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Learning to art! [NSFW]
WIckedkarma
AustinRegistered User regular
AustinRegistered User regular
Wickedkarma learns to art!
Decided I have lurked this area enough. Seeing all of the awesome work in here.. It just pushed me over the edge, I decided I was going to teach my self how to paint! Then I tried painting and realized I needed to learn to draw first hehe.
So, here is my first painting ( yes its still being worked on ) Acrylics on canvas paper.
still changing a few things and I am also doing a few other things on the side.
All comments welcome
I am thinking about getting some watercolor pencils and messing around with them because they seem pretty neat, anyone have any experience using them or recommend a good set?
Decided I have lurked this area enough. Seeing all of the awesome work in here.. It just pushed me over the edge, I decided I was going to teach my self how to paint! Then I tried painting and realized I needed to learn to draw first hehe.
So, here is my first painting ( yes its still being worked on ) Acrylics on canvas paper.
still changing a few things and I am also doing a few other things on the side.
All comments welcome
I am thinking about getting some watercolor pencils and messing around with them because they seem pretty neat, anyone have any experience using them or recommend a good set?
WIckedkarma on
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The picture you have in your post doesn't gives us any idea of your skill level, so we can point out what you need to work on and where your successes are. So something that isn't using local colors only, less stylized (or at least your own style) and basically just something that we can actually comment on
Starting from the bottom is essential in doing art, so trying to stylize first and then take it from there is nuts. You have to create a basis for building upon and that's what life drawing is about, if you for example look at some of Picasso's early works his father had him do very naturalistic paintings and from that basis he ended up developing his own distinct stylistic 4dimensional approach. First learn the basics of drawing, proportions, lighting, color theory etc. and then from there you can start to stylize. Mind you this forum is mainly for critique and we sure hope you embrace it
Also, I checked out your artblarg and saw some of your drawings but the lines were very hard to spot, so when uploading your drawings either A: increase contrast in Photoshop or Gimp or something, or B: just draw with a regular pencil.
As for watercolor pencils: I've never been a big fan of them, they can however give a lot of color. I'd recommend starting out with just plain watercolor (good ones don't have to be expensive and they're certainly cheaper than buying a set of good watercolor pencils) and get the feel of that first.
Cheers, hoping to see more of your stuff soon (fellow bprd fan here, creds for the tattoo!)
And yea I understand I need to start from the basics, which I will throw up some pics below of me drawing some of my toys ( Tachikoma and Buzzard from The Goon set), trying to get scale and outlines, and proportions down before I move on.
Sorry for the image quality, I am a total noob when it comes to photography and playing with them in Gimp/Photoshop.
Tachikoma
Buzzard
I have been doing quick sketches every night for a few months now. Decided to share a few of them here, any tips and crits are welcome and much appreciated!
Unfortunately there isn't much critique I can give at the moment, because the best thing you can do is to keep that up. Some of your proportion and placement is off, but that's a skill that'll improve with time and experience. Your lines are a little fuzzy, so maybe you should experiment with different pencil grades. Right now it looks like you're using maybe a 2B or an HB pencil, but try maybe an H or an H2 and see if those work for you.
And remember that drawing from life is always preferable to a photograph, even if you're just drawing a mug or an apple. Photos do the heavy lifting of flattening a 3D object in to 2D for you, where drawing from life puts that onus on you.
I also found out they do a $5.00 live drawing night and also have free drawing classes which I fully plan on taking advantage of.
Started drawing my hand this was a quick piece about 7 mins tops done with the 2b lead. I am really happy with how it turned out.
http://www.amazon.ca/The-Drawing-Right-Side-Brain/dp/0874774241
facebook.com/LauraCatherwoodArt
2 minute pose
5 minute pose in which I butchered her face among other things ( sorry awesome model!)
5 minute pose
10 minute pose
45 min pose
I recently subbed to New Masters Academy and have really been focusing on drawing every day.
Here is how I have been doing
Life drawing 10 minute sketches at a local comic shop that does cosplay life drawing Sundays:
Love Mike Mignolas art style been doing some drawings based entirely on his work:
I forget the artist name but I got one of his learn to draw books and was amazed with what I was able to do.
John Constantine in my first ever attempt to do something with charcoal
Some 20 minute drawing form photo reference
[img][/img]
Fair warning pics are big cause I have no idea what I'm doing
Shading
Cloth:
Figure stuff
are you following any sort of instruction? An online course or a book?
Thanks, and my apologies. It should all be fixed. I was not paying attention to the photo sizes my bad! I was just uploading from my phone to imgur.
As far as me following any instructions/course/book , Its not really a "class" but I am going through the Steve Huston gesture videos on New Masters Academy.
Couple of things that stand out:
You're pretty consistently shortening the legs and making the head too large on these Loomis mannequin figures. I'm sure he goes over these proportions in the book as well, but ones you want to commit to memory: normal, non-exaggerated people are generally 7 heads tall. The base of the crotch is halfway between the top of the head to the bottom of the feet. Therefore, distance between the top of the head and the base of the crotch is 3.5 heads. You can use your fingers to measure this stuff out and get the figures on point.
(Aside on Loomis: there's a lot of valuable information in his book, but I always feel like while the mannequin figures he suggests are good for gesture and composition shorthand, they can be pretty confusing for beginners still wrapping their heads around the concept of drawing volumes in space. You may find it helpful to try these mannequin figures in a more George Bridgman approach for a bit, where the ribcage and pelvis are first described as simple boxes, rather than using the oval and 'double compact disc' shapes of Loomis- the reason I suggest this is because it provides and easier way to get a handle on looking at these structures as volumes in space with perspective, and at this point that may be a more helpful way to approach the issue.)
Speaking of which, I think that construction- breaking the shape of objects down into simple boxes, cylinders, and spheres- is really what I would suggest you drill down on in improving your figure work currently. Right now your drawings have a lot of focus on the contour lines of an object, rather than the volumes that work to construct that object. This is where most people start off with drawing, but it means that the drawing is going to lack a sense of believability, that it feel like an object that exists in perspective in space. If you can break things down into those concrete volumes, the drawing will have a lot more solidity to it.
This video (NSFW, probably) gives a more thorough and in depth description of what I'm talking about, and shows how to apply this principle in drawing. (Also, all the other videos this guy has are gold, so if you want some really solid drawing tutorials, there you go.)
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Steve Hustons videos really resonated with me and I saw an almost instant improvement after watching his videos.
Here is an example.
Thanks for the tips I completely agree and am taking it to heart
First project is a success!
Probably should have said this before, but if you're going to study Bridgman, you probably want to get The Complete Guide To Drawing From Life- it's got all the Bridgman books on anatomy including 100 hands (I think he's got a book about light and shade that's missing) compiled into a single volume, it's reproduced at a larger size than the individual volumes- and it looks like you can get it from Amazon for like just 50 cents more than you'd pay for any one of the individual volumes, so it's a lot cheaper ultimately. So, if you've still got the receipt you might want to return 100 hands and pick this version up instead.
http://www.amazon.com/Bridgmans-Complete-Guide-Drawing-Life/dp/1402766785
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Thanks! I happened to pick up the book of 100 hands a few other nice anatomy and reference/perspective books form Half Price Books so I paid maybe 4 bucks for it?
I really need to step up my hand game.
facebook.com/LauraCatherwoodArt
I like the video but I am one of those people where I need to draw it like 4000 times, I am not really having much luck on finding decent practice sheets though =(.
I would add though that if what you're looking for is a ton of these guys to directly copy off of, it may be missing the point a bit. This type of construction is common enough that I'm sure you could find many examples of comic or animation artists using it in their process, but the value of these constructed figures are almost entirely in applying the principles they are conveying to actual figures- and maybe after a few pages of copies, I'd suggest you move on quickly towards doing just that.
Go to a life drawing session or find some ref, and break down all that information that the real thing provides you, and draw how that figure would look as a simplified box-and-cylinders figure.*
Only then do you get the real benefit of the exercise, because you're having to use your head to figure out how to do that, you need to figure out how to draw these basic volumes under any possible perspective in that process- if you are just copying pages, it's possible to learn how to duplicate those printed box figures perfectly, but not get anything useful for the trouble- since all you learned was how to replicate 2d lines on a 2d sheet of paper, rather than training in the critical thinking skill of how to break down a figure, or any other object, into 3d volumes. It's important you're getting the deeper point, rather than just the surface.
And while there are many different artists that have different common construction methodologies they may use- Bridgman has his, Burne Hogarth has his, Loomis has his, Reilly has his Reilly Method, Asaro has his Asaro head plane, etc.- these are all great things to look up and study from, but what's actually going to be useful to you is not memorizing any one or all of those methods, so much as understanding why they are doing what they are doing in any given scenario- because how one breaks down the body into planes and volumes, depends greatly on the objective and circumstance, on what problem you are trying to solve with a particular figure at a particular stage, rather than any specific method. The basic idea of 'this object is complicated- I need to simplify it into volumes in order to draw it' is much more important than any one particular approach to it.
It's also hard for any artist to thoroughly break down a full figure into a sufficiently granular to cover every scenario, so it's up to the individual artist to figure out how to apply the basic ideas at incremental levels, rather than having a formula that covers all possible bases.
For example, if I were drawing a hand on a figure, I might start off by just putting a box where that hand would go, making sure that overall that shape made sense perspective-wise. As I developed the figure further, I might break that box down further into 3 boxes- one for the palm, one for the figures, one for the thumb. Developing further, I might break down the mass of the 4 fingers together into 3 boxes, to represent change of plane that happens as the knuckle bends. Developing further, I might break down each finger into a separate series of cylinders. Developing further, I might reintroduce some of those box-type corners into the knuckles, to emphasize the sharpness of the plane changes.
Which single one step of these would usefully tell you the planes of the hand, the volumes of the hand? The answer is none of them- and all of them. No single one step fully represents the form of the hand, yet all of them provide useful tools to help me describe the hand. If the hand changed pose, I might approach the construction in a totally different way.
This is why I threw in the application of the principle to a car and a gun up there as well- completely different objects, but mastering construction with a figure will allow you to apply it to any object; it's a critical thinking skill, rather one of simple rote memorization.
There are plenty of resources that will break down the anatomy and proportions of drawing a figure (and the Loomis you have is certainly a very good resource for that information)- the principle of construction is about how you take that information, and giving you a tool with which you can apply that information in a drawing.
*(Further exercises: Draw the same figure as your model/reference, but try to draw it from a different, imagined viewpoint. In developing a sense of perspective and volume, you should be able to draw that pose from any angle. Or, draw the same figure as if the pose was slightly altered, figuring out how the forms will turn in perspective. These sorts of exercises help to make sure you're gaining a critical understanding of volume and perspective, rather than merely copying what is in front of you. Developing that critical understanding (along with understanding anatomy, foreshortening, etc.) is what allows artists to start to be able to pull off convincingly believable wholly imagined figures.)
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