(11-02-2019, 11:51 PM)Fedodika Wrote: wasup allen, it seems you have a lot of mileage already, i think you have an idea of an appealing style, i think youd benefit a lot from studying artists with a different shape language to your own, or at least a more refined one, like leyendecker for example. that, or some longer more sustained studies of a subject matter, like really drilling into how to draw and render a hand with all its planes in tact, showing a complete understanding of form. 

I think your characters in the dragon sketch above are cool, but their poses are very stiff and i feel theres some story in the picture but i cant tell what it is. i guess the characters are afraid of the dragon? His pose isnt very aggressive, it kinda looks like he wants a hug but just has a neutral dragon expression. Theres a lot of angles one could play with to show the hostility, like making him dramatically bigger and more intimidating than the others. that and you are showing the characters all "cheating out" facing the audience, when you know, you are an artist and you can show the back of their head, and if they have those features we expect from them, they will still read as that character ;)

(11-05-2019, 07:48 AM)Tristan Berndt Wrote: If you want to get out of your comfort zone, what I would suggest is a more visual approach to drawing. What you've been doing is a lot more of a conceptual approach. You're trying to describe the forms and structure and the "things" of the subject. What I suggest is that instead of trying to draw the "thing", you draw what the "thing" looks like.

Hope you don't mind but I did this quick paint-over to suggest what it could possibly look like. This isn't to say "THIS IS HOW YOU DRAW" but rather just a way to show how the thing you did draw could be represented in a more visual approach. Now of course I didn't have the reference you did so I just sort of guessed and draw it from my imagination, the idea is the same. I tried to emulate your scratchy style of drawing to not make the difference so jarring.



The idea being that our drawings in a sense reflect the visually relevant information and by doing this, convey the form and impression of the subject in a more naturalistic way. 

So a way to study using this approach is to squint down real far and just look for the basic impression of what you see. Then you try to draw that impression, avoiding any and all details you see when you're looking at the subject with your eyes wide open. What this does is that it puts the visual information in a more clear order, telling you what is fundamental and hiding any details or half-tones that would distract you. It's a very old technique but it is very very effective. 

What you then have to pay attention to when doing this is what things actually look like. It can be difficult because the mind has a tendency to impose an idea on top of what we see, and this can distract us from seeing the world accurately. We all have these tendencies and a good artistic education is largely about overcoming them to see the world more as it truly appears and be able to represent it accurately. It is of very big importance that the things we draw in paint are represented the way they actually appear, with the right contrast to its impression. The best way to see what the impression actually is without the details distracting you is to squint and follow that more fundamental big impression

When you have an organised drawing that is careful with what information it includes, it puts extra pressure and weight on that information. So if you have to block in a head in 10 lines, those lines become very important and you have to first select the important information fundamental to the impression and then draw them it correctly for it to read well. This is hard to do because you have little to hide behind and a great weight is put on your skills to see and draw accurately. However it is also easier because when you're working with a drawing, you don't have 100 different lines to keep track of, you have a handful of very important lines. 


You do a lot of construction lines in your drawing and it's something I want to touch on. The thing with "construction" lines is that they don't exist. They exist in your head, they're a concept you're projecting on to a subject but they are not an inherent part of the subject itself. So with things in your head, I'd argue that they're best if they stay in your head, at least when they don't appear visually. This way you can keep your drawing or painting focused on looking like what it's supposed to look like and it frees you up to better be able to judge the image. Like when doing a "construction drawing" of a head or something and there are a bunch of boxes there, does it look like the thing you're drawing? not really. How do you know you're right in what you drew? you can kind of guess but it becomes harder to see it because your drawing is further away from the visual impression of the subject.

What you can however do is use these concepts of construction to help orient yourself in your drawing, to help you select the critical information and to help in designing a block in that is both visually appropriate and conveys some of the structural qualities in a "construction" method. The advantage of this is that you get the structure of a constructed drawing but you don't have all these ugly abstracted lines cluttering your drawing, so instead you can focus on the critical information for your drawing. I did a quick example of this just to illustrate the point.



So in this drawing, there are no construction lines. What I did was I drew something from my imagination just focusing on what would be the visually important information but I used ideas about construction to aid me when simplifying and designing the block-in. I would really encourage this if you're interested in a structural approach to drawing because it lets you see what you're actually doing rather than working blindly as is done in pure "construction" techniques. So it keeps the theoretical stuff in your head, and it keeps the visual stuff on the paper/canvas/screen, and it keeps them from interfering with one another.


Now of course, if this doesn't resonate with you, that's perfectly fine. There are many ways of drawing and it's good to learn several to find which ones resonate with you and are effective. 
Ps. I haven't gone back over and edited this post, going to bed as soon as I hit "post" so sorry if there are half-finished thoughts there (as I often leave).

(11-13-2019, 04:36 AM)drifter93 Wrote: Hi I like your sketches and was reading the advice others posted on here, thought it was really interesting to try to draw without construction lines (I think I never learned how to draw otherwise so it's a completely new idea to me). I don't really have any advice 'cause I don't think I'm qualified to give any but I'm definitely enjoying seeing what you draw and post on here :)

(11-13-2019, 09:02 PM)darktiste Wrote: I think the line is to heavy it draw away from the femininity you could give to your character also she seem stiff and not graceful.But i guess your not gonna play more with it anymore so i won't bother you more than that.