Choplogic's dump. Help me improve before I start art school in the fall. [Update 3/8]

Chop Logic

This thread has new stuff and old stuff in it because I want to show everyone where I am so they can help me improve.

I don't really feel like I'm improving anymore. I'm trying really hard to learn how to paint digitally, but I'm still really bad at it. These are all intentionally unfinished, I just did them as color studies, because I don't really know that much about color:

From life, a lime and two peppers on my desk. Yellow objects are very hard to paint:



From photos:





This one I have the refrence for. I thought that while I was doing it I was pretty accurate but then I compared them side by side and mine is really off color-wise:

Ref:


Mine:



Another problem I'm having is with faces, these are older but they're the only ones I have online, they're from a portrait class:





They look passable I guess, but they really didn't look like the person I was drawing. Any tips on that would be great.

This is where I am in terms of life drawing:



Really, I just don't know what I should be doing to get better. The art school I was studying at closed temporarily, but even then, I was learning how to paint. I really want to get better at drawing people and faces, but all I have to work from is Brune Hogarth's "Dynamic Anatomy" and "Drawing the Human Head" and Andrew Loomis's "Figure Drawing for All It's Worth", I don't have access to any live models.

I also would really love to be able to paint digitally, but the few paintings that are digital that I have finished always look like they were done digitally. Other artists on here that paint digitally (Wakka, McGibs, several others), their work doesn't look like it was done on a computer. Of course, they're a lot better and a lot older than me. What helped you learn how to paint digitally? Do I just need to keep painting fruit?

I'm 17, I'll be starting at Parsons in the fall, most likely going into illustration. I just want to improve as much as possible before I start there.

Some random fun stuff:













I couldn't remember what I'd posted here before, sorry is anything has been re-posted. Any crit's or comments would be great, thanks.

Scosglen

My personal belief is that the most natural way to progress through mediums is to start with line drawings, work up to full value grayscale renderings, and really only once you've attained a firm grasp of observational drawing should you move up to full blown color painting.

Seeing the portraits and the duck with the ref tells me really all I need to know about your observation skills--which is to say they really aren't developed enough yet. You're starting to get it, for sure, but the duck is so off and the structure of the faces in those portraits is really telling that you need more practice working from life and learning how to painstakingly observe the shapes you're trying to capture.

The modeling of light in these is not bad, but just like in life drawing where you have to observe every minute detail of the form, when you start painting in color you need to learn how to accurately observe colors and develop a sense for how the lighting situation is going to affect the hues and saturation of the colors in your painting, rather than just light and dark. Color Theory is really a whole new bag of worms that I wouldn't recommend you get too deep into studying right now since you have a lot of prerequisite skills to master already.

So, my prescription is more life drawing, more life drawing, more life drawing. If you feel like you're not improving, well, chances are if you're putting in the hours and still feel that way then you've simply gotten to the point where it takes more substantial amounts of time to really notice improvement in your work. You can't expect to keep up a beginner's pace of learning forever.

This is just my opinion, I'm sure others may disagree with my "path of least resistance".

Chop Logic

Thanks a lot for taking the time to write all of that out.

So, I should be doing more charcol renderings? You're right, I really haven't done one in a long time, I've been drawing with pen and ink so much.

I have a question though about drawing from life, I've always had this problem. If I get home from school and start drawing a picture around 4 or 5 or so and use natural lighting, the lighting changes dramatically almost every hour, which really messes me up. Then later on, if I use artificial lights, I turn all the light off in a room, set up my subject, and focus a desklamp onto it to get some interesting dramatic lighting. The only problem with this is that because the room light are off, I can't see my paper that well. How do you get around this? Should I try and get another desklamp to have focused on my paper?

Asamof the Horrible

Charcoal portraits are good for leaning grayscale n stuff, but you really need to make sure your lines before are as accurate as they can be. Spend as much time as you need putting the lines down first, then add values. If you don't have good construction beforehand, it'll just look even weirder and more obvious once you put the values in. Learn construction, and measure lengths of things with your pencil and thumb. Look at where very specific details line up, and draw lines if you need to. Right now you just need to keep drawing and develop your observation skills, and you're off to a good start.

Mustang

I just love the internet, where else can you get personal advise from awesome artists like scos so instanteously.

beavotron

where is that giant duck from?

Shiboe

I'm sorry, is that a giant rubber duck? I was captivated. =/

bombardier

beavotron wrote: »

where is that giant duck from?

http://www.woostercollective.com/2007/07/florentijn_hofmans_rubber_duckie.html

Chop Logic

Oh man, I tried to do a charcoal rendering of these tomatoes today. They kicked my ass. It was just way too ambitious for me at this point. The vines in the middle were so hard to do, it didn't really come out so great. I might post it, I'm not sure, but I'm going to try and do at least one rendering every two days so I'll be posting more in here from now on.

Thanks for the kick Scos.

Chop Logic

From yesterday. This was way too ambitious for me, its four tomatoes all still attached to a little vine. The vine and little leaves were all really hard to do without using lines, I also kind of half-assed the background because I was already unhappy with how the tomatoes turned out. This took about 2.5 / 3 hours, I'm not really happy with it:



From today, this one I am happy with. It's a lemon and an apple, and I actually thought about doing all the things I had forgotten to do yesterday (background first, making the background consist of flat values, etc.).



I'm going to try and do one of these at least every two days. Hurt my feelings! Let me know what I can do better. Again, the first one I kind of bailed on because I knew it wasn't going to end well, but the second one is totally finished. Crit away!

Thanks a lot.

Mustang

I'm actually really quite fond of the first one, in fact, I think it's the best piece on this page.