EDIT: most of the first page is like 3 years old and not very interesting
I have been working a lot on trying to improve anatomy, proportions, and the like. these are some figures I have done recently. quality sucks but not much I can do about that
this was also from imagination since I didn't feel like sitting at my desk yesterday, I thought it turned out okay? for me. the right arm/torso ended up too exaggerated
got side tracked because my eyes need a ton of work so here's some real Bad Art
0
Options
surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
edited September 2014
keep going man! mileage is absolutely huge. one thing to consider:
when you are doing those figures, attempt to place sculptural lines on them as you draw. i mean lines which wrap around the figure, and do not cut into the surface - some contour lines, some less simple. the more you do that the more you will be forced to solve the 3 dimensional shape of the figure. you will also find that your pictures suddenly gain a 3-dimensional quality quite quickly!
the less you think of what you are drawing as shapes, and more as 3-dimensional objects you are sculpting the more dimensionality your drawings will gain.
one way to get into this early is to simplify your shapes a bit - use simpler forms. if you can't rotate a simple rectangular prism accurately through, say, 30 degree rotations around the vertical in perspective on the page then attempting to do it with a rib cage will just result in frustration.
This is not so much "learn formal perspective" as much as it is "get a feeling for how these objects behaved when tipped into deep space, recession, and how to use lines to help indicate this"
@Jars:
Hope you don't mind, took a crack at your latest, hopefully some of it is helpful.
Obviously the stuff at the beginning is the most important, I just kept going with my paintover because I got carried away shading it. It's a good ref, so I wanted to do it justice.
Which probably makes for a good point by itself- I assume you're doing a lot of this stuff in a relatively short timeframe- I went ahead and spent a good couple hours on this yesterday. You will also notice that as I go through it, I'm not getting a lot of things correct, I keep having to redo and erase and reposition things over the course of drawing to hone in on something that looks relatively ok. This is why it pays to stick with a single drawing for a good long time before saying it's done- you'll never catch that mistake you'd only ever figure out once you'd spent 2 and a half hours working at it, if you don't stick with the drawing long enough to get to the 2 and a half hour mark to begin with.
A lot of people like to fill up reams and reams of paper with quick sketches because it makes them feel very productive and prolific- but they don't improve as quickly, even in their quick drawings, as someone that also spends the time to stick around long enough on a drawing to really grapple with their mistakes, rather than simply moving on to the next thing and hope it turns out better. Also sticking exclusively to quick sketches is often a way to dodge criticism from themselves and others, because to really spend the time and swing for the fences on something holds a greater risk of failure- but it's only by making and engaging those necessary failures that they can then go back into their studies with some explicit ideas of what needs to be improved upon, the necessary frustration that lights the fire in one's belly.
Er, kinda went on a bit of a rant there that is probably more applicable to a broad audience than just to you in particular, as I don't know what else you might be up to.
TL;DR: Might want to take some time to augment the lay-in type work with some longer work geared at tightening your analytical observational abilities, ie: measuring angles and distances, negative space, etc.
yes it is a very dreamy ref isn't it. I think it's easy for me to get to a point where I feel I'm done pretty quickly because I'm simply not that good at recognizing mistakes yet, or if I do I might not actually know what the problem is. I had one thing I did where I must have looked at it for an hour because I knew something was wrong and I could not figure out what it was.
I had the picture I posted in the other thread sitting on my desktop, I might as well use it. maybe I have a better idea of how to do this than I thought
Hey man, good progress you're making! Sometimes I feel like you're lengthening out the figure more than you need to. Just keep a handle on forms and proportions. Quick glances at the subject and back to your work is great for checking overall propportions (for me.) Keep it up!
holy shit 2 years! but I haven't done nothing these past 2 years, been sitting on some stuff I have done
I like doing these because I run them through the photocopier and boom coloring sheets
this one was really hard for some reason
flowers and stuff
the first one was just a test run of sorts, the second was for real. I'm planning on doing a few more of these, I'm a bit more confident in my ability to do side views now. facial features are still pretty hard
Dude getting to 250 made a huge difference, those are looking nice and solid now. I would recommend doing a couple scenes where you have a horizon and just draw boxes to that horizon with different vanishing pits, it'll help you get how to use this in practice
I have a great respect with your diligence in doing all of these. All the same, you may want to go back and try cylinders again, because there are some issues with the circles. Pay attention to the angle of the cylinder and how round the circle is versus how oval it has become with perspective, maybe using a real can from the kitchen. Make sure the top and bottom are agreeing on the angle of the cylinder. Keep up the good practicing!
In addition to Lyrium's advice, I think it might be good for you to try out some different angles of cylinders - most of the drawings you did are from the exact same angle.
Not sure how long you're taking with these, but take a few extra seconds on each to really aim for accuracy. Make sure your oval edges match up to the cylinder edges, and try to really get the shapes of the ellipse correct.
these will probably be a bugbear of mine for a while. I went back and drew over some boxes, but that wasn't great since hand drawn boxes are by their nature imperfect. I also used a glass but the glass distorts the bottom ellipse a bit. my ellipses also aren't great to begin with
changed things up to work with actual vanishing points this time
I could put stuff in here every day but I don't really want to spam the forum. I'm not going to do any more cylinders tonight though, it's time to draw some god damn leaves
In addition to Lyrium's advice, I think it might be good for you to try out some different angles of cylinders - most of the drawings you did are from the exact same angle.
Not sure how long you're taking with these, but take a few extra seconds on each to really aim for accuracy. Make sure your oval edges match up to the cylinder edges, and try to really get the shapes of the ellipse correct.
I wanted to highlight this advice again, because I wonder how fast are you doing each sketch, on average? There's something to be said about sitting down and really thinking about what you are doing. Its a bit contrary to some of the advice in the Draw a Box lesson plan, but to some degree doing the same thing wrong over and over again really fast wont help you. Drawing things in perspective isn't a reflex, its not that you stop thinking about it at some point and always get it correct. What generally happens is you've done it so much, however slowly at first, that eventually you get faster at it.
Metaphorically, I usually compare art to cooking, and to me these exercises are a lot like learning knife handling. When I watch a chef cut shit with a knife, it always looks so fast. I assume that its because they just cook so much, but thats partially true. I also cook a lot. I dont hold a knife completely correctly, is the problem, and I also just haven't invested any time in doing it right. I've watched a few videos of how its supposed to go and then I just cut onions the same brutal way I always have, for the most part.
To bring this back to drawing, When I see pages like this:
It seems to really lack the focus of, say, an example like this:
In that when I look at that example, I can see exactly what is trying to be absorbed: drawing a variety of the shape to help you turn the object in perspective. You page has a lot of similar shapes, so you aren't getting a full bang for your buck. Ask yourself how these skills are going to be applied in the future and think ahead. If I wanted to learn how to better use my knife, I would need to slow way down, and cut my onions in time with some videos, and learn about why rocking my knife and putting my hand a particular way eventually enables me to go faster. You need to take the time for each of these studies to think about what perspective is and means, and how constructing things will help you build objects and anatomy.
All that being said, I think you are well on your way to making great progress. Most of the time it is the absolute slog of learning these skills that breaks people from drawing. I just think that, to keep yourself from burning out, you should consider focusing your exercises and try to maximize what you are taking out of each and every page of these you do. Take notes and try to articulate your goals to yourself.
Posts
when you are doing those figures, attempt to place sculptural lines on them as you draw. i mean lines which wrap around the figure, and do not cut into the surface - some contour lines, some less simple. the more you do that the more you will be forced to solve the 3 dimensional shape of the figure. you will also find that your pictures suddenly gain a 3-dimensional quality quite quickly!
the less you think of what you are drawing as shapes, and more as 3-dimensional objects you are sculpting the more dimensionality your drawings will gain.
one way to get into this early is to simplify your shapes a bit - use simpler forms. if you can't rotate a simple rectangular prism accurately through, say, 30 degree rotations around the vertical in perspective on the page then attempting to do it with a rib cage will just result in frustration.
This is not so much "learn formal perspective" as much as it is "get a feeling for how these objects behaved when tipped into deep space, recession, and how to use lines to help indicate this"
references on last two
Hope you don't mind, took a crack at your latest, hopefully some of it is helpful.
Obviously the stuff at the beginning is the most important, I just kept going with my paintover because I got carried away shading it. It's a good ref, so I wanted to do it justice.
Which probably makes for a good point by itself- I assume you're doing a lot of this stuff in a relatively short timeframe- I went ahead and spent a good couple hours on this yesterday. You will also notice that as I go through it, I'm not getting a lot of things correct, I keep having to redo and erase and reposition things over the course of drawing to hone in on something that looks relatively ok. This is why it pays to stick with a single drawing for a good long time before saying it's done- you'll never catch that mistake you'd only ever figure out once you'd spent 2 and a half hours working at it, if you don't stick with the drawing long enough to get to the 2 and a half hour mark to begin with.
A lot of people like to fill up reams and reams of paper with quick sketches because it makes them feel very productive and prolific- but they don't improve as quickly, even in their quick drawings, as someone that also spends the time to stick around long enough on a drawing to really grapple with their mistakes, rather than simply moving on to the next thing and hope it turns out better. Also sticking exclusively to quick sketches is often a way to dodge criticism from themselves and others, because to really spend the time and swing for the fences on something holds a greater risk of failure- but it's only by making and engaging those necessary failures that they can then go back into their studies with some explicit ideas of what needs to be improved upon, the necessary frustration that lights the fire in one's belly.
Er, kinda went on a bit of a rant there that is probably more applicable to a broad audience than just to you in particular, as I don't know what else you might be up to.
TL;DR: Might want to take some time to augment the lay-in type work with some longer work geared at tightening your analytical observational abilities, ie: measuring angles and distances, negative space, etc.
aminated .giffff
Twitter
I could tell the right side was all off but I couldn't really erase anymore because of the paper deteriorating so I drew over it a bit in photoshop.
this one wasn't so hot
but I'm confused about how to do facial layouts as it rotates to the left or the right
I couldn't figure out how something worked so I ended up just working on the shoulder area alone
then I thought oh I'll do some facial stuff except I don't know how to do shading on the computer
so I figure okay I'll do it in pencil instead except I don't know how to do shading period so that was my adventure this week
ref:
The shapes arent bad but they are a bit unstable. the rectanglular shapes are a little crooked, and thw shading is a little too haphazard.
You may want to keep working on shapes, and also do some practice just shading a gradient. When Im not on my phone I'll try and dig up an example.
also like I said in the chat thread drawing a box is surprisingly difficult. next time I'll try to keep the vanishing points in mind
I like doing these because I run them through the photocopier and boom coloring sheets
this one was really hard for some reason
didn't have time to finish this one
these are some things unrelated to draw a box:
lesson 2 partially complete:
It's 250 of the same 2-3 perspectives, that's what scientists call 'madness', what you need is variety!
Do turntables and tumbles, animate them.
then I had this where I had to stare at it for like 30 minutes before I could even start attempting intersections. I think I got a few right, at least
finally followed up on this but I think I need to look over a few last things, I made some mistakes in these
facebook.com/LauraCatherwoodArt
Not sure how long you're taking with these, but take a few extra seconds on each to really aim for accuracy. Make sure your oval edges match up to the cylinder edges, and try to really get the shapes of the ellipse correct.
I could put stuff in here every day but I don't really want to spam the forum. I'm not going to do any more cylinders tonight though, it's time to draw some god damn leaves
I wanted to highlight this advice again, because I wonder how fast are you doing each sketch, on average? There's something to be said about sitting down and really thinking about what you are doing. Its a bit contrary to some of the advice in the Draw a Box lesson plan, but to some degree doing the same thing wrong over and over again really fast wont help you. Drawing things in perspective isn't a reflex, its not that you stop thinking about it at some point and always get it correct. What generally happens is you've done it so much, however slowly at first, that eventually you get faster at it.
Metaphorically, I usually compare art to cooking, and to me these exercises are a lot like learning knife handling. When I watch a chef cut shit with a knife, it always looks so fast. I assume that its because they just cook so much, but thats partially true. I also cook a lot. I dont hold a knife completely correctly, is the problem, and I also just haven't invested any time in doing it right. I've watched a few videos of how its supposed to go and then I just cut onions the same brutal way I always have, for the most part.
To bring this back to drawing, When I see pages like this:
It seems to really lack the focus of, say, an example like this:
In that when I look at that example, I can see exactly what is trying to be absorbed: drawing a variety of the shape to help you turn the object in perspective. You page has a lot of similar shapes, so you aren't getting a full bang for your buck. Ask yourself how these skills are going to be applied in the future and think ahead. If I wanted to learn how to better use my knife, I would need to slow way down, and cut my onions in time with some videos, and learn about why rocking my knife and putting my hand a particular way eventually enables me to go faster. You need to take the time for each of these studies to think about what perspective is and means, and how constructing things will help you build objects and anatomy.
All that being said, I think you are well on your way to making great progress. Most of the time it is the absolute slog of learning these skills that breaks people from drawing. I just think that, to keep yourself from burning out, you should consider focusing your exercises and try to maximize what you are taking out of each and every page of these you do. Take notes and try to articulate your goals to yourself.
Keep at it, dude, you're a trooper!