Nice to see you making goals and keeping us updated. I think as far as technical issues I see, there seems to be a bit of broken perspective in a few of those sketches. That table especially. I think in order for you to learn figures properly you'll need to address this lack in constructive methodology first. Drawing more simple forms like that table drawing and focusing on nailing the perspective will help a lot. I got a book today that has a great way of constructing figures. Its called Struttura Uomo Manuale di Anatomia Artistica. Its all in Italian but the images speak volumes (pun intentional) of the human figure. This is a good example of the kind of accurate figure construction I think anyone who wants to get good at figure drawing should be striving for.
"If you want liberation in this life, there is no area that you do not watch. Watch the breathing, watch the posture, watch the flow of energy, watch the texture of the mind, watch the response to objects." - Namgyal Rinpoche
"If you want liberation in this life, there is no area that you do not watch. Watch the breathing, watch the posture, watch the flow of energy, watch the texture of the mind, watch the response to objects." - Namgyal Rinpoche
"If you want liberation in this life, there is no area that you do not watch. Watch the breathing, watch the posture, watch the flow of energy, watch the texture of the mind, watch the response to objects." - Namgyal Rinpoche
"If you want liberation in this life, there is no area that you do not watch. Watch the breathing, watch the posture, watch the flow of energy, watch the texture of the mind, watch the response to objects." - Namgyal Rinpoche
bought myself a large A2 sketchbook with cheap paper to practice doing large form-drawing on. Something I've known for a long time, is that being able to get proportions and sculpt forms accurately at a large scale is really important, and once you can do that then you can certainly scale down, but its not the case that practicing small all the time will let you scale up.
a few quick lions from photo ref
first one is not so great but showing it for record keeping honesty purposes
"If you want liberation in this life, there is no area that you do not watch. Watch the breathing, watch the posture, watch the flow of energy, watch the texture of the mind, watch the response to objects." - Namgyal Rinpoche
Great lion sketch dude! That's an interesting point you made about working big and being able to scale down, I must admit I've found it easier to work small so I keep on doing that instead of trying to work big. I should try this myself at some point.
Keep pushing!
“Today, give a stranger one of your smiles. It might be the only sunshine he sees all day.” -- H. Jackson Brown Jr.
Artloader: Thanks! Yep it's important... let me know how it goes if you try it out
Uploading an acrylic painting I'm doing casually. Spent about an hour on this today. There is going to be a skull in the lower-middle section, and then the eyes/wind spirit rising out of it in the upper-middle section. You can't really make out these forms yet. So next step will be to block in major colour and shapes, then to unify it all a bit with some glazes.
It's on an 80x60 canvas with Golden Fluid acrylic paints, which are nice to work with and dry super fast (literally within 5-10 minutes they'll be pretty dry).
"If you want liberation in this life, there is no area that you do not watch. Watch the breathing, watch the posture, watch the flow of energy, watch the texture of the mind, watch the response to objects." - Namgyal Rinpoche
"If you want liberation in this life, there is no area that you do not watch. Watch the breathing, watch the posture, watch the flow of energy, watch the texture of the mind, watch the response to objects." - Namgyal Rinpoche
"If you want liberation in this life, there is no area that you do not watch. Watch the breathing, watch the posture, watch the flow of energy, watch the texture of the mind, watch the response to objects." - Namgyal Rinpoche
"If you want liberation in this life, there is no area that you do not watch. Watch the breathing, watch the posture, watch the flow of energy, watch the texture of the mind, watch the response to objects." - Namgyal Rinpoche
"If you want liberation in this life, there is no area that you do not watch. Watch the breathing, watch the posture, watch the flow of energy, watch the texture of the mind, watch the response to objects." - Namgyal Rinpoche
"If you want liberation in this life, there is no area that you do not watch. Watch the breathing, watch the posture, watch the flow of energy, watch the texture of the mind, watch the response to objects." - Namgyal Rinpoche
"If you want liberation in this life, there is no area that you do not watch. Watch the breathing, watch the posture, watch the flow of energy, watch the texture of the mind, watch the response to objects." - Namgyal Rinpoche
"If you want liberation in this life, there is no area that you do not watch. Watch the breathing, watch the posture, watch the flow of energy, watch the texture of the mind, watch the response to objects." - Namgyal Rinpoche
"If you want liberation in this life, there is no area that you do not watch. Watch the breathing, watch the posture, watch the flow of energy, watch the texture of the mind, watch the response to objects." - Namgyal Rinpoche
Drybrush value study with oils. Dry brush with oils is really interesting and lots of fun. Easy to control the paint. Using small round brush and a hog brush with no mediums or turps. The outlines were traced, so this is just to practice value. Using the acrylic primed red paper as the middle value, just adding white or black paint varying the opacity by applying the paint thicker or thinner/spreading it out to get the other values.
"If you want liberation in this life, there is no area that you do not watch. Watch the breathing, watch the posture, watch the flow of energy, watch the texture of the mind, watch the response to objects." - Namgyal Rinpoche
Wow, it's been almost 8 years since I first started this sketchbook. A lot has happened and some goals have been met and some goals haven't. Revistiing this thing has been a good reminder to myself of how much I used to love painting, and I want to recapture that. I took a break in 2020 from painting and I'd like to get back into it.
My art focus became very fractured in 2016 onwards, as I was learning to paint in oils/eggs with brushes and felt under the influence of many different pressures. Now, I know for certain a few things:
- i dont want to make art freelance. i want to paint my own things, and if i can monetise them somehow on the side, great, but that is far secondary
- painting both digitally and with brushes are very compelling to me and im not at a position yet to fully commit to either
- i want to get back in the habit of painting purely for the fun of exploring, and less out of this ambition to manifest a vision that i have. the joy of diving into a blank canvas and not knowing what will happen can disappear when you spend too much time refining and digesting ideas
- i want to share my art with people online again, i havent been doing that in a long time. i got a lot of enouragement reading back through the posts in thsi sketchbook, thank you all who left kind and positive comments
for future art goals and practice..
i was recently inspired by a manga called Witch Hat Atelier. i dont know anything about manga as a medium and tend to not be a fan of the style but the drawing in this is really sublime. he knows his anatomy extremely well and he knows how to simplify shapes and values and get to the essence. he also tells the hero adventure very well, its magical. this has inspired me to get back into the constructivist- approach to figure drawing and modelling. i still love pure abstraction but i am compelling to bring some of this back in. ive wasted a lot of time on having inadequate methodology as to learn figure and construction, but i want to take new steps in this direction.
heres a sketch i made today to affirm the desire to get back into posting and creating loosely from imagination
"If you want liberation in this life, there is no area that you do not watch. Watch the breathing, watch the posture, watch the flow of energy, watch the texture of the mind, watch the response to objects." - Namgyal Rinpoche
Strong restart, please keep posting!
By the way, Japanese comics, just like comics from all over the world, come in all kinds of styles and you will always find one that suits you.