JyonnyNovice - from Novice to Master!

[JyonnyNovice]

More cars, trying to study like Hobbitt when he did perspective stuff; some observation sketches of a vehicle then drawing a more accurate thing from memory / imagination. I try to fix in my mind some of the key features / proportions. This is from a BMW 5 series (I am really not into cars, but they are great to practice all the techniques for section drawing, and are quite fun when it starts to look nice and solid).





^ this is a WIP, I will finish it up next time.

[JyonnyNovice]

Final result wasn't so great, but I'll keep trying!

[JyonnyNovice]

Recent stuff:

Heads - got really frustrated (again) with heads, was trying to reconstruct photos using the planes, could never get them how I wanted them. Got so fed up with it all I started just drawing heads from photos without thinking, just drawing quickly. Results are not human but seem to have more appealing look than my other heads (the ones in black biro). Maybe I have studied about structure and planes enough now and just need to keep practising (although I felt the same back in November) - but the planes stuff feels intuitive now, I can sort of feel out how stuff wraps and moves. My heads are still terrible but will keep trying! Now, maybe it's a question of developing sensitivity and intuition around a pleasing look and good design rather than studying and analysing every little piece.




Started the How to Render book, this is stuff from first 50 or so pages:

[Patrick Gaumond]

Hey man, just gonna drop you some advice here! Thanks for checking out my sketchbook, I appreciate it : )

From what i see you seem to have a very strong grasp of perspective. Theres some over foreshortening and some harsh convergence going on but that will resolve itself over time and honestly isnt too big a deal, you understand the vast majority of it very well.

I think when it comes to anatomy, you clearly understand the musculature and the structure, but in my opinion you're relying too much on the construction methods from books, especially when it comes to heads. Construction and all that shits flawless for cars and spaceships but in my opinion it falls flat for faces. Nobody's face looks anything like those generic heads loomis and hogarthe get people to draw. Absolutely nobody. I challenge you to find someone who comes even remotely close. If you want your heads to feel a bit more natural, definitely learn about the planes and the general proportions, but instead of constructing a head the loomis way when you draw from observation for instance, just keep those things you learned in mind and let those dictate the flow of your mark making. I've actually found that loosely sketching a skull first and then laying flesh on top gives better, more natural results than trying to memorize symbols from loomis. Check out skull sketcher, its a free 3d skull thats pretty lightweight. Learn how the skull works. Learn how to simplify THAT and make your own method of construction instead of following loomis too much or whoever you are following at the moment. 95% of the mass we look at is the skull, but asaro heads and loomies tend to focus more on the planes that lie over the skull for some reason. Not enough time in those books is dedicated to the skull.

Another thing you can do, and it's surprising that i've basically never heard anyone mention this, is to learn how to do orthographic projections as a basis. Scott covers it in one of the videos closer to the end of How to Draw if you don't already know how they work, and glosses over it in other parts of the book (i think he could have elaborated more on that aspect). If you have mastery of drawing the head from profile, and from top view you can do orthos and then project the features down onto your picture plane and get a more accurate result. It's not perfect and it requires some practice but it can help you map out proportions more accurately in a shorter time frame. It might also require some minor tweaking to get it right but the times I've tried it I've gotten better results than by just guessing or constructing the way its taught in books

And last thing, about figures. I think, again, that you understand the underlying structure and the musculature very well, but when it comes to proportion and symmetry you're still a bit inconsistent like with the heads. Focus a lot on the proportions first, generally speaking people are quite a bit taller than we like to think. Do what Dave rapoza does when he submits a painting: he knows he paints very dark and high contrast, so when he submits his final he makes it 20-30% brighter than hes comfortable with to compensate. Likewise, I think you can make your figures 20-30% taller than you're naturally comfortable with or you think is right; do that as much when you're drawing foreshortened figures as when you're drawing standing ones and I think over time you'll become more comfortable with drawing more accurately proportioned figures. That also applies in reverse (ie make things smaller if they look too big) and for head proportions and features

Looking through your sketchbook again, I think you might benefit from switching mediums for a while. You're working almost exclusively in line, and I think if you set that aside for a while and learn a bit about painting and how to work with volume and masses rather than in contours and outlines you might see some change in your lineart, since you'll be developing a different side of your art brain rather than making it think unilaterally. Not saying you need to devote all your time to one or the other but let them inform each other, let each of their respective strengths compensate for the weaknesses in the other.

[JyonnyNovice]

Patrick Thanks so much for all the detailed advice and comments here and in your SB. About the schedule thing I think I am the same as you really, I work better without one but I feel the need to keep one and update it - I worry that if I focus too much on perspective, for example, I will forget what I learned about figure drawing. Recently I think I realised though, that after spending time in one area and moving back to another, it wasn't that I forgot, or my drawing got worse but rather my drawing and eye had improved, so what I could do before in figures, doesn't look good to me anymore, but it seems it quickly catches up (although I definitely forgot a lot of the anatomy and muscle connections and stuff, but that's fine, just need to refresh that knowledge a bit). Still, I like to have a general sort of guide else I can get stuck in a zone of drawing crappy heads for weeks and weeks and not change it up, schedule forces me to look at what I'm doing.

You've given me a lot of clues and things to try with the head drawing. I did actually the other day get a load of photos and try to draw loomis heads on top. The planes worked out, for the most part, but the ball and the cross and the brow line etc etc, was really no where near on a lot of them. It's definitely helped me learning all that stuff but gonna take your advice and focus more on the skull. I can use the planes to help me while I draw a head but whilst I know the skull and can draw an ok one from memory, it's like it's a separate thing when I draw a head with a face - I am not thinking at all about the skull, none of it is integrated into my head drawing. Definitely need to fix that! I'll try your approach about sketching a skull and drawing a face on top.

I did try the orthographic projection for heads, since I'm pretty technical person, I figured it could be a great way to 'reason it out' to draw a face like that. The proportions came out solid but it was really fiddly - maybe I'll play with it some more since you mentioned it, kinda validates that I wasn't being a crazy technojunkie to try that. In fact Proko I remember has one exercise in a video where you draw a box and mark the brow / nose / lips / chin across the front - that could work as a quick way to start then just draw the head inside and project the lines back. Definitely lots of new things to try! Thanks!

I never noticed my figures were too short, thanks for pointing it out! I am quite short irl so maybe that's why. I'll keep that in mind next time I do figures.

Suira mentioned that I should switch to painting a while back too, I never really gave it a good shot. I'll try it out - how do you start something like that? Do you just put some nice shapes of solid value and then sculpt stuff out of it? Or do you put in some sketchy under lines first?

Thanks again man, really useful comments!



Some stuff from last couple days:

Faces, turned out not too bad; have all kinds of problems but I like the lines, I'm trying to use a super super light touch and not to kind of scratch around feeling lines out and messing up the paper - thinking, ghosting above, laying down a single guideline, looking at it, adjusting it if its not right. It's a much slower approach but makes for a cleaner, nicer looking drawing. Some people said those sketchy lines are fine, but for me I am just too messy with them, gonna try to train myself with this slow approach to be more considered.




Plus some more rendering stuff; I'm trying to find a good medium to get nice smooth renderings on paper, trying with charcoal, graphite and coloured pencil. Charcoal is the nicest looking but hardest to use, graphite is least nice looking but easiest to use, coloured pencil is somewhere in the middle. Haven't tried with marker yet.

[LaleAnn]

Patrick really said it all! Don't worry, it all takes time and you are improving! Those perspective stuff are really coming along nicely!

When it comes to human form, my advice (along with everything Patrick said) is try to forget you're drawing/painting a human/face/body. Don't think of it.

One very common issue encountered when people start painting humans is that they do it and think "I'm painting a nose", "I'm painting a boob" etc etc.. When we actually should keep the same thought process as when we're painting inanimate objects (buildings, plants and so on).

Don't think of it for what is it, try to keep your judgment away, even though your brain is crying for it. All you're looking for is shapes, lines, forms and the links between them. F.ex: Instead of seing "eyes", try to see them as spheres, locking with the eye socket's shape, instead of a nose, try to see a triangular 3D shape etc.

If at first you can't turn your brain off at all and keep "judging" your subject too much, it might be interesting for you to do some very quick gesture drawings (check Proko on youtube for that) or grab a photo and turn it upside down and paint it. That way, your brain cannot make the connections it usually does and it won't be able to recognize what it's seing as easily and, therefore, judge it/label it.

We tend to forget about it, but our eyes and brain will always trick us because they're using shortcuts and they "judge", especially when it's another human being you're looking at. Painting your "own specie" will very likely pressure you for many many reasons (that I won't state here but I'm sure you can find some yourself). So just like when you draw a cars or a tree, try to consider the human form in the exact same way. It's a bit tricky to explain but I hope you got my point :)

Keep it up buddy!

[Patrick Gaumond]

Suira mentioned that I should switch to painting a while back too, I never really gave it a good shot. I'll try it out - how do you start something like that? Do you just put some nice shapes of solid value and then sculpt stuff out of it? Or do you put in some sketchy under lines first?

Well theres 3 ways you can approach it, and they all require different skillsets and levels of knowledge. I use all 3 in different contexts, which I'll explain, depending on how complex the drawing is going to be

The first one is using a relatively loose yet accurate sketch to lay in all the shapes. It's not meant as a finished line art, so you can knock it out fairly quickly without really polishing the line quality too much beyond proportions and anatomy etc. I personally don't use it that much for nude figures. I generally only use it first to block out the pose, then to lay clothes and whatever on top. I'm not so great at visualizing form underneath clothing and armour so I find it helps to build it up, and It winds up taking less time than just jumping right in and painting. Dave rapoza used to sort of work this way, where he would sketch out the forms and resolve most of the design, then jump into grayscale, But if you're working with line you might as well go right into colour. This might be good to start out with if you're coming from a line-heavy background, but at the same time it might make you hesitant to ditch the lines. I've been using this more and more lately; the more complex your designs and illustrations become, the more beneficial it is to have it all resolved to some extent in a sketch before you commit to light and colours. The downside is though that you also need to have good knowledge of designing a scene around light to make it work, and not rely on your lines as you may be used to to get the message across

The second one I use is basically shaddy safadi's method, blocking in big shapes (generally in the shadow colour) each on their own layer in silhouette and then refining them until they look identical to the reference or to the pose you're using. Then use clipping masks or lock transparency and use only 2 values (the base value you started with and the light value(NOT the highlight value)) and block out the lit areas. Once you have that down its a matter of expanding your value range and filling in the gaps. Your major form is worked out so you can pretty much jump right into colour with this. That's why I liked it so much when I came across it, it lets you focus on one dimension at a time without worrying about your edges or your proportions at all while you're learning about the colours and forms within your subject. I used to use this for all my studies and it really helped me a lot to break out of relying too much on line, and you learn how to simplify light down to its essentials

The last one is like you said, just jump right in and start working out the form inch by inch. If you've seen craig mullins gnomon dvd he demos that a bit, just visualize it and lay it down. This is probably the hardest one to do since you really need to know what you're doing but its also the quickest just for nude figures or with minimal clothing. It also forces you into a specific lighting scenario and colour palette if youre straight into colour and is really hard to change, so if you're not confidant in your ability to design a scene around light and not run into problems from the get go, then it's not the best option for you. If you're going to use a lot of fill lights and artificial light sources (think applibot work) then its ok.

[JyonnyNovice]

Lale Thanks for the advice, I will definitely try that stuff! It's about activating the right side of the brain I think? I read something about that before... left side is all about symbols and stuff and right side is more abstract... I'll do my best... the perspective stuff is helping because I'm focusing on one line at a time instead of trying to draw the whole thing, need to work harder at switching things off tho! Merci beaucoup mademoiselle!

Patrick Thanks again for the detailed explanation! I will go for Shaddy's approach to start I think, I watched the first few of his videos on painting and seems like a good place to start. I've been messing with painting a bit the last few days but nothing worth posting yet.



So I was thinking about the 'learning curve', and generally, something with a steep learning curve really means that you will improve quickly if you work hard - you can even do a headlong sprint up the slope - but when you reach the top there is a long, slow inclining plateau towards mastery. I feel like I've hit that plateau in a lot of areas and sprinting isn't effective anymore. Time to go slow and steady, but important to keep going!

I felt like this specifically with my ellipses, I got ok at them very fast but the last couple of weeks I saw not too much improvement and still cannot land that perfect set of ellipses to make the wheel base of a car. I keep trying, slow and steady!

Some ellipse stuff (not all of it, sometimes I spend up to 2 hours a day doing this stuff, really want to crack it)




This is loads of skull stuff that I've been working on. Trying so many things to memorise this complex lump. Getting there, slowly and steadily - mixture of reference / memory / imagination stuff here:



And a few renders, progress has slowed down on this because of the skulls, will master those first before I go too much further:

[LaleAnn]

Woah, Jon, that's looking good!! You're doing well with that skull really!
It's pretty inspiring to see your dedication. I really need to kick myself and put more time into quantity and a bit less in quality... Keep it up man, it will pay off.

[StardustLarva]

Definitely what Lale said-your dedication is incredible, Jon. I can really see you becoming quite amazing at this rate, you're seriously putting a lot into it. The perspective stuff is looking great, you seem to have quite a firm grip on it. Seeing you work this much also motivates me to get better at what I do. Nothing else I can really say other than that you should keep going.

[JyonnyNovice]

Stardust & Lale Thanks so much guys, your comments and support mean more to me than you can imagine.



After drawing so many skulls I felt really foggy, like couldn't think how to draw anything but skulls and was too scared to try and draw faces in case they looked as screwed up as my ones before... broke through by just doing some building studies, kinda random ones but playing with value and lighting and design. Was pretty fun.

Managed to develop a good workflow for doing these illustrations. Doing thumbnails, then an ortho view, then a big, accurate perspective drawing, then doing an overlay of that and adding the shadows (ideally I would do that on the same page as the persp. drawing but I am a bit shaky with shadow constructions still). After that I rubbed charcoal all over the back of the page, put it over some watercolour paper and traced out the lines, leaving a tiny faint charcoal line drawing which I could ink over. Erase the charcoal, and paint with watercolour (painting ended up screwed up but the process is pretty solid I think). I know I could do it in digital too, but I like the option to do it traditional all the way as well.




Some heads, finally built up the courage to try these after my skull studies. The first page are a little shaky still, second page (bottom 3 heads) seem better. They were so hard to draw... have to think so hard it hurts my head but I can just keep pracising with this method now I think to get more confidence and instinct around it (please let me know what you think - do I need to study something else / try a different approach or just keep hammering out these heads? - thx!)




Going to spend the next week or two focusing on anatomy and figures (as well as heads, like always). Got to catch up my figure drawing to my perspective skills, then I can start to put characters in scenes and finally start on my goal to do comics.

[JyonnyNovice]

Today's heads:

Gonna try and post these heads everyday, my other studies and bits and pieces I probably won't for a while, takes so long to scan it all in.

[milkdose]

It's cool to see you're studying your perspective but I don't see any referencing going on. Particularly with the villas. If you place a figure you can project it back anywhere on the HL and reference pretty much everything else...like, everything! There's no question or ambiguity then, I don't have much to go by in your studies. If you're not setting scale throughout the entire painting, when it comes to finishing it you will realise things might be too big or too small and it will be too late. You've got some pretty big doors, normal doors are 30" x 80" in America. So set a door, say it's 36" x 80" and base everything else from it by estimating or actually measuring with increments with a flat measuring line/ruler.

With your buildings if you compare some of those windows or doors to the pillars you will notice there's a strange size difference, how big is that door? It's pretty big in comparison to the pillar but the pillar must be pretty big if it's holding up a large piece of architecture. Perhaps you're thinking about this in your mind but I thought I would point it out just in case as I think this could really take your perspective forward.

I'm not sure if you're trying to do curvilinear perspective but it's lopsiding your architecture. I would suggest learning everything there is about 1 point and 2 point before going into 3 point and curvilinear pers. Also the ellipses you're dropping in for the pillars don't match up with the square bases, same goes for the cars. I think it would be extremely beneficial to spend at least 3 months studying core fundamentals of perspective drawing to get the basics down. You're studying how perspective works in relation to direct light which is great obviously, but you really need to know how ellipses and angles work from flat space first. It's all about the flat diagram before projecting anything into space! That way you can set the exact angle you need. Get Scott Robertson's book on how to draw as I can't explain it because it would take forever and it is even longer to understand.

I tried to do two paint overs. I know they're just sketches but you're not measuring in any of them, your clean version of the building with the stairs is less accurate in comparison to the sketch because you're still following the vanishing points that don't match up, that includes the ground planes and the auxiliaries. Perhaps that's because you're estimating, try to do full perspective studies otherwise you will never be able to guess accurately. I suggest doing full perspective studies of cubes for hours everyday until you can guess what a square looks like in any given perspective for 1 and 2 point. Make cubes out of cardboard and master it, then add more. Once you can estimate a cube you will be able to estimate everything! Then you can move onto doing more primitives in space like prisms. I don't think you should move onto drawing objects just yet.

There's definite improvement in your sketch book! But all throughout your perspective studies are super duper sloppy, you need to get those down with razer precision because when one thing doesn't work, you've probably gone wrong on something 10 steps ago. Finding out what went wrong and re doing it is where you learn. If it's sloppy then you will never find the problems. Because with perspective everything can be done right and there aren't any excuses for failures. In professional work you wouldn't care as much though. Unless you're an architect or something. You where even thinking about the cone of vision for one of your very early studies but then you sort of stopped measuring it out, you need to consider the cone of vision for everything you do.

You have to be pretty bored to read though all of that :) I hope there's something in there that helped

[JyonnyNovice]

Danny Thanks so much for taking the time and writing all that, spot on critique. Scale, tightness, accuracy is all things I need to work on (I am working on them!). I don't agree that I shouldn't draw objects yet, drawing those things presents different challenges than cubes and stuff, need to do them both to get better. Like you can place ellipses on a minor axis and inside squares all day but drawing a wheel base for a car in context has other pressures and stuff associated with it, so practising wheel bases over and over is more appropriate for that (in addition to the ellipses on their own). Plus you lose motivation and get pretty bored just doing cubes and ellipses etc all day. I hear you though, and am putting in more cubes to my daily exercises. That cone of vision stuff... I get how it works, and how to draw it if I have both vanishing points on the page and can see or estimate the station point, but when it's a closer view and VP's and / or HL are way off the page I don't really get how to use it for my drawings. Do I need to worry about it then? Since probably I am well within the cone of vision already... I dunno... any further insight would be awesome! Thanks again dude!




Some anatomy stuff; going back over a lot of anatomy to get my figures looking better, realised I needed to go back further and figure out a good simplified skeleton. Proko's one looks nice so am learning that one (PS if anyone reads this who bought his anatomy course with the Robo Skelly, any chance to make a few screenshots for me? - thanks)




And today's heads:

[JyonnyNovice]

Today's heads and things:

[nphill19]

Hey man, I went to your first couple pages, and you have improved quite a lot. Great job on that!

I wanna say don't get down about your heads, you're still progressing and I think those Bargue drawings will really help inform your process. Keep going, and draw from life as much as you even if it is only self-portraits from a mirror.

Don't stop posting!

[Grotessive]

The amount of hard work you put is astounding!! You have really motivated me !! Yor building and car drawings are pretty good and i can see how your heads get better and better. Just some mor organic feel and i believe they'll turn out awesome!

[JyonnyNovice]

Nphill19 Thanks a lot for the encouragement and for reminding me to draw from life! These winter months had me too much in the house drawing from screen... some self portraits incoming soon!

Grotessive Thank you, it always feels like I could be working harder, in terms of how much focused drawing I manage to do in between daydreaming and being distracted by the real world but I guess I get things out consistently so I should be happy about that. Thanks again ^_^b



Have been pretty down about my drawing, despite all the great support here and in Abandoned Hideout and on Skype and stuff. I'm hoping it's a sign of some kind of breakthrough / level up on the way. Anyway, decided to challenge myself to work only in digital for this week, finally started to paint like people have been suggesting I do.

Some random warmups, studies and stuff; trying out different ways of painting; starting with lines, starting with blobs of paint, starting with silhouettes and using clipping masks. Trying to find a way that's nice for me.

[art44]

Great progress man , and cool lighting studies :) keep it up .

[Adrian]

I agree , nice lighting studies man !

I also agree with the fact that those bargue will help you. But be aware that the thing that they intend to help you the most with is better measuring ... at least that's what I felt about them. I believe that if you are aware of the reason behind what you are doing it is much more beneficial to learning how to apply it/make use of it later.

But anyhow that's just my opinion so ... be selective with opinions haha.