Danxs art thread

danx · October 2017

Hi,

I've been wanting to take up art seriously for a long time but have always found excuses not to. So last week I made a deal with myself that I'd draw everyday for a week and post a thread here for feedback and then I can go play the new colossus guilt free as an incentive today. The plan is to update at least once a week with highlights from the week.

There's an imgur album with almost everything from this week excluding the 25th which was just ellipse and line exercises from drawabox. I'll keep the album updated as I progress. Been working through a page of faces in Fun with Pencil mostly but I also like drawing birds.

There's no NSFW figures in here atm but will be in future.

Reference for the merlin

Got a bit annoyed with the feathers and hair on these. They don't look great. Spent some time on trying to figure out what was wrong with it. After watching a few vids on hair to get some small tips I did these

Lips are still frustrating.

Thanks for reading. I really want to learn and practice so comments and critiques are welcome.

danx · November 2017

This week has been a bit of a rough week. A bit aimless and directionless.

Realised I wasn't chopping off the side of the head, that's why the heads in the first part look a bit wide and the ears look off so I practiced head proportions from the front then decided to draw more Loomis heads from the side without practicing side view proportions or drawing front view heads to use the practice. Not sure why. I just noticed it just now after reviewing the week.

Album

Decided to start the 250 box challenge and put it and all basic forms practice in ink in the same sketchbook to keep a record of it.

Boxes

These seemed to get worse as time went on. Didn't ghost lines as much so things looked wobbly and felt like the perspective was worse in the end than the beginning.

Drew a bird based on this reference but wasn't happy with it. It was fatter than the reference and the head was wrong. Decided to draw a box roughly the size of the picture and drew the branch in using a ruler and then put the ruler away and used the pencil to measure the birds sizes and angles more attentively.

Original bird

Redrawing

danx · September 2022

Studying form rotation atm. It's getting easier but it's still really difficult.

I'm enjoying this project based learning from ArtWod. It really pushes me out of my comfort zone which is generally a good thing but it's sometimes a bit too challenging. Things might be easier if I was more comfortable with digital. It's like learning 2 skills at once.

hiraeth · September 2022

Hi Danx can I make a cc post I think will help?

danx · September 2022

That'd be helpful thanks. I looked at that thing for hours trying to fix it because it didn't look right but not 100% sure what. The bottom part, the neck protector(?) looks really off. Not sure I was paying as much attention to the perspective either truth be told.

These exercises on trying to rotate forms in perspective are quite hard and it's difficult to see what's wrong so any CC would be helpful. If it's about something else that's cool too.

hiraeth · September 2022

I was on art wod for a few months I didn't do any of the submissions or weekly thingies I just watched the videos and got the gist of it. But looking at what you're trying to do looks like you're trying to copy the photo and then guess at what it looks like what it from other angles which is skipping over the point of the exercise (as nicely as I can say it!

). To get things down so they look nice and 3 dimensional we need to break it down into the basic shapes which is usually the box, cylinder, and sphere, some basic manipulation, and then you can draw what you're studying from any angle. So when you're looking at this helmet we can see the central piece is a cylinder, the hat is half a sphere, the edge pieces are just flat rectangular boxes wrapped and bent. So we want to break it down into those and that's what we draw in their entirety, I assume that's what the 1-5 is for from the exercise? That's how I broke it down too. Draw through it all, get all the basic shapes in the right place and really anything beyond that is just details particular to what you're drawing.

I did a study of it to help explain it better, starting with the cylinder centre

and then the rest of the pieces

put them together and I sort of get it I've never drawn any armour before so I'm kind of meh but I'm learning

now I can try rotating it

and again this time from a much different angle it took a lot longer and I broke it down as I went to show those basic shapes

I hope that helps explain it better! You ultimately want to learn to see everything as a basic shape taking up 3d form and putting it down onto paper in a clear way. The artwod instagram has post with students work better than mine if you want to look for more examples

danx · September 2022

Oh wow that was a lot of effort you put into the CC. Thanks.

hiraeth wrote: »

I was on art wod for a few months I didn't do any of the submissions or weekly thingies I just watched the videos and got the gist of it. But looking at what you're trying to do looks like you're trying to copy the photo and then guess at what it looks like what it from other angles which is skipping over the point of the exercise (as nicely as I can say it! ).

You're right about the point of the exercise and me skipping over it. I started with the intent of doing only the breakdown and eventually lost it on all practice objects. Not sure why. In the posted one I went over the two under sketches from the first two on top, then got lost trying to make it pretty I guess? It really wasn't what the exercise was asking which was to focus entirely on the construction. Not line work or a pretty picture just construction.

It's weird looking at the blue sketch now. It's supposed to be a different angle that shows more of the inside but it doesn't look that different from the second one.

To get things down so they look nice and 3 dimensional we need to break it down into the basic shapes which is usually the box, cylinder, and sphere, some basic manipulation, and then you can draw what you're studying from any angle. So when you're looking at this helmet we can see the central piece is a cylinder, the hat is half a sphere, the edge pieces are just flat rectangular boxes wrapped and bent. So we want to break it down into those and that's what we draw in their entirety, I assume that's what the 1-5 is for from the exercise? That's how I broke it down too.

Yeah the colours and numbers where to help keep the forms separate and labeled. We were limited to 5 ish forms so we can throw out bits if the major forms are present.

Draw through it all, get all the basic shapes in the right place and really anything beyond that is just details particular to what you're drawing.

I did a study of it to help explain it better, starting with the cylinder centre

This is a bit of an eye opener. When I was sketching these I had issues with some of the individual forms but it never occurred to me to pull out the tricky forms to study their on it's own. I was thinking about the pieces in the context of the whole thing, trying to make them fit together even thought I didn't understand all of them. Seeing you study it on it's own is like of course that's what you should do, duh. Very helpful. Thank you.

The first part of the WoD had us study cylinders, half spheres, etc, in different angles so I'm not sure why I didn't make the connection.

I hope that helps explain it better! You ultimately want to learn to see everything as a basic shape taking up 3d form and putting it down onto paper in a clear way. The artwod instagram has post with students work better than mine if you want to look for more examples

This was great, thanks again.

hiraeth · September 2022

No worries!

It's weird looking at the blue sketch now. It's supposed to be a different angle that shows more of the inside but it doesn't look that different from the second one.

These exercises are for understanding the concept of everything being a manipulated basic shape, so you open your brain up to seeing them in everything. That way references are just more like educational prompts for illustrating instead of something to be copied directly like fine art. This is what I saw looking at your other 2 angles were warped versions of the photo. Start from the over simplified end of the spectrum as opposed to say the copying outlines end. It's not something I understood for a long time.

It took me months~ to get it into myself to not look for direct answers in things others had done and really learn to manipulate them myself. I watched some of those videos on organic and animals over and over~

danx · January 2023

Was looking through my sketch books for the year to gauge my progress. These are from March-ish and are supposed to be drawings following Mitch Leeuwe animal character drawing course.

These are from this week based on the same course.

Happy to see the difference there. Like I said earlier I've been doing the Art WoD course and drawing projects since July/August ish. It seems to have really helped. My drawings look more solid and don't always take forever.

Sakura released a Light Cool Grey fineliner pen line which turned out to be great for under drawings (the ink is lighter than it looks in the photos). I tried pencil but there's still way too much temptation to erase which makes drawings take ages. Apparently I'm allergic to pencil or something. Not sure how to fix that but it doesn't really matter at the moment. I prefer pen.

Endless_Serpents · January 2023

Very nice! Keep it up!

danx · December 2023

Thanks.

I've been unable to do anything for 4 ish months because of injury and covid, and feel like I regressed a year and a half in that time. My lines look like they were drawn with a pen stuck to a camera in a Paul Greengrass movie.

It's been a shit year.

danx · February 23

That's a tough question that might be better suited to the Q&A thread above. Most of what I draw is for course work for Artwod or other courses and so I don't really have to think as much about what to draw. At other times i just draw what I like to draw like birds or trees or something I'm studying on my own.

Sorry if that's not helpful. I'm just never stuck for ideas. My problem is actually drawing, not what to draw when I do.

Penny Arcade

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