First drawing in a long while

Resilient

I used to do quite a bit of photography and a bit of drawing in high school and early college but kind of fell out of it.

Just for fun I am thinking of doing some sort of illustrated story about a penguin who really wants to fly. Not sure if I will make it more like a comic or what. Regardless I need to remember how to draw again.

Here is the first thing I have drawn in quite a few years. I am not really happy with the ocean and even less happy with the close ice but I can't figure out how to make it better.

Dreams of Flight

NightDragon

Maybe just try working on drawing with a pencil first? There seem to be a lot of fundamental issues in this, and I think it would be good for you to focus on just getting the forms down properly before progressing with rendering and color and whatnot.

I'd also suggest looking up some reference, so the penguin is more accurate (even if he's a cartoony penguin) and so your background is more interesting/"involved".

MagicToaster

There is a lot of empty space that does nothing. It feels incomplete.

Resilient

MagicToaster: I realized after I started that I didn't lay it out very well so there is a lot of empty boring space.

I have been reworking it, trying to make it more interesting. Still having a hard time making ice interesting and have found that drawing water is very difficult. I am having a hard time finding examples of other pieces of work that do a good job with large expanses of water.

NightDragon: I am kind of trying to avoid drawing with pencil to get started. One of my big problems in the past was outlining everything too much which, given a pencil, I tend to do. But I agree that the color is a problem. I will probably try leaving out color for awhile.

Thanks

Nappuccino

Well, a pencil is used for shading as well.

Resilient

But I have a nasty habit of ignoring that. I always made better work using charcoal because it was harder for me to outline stuff. Its sort of just subconscious. Give me pencil and paper and I will return to you a drawing where everything has a hard edge surrounding it. :?

Resilient

So, screw color for awhile. Here is my 2nd drawing in a long time.



Thoughts on this one?

RandomAction

is that a jousting helmet?

Resilient

I didn't know it was when I was looking at the picture, but a quick Google suggests its a frog mouthed jousting helmet.

RandomAction

Yeah, you can tell by the visor slit. The drawing is kind of fuzzy you should do some pencil sketches to start off.

Zombiemambo

Resilient wrote: »

But I have a nasty habit of ignoring that. I always made better work using charcoal because it was harder for me to outline stuff. Its sort of just subconscious. Give me pencil and paper and I will return to you a drawing where everything has a hard edge surrounding it. :?

You should stop using excuses and learn to draw using a pencil. It's very versatile and lots of fun to use, and you'll learn fundamental techniques you should know before jumping into the digital medium. Learn to walk before you run etc.

NightDragon

Also I was suggesting a pencil because you could do quick composition studies or something (outlining or no outlining - doesn't really matter in this case). Composition was the other major issue in that first thing you posted.

Resilient

Ok, ok, I get the point. I got a sketch pad and pencils at the art store today. ;-)

Ill post some variety of pencil and paper creation in the next couple days.

Resilient

So here is a sketch I did while watching an episode of Battlestar last night.



Its more of a sketch, I didn't draw it big enough to get all details I wanted in there.