Yeah, It's an adjustable lamp. I need a new one though because the base of the thing is falling apart, but that's beside the point. Today I drew my watch with one of those heavy duty paper clip things on it, and a pair of behind the head headphones.
This one satisfies me, I started out doing a gesture drawing with a blunt pencil, and then I went over and refined it with a mechanical pencil.
i like your idea. you can only get better with practice.
my advice to you so far is to try using darker shades. you seem to be floating in a medium tone world. try picking up some 3 and 4B pencils for your shadows. the more variation you have on your shadows, the more form your subjects will have.
i like your idea. you can only get better with practice.
my advice to you so far is to try using darker shades. you seem to be floating in a medium tone world. try picking up some 3 and 4B pencils for your shadows. the more variation you have on your shadows, the more form your subjects will have.
I agree with what Red Panda said and would like to add that I think you should start putting light sources in your pictures. It will make you practice things like tones, values, and other fun stuff like reflective light!
The LittleMan In The Boat on
I don't suffer from Insanity. I enjoy every minute of it.
These guys are right. Study your light source and work on value and tone. That'll get you learning much faster than these simple outlines you've been posting.
About value and tone, what are some examples of what I should be doing? Obviously using a single light source. Should I only be using extreme shades as other people have been saying? I want to begin studying human proportions and anatomy so I can begin learning about how to draw people. Should I exercise use of tone in that or stick with outlines, someone told me a little while back not to shade and only to work on my lines and thats why I stopped my shading.
A good word of advice that might help you : Be aware of the lines. Remember that a line is infinitely flexible. Sometimes you'll want long smooth flowing lines, other times you'll want short jagged lines; also thickness is another major element to consider when using lines.
Regarding light and tone: A quick shortcut is to abuse the line. Where you want a shadow or less light, draw thicker, more solid lines. When dealing with lots of light, be very gentle with the lines and let the viewer's mind fill in the full thing. This would be a quick remedy to fully shading each exercise.
But it's also good to shade something completely once in a while.
If you're going to do line work, you need to start constructing the objects instead of just drawing the contours. It also seems like you use symbols alot, but that comes from not constructing it. Don't just look at the object from the front, look at it from all sides, figure out the shape and what makes it look a certain way from the angle you're drawing it from. And it also seems like you aren't very confident with your lines. Do a full sketch of a person or some large area every day in about 15-20 minutes to start to loosen your lines up.
About value and tone, what are some examples of what I should be doing? Obviously using a single light source. Should I only be using extreme shades as other people have been saying? I want to begin studying human proportions and anatomy so I can begin learning about how to draw people. Should I exercise use of tone in that or stick with outlines, someone told me a little while back not to shade and only to work on my lines and thats why I stopped my shading.
Do something like this, but with pencil. Go from as light as possible to as dark as possible in equal steps. You should be able to do it with one pencil. I forget what I did it with way back but it was a low B or something.
I can't for the life of me find an actual pencil drawn one of these on the interblag.
I think you should stop posting your daily drawings here everyday. You seemed to have gotten a lot of different advice and some of it has contradicted itself. This will be because some people know what they're talking about and some people think they know what they're talking about. I'd to keep drawing everyday but then come back to post them up on a weekly basis to see if people think you're improving or if you should be working on something specific that wasn't mentioned before. The way things are going now, you will be confused with differing information with no way of knowing which advice to follow. Feel free to continue as you have been thus far. This is just my personal opinion.
I think you should practice with your eyes closed. You need to feel the picture before you can see the picture. Also, when you open your eyes it will be like "wow".
In theory you could close your eyes and draw something you just thought up. I don't know how that would help at all but I guess it's a good excuse to draw something retarded looking.
We did blind contours in life drawing and everyone laughed at how stupid mine looked. I felt bad because I actually cheated and looked down for a couple parts. True story.
I'll take your advice Grifter, and post 7 or more drawings here on the 15th of June. And I don't really think that at my stage drawing something without looking at it would be very helpful, but I'll do it for kicks later on. I'll try and find some of those pencils as well.
I think you should stop posting your daily drawings here everyday. You seemed to have gotten a lot of different advice and some of it has contradicted itself. This will be because some people know what they're talking about and some people think they know what they're talking about. I'd to keep drawing everyday but then come back to post them up on a weekly basis to see if people think you're improving or if you should be working on something specific that wasn't mentioned before. The way things are going now, you will be confused with differing information with no way of knowing which advice to follow. Feel free to continue as you have been thus far. This is just my personal opinion.
I took another look at the pictures you first posted and realized that you were shading to begin with and stopped after about six or so pictures. So! In a sense my advice was completely useless. Stick to what the people who have been around here for years have to say, they won’t lead you to far astray ... unless it is like one of those really funny things they can't resist pass up and then you will find yourself doing something really ... yeah.
Also, on a side note, I plan to, when my work problems get resolved; to start this up again and I would like to thank you for the inspiration and making me remember that repetition is the motor of learning.
The LittleMan In The Boat on
I don't suffer from Insanity. I enjoy every minute of it.
One hot update delivered fresh from the oven, as promised!
I decided to draw myself from the mirror but only give myself 10 minutes, to eliminate constant second guessin of my lines:
Now compare that to my last self portrait from the mirror, much much better. I then decided to shade it using extreme tones, but I had limited myself to 10 minutes to draw the lines and I didn't have any time to study where the light fell (In retrospect I should only limit the amount of time I have to draw the actual shape and not stuff like this)
Haha, its terrible but you live and learn. I allowed myself a medium tone instead of an extreme tone, and for some reason I didn't shade in underneath my glasses?
Now comes June 10th, I had gotten the suggestion from a couple people to use a grid to work out proper proportions, so I put a grid over a picture of Philip Larkin in Photoshop and copy it into my sketchbook. The grid was light gray and picture was grayscale, so I got severely messed up in several areas, and I was generally lazy with this piece. This is one of the things I would never post If I weren't keeping a daily quota.
June 11
My hand holding a pair of scissors and an eraser. I definitely could have done this one better, but it definitely isn't terrible for my level.
June 12
I drew this one in the bathroom, the door appears off perspective but only because it was slightly open when I drew it, and I didnt draw any other surrounding features for reference.
June 13
I did a stapler sitting on my desk. At first I was going to just leave it at linework but I decided to shade it in afterwards. Since I had originally done it just with lines some outline showed through the shading, but I think it turned out pretty well. I can see some curvy lines that a ruler may have fixed.
June 14
I actually bought this Swiss Army knife in Switzerland during a school trip. It's a Swiss Champ. While in Switzerland I discovered that their main export are watches, knives, chocolate, and sexually themed T-Shirts.
Today (June 15)
I don't really like this one but I wouldn't call it terrible:
I drew a tape dispenser in 3 angles.
As a side note you guys have been great with your enthusiasm and it has really encouraged me, and I've actually inspired a few people? which is pretty humbling. I think this will be one hell of a thread in a years time when we see how much I've improved day by day. It's really something else!:)
Do you still have the picture you used for that Larkin drawing? The lighting in the picture may have made his head seem pointy, but if it was a picture like this:
then you can see how his head is much rounder than what you've drawn (though again your photo may have made it look pointy.) You seem to be doing a lot better with straighter lines than curves (which makes sense). For example, compare the stapler and the tape dispenser. Practicing some nice loose circles might help you out?
I think that is actually the picture I used and I blew it up. I definitely saw the pointy head and knew that it was wrong but I just didn't have the juice to fix it because the drawing and process was so bad.
I managed to get my Wacom semi working (4x5) Graphire 3 and I did my first digital painting ever:
Its an eraser but I think you can tell.
Then I drew myself in the mirror giving myself 5 minutes (It came out somewhat worse than the last time.) Then using a concave mirror I drew my lips, which looked pretty good until I drew my stubble.
--June 18 - also known as Today
So far I've painted a microphone hanging from my desk, but I don't think I'm finished just yet.
Also, there are a metric fuckton of Daily Drawing threads now Which is pretty cool.
Also, there are a metric fuckton of Daily Drawing threads now Which is pretty cool.
You opened the floodgates man. Not that it's a bad thing, oh no, it's rocking. This many people trying to get better and everything. None of them seem to be as dedicated as you though. And, as an added bonus, best sig ever.
Thanks Nachos, the banana came to me in a dream, and I knew I must create it.
Our dining hall started buying genetically modified bananas and man those things were freaking huge I bought one just to show people how freaking huge they were and when I took it into work my co-worker who is a Ukrainian grad student but not in Ukraine just from Ukraine ate my huge banana when he mistook it for his but then he gave me his but I was fine with it because I didn't buy it to eat it I just bought it to show people how freaking huge it was.
I mean this thing was big.
Also, I always thought that people should draw with pencils until they got really great and then they could start "painting" digitally, because I consider drawing skills to be a prerequisite to becoming a good painter. But that's just me. Warning: this advice may or may not contradict advice previously given in this thread and I am not trying to be a dick.
I've been following this and the other daily drawing threads for a time now and it's looking good so far! I can definitely see some improvement here (and those other threads aswell).
Also, I always thought that people should draw with pencils until they got really great and then they could start "painting" digitally, because I consider drawing skills to be a prerequisite to becoming a good painter. But that's just me. Warning: this advice may or may not contradict advice previously given in this thread and I am not trying to be a dick.
I disagree, but you allready stated some might do that. Painting and drawing complements eachother and it's allways a good thing to try different things. Especially early on before you get locked down in a specific technique. It's like cross-training: if all you do is run 3 miles per day at the same tempo every day your muscles will get used to it and eventually reach a point where they are not getting a good workout. But if you mix it up a bit with maybe cycling or weight lifting at the gym or do "speedwork" every now and then, then the muscles will have to adapt to the change of pace and thus you get more out of your running. It works similarly with hand-eye coordination and technique when drawing/painting.
I've even tried sculpture with clay at one point - just for artistic cross training. I made 2 crappy sculptures but I believe it helped me later on.
The same principle applies to how much time you put into your drawings/paintings. If all you do is 5 minute drawings you might quickly develop a sence of proportion and accurate contour drawing skills - however, your pencil rendering technique will not improve and you might find yourself struggling to make your drawings "look better". To improve rendering technique you need to approach a drawing with the intent to let it take it's time. Assume that the rendering will take several hours and build the drawing carefully - thinking thrue every stroke and building value slowly. Doing so will obviously take more time and it will obviously not go right at first and look crappy anyway - so you will be dissapointed you spent so much time on it when you couls have made 5 decent looking once instead - but it's a skill that needs practice as well and eventually you will learn how to render realistic skin/hair/etc.
So my suggestion is to vary the tempo. A drawing per day is a tempo of sorts. It limits you to a 24 hour mindset (probably much much smaller as otherwise you wouldn't get anything else done).
As sugested above it might be more usefull to post once per week - that way your mind is set for 7 drawings/week and you might be able to do for instance 3 drawing one day, one drawing per day for two days and then spend 2 days per drawing for the remaining two pieces (or any other combination which suits you). That way you can vary the tempo a bit and train all the different aspects of drawing.
Another thing to vary is the size of a drawing. Yet another is with focus - you might focus on shape and volume one day and rendering texture the next.
But just as one would approach cross training for sports - make one adjustment to your schedule/technique per week. You've been given tons of advice here in this thread so far and much of it is probably sound but doing it all at the same time won't do you much good.
Alrighty then, the last time I posted was June 18.
... I missed the 19th, which could only mean it was an extremely busy day (It was during exams and I probably had work and etc)
June 20th
Still experimenting in Photoshop with Wacom.
June 21st
Didn't have much time to draw and when I was drawing I wasn't in the drawing mood. You know the 'mood'. I experimented with crosshatching but I was extremely messy. What I drew is my pencils in their little package that I got for Christmas two years ago (I need to update my equipment)
June 22nd
I tried a portrait again [of a family member]. I was rusty though and it came out a lot like my Nicholas Cage portrait from page 1. (Bad.)
Today (June 23rd)
Crosshatching again. It isn't very clean and I don't really like it (the drawing, not crosshatching)
There's some weird stuff going on with the shadow near the bottom as well. Next update on Friday the 29th should have some nicer stuff than this one.
To draw heads better, check out the drawing heads book by Loomis. It's in the questions and discussions topic
Also, learn how to draw a skull. All the proportions and angles and all, which helps a fuckton
Also, when you start drawing do a rough and light sketch beforehand to make sure everything comes out right, and so you can correct mistakes easily. Then once you think it's good, then start working on the details. Form is always more important than details!
My friend was sleeping over and I was actually contemplating skipping this day. Luckily he fell asleep which gave me time to fight my inner demons and churn out this gnarly creation:
I can see a lot of the stuff that is wrong with it, you don't need to tell me about any of the obvious stuff:P
June 25th
My terrible creature submission!
A skull, the space between the nose holes and the teeth was way too long though, so I shortened it up is Photoshop so it would look more correct.
unedited skull
edited in Photoshop
The ol upside down photo exercise (which is why the drawings aren't aesthetically pleasing.)
John Travolta (doesn't resemble him I know)
Mel Gibson (ditto as above)
June 26th
A skull with better proportions
June 27th
Tried some Loomis, rest is self explanatory:
Tonight (June 28th)
Holy poop I'm tired, I really would have like to finish this self portrait (looking in a round portable convex mirror at my desk as opposed to the huge bathroom mirror is a lot easier.) I may finish it tomorrow if I don't start something else entirely.
I'm glad to see you still going, but.... why didn't you let me harass you for the update?
I waited all Friday but you were a no show, so I posted at 1:30 in the morning =o
My sketchbook doesn't say the kind of paper it is but it is a lot less smooth than printer paper, more fibrous. I use 2B, 4B, 6B, or an 'Ebony' pencil depending on which one I take out of the package at random.
The ol upside down photo exercise (which is why the drawings aren't aesthetically pleasing.)
I dunno man, I did my last two drawings in my thread from upside down photos, and I was pretty happy with the second one - once you get past the "I'm drawing a lip" and just copy what you see, it's pretty amazing how much easier it is to draw.
I did them both pretty fast, like, 10 minutes tops. Maybe the reason they look terrible is because I thought they were going to look terrible and I didn't spend any time on them.. I'll do the same exercise better later.
Shame on me for not drawing like I should while you still go on lol. Soon, soon.
Anyways, one thing pops out that me, that I feel I could point out at my skill level (I don't do much crit/commenting). Eyes. Almost all of the ones in your latest post seemed very rushed and therefore kind of takes away from the rest of the drawing in my opinion, you got to take your time, or maybe study some eyes.
I think one of my problems is I have been scanning in color instead of grayscale. This week wasn't a great week and I need to take myself more seriously. Every drawing I have done has been at like 1:30 at night, and I need to start finding more anatomy and problem areas to practice. I think I will also begin posting my drawings every day again, I find that it creates more drive for me.
A cell phone
Screwing around
A dragon head
The next day I continued the Dragon (I guess this sort of defeats posting the earlier head but oh well : P )
Random stuff
The same cell phone
Toot paste
Missed Thursday (I slept over my friends) Missing is never something I like doing though
Friday I was super tired
Today I broke my promise on creating a masterpiece. I did Bruce Willis upside down but I did it in a rush, it's really bad I know. At the beginning of my thread my sketches would take about an hour and a half, now they take twenty minutes. Starting tomorrow I'm making my minimum time to draw a day one hour.
I think some key things I have to work on are that I am really messy, and I'm very rushed. A problem is that I lost some of my drive from the beginning, partially due to a drought in replies to my thread. The thread itself was started to produce drive and ambition for me to keep me going, so I think I'll begin posting every day now with my stuff.
EDIT: If I rape anyones H-Scroll let me know, mine is fine atm but my resolution might be higher than some of yours.
It looks like your scanning brightness (or contrast) has been jacked up. Try checking the settings to see if you can make the scans any less bright - sometimes the scanner automatically "tweaks" the image somehow, and you have to go back through the preferences to fix it. Mine was doing that for awhile.
Also, A+ on the minimum drawing time requirement.
Also also - if you're losing motivation because people aren't posting in your thread...who are you doing this drawing-a-day thing for? If it were for yourself, I imagine you'd want to continue regardless of how many replies you were getting. For drawing-a-day threads, it's not really typical (so I've seen) to get replies every single day. There's just...so many days! ...and often there isn't such a difference from one drawing to the next day's, so people don't feel the need to repeat themselves for crits. Don't get disheartened, though! When I realize I'm getting un-motivated from something, half the time it's because I've been doing it for the wrong reasons. The second you know you're doing this thing for yourself and nobody else, the number of replies in your thread won't affect you. Also, I have (personally) noticed that when I try to do something on schedule, exactly, every time, I lose motivation when something goes wrong, and I miss a day, or something. Don't take that as a failure! Keep going no matter what happens, even if you're lax for a whole week. Just start right up again - I think this is the problem a lot of people have with diets, too - the second something goes wrong, it's as if the whole project comes down. Not sure if you'd had this experience or not (with missing a day in your drawings, or something) but it might be a valuable bit of advice in the future, should you need it.
Posts
This one satisfies me, I started out doing a gesture drawing with a blunt pencil, and then I went over and refined it with a mechanical pencil.
Big Version :
my advice to you so far is to try using darker shades. you seem to be floating in a medium tone world. try picking up some 3 and 4B pencils for your shadows. the more variation you have on your shadows, the more form your subjects will have.
I agree with what Red Panda said and would like to add that I think you should start putting light sources in your pictures. It will make you practice things like tones, values, and other fun stuff like reflective light!
I don't suffer from Insanity. I enjoy every minute of it.
About value and tone, what are some examples of what I should be doing? Obviously using a single light source. Should I only be using extreme shades as other people have been saying? I want to begin studying human proportions and anatomy so I can begin learning about how to draw people. Should I exercise use of tone in that or stick with outlines, someone told me a little while back not to shade and only to work on my lines and thats why I stopped my shading.
Regarding light and tone: A quick shortcut is to abuse the line. Where you want a shadow or less light, draw thicker, more solid lines. When dealing with lots of light, be very gentle with the lines and let the viewer's mind fill in the full thing. This would be a quick remedy to fully shading each exercise.
But it's also good to shade something completely once in a while.
Best of luck mate.
If you're going to do line work, you need to start constructing the objects instead of just drawing the contours. It also seems like you use symbols alot, but that comes from not constructing it. Don't just look at the object from the front, look at it from all sides, figure out the shape and what makes it look a certain way from the angle you're drawing it from. And it also seems like you aren't very confident with your lines. Do a full sketch of a person or some large area every day in about 15-20 minutes to start to loosen your lines up.
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=870&page=1
Take classes, keep practicing and practicing and practicing...
Do something like this, but with pencil. Go from as light as possible to as dark as possible in equal steps. You should be able to do it with one pencil. I forget what I did it with way back but it was a low B or something.
I can't for the life of me find an actual pencil drawn one of these on the interblag.
We did blind contours in life drawing and everyone laughed at how stupid mine looked. I felt bad because I actually cheated and looked down for a couple parts. True story.
I took another look at the pictures you first posted and realized that you were shading to begin with and stopped after about six or so pictures. So! In a sense my advice was completely useless. Stick to what the people who have been around here for years have to say, they won’t lead you to far astray ... unless it is like one of those really funny things they can't resist pass up and then you will find yourself doing something really ... yeah.
Also, on a side note, I plan to, when my work problems get resolved; to start this up again and I would like to thank you for the inspiration and making me remember that repetition is the motor of learning.
I don't suffer from Insanity. I enjoy every minute of it.
One hot update delivered fresh from the oven, as promised!
I decided to draw myself from the mirror but only give myself 10 minutes, to eliminate constant second guessin of my lines:
Now compare that to my last self portrait from the mirror, much much better. I then decided to shade it using extreme tones, but I had limited myself to 10 minutes to draw the lines and I didn't have any time to study where the light fell (In retrospect I should only limit the amount of time I have to draw the actual shape and not stuff like this)
Haha, its terrible but you live and learn. I allowed myself a medium tone instead of an extreme tone, and for some reason I didn't shade in underneath my glasses?
Now comes June 10th, I had gotten the suggestion from a couple people to use a grid to work out proper proportions, so I put a grid over a picture of Philip Larkin in Photoshop and copy it into my sketchbook. The grid was light gray and picture was grayscale, so I got severely messed up in several areas, and I was generally lazy with this piece. This is one of the things I would never post If I weren't keeping a daily quota.
June 11
My hand holding a pair of scissors and an eraser. I definitely could have done this one better, but it definitely isn't terrible for my level.
June 12
I drew this one in the bathroom, the door appears off perspective but only because it was slightly open when I drew it, and I didnt draw any other surrounding features for reference.
June 13
I did a stapler sitting on my desk. At first I was going to just leave it at linework but I decided to shade it in afterwards. Since I had originally done it just with lines some outline showed through the shading, but I think it turned out pretty well. I can see some curvy lines that a ruler may have fixed.
June 14
I actually bought this Swiss Army knife in Switzerland during a school trip. It's a Swiss Champ. While in Switzerland I discovered that their main export are watches, knives, chocolate, and sexually themed T-Shirts.
Today (June 15)
I don't really like this one but I wouldn't call it terrible:
I drew a tape dispenser in 3 angles.
As a side note you guys have been great with your enthusiasm and it has really encouraged me, and I've actually inspired a few people? which is pretty humbling. I think this will be one hell of a thread in a years time when we see how much I've improved day by day. It's really something else!:)
My favorite is June 12th.
Do you still have the picture you used for that Larkin drawing? The lighting in the picture may have made his head seem pointy, but if it was a picture like this:
then you can see how his head is much rounder than what you've drawn (though again your photo may have made it look pointy.) You seem to be doing a lot better with straighter lines than curves (which makes sense). For example, compare the stapler and the tape dispenser. Practicing some nice loose circles might help you out?
facebook.com/LauraCatherwoodArt
I managed to get my Wacom semi working (4x5) Graphire 3 and I did my first digital painting ever:
Its an eraser but I think you can tell.
Then I drew myself in the mirror giving myself 5 minutes (It came out somewhat worse than the last time.) Then using a concave mirror I drew my lips, which looked pretty good until I drew my stubble.
--June 18 - also known as Today
So far I've painted a microphone hanging from my desk, but I don't think I'm finished just yet.
Also, there are a metric fuckton of Daily Drawing threads now Which is pretty cool.
You opened the floodgates man. Not that it's a bad thing, oh no, it's rocking. This many people trying to get better and everything. None of them seem to be as dedicated as you though. And, as an added bonus, best sig ever.
So, yeah, you got that going for ya.
A deck of cards
Our dining hall started buying genetically modified bananas and man those things were freaking huge I bought one just to show people how freaking huge they were and when I took it into work my co-worker who is a Ukrainian grad student but not in Ukraine just from Ukraine ate my huge banana when he mistook it for his but then he gave me his but I was fine with it because I didn't buy it to eat it I just bought it to show people how freaking huge it was.
I mean this thing was big.
Also, I always thought that people should draw with pencils until they got really great and then they could start "painting" digitally, because I consider drawing skills to be a prerequisite to becoming a good painter. But that's just me. Warning: this advice may or may not contradict advice previously given in this thread and I am not trying to be a dick.
I disagree, but you allready stated some might do that. Painting and drawing complements eachother and it's allways a good thing to try different things. Especially early on before you get locked down in a specific technique. It's like cross-training: if all you do is run 3 miles per day at the same tempo every day your muscles will get used to it and eventually reach a point where they are not getting a good workout. But if you mix it up a bit with maybe cycling or weight lifting at the gym or do "speedwork" every now and then, then the muscles will have to adapt to the change of pace and thus you get more out of your running. It works similarly with hand-eye coordination and technique when drawing/painting.
I've even tried sculpture with clay at one point - just for artistic cross training. I made 2 crappy sculptures but I believe it helped me later on.
The same principle applies to how much time you put into your drawings/paintings. If all you do is 5 minute drawings you might quickly develop a sence of proportion and accurate contour drawing skills - however, your pencil rendering technique will not improve and you might find yourself struggling to make your drawings "look better". To improve rendering technique you need to approach a drawing with the intent to let it take it's time. Assume that the rendering will take several hours and build the drawing carefully - thinking thrue every stroke and building value slowly. Doing so will obviously take more time and it will obviously not go right at first and look crappy anyway - so you will be dissapointed you spent so much time on it when you couls have made 5 decent looking once instead - but it's a skill that needs practice as well and eventually you will learn how to render realistic skin/hair/etc.
So my suggestion is to vary the tempo. A drawing per day is a tempo of sorts. It limits you to a 24 hour mindset (probably much much smaller as otherwise you wouldn't get anything else done).
As sugested above it might be more usefull to post once per week - that way your mind is set for 7 drawings/week and you might be able to do for instance 3 drawing one day, one drawing per day for two days and then spend 2 days per drawing for the remaining two pieces (or any other combination which suits you). That way you can vary the tempo a bit and train all the different aspects of drawing.
Another thing to vary is the size of a drawing. Yet another is with focus - you might focus on shape and volume one day and rendering texture the next.
But just as one would approach cross training for sports - make one adjustment to your schedule/technique per week. You've been given tons of advice here in this thread so far and much of it is probably sound but doing it all at the same time won't do you much good.
... I missed the 19th, which could only mean it was an extremely busy day (It was during exams and I probably had work and etc)
June 20th
Still experimenting in Photoshop with Wacom.
June 21st
Didn't have much time to draw and when I was drawing I wasn't in the drawing mood. You know the 'mood'. I experimented with crosshatching but I was extremely messy. What I drew is my pencils in their little package that I got for Christmas two years ago (I need to update my equipment)
June 22nd
I tried a portrait again [of a family member]. I was rusty though and it came out a lot like my Nicholas Cage portrait from page 1. (Bad.)
Today (June 23rd)
Crosshatching again. It isn't very clean and I don't really like it (the drawing, not crosshatching)
There's some weird stuff going on with the shadow near the bottom as well. Next update on Friday the 29th should have some nicer stuff than this one.
Also, learn how to draw a skull. All the proportions and angles and all, which helps a fuckton
Also, when you start drawing do a rough and light sketch beforehand to make sure everything comes out right, and so you can correct mistakes easily. Then once you think it's good, then start working on the details. Form is always more important than details!
June 24th
My friend was sleeping over and I was actually contemplating skipping this day. Luckily he fell asleep which gave me time to fight my inner demons and churn out this gnarly creation:
I can see a lot of the stuff that is wrong with it, you don't need to tell me about any of the obvious stuff:P
June 25th
My terrible creature submission!
A skull, the space between the nose holes and the teeth was way too long though, so I shortened it up is Photoshop so it would look more correct.
unedited skull
edited in Photoshop
The ol upside down photo exercise (which is why the drawings aren't aesthetically pleasing.)
John Travolta (doesn't resemble him I know)
Mel Gibson (ditto as above)
June 26th
A skull with better proportions
June 27th
Tried some Loomis, rest is self explanatory:
Tonight (June 28th)
Holy poop I'm tired, I really would have like to finish this self portrait (looking in a round portable convex mirror at my desk as opposed to the huge bathroom mirror is a lot easier.) I may finish it tomorrow if I don't start something else entirely.
That's it untill next week!
I waited all Friday but you were a no show, so I posted at 1:30 in the morning =o
My sketchbook doesn't say the kind of paper it is but it is a lot less smooth than printer paper, more fibrous. I use 2B, 4B, 6B, or an 'Ebony' pencil depending on which one I take out of the package at random.
I dunno man, I did my last two drawings in my thread from upside down photos, and I was pretty happy with the second one - once you get past the "I'm drawing a lip" and just copy what you see, it's pretty amazing how much easier it is to draw.
Anyways, one thing pops out that me, that I feel I could point out at my skill level (I don't do much crit/commenting). Eyes. Almost all of the ones in your latest post seemed very rushed and therefore kind of takes away from the rest of the drawing in my opinion, you got to take your time, or maybe study some eyes.
Keep drawing!
Secret English translation:
A cell phone
Screwing around
A dragon head
The next day I continued the Dragon (I guess this sort of defeats posting the earlier head but oh well : P )
Random stuff
The same cell phone
Toot paste
Missed Thursday (I slept over my friends) Missing is never something I like doing though
Friday I was super tired
Today I broke my promise on creating a masterpiece. I did Bruce Willis upside down but I did it in a rush, it's really bad I know. At the beginning of my thread my sketches would take about an hour and a half, now they take twenty minutes. Starting tomorrow I'm making my minimum time to draw a day one hour.
I think some key things I have to work on are that I am really messy, and I'm very rushed. A problem is that I lost some of my drive from the beginning, partially due to a drought in replies to my thread. The thread itself was started to produce drive and ambition for me to keep me going, so I think I'll begin posting every day now with my stuff.
EDIT: If I rape anyones H-Scroll let me know, mine is fine atm but my resolution might be higher than some of yours.
Also, A+ on the minimum drawing time requirement.
Also also - if you're losing motivation because people aren't posting in your thread...who are you doing this drawing-a-day thing for? If it were for yourself, I imagine you'd want to continue regardless of how many replies you were getting. For drawing-a-day threads, it's not really typical (so I've seen) to get replies every single day. There's just...so many days! ...and often there isn't such a difference from one drawing to the next day's, so people don't feel the need to repeat themselves for crits. Don't get disheartened, though! When I realize I'm getting un-motivated from something, half the time it's because I've been doing it for the wrong reasons. The second you know you're doing this thing for yourself and nobody else, the number of replies in your thread won't affect you. Also, I have (personally) noticed that when I try to do something on schedule, exactly, every time, I lose motivation when something goes wrong, and I miss a day, or something. Don't take that as a failure! Keep going no matter what happens, even if you're lax for a whole week. Just start right up again - I think this is the problem a lot of people have with diets, too - the second something goes wrong, it's as if the whole project comes down. Not sure if you'd had this experience or not (with missing a day in your drawings, or something) but it might be a valuable bit of advice in the future, should you need it.
P.S. Keep going! go go go go go