a rapid one. But overall the value ranges in your drawing are much closer to the ones in the image - good work on that!
If you're not familiar with measuring, it basically consists of holding out your pencil at arms length, in between your thumb and forefinger, and using the side of the pencil to figure out the angle between points- the side of the pencil creating a virtual line connecting those points- and then drawing a matching line on your page.
You can also use measuring to figure out distances- between the top of the pencil and where you place the end of your thumb, you can establish a known distance. For example, if you were drawing a person, you might place the top of the pencil to mark where the top of the head was, and then use your thumb to mark where the bottom of the chin is. Now, you have a distance to measure other things, like how far it is between the chin and the nipple (generally one head length), or you can rotate your hand 90 degrees, and figure out how wide the head is compared to how tall it is.
I took one of your refs and did a sketch to give you some idea how this idea works in practice.
If you look at your drawing, you can see that it's pretty consistently stretched vertically, the bottom was a bit squished down to a more horizontal angle, and the size of the corner on the right got a bit exaggerated, which in turn distorted the surrounding areas. By taking a step back from working piecemeal, area by area, and measuring the whole first, you can sort these issues out pretty quickly.
This is the part of drawing that consists purely of just being diligent (well, this and most other things involving art, really)- so the more diligent you are, the better the results will be.
(Embarrassingly, my initial measurement was actually not that accurate as you can see, but by double-checking I managed to get a relatively accurate final result.)
Twitter
I am really grateful of you to do such a detailed and wonderful tutorial for me. I am sorry that I took so long to reply, I've had some anxiety issues and basically ran away from the forums for a bit.
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
Found this in the art assignments forum:
These are terribly boring to see so I am just going to post these kind of stuff once and much later when I improve significantly
Going for the 250 boxes excercise next
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
Took this from the other art forum
I can't tell if it's because that i am slow but these babies took a whole load of time to complete like omg
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
12th of July 2016
More lines! I have switched from using a A5 notebook and 0.1 Micron to an actual sketchbook (A4) as well as 0.3 Micron just like the video.
I have like a couple of hours left so I should be able to knock out more line practice and some cubes too as well.
Edit:
Edit edit:
Holy cubes they really consume so much time to draw
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
My lines seems to be getting worst for some reason lol
Tried to combine the various practices together
Edit: Lines lines lines!
Edit edit: Curves incoming
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
Waves
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125 Boxes
I am getting faster but this still took me like 2 hours, made a lot of mistakes too from what I can tell
I think I am going to begin the form and light practice next while honing the stuff I learnt this week
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
facebook.com/LauraCatherwoodArt
Spent yesterday reading up tutorials on light and forms, I remember the forums having a ton of resources but regretably they have fallen into a state of disrepair over time.
I am currently using the below link instead
http://www.artinstructionblog.com/drawing-lesson-a-theory-of-light-and-shade
It's pretty informative for the most part, although some parts I can't understand very well, like the cast shadows for example.
Line practice
Light and shade practice
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
facebook.com/LauraCatherwoodArt
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
Whoa...
Thank you so much!
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
I'd love it if you cross posted your boxes over there too. Trying to make that part of the forum come to life.
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
More of the same stuff I have been practicing lately, added elipse excercises to the mix since I have been neglecting them for quite a bit
Still not happy with my lines so more lines for me
Cubes wise I tried to do them faster but the overall quality dropped quite a bit as a result
For the tone scale I settled on having 9 values, I don't have the skills currently to go beyond that
Lastly oh boy I have no idea what I am doing for the light and shadow practice half the time. Oh well more for me tomorrow
03 Micron
01Micron
Around 250 elipses and 300 circles
Cubes speedrun 200 boxes
Tones values, light and shadow
I think I am going to toss in some still drawing practice soon. Do you guys have any recommendations on what I should better do next though?
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
I was kinda embarrassed to show my doodles because they are really messy but here you go folks, stuff from the past few days until today in mostly chronological order:
27th of July 2016:
05 Micron
05, 01, 005 Microns
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
My core foundations are not there yet but I would it would be nice to start properly draw a simple figure so I can try placing and positioning them for some doodling fun later this week.
I still have some trouble properly rotating cubes from a certain angle, specifically when they are tilted at around 45% with a corner on the ground and I want to draw a bunch of cubes spinning sideways like a top in correct
perspective. Anyone in here can recommend me a tutorial to solve this? It's been bothering me for quite a while.
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
I have been reading up on mainly light and shadow stuff in my local library these past few days
Man I really need to do more of these, I can barely wrap my mind around the cast shadow stuff in the first chapter of Scott Robertson's book
2nd of August 2016
Didn't manage to do much today, trying to figure out foreshortening stuff and rotating figures. Time for me to read up on anatomy after I get a little more comfortable with posing and rotation.
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
8th of August 2016
I think I should focus more on light and shadows because It feels like I am going to take a very Long time to even remotely grasp the concept and techniques
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
You said you were interested in doing some more still lifes soon, and I think that would be a great idea, to apply and cement some of the things you're learning. I'd pay special attention to the relative value of things: look for the darkest dark in your image and don't let anything else go darker than that on your drawing. Instead of telling yourself, 'a core shadow is really, really dark,' look at it closely and see whether it's truly as dark as you think it is, or whether there might be part of the cast shadow that's darker. Do the same thing with edges. Where is the hardest edge? Where is the softest edge? Is the core shadow really as sharp as I've drawn it?
Not that you shouldn't hit the books - that's really important, too. For me, at least, trying to see on an actual sphere or egg something I've read about, and then apply it to a drawing can help things stick better.
I will start to draw more still life stuff next week!
14th of August, 2016
Top portion of fire extinguisher, HB mechanical pencil 0.5
Used my old linework to practice getting more comfortable with shading, HB mechanical pencil 0.5
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
Shading with a mechanical pencil is kind of complicated if you aren't doing hatchwork. It looks interesting but you might get better practice using a regular leaded pencil-- even a school #2 (HB) might give you some easier time smoothing if you're looking to practice gradients and things like that.
Great work, though, you are really pushing yourself and the improvements are starting to accumulate!
Uncanny Magazine!
The Mad Writers Union