Peter's Sketchbook

[Peter]

I think you have good lineweight and a good grasp on the concept of form, its just sometimes your proportions like will be half right, but throw the rest of the drawing off; like in the arm drawings above, you usually indicate the forearm as half the size it really is. Maybe practice quick indications of the same subject matter multiple times just to get the feel of the proportions.

Like lay out four panels, and spend one minute just laying in the arm four times focusing entirely on the proportion and not neatness or lineweight or anything. You can even get a lot out of drawing the same  exact subject twice or more times, because you'll notice things you did and didnt do the first time. It immediately can liven up your eye to what you're coming short on;

Good stuff bro, post till u drop

Hey Fedodika, your'e totally right about my proportions being off, I always thought that it would improve overtime just by drawing constantly but clearly I need to work on it.

Perhaps the angle at which I have my drawing board when drawing is also having an effect on my proportions, think I'll try angling the board more upright.

[Peter]

Been working till late the past week and felt too tired afterwards to post so here's a dump of some work from the past few days.

As usual life drawing and portraits from life. Model was a no show this week for portrait class so we ended up drawing each other for 30 mins each. Need to spend time doing quicker head drawings since these are quite bad, lost alot of the construction when shading so I will probably just focus on the construction side of things.

Tried what Fedodika suggested about drawing the same image multiple times so I revisited one of the arms that I drew the other week. Definitely noticed my proportions being off so I'll need to be more conscious of that in the future.

Felt annoyed with the features I drew in my life drawing class so I drew my eye and lip casts a whole bunch of times and then tried redrawing them from memory to help me remember how they look. I was thinking about working form the Bargue Plates to help me remember how the features look from different angles?

Apart from that I drew a mead from imagination and tried rendering it which as you can see went horribly wrong but wanted to prove to myself that drawing from my casts helped my understanding so I drew another head from imagination haha.

I've also singed up for one of the Live streaming classes from Watts Atelier, doesn't start till end of April but really looking forward to getting feedback from Jeff himself. :)    

[Peter]

Signed up to the "Essentials of Realism course" (not tutored) over at Schoolism and bought the "Figure Invention" video from MuddyColor's gumroad account which I watched and made alot of notes on (not sure if I can post them or not?).

Watched the first lesson for the Essentials of Realism course and made my own notes and then did the first assignment which was the Block-In exercise using the ref provided, watched the feedback videos and made notes/corrected my mistakes and then attempted my own block-in using a different ref. 

My plan for this week was to work through as much of this course as possible, particularly the value section as I wanted to start an illustration next week.


My Attempt



Notes from feedback videos





Block-In attempt using different ref

[Richie]

The  Realism course looks like a really good one, i remember his epic thread over on CA.org. The block in studies remind me of when i was painting, the tutor alway was talking about getting the 5 shapes in the face correct to get a good likeness, they were the two 'eye wells' the show of the nose the lip shape and the shadow below the lip shown here: https://www.instagram.com/p/BRbUcHfBFsU this demo shows it better: https://www.instagram.com/p/BM9Sdg8BS0N/...onihduarte

[Fedodika]

ahh i remember that course... its with Mindcandyman right? seems more insteresting now than i remember lol

[Peter]

The  Realism course looks like a really good one, i remember his epic thread over on CA.org. The block in studies remind me of when i was painting, the tutor alway was talking about getting the 5 shapes in the face correct to get a good likeness, they were the two 'eye wells' the show of the nose the lip shape and the shadow below the lip shown here: https://www.instagram.com/p/BRbUcHfBFsU this demo shows it better: https://www.instagram.com/p/BM9Sdg8BS0N/...onihduarte

I've been enjoying the course so far, whenever I need motivation I always go back to his sketchbook haha.

Thanks for the links btw, I'll be sure to check them out. :)

[Peter]

ahh i remember that course... its with Mindcandyman right? seems more insteresting now than i remember lol

Yep that's the one :) It's been a nice change of pace tbh since I felt quite stagnated from powering through all the anatomy videos.

[Peter]

Still making my way through the Essentials of Realism course, probably spent most of my time the last few days making extensive notes since there is so much to take it. If a week's worth of videos is 1 -1.5 hours long i'm probably spending double that making notes haha. Currently on the 3rd week which is values which I'm looking forward tro since it was the main reason why I started the course.

Did another 3 stage block - in for the 1st week tracing over the ref. 2nd weeks homework was to do another 3 stage block -in but to make it bigger than the ref image (so not tracing over the image). Decided to do mine traditionally since that's what I primarily work in. It doesn't look like it but the drawing is bigger than the ref, I just tried to make them a similar size  for the purpose of posting.

I will definitely need to do more of these since I'm noticing quite a few proportional errors which all looked correct during the drawing process but once comparing them side to side to the ref you can tell my accuracy is still quite not where it needs to be.






Here's a portrait from my life drawing class as usual, changed my approach this time and tried the 3 stage block in rather than constructing the head. Not sure how I feel about this approach though since it felt like I was merely copying rather than constructing which isn't what I want to do. I will have to find a way to utilise some of this knowledge such as the approach to shadow shapes and use it with the Watts method as that is the approach I want to learn fully.

The eyes look very gozzy on the drawing but in my defense he was falling asleep haha.

[Fedodika]

hey man, i still think you'd benefit a lot by just doing a couple hundred basic head lay ins of like the loomis head and riley method and self critiquing along the way. Your proportions in the last head are very strange and it seems like you could spend some time on quicker drawings to ingrain a better and natural feel for proportions.

The female portrait is better, but still skewed and not very accurate, and its just mainly from knowing intuitively where the major landmarks are and their distances from eachother

[Peter]

hey man, i still think you'd benefit a lot by just doing a couple hundred basic head lay ins of like the loomis head and riley method and self critiquing along the way. Your proportions in the last head are very strange and it seems like you could spend some time on quicker drawings to ingrain a better and natural feel for proportions.

The female portrait is better, but still skewed and not very accurate, and its just mainly from knowing intuitively where the major landmarks are and their distances from eachother

Hi Fedodika, thanks for the feedback as always. Yh I did terrible on that last lead from life, rather than constructing it (dividing head into 1/3's etc) I tried blocking it in just from what I was seeing which clearly was not a good choice.

Don't even know what happened with the woman's head, spent time examining each area, making sure my angles and distances between light and dark shapes was correct but clearly my accuracy is not as good as I thought.

Thanks for the suggestion, I think it will definitely help me, I'll give it ago tonight and tomorrow, prob watch some of the head drawing videos from Watts again and make notes.

[Fedodika]

Jeff emphasizes correct repetition, and that's gonna go further than trying to shade and lay in planes on a flawed drawing. When you do lots and lots of repetitions, especially the riley method, just from your head and every now and then a few from reference, you build this sensitivity to the correct proportions. The Rythms help you find the other parts of the face once you internalize them.

For instance, draw 10 riley heads from your imagination, then 10 from jeffs examples. put em away and come back the next day and see how they are flawed. if your rythms are off, it will influence the rest of the heads you end up doing, specially the more finished ones. Work on the rythms until they are solid, and it will make everything else a lot easier, you'll just know when a portrait is off and be able to use the rythms as a guide to find where the other features/bones would be.

Just fill pages with em dude, i did it a couple months ago with loomis heads in pen, it multiplied my head drawing skills

[Peter]

Jeff emphasizes correct repetition, and that's gonna go further than trying to shade and lay in planes on a flawed drawing. When you do lots and lots of repetitions, especially the riley method, just from your head and every now and then a few from reference, you build this sensitivity to the correct proportions. The Rythms help you find the other parts of the face once you internalize them.

For instance, draw 10 riley heads from your imagination, then 10 from jeffs examples. put em away and come back the next day and see how they are flawed. if your rythms are off, it will influence the rest of the heads you end up doing, specially the more finished ones. Work on the rythms until they are solid, and it will make everything else a lot easier, you'll just know when a portrait is off and be able to use the rythms as a guide to find where the other features/bones would be.

Just fill pages with em dude, i did it a couple months ago with loomis heads in pen, it multiplied my head drawing skills

It's been ages since I worked through the videos, I will definitely have to start working through them again, lots of valuable knowledge. :)

I usually get abit of time in work to draw so I'll follow your example and use that time to draw this stuff from memory each week.

[Peter]

Spent the weekend following Fedodika's suggestion. So far I've only managed to work through some of the Reilly Head (did't think it would take me so long) doing a page using the handout provided and a page from memory.

I'm gonna start an illustration Tuesday which I was gonna spend about 3 weeks on, try and finish for the 24th if possible because that is when the live streaming class starts. I definitely want to atleast work through the value section of the schoolism course next week to help with the illustration so it might be that I only work on the reilly and loomis heads while in work.

 

[Fedodika]

Excellent! do you see the subtle differences in all of them? how some look better than others? This carries into everything else. if you do enough, you'll really start to see everything differently because of how conscious it makes you of shapes in the head, specially the riley method, keep it up!

[Peter]

Excellent! do you see the subtle differences in all of them? how some look better than others? This carries into everything else. if you do enough, you'll really start to see everything differently because of how conscious it makes you of shapes in the head, specially the riley method, keep it up!

Yh I did actually, when I finished the page I noticed that i had drew some of the heads too narrow and some areas too wide or too tall. Once I do corrections on top I think it will really start sinking in. :)

[Peter]

Stuff from the last few days. Finished the Reilly front view page, had a trickier time with this view because of the amount of abstraction lines, noticed that I drew some heads too wide drew the eyes too close on some etc. Think the final attempt was my best crack at it so now I just need to draw them more over the next few months years etc until it all sinks in.

Life drawing for this week as usual, still need to work on my 10-15 min drawings, think I spend too long on the gesture which results in the pose feeling quite stiff so I will have to practice them at home. Lastly some sketches from my sketchbook, took the front view of the reilly head and worked on it abit.

Apart from that I've gone through weeks 3 and 4 of the Schoolism course and made notes and I started to work on the illustration tonight just doing some thumbnail sketches. Doing the thumbnail sketches is something I always struggle with, I'll have the idea in my head but still can't quite translate what I'm thinking onto paper. Think I might look at some composition rules/guidelines since my compositions suck.

My plan for the illustration was to have finished rough comps and take one to a more finished state by the end of this week, take ref photos, take the comp to a finished state and have some colour comps by the end of next week, and paint the whole thing the week after.

[Peter]

Started working on the illustration I was talking about. Since I want to get into book illustration I wanted to illustrate a scene from a book. Read a bunch of short stories since they aren't too long so it would be easier to pick a scene I like rather than reading a 500 page book. 

The short story I'm doing a illustration on is called "The 3 Questions" by Leo Tolstoy. 

The bit of the story I was concentrating on was the bit where the king approaches the hermit to ask is 3 questions he wanted answering and took over digging for the hermit (just so you have some context.)

So in my rough comps I was focusing on different parts of that particular scene such as when the king first comes across the hermit, when he approaches him and asks his 3 questions, and when the king takes over digging for the hermit.

Did a bunch of rough comps and chose my favourite, did some variations of that comp to see if I could portray the scene better and selected 3 comps that I wanted to develop bigger which I put a red dot below.




I took those 3 rough comps I liked. blew them up and re drew them at a larger size  which I then shaded so that I could choose which one I liked the best and develop that one further. I think re drawing them roughly was a bad idea because I feel like they look worse than they did when they were small, almost as if they look too stiff now.

I think I should re draw them again but this time put abit more thought into the quality of the drawing. Don;t want to spend ages on it since this is still the rough stage, just enough so they look as good as they did on the smaller scale so I can choose the best one.








Apologies for the wall of text haha, just had quite abit to say.

[Peter]

Model had to cancel last minute for my life drawing class on Monday so one of the regulars volunteered to sit for a portrait session instead so I stayed for that. Utilized the Reilly Method for the drawing and I think they turned out much better than my usual portraits from life (never again will I stray from this method). Only took them to the block in stage because I didn't have enough time to fully render them. 






I've carried on with my illustration. Didn't like how my rough comps looked blown up and traced so instead of re drawing all 3 I selected the comp I liked best, put abit more time into making the drawing look nicer/correct.




From that I experimented with lighting, I was originally going to go with frontal lighting but I quite like how it looked lit from the front left and right so I might choose one of them instead.






Then my next step was working out the value structure, again experimented with different ideas and I've settled on the "High Key" value structure. 

My next step/s for the rest of the week was to re draw the comp on a larger scale and take it as much as I can without using reference, redo my value structure and blend it together to give definition to the forms, shoot my reference imagery and then start work on the final drawing.

However I'm abit stuck on the perspective for this piece, was hoping someone could help me out.

Model had to cancel last minute for my life drawing class on Monday so one of the regulars volunteered to sit for a portrait session instead so I stayed for that. Utilized the Reilly Method for the drawing and I think they turned out much better than my usual portraits from life (never again will I stray from this method). Only took them to the block in stage because I didn't have enough time to fully render them. 

I've carried on with my illustration. Didn't like how my rough comps looked blown up and traced so instead of re drawing all 3 I selected the comp I liked best, put abit more time into making the drawing look nicer/correct.

From that I experimented with lighting, I was originally going to go with frontal lighting but I quite like how it looked lit from the front left and right so I might choose one of them instead.

Then my next step was working out the value structure, again experimented with different ideas and I've settled on the "High Key" value structure. 

My next step/s for the rest of the week was to re draw the comp on a larger scale and take it as much as I can without using reference, redo my value structure and blend it together to give definition to the forms, shoot my reference imagery and then start work on the final drawing.

However I'm abit stuck on the perspective for this piece, was hoping someone could help me out.




The scene will be in 1 point perspective and I was wondering about the figures and how to make sure they are also in perspective. The 2 images above by N.C Wyeth are similar to how I wanted my image to look. Wasn't sure from how my figures are indicated whether they would be in 1 point or 2 point.

[darktiste]

With such showcase of love for the fundamental we can almost only stay silent and try to learn for this sketchbook.Only thing i will hammer is balance those fundamental with more experimentation try to add more expression and character to the character.Atleast it you seem to start to grasp what i am hammering with those last study.

[Peter]

With such showcase of love for the fundamental we can almost only stay silent and try to learn for this sketchbook.Only thing i will hammer is balance those fundamental with more experimentation try to add more expression and character to the character.Atleast it you seem to start to grasp what i am hammering with those last study.

Wow darktiste thanks for the kind words man, it means alot :)  Yh I think expression is still a rough area for me, think I'm being too stiff with my figures (and drawings in general) and not bending the rules to suit my needs. My online class strated last night so hopefully that helps me work on it.