Forgot this one. They liked it so they asked to keep it. I snapped a photo tho
This is pretty light, but It's a WIP. Bargue copy, so I'm going to spend as much time on this is a need to. Gonna do a few of these over the summer. As well as watercolor and all that other stuff I wanted to do this summer.
alright, so there was some unfixable problems. Everything was out of relation to each other so I started over. about 2.5 hours
I have a feeling I'm doing this wrong. I started with the angular lay in and built up the shapes from there, idk I'll try to find a better set of instructions online
Also could I get some feedback on the sketchy comics from the last page? Just tell me if you can understand what is going on or not.
Comic 1: guy tries to get on bus, has no money. Bus leaves him.
Comic 2: dude shoots a clock
Comic 3: a guy says something inoffensive to a girl yet still gets punched or slapped and states that it was worth the abuse?
Comic 4: dudes playing a guitar, then smokes a cigar, then jerks off then rides home on a bike to kill himself.
Comic 5: dude smashes all his teeth on a sandwich, then they grow back because he farted just onthe nick of time. But the gas cloud takes on a mind of its own and starts to run for president.
Comic 6: an angry redditor petitions the gov to use UAV's to help control the un neutered pet population.
Comic 7: the new private day dreams about when they are going to let him use real bullets. His range safety corrects him telling him to keep it to just 3 "bangs"
Yes actually, surprisingly close.
1. yes
2. yes
3. guy#1 compliments the dudes date, she's flattered, he's offended and punches guy #1
4. just a list of things I'd rather be doing than sitting in the "suicide prevention" class
5. I got the teeth smashing thing from someone else too. Was just supposed to be biting a sandwich. And the sandwich is giving him gas
6. Dog shits on his lawn so he calls in an air strike
7. close enough
What I'm wondering is if there is enough communication with just the images, and I guess yes for some and need more creative framing for the other ones. (and probably less mess would help too, but these aren't supposed to be finished stuff, just messing around with quick short stories to see how it works)
you are transmitting all the general information. on comic 3 i didnt know there were two men.
i like my telling of a few of the stories better than yours.
i think in comics, much like story writing, you dont want to confuse your reader, so your illustrations should be more crisp. smashed teeth could be cracked like in loony toons when anyone bites something that is supposed to be soft but maybe has something hard hidden in (the sandwich) it.
it seems more effective to show the immediate result of an action than to still frame the action its self. i.e. the follow through of a punch that landed, vs. a fist touching a face (tangent).
so draw the guy chewing, and the sandwich bitten, but not the guy biting the sandwich. then maybe his stomach rumbles and he looks at it with concern on his face. then a dumb, satisfied smile while the gas cloud expands around him.
the airstrike was pretty specific, but ive spent a lot of time around preditor drones, and so your illustration of one was passable for me. but i think you should observe them better, or slow down and render them better (or both if you feel like it). the 'crafty looking face' panel was successful in the UAV strip. it made me think he was up to something.
its been my experience that nothing good in comics comes from rushing it. pencil quickly, but ink deliberately and you will improve. pencil deliberately and ink deliberately and you will start getting commissions (in a perfect world).
edit: in comic 7, if somebody used burst or just started popping off during a grouping session they would be tackled and beat the shit out of.
edit: in comic 7, if somebody used burst or just started popping off during a grouping session they would be tackled and beat the shit out of.
It went like this. I shot my 3. Shot my next 3. I was already zero'd and so I spent the rest of my ammo in 1 iteration :P I got away with it because there were a few others on the line burning excess ammo so we didn't have to turn it in.
Checking the target again after 24 rounds, not a single round hit outside of the circle.
for those that don't know this is what we shoot at to make sure the weapon is attuned to the person shooting it.
alright, so there was some unfixable problems. Everything was out of relation to each other so I started over. about 2.5 hours
I have a feeling I'm doing this wrong. I started with the angular lay in and built up the shapes from there, idk I'll try to find a better set of instructions online
Also could I get some feedback on the sketchy comics from the last page? Just tell me if you can understand what is going on or not.
I think you went too fast into doing your shadow shapes. Even looking at the picture, a bunch of the lines and relations are visibly off, and I have a feeling your eye is keen enough to see these, but you went through it too quickly to notice. FWIW, when I did these the average time to complete one was between 9-12 hours. In a 3 hour session I could probably get the lay-in out, but even then I'd get scolded for inaccuracies by the instructors.
If you cant find pdfs on the instruction, I have printouts, in a pinch I could take a photo of em and send em your way.
I was following the instructions on a video instruction on how to do these, but I guess I'm still going about it wrong. The second attempt was much more accurate, but the pinky and the wrist caught my eye this time being way off. And measuring some things on paper make no sense. 5 different measurements check out in relationship with one another, but then a 6th measurement is way off. I don't know how that's physically possible.
Another bit of time on this. 4 hours give or take here or there to take a peek at what was playing on the tv in the background. (only place with light to draw ) At least an hour trying to fix things that I noticed were wrong. Pinky, top of hand, placement of a few shadow shapes. and goddamn it lol, it's still wrong, just wrong in a different way :P
A moment from last night I can't shake from my head. We were both walking barefoot, she was wearing my coat because it was cold, she stopped, stood on my feet, then she kissed me. I had a good night
Yet another instance of me not waiting til the ink drying before erasing the pencil... Also I wanted to do some sort of dramatic lighting but I am a little too attached to the drawing so I was nervous and decided not to.
also displaying my lack of confidence tracing lines in ink...
This morning figure painting turned out pretty good I think
sorry couldn't scan these... my scanner aren't big enough
Looks pretty good overall- if you're still being bugged by bits of measurements being off, now would be a good time to make a tracing of the original plate on tracing paper and lay it over what you've done, so you can see black and white what's off, and draw some conclusions about what it was you forgot to measure.
The biggest thing that leaps out to me is you're exaggerating the darkness of the values on the fingers, creating a kind of jaggedy read with some of your shading. I also suspect that in trying to get your shadow pattern shapes correct, in places you've kind of lost sight of what it it you're actually trying to depict, form-wise.
For example, look at the index and middle fingers on the ref. Though rendered with a lot of subtlety, you can still tease out that on the middle and last finger bones, the artist is still thinking in terms of major planes; they are simplified into box shapes; there's a side plane, and a front plane to them. (Imagine a line running from the side edge of the fingernail up to the corner of the knuckle, and you'll see what I mean.) In your copy, in trying to get the more obvious, darker shading of the knuckles correct, you've forgotten what the basic form of the object is about, and left those broader planes more or less flatly shaded. It's really subtle, but it's essential to making the illusion of form work.
Another example would be the pinky, which as you mentioned looks a bit fuzzy. If you were to take a piece of tracing paper and draw the outline there, and then try to draw in the part of the finger that's currently being obscured by the ring finger (keeping in mind these fingers have a delicate taper to them and are not big knobby strongman hands), you'd notice that it's a bit too wide in that third knuckle area; you've put in an angle at the knuckle there that's a bit too acute, bowing it outwards. The work you've put into the shadow shapes is good, they just aren't pulling their weight because that construction's a bit off. You could probably use the Liquify tool in PS and mush it in a bit, and suddenly what was "fuzzy" would all of a sudden come good.
Sure, you can come to that same conclusion just through brute force measuring of the ref, but even though you're "just" copying a reference, it is helpful to attack drawing problems from multiple angles, as you would if drawing from a model or from imagination.
But other than that, good job on sticking with this; I know it seems like a lot of time to put in, but it's definitely going to pay off for you in spades if you keep with it. It's very encouraging to see. :^:
Some stuff that might be redundant to what you already know/have been told:
Judging by the torn out paper you're working on, I assume you're just working with standard sketchbook paper? I might suggest going forward with a higher grade paper with a finer texture, since you seem to be getting a bit of roughness in your shading. You might also have trouble achieving the very soft shading and have trouble erasing substantially on rougher paper. (I've never done Bargue drawing in an instructed class so I don't have any specific recommendations- (maybe @lyrium has some suggestions, since she did all those cast drawings?) but I would think something like smooth bristol would be, if not exactly the best choice, at least slightly better.)
I dunno if KevinDee ever gave his notes to you, but this is what's in the book, in case he didn't: http://bacon.iseenothing.com/info/bargueNotes.jpg
(Go buy the book so this comes across as an effective ad and not just copyright infringement plz).
Also I don't know if your ref included the angular layout, which is really handy. (Couldn't tell because you were already on to shading when you posted it the first time.) http://bacon.iseenothing.com/info/bargueHand.jpg
Bacon's post is great and I agree with everything. In particular, he is absolutely right about you missing some of the subtlety and softness, and the shadows on the fingers coming out a little bit severe looking.
If you're going to do a dozen-hour study of something, it's totally appropriate to spring for some heavier, smoother paper stock.
Some parts of this also seem like they were finger-smudged or blended with a tortillon-- personally, for a very precise technical exercise like a Bargue copy I would not do any kind of smudging at all.
I know it's probably the last thing you want to do right now, but moving forward with what you've learned into a second Bargue study would probably be really helpful to burn in some of these concepts. That's what you'd most likely be doing in an atelier at any rate.
I tried to take some pictures of the print-outs today, but couldn't get the text to a readable level. I'll see if I can scan them in at work tomorrow.
I agree with the previous critiques. I was recommended heavily textured canson paper for bargues, and it sucked. I'd much prefer to do them on smooth bristol or something for sure.
For your next bargue, I would recommend you pick an arm, or a leg. Hands and feet are hard, and I think picking a simpler geometry will let you focus more on nailing the values, which I think you'd benefit more from right now.
You guys are too awesome. Thank you so much bacon, scos, kd for the awesome feedback.
@Angel_of_Bacon I didn't see any of the subtlety between dark and light areas until I set up my light. Then, bam, suddenly all of my shadow shapes looked super jagged like you said and the forms were completely flat. Yeah it's just sketchbook paper, I'm going to bust out the bristol for the next go. Thanks again for the encouraging words and the criticism. I saw some of what was wrong, but having it pointed out really helps me
@scosglen The smudging was an accident, and to keep everything cohesive I smudged the rest :C . I didn't like it either. The tones were looking nice without it, I'll do my best on the next one to avoid that. And while I was frustrated with the mistakes, that is far from the last thing I want to do. I mean, I'd rather be drawing some cool like sci fi dood and shit exploding, but I fully intend to keep doing these over the summer. I'm pretty excited I hope it helps as much as AOB says it will :P
here's what I was doing earlier. I decided it might help to do some of the more basic (unshaded) linear stuff because it's much simpler than the rest of the bargue plates? But turns out it isn't that simple. I got aggravated as time went on. Getting the angles just right, I had to do some over and over. Measuring one angle is spot on, checking against another angle someone it's of by half an inch or something.... And I'm STILL probably going way too fast. This is about 2 hours total so far.
It's like, as a drawing they don't look bad to me, but looking at the plate, I want to chuck it out the window :P
I'm saying that in jest, but it wears on my patience after a while. Taking a break for now.
Some stuff that might be redundant to what you already know/have been told:
Judging by the torn out paper you're working on, I assume you're just working with standard sketchbook paper? I might suggest going forward with a higher grade paper with a finer texture, since you seem to be getting a bit of roughness in your shading. You might also have trouble achieving the very soft shading and have trouble erasing substantially on rougher paper. (I've never done Bargue drawing in an instructed class so I don't have any specific recommendations- (maybe @lyrium has some suggestions, since she did all those cast drawings?) but I would think something like smooth bristol would be, if not exactly the best choice, at least slightly better.)
Definitely use smooth bristol for the paper, but don't forget that another big factor in the smoothness will be how you are laying down your pencil marks. Keep the marks light, and get the dark values by gradually building up the layers of graphite. Understand that the graphite will reflect light, so you're not going to be able to get quite as dark with them as your printed reference. But that's okay, because the important thing about the bargue drawings is practicing your shapes/form/transitions, and it will look better to have smooth values that are all correct relative to each other, even if you can't get them super dark. Or at least that's what we've focused on in my experience, so we only use 2H or HB pencils.
I got really frustrated with this. I didn't manage my expectations well, and I was caught off guard by the complexity even though it looks so simple. I gave up copying towards the end and settled for semblance. The second two rows took twice as long as the first to in any case.... 4 hours and bleh.
I'm probably going to take a break from bargue for a few days and play some. All work and no play yeah?
Posts
This is pretty light, but It's a WIP. Bargue copy, so I'm going to spend as much time on this is a need to. Gonna do a few of these over the summer. As well as watercolor and all that other stuff I wanted to do this summer.
Some ones I liked from botp
I have a feeling I'm doing this wrong. I started with the angular lay in and built up the shapes from there, idk I'll try to find a better set of instructions online
Also could I get some feedback on the sketchy comics from the last page? Just tell me if you can understand what is going on or not.
Comic 2: dude shoots a clock
Comic 3: a guy says something inoffensive to a girl yet still gets punched or slapped and states that it was worth the abuse?
Comic 4: dudes playing a guitar, then smokes a cigar, then jerks off then rides home on a bike to kill himself.
Comic 5: dude smashes all his teeth on a sandwich, then they grow back because he farted just onthe nick of time. But the gas cloud takes on a mind of its own and starts to run for president.
Comic 6: an angry redditor petitions the gov to use UAV's to help control the un neutered pet population.
Comic 7: the new private day dreams about when they are going to let him use real bullets. His range safety corrects him telling him to keep it to just 3 "bangs"
Did I get those All right?
1. yes
2. yes
3. guy#1 compliments the dudes date, she's flattered, he's offended and punches guy #1
4. just a list of things I'd rather be doing than sitting in the "suicide prevention" class
5. I got the teeth smashing thing from someone else too. Was just supposed to be biting a sandwich. And the sandwich is giving him gas
6. Dog shits on his lawn so he calls in an air strike
7. close enough
What I'm wondering is if there is enough communication with just the images, and I guess yes for some and need more creative framing for the other ones. (and probably less mess would help too, but these aren't supposed to be finished stuff, just messing around with quick short stories to see how it works)
i like my telling of a few of the stories better than yours.
i think in comics, much like story writing, you dont want to confuse your reader, so your illustrations should be more crisp. smashed teeth could be cracked like in loony toons when anyone bites something that is supposed to be soft but maybe has something hard hidden in (the sandwich) it.
it seems more effective to show the immediate result of an action than to still frame the action its self. i.e. the follow through of a punch that landed, vs. a fist touching a face (tangent).
so draw the guy chewing, and the sandwich bitten, but not the guy biting the sandwich. then maybe his stomach rumbles and he looks at it with concern on his face. then a dumb, satisfied smile while the gas cloud expands around him.
the airstrike was pretty specific, but ive spent a lot of time around preditor drones, and so your illustration of one was passable for me. but i think you should observe them better, or slow down and render them better (or both if you feel like it). the 'crafty looking face' panel was successful in the UAV strip. it made me think he was up to something.
its been my experience that nothing good in comics comes from rushing it. pencil quickly, but ink deliberately and you will improve. pencil deliberately and ink deliberately and you will start getting commissions (in a perfect world).
edit: in comic 7, if somebody used burst or just started popping off during a grouping session they would be tackled and beat the shit out of.
It went like this. I shot my 3. Shot my next 3. I was already zero'd and so I spent the rest of my ammo in 1 iteration :P I got away with it because there were a few others on the line burning excess ammo so we didn't have to turn it in.
Checking the target again after 24 rounds, not a single round hit outside of the circle.
for those that don't know this is what we shoot at to make sure the weapon is attuned to the person shooting it.
I think you went too fast into doing your shadow shapes. Even looking at the picture, a bunch of the lines and relations are visibly off, and I have a feeling your eye is keen enough to see these, but you went through it too quickly to notice. FWIW, when I did these the average time to complete one was between 9-12 hours. In a 3 hour session I could probably get the lay-in out, but even then I'd get scolded for inaccuracies by the instructors.
If you cant find pdfs on the instruction, I have printouts, in a pinch I could take a photo of em and send em your way.
Yes please I'll take whatever you have.
I was following the instructions on a video instruction on how to do these, but I guess I'm still going about it wrong. The second attempt was much more accurate, but the pinky and the wrist caught my eye this time being way off. And measuring some things on paper make no sense. 5 different measurements check out in relationship with one another, but then a 6th measurement is way off. I don't know how that's physically possible.
Another bit of time on this. 4 hours give or take here or there to take a peek at what was playing on the tv in the background. (only place with light to draw
K guys, here's todays progress. another 3 hours. A lot of weird things happening with the shadow shapes. Will work more tomorrow.
Anyway, what I learned was about watercolor. THe face turned out well I think, but hard to see in the photo
Yet another instance of me not waiting til the ink drying before erasing the pencil... Also I wanted to do some sort of dramatic lighting but I am a little too attached to the drawing so I was nervous and decided not to.
also displaying my lack of confidence tracing lines in ink...
This morning figure painting
sorry couldn't scan these... my scanner aren't big enough
Ok guys.
Calling it. I did a number of things incorrectly and wound up with a bunch of mistakes that I don't know how to fix this far in so I'm calling it.
Plz critique and let me know what to do differently on my next bargue study.
13 hours. fucking pinky looks fuzzy
The biggest thing that leaps out to me is you're exaggerating the darkness of the values on the fingers, creating a kind of jaggedy read with some of your shading. I also suspect that in trying to get your shadow pattern shapes correct, in places you've kind of lost sight of what it it you're actually trying to depict, form-wise.
For example, look at the index and middle fingers on the ref. Though rendered with a lot of subtlety, you can still tease out that on the middle and last finger bones, the artist is still thinking in terms of major planes; they are simplified into box shapes; there's a side plane, and a front plane to them. (Imagine a line running from the side edge of the fingernail up to the corner of the knuckle, and you'll see what I mean.) In your copy, in trying to get the more obvious, darker shading of the knuckles correct, you've forgotten what the basic form of the object is about, and left those broader planes more or less flatly shaded. It's really subtle, but it's essential to making the illusion of form work.
Another example would be the pinky, which as you mentioned looks a bit fuzzy. If you were to take a piece of tracing paper and draw the outline there, and then try to draw in the part of the finger that's currently being obscured by the ring finger (keeping in mind these fingers have a delicate taper to them and are not big knobby strongman hands), you'd notice that it's a bit too wide in that third knuckle area; you've put in an angle at the knuckle there that's a bit too acute, bowing it outwards. The work you've put into the shadow shapes is good, they just aren't pulling their weight because that construction's a bit off. You could probably use the Liquify tool in PS and mush it in a bit, and suddenly what was "fuzzy" would all of a sudden come good.
Sure, you can come to that same conclusion just through brute force measuring of the ref, but even though you're "just" copying a reference, it is helpful to attack drawing problems from multiple angles, as you would if drawing from a model or from imagination.
But other than that, good job on sticking with this; I know it seems like a lot of time to put in, but it's definitely going to pay off for you in spades if you keep with it. It's very encouraging to see. :^:
Some stuff that might be redundant to what you already know/have been told:
Judging by the torn out paper you're working on, I assume you're just working with standard sketchbook paper? I might suggest going forward with a higher grade paper with a finer texture, since you seem to be getting a bit of roughness in your shading. You might also have trouble achieving the very soft shading and have trouble erasing substantially on rougher paper. (I've never done Bargue drawing in an instructed class so I don't have any specific recommendations- (maybe @lyrium has some suggestions, since she did all those cast drawings?) but I would think something like smooth bristol would be, if not exactly the best choice, at least slightly better.)
I dunno if KevinDee ever gave his notes to you, but this is what's in the book, in case he didn't:
http://bacon.iseenothing.com/info/bargueNotes.jpg
(Go buy the book so this comes across as an effective ad and not just copyright infringement plz).
Also I don't know if your ref included the angular layout, which is really handy. (Couldn't tell because you were already on to shading when you posted it the first time.)
http://bacon.iseenothing.com/info/bargueHand.jpg
Twitter
If you're going to do a dozen-hour study of something, it's totally appropriate to spring for some heavier, smoother paper stock.
Some parts of this also seem like they were finger-smudged or blended with a tortillon-- personally, for a very precise technical exercise like a Bargue copy I would not do any kind of smudging at all.
I know it's probably the last thing you want to do right now, but moving forward with what you've learned into a second Bargue study would probably be really helpful to burn in some of these concepts. That's what you'd most likely be doing in an atelier at any rate.
I agree with the previous critiques. I was recommended heavily textured canson paper for bargues, and it sucked. I'd much prefer to do them on smooth bristol or something for sure.
For your next bargue, I would recommend you pick an arm, or a leg. Hands and feet are hard, and I think picking a simpler geometry will let you focus more on nailing the values, which I think you'd benefit more from right now.
@Angel_of_Bacon I didn't see any of the subtlety between dark and light areas until I set up my light. Then, bam, suddenly all of my shadow shapes looked super jagged like you said and the forms were completely flat. Yeah it's just sketchbook paper, I'm going to bust out the bristol for the next go. Thanks again for the encouraging words and the criticism. I saw some of what was wrong, but having it pointed out really helps me
@scosglen The smudging was an accident, and to keep everything cohesive I smudged the rest :C . I didn't like it either. The tones were looking nice without it, I'll do my best on the next one to avoid that. And while I was frustrated with the mistakes, that is far from the last thing I want to do. I mean, I'd rather be drawing some cool like sci fi dood and shit exploding, but I fully intend to keep doing these over the summer. I'm pretty excited
here's what I was doing earlier. I decided it might help to do some of the more basic (unshaded) linear stuff because it's much simpler than the rest of the bargue plates? But turns out it isn't that simple. I got aggravated as time went on. Getting the angles just right, I had to do some over and over. Measuring one angle is spot on, checking against another angle someone it's of by half an inch or something.... And I'm STILL probably going way too fast. This is about 2 hours total so far.
It's like, as a drawing they don't look bad to me, but looking at the plate, I want to chuck it out the window :P
I'm saying that in jest, but it wears on my patience after a while. Taking a break for now.
Definitely use smooth bristol for the paper, but don't forget that another big factor in the smoothness will be how you are laying down your pencil marks. Keep the marks light, and get the dark values by gradually building up the layers of graphite. Understand that the graphite will reflect light, so you're not going to be able to get quite as dark with them as your printed reference. But that's okay, because the important thing about the bargue drawings is practicing your shapes/form/transitions, and it will look better to have smooth values that are all correct relative to each other, even if you can't get them super dark. Or at least that's what we've focused on in my experience, so we only use 2H or HB pencils.
facebook.com/LauraCatherwoodArt
I got really frustrated with this. I didn't manage my expectations well, and I was caught off guard by the complexity even though it looks so simple. I gave up copying towards the end and settled for semblance. The second two rows took twice as long as the first to in any case.... 4 hours and bleh.
I'm probably going to take a break from bargue for a few days and play some. All work and no play yeah?