(01-03-2019, 07:52 AM)Fedodika Wrote: id say keep up the imaginative stuff more, really get some of the studies youve had out of your system, some of them are interesting.
For imaginative figure work, draw lots of different stickment, just 5 lines, body, legs, arms, and circle for head, then pick the most dynamic one and test yourself drawing it :D
I really need to find time to do more imaginative work even if it's only short periods of say 30 mins or so. I tend to find that with doing the h/w for Watts, the studies I do aswell as my day job I don't have alot of time to myself let alone fitting in imaginative work.
Once classes start again I'm gonna have to look at my schedule and tweak it.
Thanks for the advice btw I think how I was going about my figure invention was not very productive, I've actually sort of been doing what you suggested as I've been doing some loomis manikins and they turned out alot better.
Been doing some more imaginative work the last few days, playing around with the loomis manikin aswell as an ovoid manikin. They turned out better thna my first attempt in my last post, proportions are hit and miss in them ( I think mainly in the torso/pelvis area) but that's due to my lack of understandng the proportions when the body is twisted or in dynamic poses.
Not sure what exercises to do to help with that. I'm guessing breaking down dynamic photo ref and seeing how other artists tackle it aswell?
I thought the Watts classes were starting this coming week but it's the week after so I'm thinking of doing more imaginative work in my sketchbook, give what Fedodika said a try and perhaps take a head I drew and a figure or two and draw them at a larger scale on newsprint.
always watch them proportions, specially the legs. on the last sketch on the bottom there is a figure turned backwards to the side a iittle, his butt is very flat how youve indicated, make sure those humps read as forms projecting out, be it male or female
(01-07-2019, 07:30 AM)Fedodika Wrote: always watch them proportions, specially the legs. on the last sketch on the bottom there is a figure turned backwards to the side a iittle, his butt is very flat how youve indicated, make sure those humps read as forms projecting out, be it male or female
Thanks for pointing that out didn't realise I made that mistake until you said it.
My usual life classes started again this week, it's only been 3 weeks roughly since I last went but I felt very rusty at first I eventually got back into the swing of things but man I was not expecting it.
Finished the actual aly-in early but didn't have enough time to render it or start another drawing so thought I'd do some studies of the features at the side. Tried rendering the eye in the bottom left but f***** it up.
Felt like I wasn't simplifying enough and still getting caught up in the little bumps and crannys such as with the nose and her hat.
I've been reading Nathan Fowkes Portrait book so I want to try and incorporate some of his ideas next week, specifically his simplification.
Life Class
Usual 3 min and 10 min quick sketches, it felt very rough executing them. Tried going slower and making sure my reilly abstractions where correct for the model.
Sketchbook
Spent most of the week doing more imaginative work, mostly Loomis manikins and some more portraits. I was very more conscious when it came to figure proportions. Wanted to push my female heads since I suck at making women look attractive. I spent some time looking at how Brian Knox simplifies features etc and tried emulating that in my own imaginative work. Thought these where an improvement over my last female head but still needs work.
I've quite enjoyed these last 2 weeks of purely imaginative work, it was a nice break from working on studies constantly and I've pin pointed some problem areas that I need to work on as seen below:
. Planes of the head ( my rendering was all over the place on some of the portraits and felt like it was due to not remembering all of the plane changes)
. Heads at extreme angles
. Proportions of the figure from dynamic poses/ foreshortening and remembering interesting poses
. Gesture drawing (needs improving greatly)
My scheduele is tight for the next month or so so some of these issues will have to wait until my scheduele is not as busy
i think your heads look weird because they have this like, plug in a symbol for the features feel to them, like a mr potato head thing. Also you draw the side of the head too small, like the cheek bone goes further back, that and the jaw is too smal, aghh im not sure what to tell you but just do more, try to loosen up and draw the head without the riley construction, maybe try to build the head in a less intuitive way, like start with the eye, and try to draw with no construction so you can feel and internalize how the head isnt a bunch of generic plug and play features.
And try to not shade them too, mileage would help in that area if you didnt shade and just tried to do more and go for understanding over a tight end product
Nice studies! Are you taking Brian Knox's online livestreaming class? I was going to take it but wasn't sure how it was going to be like. Your studies look pretty solid. I agree with Fedodika's comment on avoiding the shading for now and trying to just nail the structure. Your rendering with a pencil shows you've got good shading technique anyway. Another suggestion is to practice drawing some heads using reference and then afterwards, do a drawing overlay above the reference to see if you are drawing what you think an eye is vs how the eye actually is drawn. Then redraw it from imagination or reference again and try to see if you can connect everything you're learning to what you see in real life by looking at your face in the mirror or a friends. You mentioned doing something similar with other artists and dynamic poses. Yeah something like that but with faces! I hope this helps!
(01-14-2019, 05:10 AM)Fedodika Wrote: i think your heads look weird because they have this like, plug in a symbol for the features feel to them, like a mr potato head thing. Also you draw the side of the head too small, like the cheek bone goes further back, that and the jaw is too smal, aghh im not sure what to tell you but just do more, try to loosen up and draw the head without the riley construction, maybe try to build the head in a less intuitive way, like start with the eye, and try to draw with no construction so you can feel and internalize how the head isnt a bunch of generic plug and play features.
And try to not shade them too, mileage would help in that area if you didnt shade and just tried to do more and go for understanding over a tight end product
Yh I think I know what you mean with how my features are weirdly slotting in, can't quite describe it though. I found that I'm drawing the bridge of the nose too wide which in turn widens my eyes and makes them look abit alien.
For the side view I was trying to visualize the side view from the vanderpoel book, kinda forgot to also think aobut the skull beneath.....
Next time I give it ago I'll stick to just a line drawing, I wanted to create a more finished look but as you said I should think about milage since shading is the easy part.
(01-14-2019, 07:31 AM)Arteriorrhexis Wrote: Nice studies! Are you taking Brian Knox's online livestreaming class? I was going to take it but wasn't sure how it was going to be like. Your studies look pretty solid. I agree with Fedodika's comment on avoiding the shading for now and trying to just nail the structure. Your rendering with a pencil shows you've got good shading technique anyway. Another suggestion is to practice drawing some heads using reference and then afterwards, do a drawing overlay above the reference to see if you are drawing what you think an eye is vs how the eye actually is drawn. Then redraw it from imagination or reference again and try to see if you can connect everything you're learning to what you see in real life by looking at your face in the mirror or a friends. You mentioned doing something similar with other artists and dynamic poses. Yeah something like that but with faces! I hope this helps!
Thanks Arteriorrhexis :) I was taking his figure construction class last term for this term I'm actually auditing his head fundamentals class since there was a 50% discount code (which was sweet) and currently taking Lucas's and Erik's classes.
Thanks for the reccomendation you know I keep saying to myself that I should overlay my drawings and do corrections, I use to do it but for whatever reason I fell out of it, tihkn it was when I was tkaing Watts classes last year since they were doing it for me, ugh I realllly need to get back into it!
Had to work more hours last week than initally planned so spent the weekend catching up on what I wanted to do during the week that I didn't get a chance to. All these extra hours are only lasting until end of Feb so should hopefully be back to my regular routine beginning of March.
Sketchbook
Did another page of figures from imagination before the new Watts classes started. Tried incorporating some props into a few of them to help get across the pose I was going for.
Portrait Class
Still reading through Nathan Fowkes portrait book and got inspired to tackle a portrait like he does so spent a shorter amount of time on my lay-in and went straight into shading but as you can see I got way ahead of myself and f***** it up big time. Her glasses really messed with me since they were casting a shadow (didn't help that her head was mainly in shadow). Had trouble making them look correct in perspective, they were rounded and tilted in the corners and that really messed with me, just couldn't draw them.
Gave up on that first drawing since I didn;t see how I could fix it and started on another. This week I want to go back to how I usually lay-in a head but try and work quicker and break down the features around my drawing like I started the week before, focus on the eyes since that was what I was learning last week in Lucas's class and try what Fedodika said at home where I can churn out multiple drawings from ref.
Life Class
Usual 3 and 10 min poses (sitting down poses are the 10 min) I found myself getting too caught up in his anatomy and not simplifying the gesture.
Usual 45 min pose, had difficulties with his right leg that is foreshortened. I measured it but it looked way too long initially so messed around with shortening more than what it appeared to be.
Lucas's Class
As I said Watts classes started last week and the first week was focused on the eyes, I was planning on getting another 1 or 3 rendered eyes in but didn't have enough time.
Erik's Class
I usually lay in my poses like Brian but decided to try Erik's approach this week as it is more free flowing and not as constructive as Brian's approach. Started with the big envelope shape of the pose and drawing the head up from the pit of the neck which I really struggled with since it was new to me and then rather than mapping the shadow shapes and then filling in I went for a painterly approach and directly layed in the shadows which again was a first. Made alot of mistakes (as you can see) mainly the head is bugging me since it's comptely wrong but it was a good learning experience.
Gesuture Drawing
I've been warming up the past week with gesture drawing since I really want to improve them. Been working slower and really focusing on simplifiying using the reilly rythms and just ingraining how poses flow.
Again prob won't have time to post until the weekend at the earliest.
alright i said i would so here i changed the proportions to match the photo so you can clearly see the difference; narrow leg,weird neck, torso half the size, long foot, etc.
(01-22-2019, 07:51 AM)Fedodika Wrote: alright i said i would so here i changed the proportions to match the photo so you can clearly see the difference; narrow leg,weird neck, torso half the size, long foot, etc.
Thanks Fedodika. :)
Don't have a clue how my proportions f***** up so bad! I measured the pose top to bottom, the half way point, width etc etc. I think they are ok so it must be my sub measurements that are consistently wrong such as the size of her foot or length or her breasts. Clearly my eyes aren't as good as I thought.
Was planning on posting last Monday but my hw for Erik's class took alot longer than I had planned since I kept having issues with it and now is the only free time I've had. Anyway here is an update for the past 2 weeks.
Watts Feedback
Watched the feedback videos and made notes and applied feedback. Lucas actually does his crits in photoshop and he provides the psd file aswell so there wasn't aneed to do any trace overs myself since he already did it which was nice.
I asked Lucas to take a look at the eye in 3/4 as I was confused on how the lid wraps around the eye when looking at the farthest eye from a 3/4 angle (hope that makes sense).
For Erik's class I asked him about applying tone painterly and some tips for working that way.
Lucas's Class
Week 2
Working on the construction of the nose which I had alot of difficulty with, really an eye opener since I thought the nose wasn't one of my weakest areas.
Week 3
This week was the construction of the lips. Feel like I understand the lips the best as I had the least amount of difficulty with them.
Erik's Class
Week 2
Used the same approach for my lay-in as last week but mapped my vlaues first rather than jumping straight in. From start to finish I just struggled with the drawing and couldn't seem to get anything right. My main issue was the proportions, even now he looks rather like pop-eye.
Portrait Class
Past 2 weeks I've finished my lay-in and then on the side I've been working on the features (like I said I would last time) applying what I've been learning from Lucas's class and to see where I'm going wrong.
Life Drawing
3/10 min gestures
Gesture Drawing
Reilly Abstraction
Sketchbook
did some more imaginative drawing. Drew some figures the same way I draw my gesture drawings. Tried drawing heads again but started with the eye or nose first and drew the rest of the face based off that. Didn't use the reilly abstractions apart from 1 drawing I think. They turned out rather ...... horrible haha, my proportions are all over the place, not sure how I feel about drawing this way.
Been thinking, rather than drawing more imaginative heads I'd use my sketchbook for working on the facial features and do lots of pages of them copying the drawigns of artists I like to understand how they draw them, try drawig them from memory aswell and then go back to inventing heads.
Art Goals
Read an article on muddycolors about artistic goals and they suggested as an exercise to create folders which contain 20 or less pics of the type of art that are similar to the art you want to create. I did something like this ages ago but it wasn't as specfic as this. Decided to give it ago myself as you can see below and I found it to be a real eye opener. I guess from my folders I like strong colours and dynamic compositions which are mostly figurative based.
I think with imaginative drawing, you should find a sketch artist you like, draw stuff from imagination, then pull things they do into your stuff. I did that with John Grello alot, and it taught me a lot about indication and adding appeal. I still think doing imaginative drawing would help you the most, like trying to emulate other styles, see what makes them appealing. Pulling from that as inspiration rather than reference. Draw like, a pose, then draw the same pose, but try to make it better. Then do it again, use whatever you can find to make it better. If you feel it needs a major change, go with that, just keep pushing the "better" and "how do i make this better" idea. It goes a long way
(02-03-2019, 07:49 AM)Fedodika Wrote: I think with imaginative drawing, you should find a sketch artist you like, draw stuff from imagination, then pull things they do into your stuff. I did that with John Grello alot, and it taught me a lot about indication and adding appeal. I still think doing imaginative drawing would help you the most, like trying to emulate other styles, see what makes them appealing. Pulling from that as inspiration rather than reference. Draw like, a pose, then draw the same pose, but try to make it better. Then do it again, use whatever you can find to make it better. If you feel it needs a major change, go with that, just keep pushing the "better" and "how do i make this better" idea. It goes a long way
Sorry for the late reply man just been so busy with work I've had even less free time recently. I quite like that idea actually, think I said in my last post that I was just gonna use my sketchbook to focus on the individual features, copy artists I like and try and incorporate their design choices into my own imaginative work but I think this will also work quite nicely along with that.
Trying to find time atm to make imaginative work apart of my weekly routine. I'll try this week but it might not be until my extra hours at work are over which should be in the next week or 2 hopefully.
Apologies for the long delay. Been super busy at work since we are moving offices so i've been working extra hours to help out, hopefully that should end next week but might be the week after.
Gonna split this into 2 seperate posts so there isn't a long wall of text.
Lucas's Class
H/W for the last 2 weeks. Didn't have to much difficulty with the ear since the basic construction is rather simple although I thought the inside view of the ear was a challenge since I wasn't too sure how to interperate what I was seeing or what I was seeing.
W5 was taking what we've learnt so far and doing some head constructions, mainly working on proportions and tying it all together. I was confident I would do well with the h/w but had a really crappy night where I just couldn't seem to draw.
Erik's Class
W3 was a struggle for me, had to keep moving things around and correcting proportions and struggled to interpeate what I was seeing when it came to the rendering, I got too caught up in every little value change and forgot to focus on the big picture.
W4 went better. Watched Erik's crit from the previous week as I asked him for tips on rendering and took what he said into account when working on this. Feel like I did a better job with the rendering but went too dark with my darkest value.
W5 Erik focused on construction and I wanted to do the same since 1. it's been awhile since i did it and I could use the practice, and 2. I was having a tough time with the gesture and the proportions of the limbs when tackling this drawing so I decided to focus on improving those things.
Crits
Here is Lucas's crit from W2.
Apologies for not posting the crits. I've been watching the videos and making notes but lacked the time to compile it all together. I've got extra time on Wednesday so I'm gonna catch up on it all and post.
Note
Need to work on my photography skills abit, think I'm not taking some of these photos perfectly straight which is making them look abit funky (unless I'm wrong?).
Feel like the past 2 weeks I've noticed an improvement with my drawings. To me they seem alot stronger than my previous drawings from the past few weeks.
lucas has been saying in my crits that i'm using too many hard edges and to go alot softer so for this one I tried going alot softer than usual and rather than putting my hard lines in as prgress thorugh the drawing (like I usually do), I got my lay-in down first and then went back and put in my hard lines and I think for me that works better.
Life Drawing
Drawings for the past 2 weeks. Gestures are the usual 3 and 10 min. It's still taking me abit of time to fully warm up, my 3's always look like crap and it's not until I get to my 10's that I feel like my hand is listening to my brain and I can see how the gesture looks if that makes sense?
One thing i've noticed is that I have a habit of drawing my bodies too big for the heads so I need to be conscious of it.
Been doing really bad with the longer poses recently. Been struggling with my meaurements and proportions, think I'm still not use to the way Erik goes about his figure drawings.
On this one the model was sitting really close to me, I couldn't even stretch my arm out to measure with my pencil he was that close! (I remember my arm kept hitting the chair) so I think that was what was throwing me off with this one.
With this one I struggled with the gesture and had a really tough time with getting the measurement between her head and clavicle right aswell as the width of the pose as her left side (right in drawing) just kept on looking way too wide.
Quick Sketch
Haven't had as much time recently to work on my quicksketch so this was all I could manage. This was after the male life drawing session as I felt that my male quicksketches could use alot of work (and they still can).
Been making this apart of my schedule the past few weeks and I'm planning on iclduing head quicksketch again aswell as part of it, draiwng from my physical head models aswell as ref.
Reilly Abstractions
Some more work on my abstractions to help with my quicksketches. With these I tried measuring more with my eye rather than with my pencil to help train my eye.
alright peter, im not trying to like flex on you with these, i think its really just seeing these mistakes could actually help you understand your own choices better. I think your biggest issue is you do a lay in and you religiously follow it, and you dont compromise or tweak tiny things in placement to make it better during the rendering process, things are bolted down too fast.
Youre close on a lot of these detail wise, like specially on feet and the legs usually arent bad. You just need to pay alot more attention to the measurements going on within the body and dont be afraid to erase, and just imagine over and over, what if this drawing came to life right now, would it look weird would it fall over etc
Cool stuff. I like the soft edges in the portraits and figures. Obviously, be careful not to fall into the rendering trap- falling back on the pretty and quick techniques and thinking everything's improving. I can see your improvement tough, and there's no reason to think you are doing this. Just a precaution from an overrenderer myself :)
1. Use the biggest brush possible for a given passage. 2. Paint large shapes first, followed by small shapes. 3. Save your tonal and chromatic accents until the last. 4. Try to soften any edge that doesn’t need to be sharp. 5. Take time to get the center of interest right.
Or, the briefer version: (B.L.A.S.T.) Big brushes. Large to small. Accents last. Soften edges. Take your time.
(02-19-2019, 10:34 AM)Fedodika Wrote: alright peter, im not trying to like flex on you with these, i think its really just seeing these mistakes could actually help you understand your own choices better. I think your biggest issue is you do a lay in and you religiously follow it, and you dont compromise or tweak tiny things in placement to make it better during the rendering process, things are bolted down too fast.
Youre close on a lot of these detail wise, like specially on feet and the legs usually arent bad. You just need to pay alot more attention to the measurements going on within the body and dont be afraid to erase, and just imagine over and over, what if this drawing came to life right now, would it look weird would it fall over etc
Hi Fedodika thanks for taking the time to compile these together (and apologies for the late reply). Seeing these are a real eye opener to all the little mistakes that I'm still making.
There's no need to sugar coat anything with me, Id rather you be honest and tell me if I'm making consistent mistakes otherwise I wouldn't know where and how to improve.
I do alot of measuring and normally keep things light and alot of erasing, hell even sometimes starting over again on a new page as what I was drawing was completely wrong but I do agree with you and think that at some point in the drawing I do stop making any adjustments but I think that's is normally when I believe what I have down is accurate, and obviously when it comes time to render it highlights all of my mistakes.
I'm not sure if I should step back more and spend a good 10 minutes or so just scanning my drawing and comparing it to the ref as I do believe that I am still taking too long for alot of my drawings, more time than I should be really.
