DLPWillyWonka's Sketch Quest Progress

dlpwillywonka · September 2009

Hi everyone, been lurking for a while. I thought I'd throw some drawings and get critiques and advice.

To start here is my favorite sketch page so far. I have been drawing 1 sketch page a day since early June of this 2009.

Here are the older drawings to show a comparison of my progress.

I'll link more drawings later, but I just got back from PAX 09 and I am very tired.

Link to my deviantart scrap page as well.

Mustang · September 2009

I've been staring at your drawings trying to think of which way to best direct you. My advise, for the moment, would be to do some pictures of basic shapes, ball, cone, sphere. You need to start training your brain to think 3-dimensionally. Keep up with your fun stuff to maintain your interest, but throw in a ball or a cone here and really concentrate on how they would look in a 3d space. Use reference material to start with (from life preferrably) and then try doing them on your own. Also, slow down, it's not a race.

Flay · September 2009

At the moment, I think you're punching above your weight. Dynamic poses from imagination are a difficult thing to master, and to pull off convincingly, even for experienced artists. I'm pretty sure a lot of people here would say that for someone who is new to drawing, the best place to begin is with life drawing and studies. Yeah, it's not that exciting, but you'll improve a great deal. And you can keep up drawing for fun at the same time.

There are a few books you should definitely have a look at. I found Betty Edwards' 'Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain' extremely useful when I was starting off. The scientific and psychological information in it is kind of dubious, but the exercises will give you a good grounding in some of the essential skills of drawing. If you're interested in understanding the human form, there's a link to several pdf files of Andrew Loomis books in the question thread, and I've heard many good things about Hogarth's anatomy books (though I've never actually read them myself).

I'd also like to point out...

dlpwillywonka wrote: »

I have been drawing 1 sketch page a day since early June of this 2009.

This is an extremely good thing. If you've got the right attitude you'll go far. Make sure you don't fall in to a rut though; challenge yourself and learn new things.

Guy Bell · September 2009

I think that it is always a mistake learning to draw from comics. It's like looking at your neighbors' house and then trying to build it. If you don't understand the principles of construction it's not going to work. I agree with the advice to learn from the Loomis books and then refer to comics to help develop your style.

ManonvonSuperock · September 2009

your faces a lot to be desired, but I absolutely love those spider-mans.

Kendeathwalker · September 2009

No.. Learn how to draw from comics. And study anatomy at the same time (doing this you will begin to recognize the liberties being taken by certain artists). You learn by copying and studying.

Do not compartmentalize your study.

Make sure you are studying good comic artists. And learn to draw the marvel way is a good book.

Studying comics is kinda a more dumbed down version of studying from master drawings.

dlpwillywonka · September 2009

Wow! Thank you very much for all the advice. I hadn't expected such a response. I'm rather stunned.

Now to link the rest of the drawings from the past 3 months.

Warning: Alot of pictures after the jump.

Preston Blair Walk Cycle Test

This is where I started doing the lessons from Karma Toons.

Interestingly it was the same week I started drawing from Andrew Loomis' books.

Next up I'll scan in my drawings I did during my vacation.

dlpwillywonka · September 2009

Here are the drawings from PAX. I'll start with the comic I drew while in line for the Gabe/Tycho signing. I was happy it got a laugh out of Jerry.

The rest in the spoiler tag.

Beyond Normal · September 2009

I recognize A LOT of those from a cartooning book. Don't copy a cartooning book. Everyone is going to start saying study real life, and you should. Style will come out naturally.

But definitely keep on drawing every day.

dlpwillywonka · September 2009

I try to draw anything that catches my eye. So I have plenty of cartooning books on my shelf. I did finally pick up "drawing on the right side of the brain" and look forward to being able to read through it. I think it'll help my life drawing attempts.

Drawing books I keep in my bag I carry with me:

-Andrew Loomis Print outs. Would love to own some but doubt I'd carry them around.
-Action Cartooning and Fantasy Cartooning by Ben Caldwell
-Big Book of Cartooning by Bruce Blitz
-Perspective Made Easy by Ernest R Norling
-Sketching People by Jeff Mellew (newly acquired I'm really linking it)
-Dynamic Wrinkles and Drapery by Burne Hogarth
-Cartoon Animation by Preston Blair

About 5 others that stay at home. My favorite out of those five is "Anyone can Draw" by Arthur Zaidenbeg. Wonderful 1940s book. in rough shape but have great information and a wonderful old style to it.

Here are my drawings so far this week.

Thanks for looking

NakedZergling · September 2009

forget cartooning for now. Cartooning is a simplified version of real things. Its actually hard to do cartoons well because you are using less information to define something. Thats why knowing the basics first is the way to go.
Draw from life....everyday. draw fruit, your mouse, a book, your bedroom, a phone....anything around you. the point isn't to have a cool drawing, but to help you see and draw.

Don't worry about color right now. Thats like getting your first dirt bike and signing up to do motocross the following week.

don't pick and choose what advice you listen to. Many of the people who post in the forums are great artists and want to see you grow. we're always getting noobs in here who we try to help, and they basically piss on the advice they're given, and disappear. Just realize EVERYONE here wants to see you do better not worse, so listen to what they say.

You have a great drive. Stay focused and you'll be seeing improvements everyday. good start.

dlpwillywonka · September 2009

Ugh busy weekend. Here's the sketch pages for the past few days.

Here you can see my preinstruction drawings for the "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" in a month I hope to look back at these and see a vast improvement after going through the book. The real goal is 5 days but I know I don't have the time to make that work now.

More under the Spoiler jump.

winter_combat_knight · September 2009

Mate, you're at a really good stage at the moment. You're at the point where you're very imaginative, have great/funny concepts, BUT, your lack of drawing skills lets your ideas down.

Heres what i think you should do.

Have two goals.

1. To develop your imagination and creativity. Experiment with your ideas. Play around. Have fun

2. Learn the fundamentals of drawings.

Seperate these two areas. If you focus on just the fundamentals, you will loose your creativity. If you focus on the creative side, you will never learn to apply your ideas.
Develop both at the same time. Kepp going.

dlpwillywonka · September 2009

To everyone giving me advice and critique: Thank you very very much. I appreciate it all but I don't really know how to express my thanks. Perhaps a drawing...

Now a question, when you are drawing from life, do you normally start with shapes or are you more often using line gestures?

And does anyone else use Playdoh to make their "shapes" to draw?

dlpwillywonka · September 2009

It's hard to find time to scan lately. Here's drawings from the past week.

This first one I tried the exercise of drawing photos upside down. I think it was worthwhile.

Other drawings in the spoiler tag.

acadia · September 2009

The beginning artist’s problem is that they have been looking at things all their life. They think they know what things look like already. So they draw what they think it should look like, not what they see in front of them. And then they compare the drawing with the real thing and get all upset when they don’t match.

For example, a beginning drawing brain says:

“Wow. That is a flower. I know what one of those looks like. There’s a stem, there’s a leaf or two, there’s a bunch of petals on top, and sometimes a middle cluster of whatever those things are called.”

Then the brain, thinking it’s got this one down pat, helps you to draw just that.

“Yeah, that’s the best I can do” the brain tells itself. “If it’s not good enough, then I just can’t draw. I’ll never get an A in this class and then I’ll end up dropping out of college, and I’ll have to get a crappy job and my dad’s gonna be disown me and I’ll end up cold and alone in a van down by the river.”

All the information you need is provided in front of you. You need only to put aside the part of your brain that classifies things as parts and learn to look at every inch as a separate entity with light and dark tones that can change. A hand does not always look the same. Why assume you can draw one well without looking? It’s always changing—the position, the light, the shape, etc. There is no one “Hand” drawing that can be used on all occasions. When you haven’t trained yourself to See yet, you draw what you think matches the symbol you have come to associate with the object.

You need to put real objects in front of you and make yourself LOOK at them in detail. FORGET that you know what it is. Make believe you are in a foreign country and they have the most amazing thing you’ve never seen before! You don’t know what to call it, you don’t know how it is made, what it is made of, you only know you want to examine it and find out all those things. And you want to tell someone! How can you tell someone if they don’t know what it is? You have to describe it. You have to take in every detail of it as possible and record them in some way so you can tell the other person what you’ve seen. Every detail could mean something, reveal something. It is a mystery to solve through sheer examination.

Penny Arcade

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