Wow, pretty works! Especially "Still life". I like the color theme close to nature and the green fruit or vegetables are really comfortable to my eyes.
Life is just like a mirror. When you smile to it, you will get a smile back from it.
My Works: Azazie
@Judas Just a general comment, I think one of these days you should just take a good amount of time and just render some spheres, cubes and cylinders in black and white, lit with a single light source. Really spend the time to make them look as photo-perfect as you can, even if it takes hours longer than you might have spent on a full painting- because right now, there's a certain lack of formal understanding of form, light and shade in the work that makes everything not quite believable.
I see a lot of the kind of shading that you're tending to employ from people who may have spent a lot of time on linework, and then try to approach lighting as something that goes 'in between the lines'- "there's a line on the left, a line on the right, I'll make it dark by the lines, and bright in between". Which may work ok for a single cylinder, but if you do that on every fold in a piece of cloth, every fold becomes so over emphasized that it's impossible to figure out the overall form of the cloth. If flattens everything out.
Or, you may put down a bunch of brushstrokes and say, "oh no! I put down all these hard brushstrokes, but I know real shading would be softer than this! I guess I'll smudge it all together to make it look more realistic!" But then you do that, and now it's all wishy-washy and flat, rather than realistic- without having a thorough understanding of form to make decisions about where things need to be soft, and where they need to be hard, you won't be able to get a believable result.
(Touched on this before, on step 3: http://artofkevinoneill.tumblr.com/image/82639238364)
Or, 'this light is coming from the left- so I'll paint over the lines on the left with a brighter value'. A rimlight may have this appearance under some circumstances, but as a rimlight, the same as any other light, will be effected by changes in planes, material differences, specular highlights, shadows, etc., boiling it down to something with no real nuance to it kills the believablility of it.
(Brief tutorial on rimlighting I did previously that may or may not make the point clearer: http://artofkevinoneill.tumblr.com/image/82639326706 )
There's a certain logic to these issues- they all make a certain kind of sense- which is why I see these same things so commonly from so many people; but that logic has nothing to do with how actual light and shade works. Luckily, the whole light and shade thing has been figured out for a couple centuries, so there's no need to flounder about guessing at how it works, making up all sorts of nonsense in the process.
I (and most other artists and drawing teachers) recommend drawing cubes, cylinders, and spheres because every object you can think of can be broken down into combinations and variations of those 3 things- so having a thorough knowledge and experience drawing those things accurately, lends immediate credence to anything you may draw, and is an absolute necessity for drawing/painting from imagination. It's also something that is much harder and much easier than you think- it's harder because it seems so simple- but the simplicity makes any mistake stick out like a sore thumb, it is inescapable and inexcusable. But it's easier in the sense that once you've grasped the logic of the forms- how light behaves in regards to them- that logic is much easier to grasp and apply than trying to wrangle all these piecemeal rules of flawed logic I mentioned before, and will give you much better results much quicker in the end.
If you haven't already (or even if you have) Stan Prokopenko's videos give an excellent breakdown of how to approach form and shading. I'm not sure how much formal training or how much you read the critiques in other threads, so may some of this may seem redundant- but I'd suggest watching all the way through them anyway. (If you don't like videos, or you want something more in-depth, Scott Robertson's How to Render book is an invaluable resource).
And just as important, practice the principles! Cubes, cylinders, spheres. Can't master kung-fu just from reading about it, can't play in the NFL if you can't stand working out in the offseason. Even though I've drawn a million cubes and spheres and cylinders by now, and even though I draw and paint around 8 hours a day, every day, I'll still take the time to draw these as practice on occasion. Keeps my skills up, keeps me honest, and it's nice to have something I can always fall back on drawing and be 100% sure that it's a good use of my time.
Thank you for taking the time to break that down. I'll watch the videos; and it's funny you pointed out Scott Robertson's "How to Render book". I randomly came across that on Amazon the other day, just wasn't sure if it was too advanced for my skill level. I'll dig into that as well.
Hard pressed on my right. My center is yielding. Impossible to maneuver.
Situation excellent. I am attacking.
- General Ferdinand Foch
just wasn't sure if it was too advanced for my skill level.
Eh, most worthwhile drawing books will either reinforce the basics on the assumption that this may be the first art book the reader has ever picked up, or will be up front about what it covers and what it does not, and you'll be able to pick up on what else you need to be doing to execute what they're talking about. Either way, you're better off having access to good, solid information- even if all it gleans on first glance is a realization that you've got a lot of work to do in other areas- than working off little to no information.
If you've got that first bit of solid information, then you've got a tangible problem you can work on- rather than not knowing that there's a problem or how to go about fixing it, and simply having a nagging sensation in your head that things could be better, but how oh how to do so. Being 'in too deep' may be frustrating, but it's also very useful and informative, so don't fear it.
The real danger isn't stuff that's too advanced, it's material that presents itself as a be-all-end-all solution, or concentrates on things that don't really matter; it's easy to get wrapped up following one book or another and not realize what you're missing. The solution is to take information from as many sources as you can- the real, solid, basic information will up again and again and again, while things that aren't important won't.
Ironically, its mostly books aimed at 'beginners' that are the ones full of junk, or have only niche applications that only someone who actually had a previous solid drawing foundation could hope to apply effectively, or give a false sense of its own thoroughness. After all, if you're trying to sell a book to someone that doesn't know anything about drawing, you're better off giving them what THEY think is important, even if in actual fact it's pretty much totally irrelevant (ie: "Here's a page of various manga eyes, kids! Here's how to apply a half-tone sheet! Now you can be a manga pro!").
If you start with the advanced material and work backwards when you reach knowledge gaps, that strategy won't eventually lead you back to some 'How to Draw Manga/Furries/Dragons/whatever' junk book, it'll lead you towards solid, foundational information.
So I'm recommending "How to Render" to solve one particular issue, namely basic lighting- but yeah, there's a good chance you're going to get 50 pages in and realize, 'hey, I'm learning some good information, but I really don't have enough experience in linear perspective to do all these things.'
So you'll probably have to pick up a book about that- whether that's Robertson's other book "How to Draw", or another book on perspective.
Then you'll say, 'well, this covers a lot of my issues with buildings and vehicles and cast shadows and such, but I'm having trouble applying it all to the figure'.
So then you'll have to go get, say, Anthony Ryder's book on figure drawing.
And you'll say, 'This is great for observational drawing, but there's not enough depth when it comes to anatomy that I can use it for imagined figures.'
So you'll pick up the Eliot Goldfinger book on anatomy, as say, 'This really explains a lot about muscles and skeletal structure, my brain is totally full of information about clavicles, but I find it hard to apply in an actual drawing because it's all flat diagrams.'
So then you'll have to pick up Bridgman's anatomy books that cover that material from a more construction-based drawing perspective.
And then you'll say, 'Now I can make a halfway decent figure standing around, but I find it hard to get my figures to act and emote', and you'll have to pick up a book about gesture like "Drawn to Life" or "Force", and then you'll say, "So now I can make a figure move around pretty well, but- what the H? Now that I've done all that, I realize when I go to render these figures, my rendering still needs a lot of work! And these figures aren't sticking in perspective when I try to put them in a composition!"
And then you'll have to go back to "How to Render" and your perspective books, going over the same things you did before, and all the pages you couldn't make work the first tme- and you'll keep going through this sorta cycle, as your skills get brought up and you become more and more aware of where the gaps in knowledge and practice and experience exist, and having to address and re-address them over time. Starting with good, solid, advanced information leads you towards other good information. You could choose to jump in the deep end with some other skill, and it would eventually loop around and you'd get back onto the same sort of path, provided you did so by pursuing good information about it; short change yourself on good information to begin with, and you never get to a point where you realize how much you're missing.
It's unlike learning, say, math- you go from addition to calculus in a more or less linear, step-by-step fashion. You don't take trig and then loop back around to basic addition, generally. Whereas if you walk in a decent art school or atelier, you'll see that the curricula of the freshmen are going to be very similar to those of the seniors- life drawing is always relevant, there's always more to learn by doing it. Composition is always worth practicing more- so is perspective. So is lighting, observational drawing, etc. You don't stop drawing because you've learned how to paint, you keep drawing to improve your painting. So the advanced student will do the same basic things as the beginner, they'l just get further along as a result of having been through this learning cycle again and again.
Hey, @Angel_of_Bacon . I know this isn't my drawing thread, but I've gotta thank you and @Iruka for being the two folk who're always laying down the best, most detailed and most honest advice in these threads. I'm learning just as much from the feedback you're giving @Judas as I am from what I get in my own thread. You two are champs.
Posts
Situation excellent. I am attacking.
- General Ferdinand Foch
Situation excellent. I am attacking.
- General Ferdinand Foch
Situation excellent. I am attacking.
- General Ferdinand Foch
Situation excellent. I am attacking.
- General Ferdinand Foch
Situation excellent. I am attacking.
- General Ferdinand Foch
Also, what program are you doing the digital work in?
Sketchbook Pro.
Situation excellent. I am attacking.
- General Ferdinand Foch
Situation excellent. I am attacking.
- General Ferdinand Foch
Situation excellent. I am attacking.
- General Ferdinand Foch
My Works: Azazie
Situation excellent. I am attacking.
- General Ferdinand Foch
Situation excellent. I am attacking.
- General Ferdinand Foch
Situation excellent. I am attacking.
- General Ferdinand Foch
Situation excellent. I am attacking.
- General Ferdinand Foch
Situation excellent. I am attacking.
- General Ferdinand Foch
Situation excellent. I am attacking.
- General Ferdinand Foch
Situation excellent. I am attacking.
- General Ferdinand Foch
Situation excellent. I am attacking.
- General Ferdinand Foch
Situation excellent. I am attacking.
- General Ferdinand Foch
Situation excellent. I am attacking.
- General Ferdinand Foch
Situation excellent. I am attacking.
- General Ferdinand Foch
I see a lot of the kind of shading that you're tending to employ from people who may have spent a lot of time on linework, and then try to approach lighting as something that goes 'in between the lines'- "there's a line on the left, a line on the right, I'll make it dark by the lines, and bright in between". Which may work ok for a single cylinder, but if you do that on every fold in a piece of cloth, every fold becomes so over emphasized that it's impossible to figure out the overall form of the cloth. If flattens everything out.
Or, you may put down a bunch of brushstrokes and say, "oh no! I put down all these hard brushstrokes, but I know real shading would be softer than this! I guess I'll smudge it all together to make it look more realistic!" But then you do that, and now it's all wishy-washy and flat, rather than realistic- without having a thorough understanding of form to make decisions about where things need to be soft, and where they need to be hard, you won't be able to get a believable result.
(Touched on this before, on step 3: http://artofkevinoneill.tumblr.com/image/82639238364)
Or, 'this light is coming from the left- so I'll paint over the lines on the left with a brighter value'. A rimlight may have this appearance under some circumstances, but as a rimlight, the same as any other light, will be effected by changes in planes, material differences, specular highlights, shadows, etc., boiling it down to something with no real nuance to it kills the believablility of it.
(Brief tutorial on rimlighting I did previously that may or may not make the point clearer: http://artofkevinoneill.tumblr.com/image/82639326706 )
There's a certain logic to these issues- they all make a certain kind of sense- which is why I see these same things so commonly from so many people; but that logic has nothing to do with how actual light and shade works. Luckily, the whole light and shade thing has been figured out for a couple centuries, so there's no need to flounder about guessing at how it works, making up all sorts of nonsense in the process.
I (and most other artists and drawing teachers) recommend drawing cubes, cylinders, and spheres because every object you can think of can be broken down into combinations and variations of those 3 things- so having a thorough knowledge and experience drawing those things accurately, lends immediate credence to anything you may draw, and is an absolute necessity for drawing/painting from imagination. It's also something that is much harder and much easier than you think- it's harder because it seems so simple- but the simplicity makes any mistake stick out like a sore thumb, it is inescapable and inexcusable. But it's easier in the sense that once you've grasped the logic of the forms- how light behaves in regards to them- that logic is much easier to grasp and apply than trying to wrangle all these piecemeal rules of flawed logic I mentioned before, and will give you much better results much quicker in the end.
If you haven't already (or even if you have) Stan Prokopenko's videos give an excellent breakdown of how to approach form and shading. I'm not sure how much formal training or how much you read the critiques in other threads, so may some of this may seem redundant- but I'd suggest watching all the way through them anyway. (If you don't like videos, or you want something more in-depth, Scott Robertson's How to Render book is an invaluable resource).
And just as important, practice the principles! Cubes, cylinders, spheres. Can't master kung-fu just from reading about it, can't play in the NFL if you can't stand working out in the offseason. Even though I've drawn a million cubes and spheres and cylinders by now, and even though I draw and paint around 8 hours a day, every day, I'll still take the time to draw these as practice on occasion. Keeps my skills up, keeps me honest, and it's nice to have something I can always fall back on drawing and be 100% sure that it's a good use of my time.
Twitter
Situation excellent. I am attacking.
- General Ferdinand Foch
Eh, most worthwhile drawing books will either reinforce the basics on the assumption that this may be the first art book the reader has ever picked up, or will be up front about what it covers and what it does not, and you'll be able to pick up on what else you need to be doing to execute what they're talking about. Either way, you're better off having access to good, solid information- even if all it gleans on first glance is a realization that you've got a lot of work to do in other areas- than working off little to no information.
If you've got that first bit of solid information, then you've got a tangible problem you can work on- rather than not knowing that there's a problem or how to go about fixing it, and simply having a nagging sensation in your head that things could be better, but how oh how to do so. Being 'in too deep' may be frustrating, but it's also very useful and informative, so don't fear it.
The real danger isn't stuff that's too advanced, it's material that presents itself as a be-all-end-all solution, or concentrates on things that don't really matter; it's easy to get wrapped up following one book or another and not realize what you're missing. The solution is to take information from as many sources as you can- the real, solid, basic information will up again and again and again, while things that aren't important won't.
Ironically, its mostly books aimed at 'beginners' that are the ones full of junk, or have only niche applications that only someone who actually had a previous solid drawing foundation could hope to apply effectively, or give a false sense of its own thoroughness. After all, if you're trying to sell a book to someone that doesn't know anything about drawing, you're better off giving them what THEY think is important, even if in actual fact it's pretty much totally irrelevant (ie: "Here's a page of various manga eyes, kids! Here's how to apply a half-tone sheet! Now you can be a manga pro!").
If you start with the advanced material and work backwards when you reach knowledge gaps, that strategy won't eventually lead you back to some 'How to Draw Manga/Furries/Dragons/whatever' junk book, it'll lead you towards solid, foundational information.
So I'm recommending "How to Render" to solve one particular issue, namely basic lighting- but yeah, there's a good chance you're going to get 50 pages in and realize, 'hey, I'm learning some good information, but I really don't have enough experience in linear perspective to do all these things.'
So you'll probably have to pick up a book about that- whether that's Robertson's other book "How to Draw", or another book on perspective.
Then you'll say, 'well, this covers a lot of my issues with buildings and vehicles and cast shadows and such, but I'm having trouble applying it all to the figure'.
So then you'll have to go get, say, Anthony Ryder's book on figure drawing.
And you'll say, 'This is great for observational drawing, but there's not enough depth when it comes to anatomy that I can use it for imagined figures.'
So you'll pick up the Eliot Goldfinger book on anatomy, as say, 'This really explains a lot about muscles and skeletal structure, my brain is totally full of information about clavicles, but I find it hard to apply in an actual drawing because it's all flat diagrams.'
So then you'll have to pick up Bridgman's anatomy books that cover that material from a more construction-based drawing perspective.
And then you'll say, 'Now I can make a halfway decent figure standing around, but I find it hard to get my figures to act and emote', and you'll have to pick up a book about gesture like "Drawn to Life" or "Force", and then you'll say, "So now I can make a figure move around pretty well, but- what the H? Now that I've done all that, I realize when I go to render these figures, my rendering still needs a lot of work! And these figures aren't sticking in perspective when I try to put them in a composition!"
And then you'll have to go back to "How to Render" and your perspective books, going over the same things you did before, and all the pages you couldn't make work the first tme- and you'll keep going through this sorta cycle, as your skills get brought up and you become more and more aware of where the gaps in knowledge and practice and experience exist, and having to address and re-address them over time. Starting with good, solid, advanced information leads you towards other good information. You could choose to jump in the deep end with some other skill, and it would eventually loop around and you'd get back onto the same sort of path, provided you did so by pursuing good information about it; short change yourself on good information to begin with, and you never get to a point where you realize how much you're missing.
It's unlike learning, say, math- you go from addition to calculus in a more or less linear, step-by-step fashion. You don't take trig and then loop back around to basic addition, generally. Whereas if you walk in a decent art school or atelier, you'll see that the curricula of the freshmen are going to be very similar to those of the seniors- life drawing is always relevant, there's always more to learn by doing it. Composition is always worth practicing more- so is perspective. So is lighting, observational drawing, etc. You don't stop drawing because you've learned how to paint, you keep drawing to improve your painting. So the advanced student will do the same basic things as the beginner, they'l just get further along as a result of having been through this learning cycle again and again.
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