Daily drawings

Penguin-Factory

So, I posted here way back with some drawings for an animation course portfolio (I got in!). Since then I've been drawing from life a lot, and I decided to start up a thread to help motivate myself to draw every day. Just one for now:



I realise the shading is quite difficult to make out, I have a bad habit of doing it really lightly. All critiques and advice are greatly appreciated ^^

srsizzy

Well the things that shoot out the most on this one is that the wrists and hands are way too small, and the lower half of the legs are too much like thin sticks a bit. Also, the neck is kind of too long. Someone will probably suggest not using outlines, and just shading.

Penguin-Factory

Thanks for the feedback. The photo I used as a source had one hand clasped in the other, but now that you've drawn my attention to it, it seems more like some kind of stump :P

WastingPenguins

It seems that you could use a better grasp on human anatomy. I would suggest you leave the clothed references alone for a bit, and draw nudes. It's VERY important to understand the structure of the body before you can understand how clothes will fit over top of that.

Finding nudes to draw online shouldn't be too hard :winky: (I would suggest searching the anatomy forum over on CGtalk.com), but most importantly, go grab yourself a good anatomy book (Dymanic Figure Drawing and Dynamic Anatomy by Burne Hogarth were absolutely invaluable to me) and study, study, study! And don't just copy the figures from those books... READ em and carefully study the diagrams and you'll be amazed at how fast you'll improve. They will help to teach you how to construct figures with volume.

Just some friendly advice from a fellow artist, good luck!

tmccool

http://characterdesigns.com/ --look at the photosets. worked wonders for me.

Penguin-Factory

Thanks for the advice (and that link, tmcool, it looks great). I'll try some nudes and post up my efforts when I'm finish.

Penguin-Factory

Right, here's a torso. I tried to shade it, with, uh..... "mixed" results. Need to work on that.



Two arms:



I'll do some more later. Thanks in advance to anyone who comments.

By the way, what's the usual resolution for scanning drawings?

HugmasterGeneral

In my experience, it's best to scan as big as your scanner/computer will allow, then scale down using your imaging software (ie. Photoshop). You can usually get decent results at 600dpi, but I rarely do less than 1200. That's just me, though.


Edit: Aight, aight, my bad. It's been a while since I've scanned shiz, and I thought for sure those were the numbers I used. I would always scan at the max my scanner would allow, then downsize until I had something I could work with. The reason was my scanner, for some reason, would get terrible quality at lower DPIs, regardless of how I adjusted the settings, or what program I imported to. So I always had to use a minimum of 600 DPI to get decent results.

Sorry if that was misinformation. Its just what I had to do.

Penguin-Factory

600dpi? I've been using 90 :P

In my defence, I assumed the default setting for my scanner would be good. Apparently not.

BananaChips

Just as an experiment I scanned a full page in at 1200 DPI. I think my computer nearly exploded.

HugmasterGeneral

I should mention that most of the time when I'm scanning, it's for super high-res stuff, such as vehicle wraps and banners. If all you're doing is uploading to the internet, I'm sure 300 is plenty. And yes, unless you have a really good computer and graphics card, 1200 DPI will probably make your computer fart blood for a week. :P

MagicToaster

rfilyaw wrote: »

If all you're doing is uploading to the internet, I'm sure 300 is plenty.

It's not plenty, it's excessive! In order to optimize downloads you should set your internet images at 72dpi.

Also, 1200dpi?!?! Are you serious? There is no level of detail that requires such massive amounts of useless image data. You know you're gonna loose all of that when the RIP that processes your image prints it out. Even if you're printing on the side of a van 300dpi is more than enough. If you're working on super large scale try using vectors instead, the file will be much more manageable in terms of size and processing power required to edit it.

tmccool

Um... working on our high school's magazine (we won awards... yeah im bragging on the internet) for 4 years taught me that print-quality stuff is saved at 225 dpi. Posting sketches doesn't need 300.

rts

I wouldn't post on this forum, as it is for students/former students/soon to be students of my school, but here is a link to a tutorial of how we approach drawing from a nude model at my school.

http://www.erikgist.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=131

Hopefully that will help.

Sam :)

I scan @ 300 dpi to get a high res image that I can still work with in photoshop - then for the Internet I allways resize images to 500 pixels in width (photoshop will calculate the height automatically so you don't have to worry about that and dpi can remain 300 for all I care the browsers allways show at the native resolution of the screen whatever that might be) - that way they are allways slim enough to fit small monitors - even on forums where there's lots of margin.

Penguin-Factory

I know there's something seriously messed up with the proportions on this one, but I can't tell what it is exactly. Can anyone help me out?

Lly

Do you start blocking out the shapes roughly and we just can't see them, or do you start straight on the lines? The last one the torso is too long and the hips are nonexistant. What refs are you using for these?

Typhus

Lly wrote: »

Do you start blocking out the shapes roughly and we just can't see them, or do you start straight on the lines? The last one the torso is too long and the hips are nonexistant. What refs are you using for these?

According to what I've learned from "Figure drawing for all its worth", the knees look too high up as well, but that may be because her torso is so long and we an't see her feet (although you can make an educated guess).

You can divide the female figure into three equal (roughly) parts. Heels to knees, knees to waist (not hips), waist to top of the head.

Hah - learning in action!:D

Lly

err that doesn't sound right at all ... you sure you don't mean waist to top of shoulders? I guess it depends where you mean the waist ... I will have to draw that when i get home!

Penguin-Factory

Lly- I block them out beforehand, but it took me a few goes to get this one right (...well, right-ish anyway) and I ended up erasing most of it. I think you're right about the torso. Are the arms a little long as well?

As for refs, this is from the site that tmcool linked to back at the start. I think it's the first image on that page.

Thanks for the crits. 8-)

Typhus

Lly wrote: »

err that doesn't sound right at all ... you sure you don't mean waist to top of shoulders? I guess it depends where you mean the waist ... I will have to draw that when i get home!

You're right, bottom of the ribcage is probably more accurate, but Loomis uses the word waist so thats what used.

padmeamanda

eh... bottom of the ribcage and natural waist are pretty much the same thing.

But everyone wears low-rise pants these days so people start thinking of "waist" as a couple of inches below the bellybutton, lol.