Anyway I have a question: how can I get the most out of doing a master study? I just finished doing a ~8 hour rough value study of a Jean-Leon Gerome painting, but I don't feel like I really learned a great deal. I'm consciously trying to take notes while I draw, but maybe I'm asking the wrong questions? Or maybe I don't have enough foundational knowledge in things like composition or lighting to observe when they've done something particularly clever?
You probably learned a good deal more than you think you might have. Basic measuring of proportions, brush strokes, value measurement and control, and other such.
That said, the more you do, the more you'll notice and the more you'll appreciate. 8 hours is really just a drop in the bucket and training your eye for that sort of thing is a lifelong endeavour.
If you're looking to get scholarly, you might consider doing a quick little analysis/essay before and after you do a study.
Build and take some time to answer a set of questions like:
Why do I like this painting?
What do I dislike about this painting?
What are the areas of greatest contrast in value?
What are the areas of greatest contrast in colour?
What path do my eyes naturally follow through the painting?
Where do my eyes settle the longest?
Do the important elements in this painting fall into any sort of obvious compositional rule system? Rule of Thirds? Golden Ratio?
Does the painting have a narrative and what was my first impression of it? Are there any subtle secondary narrative elements that I didn't notice when I first saw the painting?
Who was this painting's intended audience?
In what environment/context was this painting supposed to be seen originally? Do I think that was an important consideration for the artist with regard to the paintings palette, value structure, subject matter, narrative, size, composition?
Which areas of this painting gave me the most trouble during the study?
Does the Google Search by Image function bring back any interesting results when I submit my study?
Also, if you don't already read it, James Gurney's blog is pretty great. He'll occasionally post analysises, histories and techniques of paintings and painters. gurneyjourney.blogspot.ca/
Just a little update from when I was talking about purchasing a surface pro 2.
Here is a set of three pics to show you guys that I've actually been drawing and stuff.
I was kinda mimicking what Mike does and I gotta say, its a pretty good method for churning out work. Start with a sketch and get a rough outline of what you want, then in a separate layer use a heavy pen for the proper linework. and just remove the sketch layer for dead easy clean up. Critiquing myself, I need to get a little more confident in my pen strokes because they look a little wavy from starting and stopping a few times, but for a quick picture the first time on a tablet, I'm feeling pretty smug.
I used Manga Studio 5 for the drawing program, and the drawing took about and hour and a half from start to finish, but I think a lot of that was me trying to figure out how to get Manga Studio to work.
I do need to figure out how to readjust the size of the buttons in manga studio and conform the workspace to my will and such. I also need to get a mechanical keyboard so I can use that instead of 'mousing' with the tablet pen for the file, edit, filter, etc tabs
My next pics, I'll devote to my own thread in the subforums here, but this is the proper close to the inquiries I had about using a Surface Pro 2. Its dead sexy.
I'm about to start on a digital painting for a friend, with the intent of presenting him a print of the finished piece.
I have very little experience with art printing, so general advice is welcome. I'll be using photoshop.
Beyond working at a print-appropriate resolution, I'm a little lost on what else I can do to ensure a good outcome. Should I be working in CMYK color mode or use a special proof setup? I normally produce everything in RGB color with the Windows RGB proof. Does that even affect anything if I'm presenting the printer an image file rather than a .PSD?
Beyond the software aspect, do you guys have any favored service providers for ordering prints online?
if I remember right, you do want to be working in CMYK. Colors look proper in on a monitor in RGB, but when you transfer print media, they can be rather off. Like something might be brown or tan on the monitor, but appears grey on print.
I feel that vibrant blues and greens are the colors that suffer the most dramatic color shift when dealing with CMYK. Keep an eye out on those two guys if you're using them.
Think about your paper stock, ask your vendor what is available and see if you can get samples. Paper makes a tremendous difference on how the final product looks.
Hey guys I have a question over anatomy, specifically in the arms of females?
I always have an easy time drawing men's arms because their fairly bulgy and I typically know where each bulge shows up and what that bulge is. With women however it's a little more difficult for me. One guys gave me the tidbit that women's arms are more "subtle", they're not as flashy as men's. This is usually where I get confused.
When I draw a man's arm, I can use 3D shapes and build it out from the deltoid to the forearm, and have it look decent. But every time I try to do the same thing with women's arms (regardless of physical state) it comes out looking all... herp-derp. I'm fairly confident the main area of difficulty with me is the area around the deltoid, because I have a hard time trying to piece that in when drawing the breasts, because the breasts connect to the deltoid at one point (but when I connect them the breasts usually look like their too high).
I'm sorry I don't have a image on me to demonstrate it right now, but I'll draw one if you need it to help me.
References. Reference, reference, reference till you get an understanding. It may also help to look at anatomical drawings/'skinless' models so you can see the way the muscles connect. But yes, if you do have examples of your attempts it would be useful to put some here or in the doodle thread, and people might be able to give you more directed critiques.
References. Reference, reference, reference till you get an understanding. It may also help to look at anatomical drawings/'skinless' models so you can see the way the muscles connect. But yes, if you do have examples of your attempts it would be useful to put some here or in the doodle thread, and people might be able to give you more directed critiques.
Here I cranked these out for ya, wheredya see the problem doc?
I'll try to take all this to heart, the extra definition thing is really sort of reflexive practice I've resorted to in recently because it allows me to sort of see and practice where the muscles go for figures at certain times. There's no excuse for the thigh thing on that last one though, other than Legoman being one of my influences.
Outside of that, what's your opinion on the rest of the figure, I've been really self-concious about the position about the breasts when it comes to drawing female figures recently and I hope I'm doing it right. The latest technique I've used is a bounding box(?) where the box on the torso sort of illustrates where the breasts will go.
@Tidus53.....if you make a thread, you'll likely get more feedback, and you'll be able to keep your work and critiques together for easier read-throughs! I know you said that you were nervous to make a thread, but I think it could help you a lot since you have different areas you'd like to improve upon, and questions about different things. (You've already posted your work on the forum, so there's nothing left to be nervous about! )
A ) Make a thread. A lot of people are nervous about making threads for no good reason. You don't need to pass some minimum bar of excellence to make a thread. In fact, you will probably get better feedback by being more on the student side of the spectrum, because there will be a far larger proportion of forumers at or above your level who can offer guidance both broad and specific. Also, all the things ND mentioned about collecting feedback and your work together in one place.
B ) Study from reference heavily (life or photos, whichever you can get, preferably from life). Studying actual bodies will help resolve basically all of the topics of confusion you've brought up on this page, but in particular it will help you see how you can nail down the specific rhythm of anatomical structures in a female physique that will communicate accurate anatomy without resorting to grotesque muscle balloons, and it will probably help you see that even most male figures in good athletic shape aren't so defined that you can see every contour of their musculature and tendons.
@Tidus53
I dunno about the 'bounding box' for the breasts idea- I mean, you can do it if you want and it's not like it hurts anything, but it doesn't seem like it's the most useful construction technique for them- constructing figures in terms of boxes can be a helpful tool, of course, as it forces you to think in terms of basic perspective rather than getting caught up in details- but for the most part, if you've got the perspective of the ribcage down, you've pretty much got the perspective of the breasts down as well- so you can do that, I'm just not sure what it's going to add to the proceedings in most cases.
You might find this construction method useful for the task though, part of the Reilly method of figure construction.
Getting back at what Scos is saying though, practicing drawing with this method is most useful when you first (and habitually) try applying it to referenced work to see how the method helps lead to accuracy and confidence, and NOT as a 'here's how you draw this, now you don't have to look at actual people you can just draw it out of your imagination' panacea. For example, it doesn't account for say, how a breast will behave when one arm is lifted, stretching and elevating the pec and breast- so this method is a good general guide, but without observation and practice from life to see where it needs to be adapted to work, it could still give you some very strange results if taken as absolute gospel.
@Tidus I think there's a tendency to think of breasts as something 'stuck on' to the outside of the ribcage (I'm guilty of this myself), instead of a formation of fatty tissue that's actually connected by muscle all the way round from the collarbone to the armpits to the sternum. I find it helps to visualize these connections especially when doing dynamic poses, because you can see how eg. moving the arms around pulls and changes the shape. Helps avoid plastic-tit syndrome, which is so common in comics.
I have some questions about charcoal. I started using charcoal pencils yesterday on smooth texture less paper and it just looks awful. It isn't smooth feeling and even though the paper is supposed to be smooth, when the charcoal is applied it has a textured look. Should I be using a different paper, like newsprint? I know that is better but the paper degrades over time. I've heard someone say that they use watercolour paper for proper work, but wouldn't that also create a textured look?
This is just another case of a bad workman blaming his tools isn't it?
I'm no expert on working with charcoal, but there's probably always going to be a little bit of grain and texture to the surface no matter what you're working on. It'll vary depending on the softness of the charcoal and on the paper you're working on.
Smooth newsprint isn't exactly perfect for archiving pieces, but it's good to practice on and, if you find it cheap enough, it'll stop you from feeling too precious about wasting good paper when you're working.
Something to keep in mind is that if you're just pinning up one nice sheet of paper at a time to a drawing board, when you're laying down a flat tone you'll be picking up the texture of that hard surface you are drawing on. Part of the smoothness of some newsprint is the fact that there's a big thick pad of soft paper underneath.
Experiment with some different hardnesses and brands of charcoal pencils, try out a bunch of different papers, when you're working try putting those papers on top of a nice big pad of newsprint, etc.
If you're still having problems, snap and post a picture of the offensive graininess, post a picture of the sort of smoothness you're expecting to achieve, and maybe post the brands and other details of the materials you're working with. That might help proper charcoal people to diagnose the problem and offer better recommendations.
In my limited experience with charcoal, the technique you use to blend values is just as important as your materials when it comes to how smooth your gradients will be.
You see the texture of the paper because the charcoal hasn't gotten into the deeper parts of the paper's surface, and you need to take steps to overcome that. That could mean breaking out tortillons for fine work, or a big rag to blend an area at once, or your finger in a pinch. I've used a small watercolor paint brush to blend charcoal before to surprising effect (works best with vine).
Your other option is to use a charcoal pencil and make sure that it's extremely sharp, then use the same kind of technique you would with graphite to create a smooth value transition by layering many fine strokes next to each other and graduating the amount of pressure you use. The sharpness of the tip will help the charcoal penetrate into the fine texture of the paper.
"If you're still having problems, snap and post a picture of the offensive graininess, post a picture of the sort of smoothness you're expecting to achieve, and maybe post the brands and other details of the materials you're working with. That might help proper charcoal people to diagnose the problem and offer better recommendations".
That sounds like a good idea, but should I post it in this thread?
"Your other option is to use a charcoal pencil and make sure that it's extremely sharp, then use the same kind of technique you would with graphite to create a smooth value transition by layering many fine strokes next to each other and graduating the amount of pressure you use. The sharpness of the tip will help the charcoal penetrate into the fine texture of the paper."
Yeah, I'm using a charcoal pencil and I've whittled it down so about an inch of the charcoal is showing and sanded the tip so it's to a smooth looking point. But it's incredibly scratchy feeling. I'm also trying to adopt the technique of holding the pencil under my hand between index finger and thumb (if that makes sense), but I'm not getting the desired broad strokes when trying to fill in shadows, and the result is just flat looking (although that's likely to do with my lack of skill).
I found that stick charcoal is preferable to pencils wherever possible for good strong deposited charcoal. Pencils tend to be scratchy and hard even when they're "soft."
I have a question. Does it make me insane that I absolutely hate the feel of digital pens/tablets, even touch screen cyntiqs? I do a lot of digital art as well as clean scanned inked/pencil work, but I just prefer the mouse over the digital pens. I swear for the last 8 years alone I've had so many people say I'm crazy and or try and push me into digital pen usage. And every time I borrow or buy one I'm just like NOPE! Don't like or get the feel. I mean maybe some of my line work suffers when I use the mouse as opposed to hand drawn on paper, but strangely the mouse feels more natural by now to me.
I knew plenty of vector artists/graphic designers at school who never needed to use a tablet over a mouse.
Tablets have a bit of a learning curve and you need to spend time with them to learn the motor skill, which is probably why they feel weird. I've been using a tablet since middle school, its second nature for me, at this point.
If you really like using the mouse, it doesn't really matter if you are crazy because of it, no one can stop you. If you want to improve your lines but hate tablets, learn how to use illustrator.
I also might recommend trying to ease yourself into using a pen and tablet, mainly because it also tends to be better for your wrist/hand. It definitely does take some getting used to at first - and for a lot of things it's probably not an issue that you're using a mouse...but for other applications, like line work as you mentioned, learning to feel comfortable with a pen and tablet would likely make your digital line work better and feel more natural.
I've looked at those, they didn't cover what I am having trouble with which is difficult to explain. as you take say a front view and start rotating it to the right or left I get very confused about how to lay things out. the only way I can get an idea of something like how wide the oval needs to be is to take a picture and draw right on top of it
Hm, that's one way to break down what's visible from what angles, but it won't help you to have an understanding of what the shapes mean in terms of the volume that the head occupies. There's a certain amount of this that is literally just drawing things a thousand* times and screwing it up the first 999.* Trusting your eyes to actually grasp volume is something that doesn't come naturally and takes practice and time, but I think tracing to get the shape might make it more confusing? I don't know for sure, though.
*not actually a thousand, but like, a lot. a lot a lot.
Well, heads that are aligned slightly off the cardinal axes can be a little tricky because there is a tendency to want to nudge them back into being aligned, but beyond that I'm still not entirely sure I understand what specifically is the thing you're struggling with.
If we're just talking in general about imagining how a three dimensional shape looks in space when viewed from various angles and how to represent that in a two dimensional drawing, well, to a large degree that's just a muscle that grows steadily with practice. Observational and invented work are both helpful to improve your sense of how a thing should "look" from various perspectives.
If you specifically want to practice to improve your invented heads, I would say that probably the most direct action you can take is to study heads from observation. Best case would probably be to rope a friend into sitting for you and then doing many drawings while moving slowly around them to get a wide variety of perspectives. Any drawing from life is preferable, because it will probably better help you reinforce those core drawing skills I mentioned, but working from photos is better than nothing.
Posts
It's a cool idea but maaaan, I wish they would've made HD versions.
They're all showing up as 1080p for me, weird.
Anyway I have a question: how can I get the most out of doing a master study? I just finished doing a ~8 hour rough value study of a Jean-Leon Gerome painting, but I don't feel like I really learned a great deal. I'm consciously trying to take notes while I draw, but maybe I'm asking the wrong questions? Or maybe I don't have enough foundational knowledge in things like composition or lighting to observe when they've done something particularly clever?
That said, the more you do, the more you'll notice and the more you'll appreciate. 8 hours is really just a drop in the bucket and training your eye for that sort of thing is a lifelong endeavour.
If you're looking to get scholarly, you might consider doing a quick little analysis/essay before and after you do a study.
Build and take some time to answer a set of questions like:
Why do I like this painting?
What do I dislike about this painting?
What are the areas of greatest contrast in value?
What are the areas of greatest contrast in colour?
What path do my eyes naturally follow through the painting?
Where do my eyes settle the longest?
Do the important elements in this painting fall into any sort of obvious compositional rule system? Rule of Thirds? Golden Ratio?
Does the painting have a narrative and what was my first impression of it? Are there any subtle secondary narrative elements that I didn't notice when I first saw the painting?
Who was this painting's intended audience?
In what environment/context was this painting supposed to be seen originally? Do I think that was an important consideration for the artist with regard to the paintings palette, value structure, subject matter, narrative, size, composition?
Which areas of this painting gave me the most trouble during the study?
Does the Google Search by Image function bring back any interesting results when I submit my study?
Also, if you don't already read it, James Gurney's blog is pretty great. He'll occasionally post analysises, histories and techniques of paintings and painters.
gurneyjourney.blogspot.ca/
3-Hour life drawing workshop, 3-hour still life painting workshop, and others.
https://www.youtube.com/user/wattsatelier/videos
... can someone get me some time for christmas.
Here is a set of three pics to show you guys that I've actually been drawing and stuff.
I was kinda mimicking what Mike does and I gotta say, its a pretty good method for churning out work. Start with a sketch and get a rough outline of what you want, then in a separate layer use a heavy pen for the proper linework. and just remove the sketch layer for dead easy clean up. Critiquing myself, I need to get a little more confident in my pen strokes because they look a little wavy from starting and stopping a few times, but for a quick picture the first time on a tablet, I'm feeling pretty smug.
I used Manga Studio 5 for the drawing program, and the drawing took about and hour and a half from start to finish, but I think a lot of that was me trying to figure out how to get Manga Studio to work.
I do need to figure out how to readjust the size of the buttons in manga studio and conform the workspace to my will and such. I also need to get a mechanical keyboard so I can use that instead of 'mousing' with the tablet pen for the file, edit, filter, etc tabs
My next pics, I'll devote to my own thread in the subforums here, but this is the proper close to the inquiries I had about using a Surface Pro 2. Its dead sexy.
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
I have very little experience with art printing, so general advice is welcome. I'll be using photoshop.
Beyond working at a print-appropriate resolution, I'm a little lost on what else I can do to ensure a good outcome. Should I be working in CMYK color mode or use a special proof setup? I normally produce everything in RGB color with the Windows RGB proof. Does that even affect anything if I'm presenting the printer an image file rather than a .PSD?
Beyond the software aspect, do you guys have any favored service providers for ordering prints online?
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
Think about your paper stock, ask your vendor what is available and see if you can get samples. Paper makes a tremendous difference on how the final product looks.
I always have an easy time drawing men's arms because their fairly bulgy and I typically know where each bulge shows up and what that bulge is. With women however it's a little more difficult for me. One guys gave me the tidbit that women's arms are more "subtle", they're not as flashy as men's. This is usually where I get confused.
When I draw a man's arm, I can use 3D shapes and build it out from the deltoid to the forearm, and have it look decent. But every time I try to do the same thing with women's arms (regardless of physical state) it comes out looking all... herp-derp. I'm fairly confident the main area of difficulty with me is the area around the deltoid, because I have a hard time trying to piece that in when drawing the breasts, because the breasts connect to the deltoid at one point (but when I connect them the breasts usually look like their too high).
I'm sorry I don't have a image on me to demonstrate it right now, but I'll draw one if you need it to help me.
Here I cranked these out for ya, wheredya see the problem doc?
Twitter
I'll try to take all this to heart, the extra definition thing is really sort of reflexive practice I've resorted to in recently because it allows me to sort of see and practice where the muscles go for figures at certain times. There's no excuse for the thigh thing on that last one though, other than Legoman being one of my influences.
Outside of that, what's your opinion on the rest of the figure, I've been really self-concious about the position about the breasts when it comes to drawing female figures recently and I hope I'm doing it right. The latest technique I've used is a bounding box(?) where the box on the torso sort of illustrates where the breasts will go.
A ) Make a thread. A lot of people are nervous about making threads for no good reason. You don't need to pass some minimum bar of excellence to make a thread. In fact, you will probably get better feedback by being more on the student side of the spectrum, because there will be a far larger proportion of forumers at or above your level who can offer guidance both broad and specific. Also, all the things ND mentioned about collecting feedback and your work together in one place.
B ) Study from reference heavily (life or photos, whichever you can get, preferably from life). Studying actual bodies will help resolve basically all of the topics of confusion you've brought up on this page, but in particular it will help you see how you can nail down the specific rhythm of anatomical structures in a female physique that will communicate accurate anatomy without resorting to grotesque muscle balloons, and it will probably help you see that even most male figures in good athletic shape aren't so defined that you can see every contour of their musculature and tendons.
@Scosglen @NightDragon
He did and only one person replied.
@Tidus53
I dunno about the 'bounding box' for the breasts idea- I mean, you can do it if you want and it's not like it hurts anything, but it doesn't seem like it's the most useful construction technique for them- constructing figures in terms of boxes can be a helpful tool, of course, as it forces you to think in terms of basic perspective rather than getting caught up in details- but for the most part, if you've got the perspective of the ribcage down, you've pretty much got the perspective of the breasts down as well- so you can do that, I'm just not sure what it's going to add to the proceedings in most cases.
You might find this construction method useful for the task though, part of the Reilly method of figure construction.
Getting back at what Scos is saying though, practicing drawing with this method is most useful when you first (and habitually) try applying it to referenced work to see how the method helps lead to accuracy and confidence, and NOT as a 'here's how you draw this, now you don't have to look at actual people you can just draw it out of your imagination' panacea. For example, it doesn't account for say, how a breast will behave when one arm is lifted, stretching and elevating the pec and breast- so this method is a good general guide, but without observation and practice from life to see where it needs to be adapted to work, it could still give you some very strange results if taken as absolute gospel.
Twitter
Thanks for the heads-up, Bacons. I'll try to post something this weekend. :P
This is just another case of a bad workman blaming his tools isn't it?
Smooth newsprint isn't exactly perfect for archiving pieces, but it's good to practice on and, if you find it cheap enough, it'll stop you from feeling too precious about wasting good paper when you're working.
Something to keep in mind is that if you're just pinning up one nice sheet of paper at a time to a drawing board, when you're laying down a flat tone you'll be picking up the texture of that hard surface you are drawing on. Part of the smoothness of some newsprint is the fact that there's a big thick pad of soft paper underneath.
Experiment with some different hardnesses and brands of charcoal pencils, try out a bunch of different papers, when you're working try putting those papers on top of a nice big pad of newsprint, etc.
If you're still having problems, snap and post a picture of the offensive graininess, post a picture of the sort of smoothness you're expecting to achieve, and maybe post the brands and other details of the materials you're working with. That might help proper charcoal people to diagnose the problem and offer better recommendations.
You see the texture of the paper because the charcoal hasn't gotten into the deeper parts of the paper's surface, and you need to take steps to overcome that. That could mean breaking out tortillons for fine work, or a big rag to blend an area at once, or your finger in a pinch. I've used a small watercolor paint brush to blend charcoal before to surprising effect (works best with vine).
Your other option is to use a charcoal pencil and make sure that it's extremely sharp, then use the same kind of technique you would with graphite to create a smooth value transition by layering many fine strokes next to each other and graduating the amount of pressure you use. The sharpness of the tip will help the charcoal penetrate into the fine texture of the paper.
That sounds like a good idea, but should I post it in this thread?
"Your other option is to use a charcoal pencil and make sure that it's extremely sharp, then use the same kind of technique you would with graphite to create a smooth value transition by layering many fine strokes next to each other and graduating the amount of pressure you use. The sharpness of the tip will help the charcoal penetrate into the fine texture of the paper."
Yeah, I'm using a charcoal pencil and I've whittled it down so about an inch of the charcoal is showing and sanded the tip so it's to a smooth looking point. But it's incredibly scratchy feeling. I'm also trying to adopt the technique of holding the pencil under my hand between index finger and thumb (if that makes sense), but I'm not getting the desired broad strokes when trying to fill in shadows, and the result is just flat looking (although that's likely to do with my lack of skill).
Thanks for the advice to both of you.
I would recommend:
http://www.amazon.com/Life-Drawing-Charcoal-Dover-Instruction/dp/0486282686
This book was the first resource I found that helped me to understand the different techniques.
Uncanny Magazine!
The Mad Writers Union
http://slapzappy.tumblr.com/
Tablets have a bit of a learning curve and you need to spend time with them to learn the motor skill, which is probably why they feel weird. I've been using a tablet since middle school, its second nature for me, at this point.
If you really like using the mouse, it doesn't really matter if you are crazy because of it, no one can stop you. If you want to improve your lines but hate tablets, learn how to use illustrator.
this series broke down the planes and component parts for me in a way that made much more sense than most of the other stuff I've looked through.
Uncanny Magazine!
The Mad Writers Union
*not actually a thousand, but like, a lot. a lot a lot.
Uncanny Magazine!
The Mad Writers Union
If we're just talking in general about imagining how a three dimensional shape looks in space when viewed from various angles and how to represent that in a two dimensional drawing, well, to a large degree that's just a muscle that grows steadily with practice. Observational and invented work are both helpful to improve your sense of how a thing should "look" from various perspectives.
If you specifically want to practice to improve your invented heads, I would say that probably the most direct action you can take is to study heads from observation. Best case would probably be to rope a friend into sitting for you and then doing many drawings while moving slowly around them to get a wide variety of perspectives. Any drawing from life is preferable, because it will probably better help you reinforce those core drawing skills I mentioned, but working from photos is better than nothing.