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Time to get my DRAW ON
surrealitycheck
lonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered User regular
lonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered User regular
About a year ago I decided to start drawing. Then I found that it was pretty hard work, got super lazy, let my work push other stuff out of the way, and ended up not drawing for 6 months.
Work is now over; it's time to actually do what I said I would do.
I plan on doing at least 4 hours a day of drawing for the next month. It will be pure drawing (no photoshop yet) because
a) I believe the skillset is pretty transferable
b) I want to make sure I don't have medium issues that might obscure actual artin' issues.
Today I'm going to do my first set of drawings, which will be diagnostic - a few things from imagination (so I can see where I am after 6 months of neglect... sniff), and a few drawings with reference. Then I'm going to try and work on obvious areas of weakness - it should be "effortful practice" the whole way.
Also, I'm thinking of trying something:
I will do one suggested exercise a day (suggested by you lot or the dudes on ca.org), in the order that they are suggested (so long as they're not ridiculously long). This is to deal with the fact that often I see guys suggest exercises that the person in question never ends up doing!
So, let's see where this goes.
Here is where I am, stuff not from reference first (resizing the scans ate the quality
):
As a note, I have the following books, so studies from these are all possible:
All the Burne Hogarths
Bridgman
Drawing lessons from the great masters
Anatomy lessons from the great masters
And the maughan "drawing the head" book
Work is now over; it's time to actually do what I said I would do.
I plan on doing at least 4 hours a day of drawing for the next month. It will be pure drawing (no photoshop yet) because
a) I believe the skillset is pretty transferable
b) I want to make sure I don't have medium issues that might obscure actual artin' issues.
Today I'm going to do my first set of drawings, which will be diagnostic - a few things from imagination (so I can see where I am after 6 months of neglect... sniff), and a few drawings with reference. Then I'm going to try and work on obvious areas of weakness - it should be "effortful practice" the whole way.
Also, I'm thinking of trying something:
I will do one suggested exercise a day (suggested by you lot or the dudes on ca.org), in the order that they are suggested (so long as they're not ridiculously long). This is to deal with the fact that often I see guys suggest exercises that the person in question never ends up doing!
So, let's see where this goes.
Here is where I am, stuff not from reference first (resizing the scans ate the quality
):As a note, I have the following books, so studies from these are all possible:
All the Burne Hogarths
Bridgman
Drawing lessons from the great masters
Anatomy lessons from the great masters
And the maughan "drawing the head" book
surrealitycheck on
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It is the only thing 'twill give me pleasure.
I like the last picture the most, even though she had curious pubic coiffage.
Completely fair advice. Although I would say in my defense that those drawings were much smaller than they appear, then got scanned, then bounced, and turned super granular
How would you go about guiding hatching lines?
EDIT: The problem really for me is that I have big problems with value control, especially from imagination. Might do some light/dark studies.
Experimentation is key. If you want to learn about hatching, cross hatching, or anything else at all, just try it out and play with the possibilities.
Also, if you're not already familiar with old master drawings, you should look at work from people like Peter Paul Rubens and Albrecht Dürer. There are plenty of artists who use beautiful hatching and cross hatching techniques; those are just the first two names I thought of.
Fuck that. Do what looks good, whatever it may be.
If you are thinking about anything else you are thinking about the wrong thing. Learn to draw shapes, values and edges accurately and it almost won't even matter how you achieve them. The reason I complain about your hatching is because it's blatantly obvious that you are thinking about hatching and it doesn't look good.
'Shading along the form' is the generally accepted method of rendering, and it's great. And something you will have to think about eventually. But honestly at this stage I would rather you just concentrate on learning to see the forms.
EDIT: I'll put this down as your Day 0 request cake!
I'll give a whack at explaining it, even if it's not what you're all about, because nobody else is going to do it it seems.
When it comes to shading along the form, probably the guy I've seen whose method is most self-explanatory is Greuze:
The way he works is similar to how a sculptor might use a rake- using the directions to further describe the form (Zoom up on the detail of this Bernini sculpture to see what I'm on about).
For example, you look at the Greuze picture above- the strokes subtly follow down the musculature of the face from the mid-nose to the sides of the mouth, but on a sharp turn of form, such as where the side plane of the nose turns to the front plane, he switches direction of his strokes to create contrast, emphasizing the plane change. The result is realistic without being photorealistic, describing form in a precise and tangible way, without necessarily needing a full rendering of light and shade.
Having a solid sense of anatomy and having a lot of experience drawing from life models or sculptures is essential to pulling this sort of thing off, it means having a lot of understanding of the form that won't show up in photographs, like knowing which direction the muscle strands flow, or knowing where to push sharper plane changes where the bones are closer to the skin, versus areas which have a lot more fat and muscle in the way, requiring gentler treatment.
If you pull out your Bridgman books, he also uses this method in his drawings, and it's helpful in seeing how the method relates to anatomy, though the drawings aren't as thorough or perhaps useful when it comes to pure hatching practice as looking at old master drawings.
I'll also drop this in here, which is a quick and dirty draw over I did for 1900 a long while back:
In the original, you've got all these straight strokes that vaguely describes tone, but not form. In the second, you've got the strokes curving around the form, but it's fairly static, like a Durer drawing. In the second, you've down the strokes flowing down the form, emphasizing the gesture, at the sacrifice of the form and light. The balancing act here is being able to understand all 3 of these concepts- light, form, and rhythm- and pull it all together in a graceful and sensible way.
For example, if you have a model sitting on a chair, facing you, with their shins pointed off to one side in a pin-up kinda pose, you might have the thigh part of the leg, which is pointed at you in a foreshortened pose, hatched in with the strokes going across the form, emphasizing the form coming at the viewer. But on the shins, where the leg is meant to be flowing gracefully down the page, you might switch it up, hatching down the form with long strokes, emphasizing the graceful quality of the leg.
Hope that helps, though like Cake said, working on accuracy of shape, form, and edge should be your primary concern, rather than hatching niceties. I put this out here more as some tools you can use, rather than as a sole point of concentrated study.
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ATM my basic plan for studies is going to be:
Study (from reference)
Attempt at reproduction (roughly), to see what I can remember
Quick look back at reference with maybe some little clarifying investigation sketches
Then invention, probably 1-2 things, based on what I think I've learned. And see if I have!
Example?
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EDIT: OK, 2 examples but neither is quite satisfactory:
The girl on the right is almost exactly it. This one also has a lot of clear stroke lines but I just love it:
The difference is how I am choosing to use it. I am letting it show through the most in his turban and other cloth areas, where I want to give the materials a different textural feel than his flesh or beard.
There isn't really a wrong way to execute something. There are a lot of dudes who could do single direction hatching and make it look good. The problem here isn't your hatching...it's the fact that you are worrying about hatching instead of far far far more important aspects of the drawing.
In the examples you posted he is able to get away with it to an extent (I say extent because there are some areas it is working better than others) because he has a strong grasp of shape, value and edge, as well as thinking about the form 3-dimensionally. These are the things you should be concentrating on for now.
What you're doing is trying to describe the form, light and shade with the same sort of hatching, and it's coming up short because that isn't really an adequate tool for the job- unless you want to spend 30 hours rendering it to the point where you can't really see the hatches and it's working purely on the basis of tone, which somewhat defeats the purpose of doing that in the first place.
The second example is more interesting, and shows off what I'm talking about- hatching along the form of the shirt wrinkles, down the rhythm of the shin, around the thighs, with a distinct demonstration of understanding light and shade. The big areas of tone in the background are also not arbitrary, flowing along the gesture of the figure and working to create an abstract, loose paintbrushy-type effect. Everything the artist is doing is being done for a specific reason, having acquired through experience what works in what situation, rather than trying to apply a single mental tool to all problems universally.
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Oh definitely. I was just describing an effect that I liked (and that I quickly tried to steal for two of my invented heads, to not great success).
I wasn't trying to do that on the more rendered drawings, if it appears that way it's just rushing/laziness
Well, looking at the art, my impression is that it's very much a "when your only tool is a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail" situation. You saw one example of hatching- parallel, flat strokes- and proceeded to use it everywhere. Even applying a great deal of diligence, the effect would likely be one of a lazy default, rather than a deliberate choice.
I'm trying to give you a couple more tools you can use, and a sense of understanding why you'd want to use them. Coincidentally, these tools require more thought and understanding of form than your current tool, so you end up learning more, being less lazy, and getting in the habit of making deliberate choices by trying to learn how to use them.
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I sneak in the learning so you don't even know you're learning, similar to popular edutainment game Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, first released in 1985 for the Apple II computer by Brøderbund Software.
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Indeed, and I am going to use those methods while engaging in transatlantic metaphorical theft and wearing an 80s power-suit.
PS LET'S ALL HUG IN A MANLY FASHION
And then a rhythm one.
Going to do a still life tomorrow from real life and see how that turns out.
Yeah, those drawings are looking way better than the first ones. Listening to Cake and Bacon's art advice is a great idea because it's always good stuff.
Going to do a still life, some more studies, probably some anatomy look-sees
Any suggestions will probably be done
I'm beginning to think I'm missing some seriously obvious step when it comes to drawing objects in three dimensions - I just cannot, for the life of me, draw a figure. I'm thinking of trying to do 16 30 minute figures tomorrow, and seeing if I can break its back. Or I might need to just do really basic shape stuff, but not sure how to approach that.
First lot are the bridgman arms, the second lot are actual arms that I was trying to bridgmanise to find musculature.