I used to love drawing when I was younger, took a class in college, and have recently rediscovered that it is something I super enjoy doing. And I want to be better.
So, I'm trying to set aside 1 hour per day to sketch instead of browsing the interwebs or staring into space. Making a thread will hopefully guilt me into keeping it up, and also hopefully let me benefit from some of the huge huge talent and art wisdom I have lurked long enough to witness around here.
For the moment I am doing figure drawing via pixelovely, starting with 30-second gestures and then getting into slightly more detailed ones.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKfsZaNrmzM&list=UU7nqKTkW-PUmcTk_vp2yvtQ
Which is a very good commercial for watts, but its a good video for figure drawing. When you post figures, its a good idea to, at least for some, to post the reference. When you sit to really make something accurate, and post it with your reference on the forum you are going to get good feedback. Doing much simpler objects can help give us an idea of where you are, trying to do some of the simple studies in here: http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/172670/feb-monthly-enrichment-simple-shapes-light-and-form can give us something to work with.
Some example threads with good crits in them:
http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/28705334/#Comment_28705334
http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/186030/mageormikes-thread-of-illustration-concept-art-and-self-improvement
http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/30182189/#Comment_30182189
http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/178745/noah-s-art-camp-ac-group-of-supreme-organization/p1
also: http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/187701/mar-monthly-enrichment-anatomy#latest
Remember to try not to work in a complete vacuum. Posting is a really awesome first step in getting some feedback, so push yourself to equip us with the knowledge to help you.
derrick rose, why you dunkin a flat misshapen ball ? aren't you a professional ? can't you get someone to pump it properly for you ? ps. don't bust a knee at fiba, love you
Also, be bolder with the gestures. Drawing is just like writing in that you always start with the basic shapes and then add some slightly more complicated shapes and so on and so forth until you have a snowflake. Don't draw the small itty bitty things on the snowflake first, draw the pentagon (or whatever shape it has.) Get the gesture, add the details afterwards. A friend of mine does some amazingly simple gestures that work just as well on their own as if they had details on them, I think you'd benefit from doing stuff that is this bold. Check it out.
things i can see after posting it: dude's neck is too long, dude's back leg is drawn too far back, dude's front foot looks like it's facing back instead of forward, and girl's head is too high / small,
With your gestures here it looks like you are going for the contour drawing right from the start. It would probably help a lot for you to first draw a line of action that flows through the pose, to help establish in your mind the overall feeling of it right away. I think a good goal that helps me with gestures is focusing on getting down the feel of the pose while keeping things in pretty much the right proportion. So instead of drawing out the contour of one area at a time, get down general shapes and landmarks for the whole pose and work your way toward more specific info as you go, keeping the whole figure at roughly the same stage throughout. I know that video shows Watts drawing out specific things right away, but he's had decades of practice! Help yourself out a little by starting from big angles and shapes and working from there, always remembering that the feel of the pose is key.
And really, this doesn't just apply to gestures. Starting your longer drawings the same way you start gestures only makes sense- you just give yourself a lot more time to keep refining it.
Keep it up!
facebook.com/LauraCatherwoodArt
and reference for rope guy:
I will say that, while mastering the figure is a really good challenge on its own, there's a reason that students end up having to paint fruit and cups first, and that's because it gives you the basic building blocks of building form. Anatomy is difficult, but its even more so when you arent quite nailing cubes and spheres. My eye zones in on that basket ball you drew, you can turn that into an exercise on its own. Some still life drawing would be a really good thing to mix into your studies.
at this moment all i really, really want to be able to do is draw likenesses of people. can i learn to do that just by drawing a ton of people from life and photos? or will starting with fruit and cups accelerate the learning process to the degree i'd be dumb to just keep doing what i'm doing rather than getting back to the basics?
You have a decent handle on shape, in terms of outline, anyway, but you might want to also look at light and shadow as that's actually very important to likeness work. Your outlines are also a little on the heavy side with a lot of feathering going on. Nothing necessarily wrong with that but you might want to look at doing practical work on line confidence (practice using your elbow for strokes and so on: http://www.reddit.com/r/artfundamentals has some great exercises for that, vis a vis drawabox.com [yeah, I know, just what you wanted to hear, right? but likeness work relies on a solid underpinning of technique for best effect.])
I'm not sure how representational your face drawings are in the most recent update, so I don't know how close you're getting, but you have a good understanding of the base construction there. Light and shade will help you to create even more lifelike images.
Uncanny Magazine!
The Mad Writers Union
Don't be afraid to take your time! Speed comes from practice.
so, i'm actually hella proud that i did this (not OF this, i know it's not great) because i put on an hour-long playlist and made myself sit and keep working on it, long after i had lost interest in all gourds. discipline !
who did the original ? which is rad as hell. i'm sure i saved it off somebody's thread here on the forums, but now i can't find it
this took an hour. tried very hard to see light and dark rather than getting distracted by the color changes and the text. tried to use shadow instead of lines but that kind of went out the window with the deodorant. no idea how to maneuver around all the minute details on the label. and the hat was super fucking hard. tried to make it look soft and thick.
i feel like the answer you're looking for is "too damn small". i guess my hand can pretty much cover it with fingers spread. here's a face that's a little bigger, but i'm kind of restricted by the size of my paper, which is printer paper
Okay, here is the two-tone experiment. I cheated and threw some lines it. It looks kind of cool? Kind of stylish.