Scwhingalongadingdong's sketchbook

[Schwing]

I guess goal in art are pretty hard to measure since you can never quantify your skill exactly. Here it is anyway:

My short term goals are:

1. Go through the figure drawing material I pulled together over the summer. Do two gnomon workshop videos and 2 books.
   
2. Study anatomy every day over the summer.
   
3. Nail my pre entrance task for art classes at highschool next year.
   
4. Win the school art prize at the end of the year.
   

In the long term I want to make a comic book. I want to pour in my ideas and tell a solid story with great illustrations. I also want to make album art for my favourite bands!

[Schwing]

Latest work:

[Schwing]

I'll link my deviant art and stop being so self conscious about internet people. Prepare to cringe! 4 months of progress is on there. Some good. Some bad. Mostly bad.

http://vaeldus.deviantart.com/

[Amit Dutta]

Hey dude, welcome and good start posting. from what i see, i recommend you check out this, http://www.dorian-iten.com/ particularly the accuracy guide.
As well as that your lines are a bit tentative and 'scratchy' ie using lots of small marks to make a longer line. A good way of learning to simplify angles and distance is to use straight lines to draw the main angles of the curved lines in your reference. This is a more structural approach and aids in boiling things down into primitive forms (boxes, wedges, cylinders etc) first. Work on learning and practicing the general proportions of the body first very then you can work on perspective and form. Drawabox.com has solid beginner exercises on the fundamentals of drawing and perspective, i recommend you do those as well.

good luck!

[Schwing]

Hey dude, welcome and good start posting. from what i see, i recommend you check out this, http://www.dorian-iten.com/ particularly the accuracy guide.

As well as that your lines are a bit tentative and 'scratchy' ie using lots of small marks to make a longer line. A good way of learning to simplify angles and distance is to use straight lines to draw the main angles of the curved lines in your reference. This is a more structural approach and aids in boiling things down into primitive forms (boxes, wedges, cylinders etc) first. Work on learning and practicing the general proportions of the body first very then you can work on perspective and form. Drawabox.com has solid beginner exercises on the fundamentals of drawing and perspective, i recommend you do those as well.

Thanks man!
Yea I suppose I should go over the fundamentals. I guess that would beef up my intuition when it comes to drawing figures.

[Amit Dutta]

Yep, the fundamentals should always be worked on, no matter how good one gets. More applied focus on them will allow you to improve quicker. It's all too easy to forget how important they are and not really apply them while drawing, all the while, thinking you are.

[Triggerpigking]

Good start dude!. If you haven't already i'd really reccomend you check out the proko tutorials on youtube, he does a good job of teaching the fundamentals of figure drawing and anatomy and how to apply form to them. Good luck!.

[Schwing]

Good start dude!. If you haven't already i'd really reccomend you check out the proko tutorials on youtube, he does a good job of teaching the fundamentals of figure drawing and anatomy and how to apply form to them. Good luck!.

Oh yea I've watched a couple of videos I think. Right now I'm working through a DVD from gnomon workshop and copying some stuff/ making notes as I go. I've been looking at your sketchbook and it's amazing how much you've improved! I hope I can improve as much as you have.

[Triggerpigking]

Ah cheers dude, I appreciate it! :).

[Schwing]

[Schwing]

I was on holiday for 2 weeks so here's all of the stuff I did on a pad of paper
I guess I'm too scribbly with things. Need to refine my shading technique with crosshatching. I guess it stems from a lack of confidence with what I'm about to draw. Time to study! Oh yea. And also time to stop calling my drawings gay! Enough of the juvenile humour right? But I'm only 17 so I can still take those liberties I think. Ah who gives a shit. There's nothing worse than someone who pretends to be mature when they're not!
Here's to being juvenile!

[neopatogen]

Hello, decent amount of work here in your SB! I would second Amit's and Trigger's advice on resources for fundamentals. I'm learning from those sources as well and find them all quite mind-shifting. For faces, Loomis book is very good, it can be found for free online and it also covers certain fundamentals.

[Schwing]

Hello, decent amount of work here in your SB! I would second Amit's and Trigger's advice on resources for fundamentals. I'm learning from those sources as well and find them all quite mind-shifting. For faces, Loomis book is very good, it can be found for free online and it also covers certain fundamentals.

Andrew loomis? Yea I'm using his figure drawing book too. Drawing the head and hands is the one right?

[Anton_Fort]

I always wonder why people study anatomy like crazy when they don't know fundamentals. I also wonder why don't they draw bones, a whole skeleton. It's a basic structure of the body so why don't study this first? You must understand a lot before jumping to anatomy.

[neopatogen]

Actually even in Loomis Figure drawing book mentioned by Schwing the "basic manneqin" is a simplified skeleton. I think the reason is that for most people muscles are more fun. I like how Proko calms down his audience in Anatomy lessons promising that the muscles are going to be very soon, just a bit more bones :) But I would not be so sure that Schwing missed this part. Skeletal structure also something one can repeatedly return to if not memorised well and if one realises there's some fundamental problem with one's figure drawings.

[Schwing]

Posted by Anton_Fort - 2 hours ago
I always wonder why people study anatomy like crazy when they don't know fundamentals. I also wonder why don't they draw bones, a whole skeleton. It's a basic structure of the body so why don't study this first? You must understand a lot before jumping to anatomy.

Thanks for the tips. I think it's because noobs like me don't understand how complex it really is. I've actually had to reevaluate my goals at the top of my sketchbook a lot since I started due to the vast amount of information I'm getting bombarded with. The problem was I really didn't know what the fundamentals were exactly and what the most basic level of abstraction was. So I've been 'regressing' a bit.
Not sure about skeletons though. I think that's one step up from basic mannequins. I consider what I am studying now as anatomy - but just a very abstract level of it.

Lately I've been spamming out gesture drawings and boxes galore:



There's definitely a lot I missed in the past! It's easy to get conceited and think you know it all. I clearly did get conceited and did cut some corners

Posted by neopatogen - 1 hour ago
Actually even in Loomis Figure drawing book mentioned by Schwing the "basic manneqin" is a simplified skeleton. I think the reason is that for most people muscles are more fun. I like how Proko calms down his audience in Anatomy lessons promising that the muscles are going to be very soon, just a bit more bones :) But I would not be so sure that Schwing missed this part. Skeletal structure also something one can repeatedly return to if not memorised well and if one realises there's some fundamental problem with one's figure drawings.

Oh yea. I liked the thought: "BWHAHAHAHA I'M GOING TO MEMORISE EVERY SINGLE MUSCLE IN THE BODY AND NO ONE CAN STOP ME MUAHAHAHAHA!!!"
I'm just going to iterate over things. Study fundamentals, try and produce something good (but it turns out shit), repeat. At some point they will be less shit. I hope hehe.

[Schwing]

Actually wondering if I don't spend enough time trying to make something look good sometimes. In the past I had fuck all knowledge and I practised very rarely but I was still able to produce something that looked good (sort of) if I took my time. Right now I'm really messy. I just scribble here and scribble there. Maybe that's a reason why everything looks like shit?

[Anton_Fort]

You know, while you learning (especially for this particular moment) everything will looks like shit. My stuff looked like shit and still is. The difference is as the time passes you will have different kinds of mistakes and your stuff will be better no matter what. The point is to not rush these things, start from the beginning. Learn the structure of things, learn basic shading, develop a skill to see a form in 3D, etc.. There are really a lot of things you should care about right now more that your anatomy knowledge. And believe me - anatomy is not everything. You can create something good with just a basic knowledge of the human body.

[Schwing]

You know, while you learning (especially for this particular moment) everything will looks like shit. My stuff looked like shit and still is. The difference is as the time passes you will have different kinds of mistakes and your stuff will be better no matter what. The point is to not rush these things, start from the beginning. Learn the structure of things, learn basic shading, develop a skill to see a form in 3D, etc.. There are really a lot of things you should care about right now more that your anatomy knowledge. And believe me - anatomy is not everything. You can create something good with just a basic knowledge of the human body.

Ok. So the bottom line is: who cares if it looks like shit just draw and git gud skrub! Words to live by. When you are practising the fundamentals you notice your mistakes more because you're actually working on them. Makes sense.

[Schwing]

Been chugging out a LOT of pages of gesture drawings. Finally seeing some improvement. Did a little watercolour pencil thing to ease the grind. Looks whack but who cares!