(12-10-2019, 10:21 AM)darktiste Wrote: There so much stuff to read in here so i am sorry if what i am gonna say might have been said before this message.I think it great that you have an academic approach but i feel like it also play against you in term of how rigid the academic approach tend to try to impose itself as the go to method it important in my opinion to diversify the source of material you study.
If i can give you an advise it would be to do more gesture drawing and try to approach your drawing by working all around the piece to maintain the proportion if you work to much on one thing you will generally lose the proportion in relation to the rest.What i think happen is that you take so much time measuring that when a line is done it become hard for you to change anything.If you want to become free you need to work lightly and quickly by doing this you leave space for change.There will always come a time that your satisfied it at that moment that you can start to press harder to bring out the line.Don't be afraid to be messy it the stage where you figure sh1t measure and check angle and proportion those kind of thing.
Lastly i hope that your using those study and applying them to your own personal project if your not doing this already because if you don't you are not testing if your really understand what your studying.It one thing to study it an other to apply what was learned.By having a good balance between your own personal project and study you can better inform yourself on what next is necessary to study.
I hope this was helpful.
Hey Darktiste, no problem! I mainly use my sketchbooks to keep track of my progress aswell as my thoughts (hence why I write so much haha) so apologies if I go off on a tangent.
Thankis for your suggestions :) I've been meaning to get back into gesture drawing since as you said it's something that I struggle with. Atm I've been trying to stick to one thing at a time rather than multiple things like I normally would. Are you suggesting to not measure as much as I am currently (juding measurements more by eye?) or working quicker than I am currently, or just doing lots of gesture drawings of varying times? Ive mainly been trying to work on my proportions the past few weeks since they were all over the place most of the time.
I've actually just started geting back into personal work (trying to rework an old idea I had) since I'm terrible for just studying constantly and like you daid not applying it to what I want to do. It's something that I'm currently trying to work on, hopefully actually finishing this personal piece that I'm working on right now will give me to push I need.
Completely forgot I was covering some extra hours for my friend so again don't have as much work to show as I normally would.
Portrait Class
This was the 2nd drawing I did since I used the 1st one as a warm-up since I go to class straight from work. The bad lighting did not make her look attractive at all but perhaps if I got into rendering it would of tunred out ok? Can't really tell.
Life Class
Rendered the drawing from last week. Think it definitely looks better in person and definitely need to work on my anatomy/rendering. I beleive I'm going in the right direction so atleast that's something....
Live Streaming
Erik
H/W for week 9 - Still using the academic approach but want to try and inject more gesture into the poses, push the leg more etc make it look more dynamic.
Brian
H/W for week 8 - I was having such a shitty night with this one. I was trying to do other work before this one but everything I was doing was just turning out crap. I know everyone has bad days but this felt like an extremely bad day for me where nothing was going right.
Poster
As I mentioned in one of previous posts I wanted to revisit an old poster idea I had and force myself to finish it over the winter break as I have 2 weeks off. Last time I tried inking it digitally and was struggling alot with it but this time I'm going to try and ink it by hand and then colour it digitally since it's meant to be a screen print. Going to so some reading up on how to create screen printed artwork digitally since I don't really have a clue on how to do it.
Tried to see if I could improve on what I had last time, mainly trying to fix the figure.
Old poster sketch
I noticed some proportional errors on my old drawing such as the width of the shoulders and her arms and hand so had a go at fixing those issues.
New poster sketch
Heres where I'm at currently after attempting to fix the previous mistakes. Not really sure if eveything looks good proportionally now, (or if what I did was an improvement on the old sketch?) if there are any mistakes please let me know, if not I'm going to transfer this to my bristol board and start inking this later on in the week.
It not bad to study but it actually can be a comfort zone and this tend to create less apparent progress for those who observe the artist study.When you work different subject in the course of a week it give you some room to observe your own progress.When you do personal project it become more organic you start to naturally understand what you need to study.
I did a small liquify adjustment on your last piece i think it a great tool to avoid redrawing certain part of the face that can be a long thing to do.But a good understanding of how the form turn in 3d will always beat trick any day of the week
For that dark skin rendering i think it would be justify to do your value to reflect a dark skin but i assume it just because it a wip right now that we don't see the dark of the skin in the lighter part yet.
To inject gesture into your work try more challenging pose with foreshortening and more movement.Try to find gesture subject that have dynamism like MMA figher who often don't have a alot of cloth so you can also try capturing gesture of dancer or mime also.
your poster is looking better for sure, still feels stiff but the hand looks better and the face is better too, maybe youll see that with time.
The black guy drawing is not bad, his torso is a tad short but overall the proportions and mapping are rather good.
The yoni is pretty rough, his jaw should be way fuller, you drew him like a 10 year old with a beard; I think the first drawing of the woman looks ghoulish, generally you wanna hold off on aging lines and try to make them smooth as you can, even older women, unless their age is so charming, you wanna dial it back.
The older man figure pose has a lot of proportion issues and skewing but its an honest effort
Do whatever you did on that black guy, thats working
(12-16-2019, 07:46 AM)Fedodika Wrote: your poster is looking better for sure, still feels stiff but the hand looks better and the face is better too, maybe youll see that with time.
The black guy drawing is not bad, his torso is a tad short but overall the proportions and mapping are rather good.
The yoni is pretty rough, his jaw should be way fuller, you drew him like a 10 year old with a beard; I think the first drawing of the woman looks ghoulish, generally you wanna hold off on aging lines and try to make them smooth as you can, even older women, unless their age is so charming, you wanna dial it back.
The older man figure pose has a lot of proportion issues and skewing but its an honest effort
Do whatever you did on that black guy, thats working
Sorry for the late reply Fedodika, deiced to take a break from art forums while I was off from work.
Thanks for the feedback :) I decided to go ahead with the poster rather than constantly adjusting it since I'd never finish the damn thing haha.
Man I knew the torso on that drawing seemed odd to me, I was thinking it looked short but my measurements where saying otherwise. Don't get me started on that Yoni. I honestly don't know what the hell happened with it.
Lately I find that I'll have weeks where my work is consistently the same skill wise and then others where it's like I've gone back 10 steps and struggle to draw something basic that I know I can draw. I had it again with the final week of Brian's class. It's almost as if someone else did the drawing. I don't know if it's Burn out or because I'm using a different approach?
In regards to the older woman portrait, I still need to work on knowing when take artistic license with what it is I'm drawing. I feel like I'm stuck in the mindset of drawing exactly what I see. I mean it didn't help that the lighting was casting those shadows on her but I still could of cut some bits out like you said.
Decided to take a break from the art forums while I was on break and get some free time in for myself since I usually don't have alot of time to unwind during the week.
Manily worked on completing the poster from my last update during the 2 week period, I was hoping to get some paitning in but the poster took longer than I expected so didn't get the chance in the end so I'm going to spend some time this month working on my painting skills.
Poster
Here's the final sketch that I posted last time.
I transfered the drawing to some bristol board and worked out my light and dark areas for inking in pencil first. I tried inking the poster traditionally with the plan to scan it into photoshop and colour it but I was really hating how my inking of the piece was going. It just looked really sloppy to me so in the end I decided to just ink over my finished pencil drawing in photoshop and then work out my colours.
Finished Pencil Drawing
Finished Poster
Settled on a 4 colour screen print to keep it simple.
Here's how the poster turned out in the end. I kept refering to posters by artists that I liked to help with the colours and linework (manily Martin Ansin's work) and kept it rather simple since I don't really know they do all those crazy effects digitally for screen printing. Tbh I'm not 100% sure what I did can be screen printed, I was foloowing a guide for creating digital artwork for the intention of screen printing but unless I actually try and screen print it myself I can't say for certainty. I plan on emailing abunch of artists and potentially screen printing studios and see if they can helpt me at all with all the know how.
Here are the colours seperated into their own layers
Finally the same layers with registration makrs ready to be transferred to a screen
Overall I'm happy that I was finally able to complete a finished piece of art. There's definitely alot to improve on but that will come with time.
Close up of the face since you can't really see the detail above
Live Streaming
Final H/W's for both classes
Erk Week 10
Brian Week 10
Had a very bad week with this one. Same with the Yoni drawing for week 8 I've been experiencing weeks where I seem to regress in skill and struggle with something that I shouldn't have an issue with. Not sure if it was is just burn out or due to trying a different approach?
How far back is your viewing position? Fedo recently tried stepping back further and it went well for him. Could be worth trying. In general, we're just not very good at judging things when they take up a larger area of out field of view. Stepping back allows us to focus things to where we're better equipped to judge the accuracy of what we're doing. If you set up your easel so you can see your drawing and the subject at the same time, you can more easily compare the two as you step back. It can maybe feel like a trivial thing but it makes a big difference.
(01-03-2020, 11:22 AM)Tristan Berndt Wrote: How far back is your viewing position? Fedo recently tried stepping back further and it went well for him. Could be worth trying. In general, we're just not very good at judging things when they take up a larger area of out field of view. Stepping back allows us to focus things to where we're better equipped to judge the accuracy of what we're doing. If you set up your easel so you can see your drawing and the subject at the same time, you can more easily compare the two as you step back. It can maybe feel like a trivial thing but it makes a big difference.
Thanks for the suggestion Tristan, the thought never actually crossed my mind, that probably explains why I don't seem to have this issue when i'm doing the figure assignments since the head doesn't take up my entire screen.
I'll give it ago when I next work on my protraits and see if it helps. :)
Forgot to post some work I did before my holidays.
Life Class
Final week of the 3 week pose I gave painting another shot. Wanted to try the Frederix red label canvas but my order was cancelled due to no stock so I had to go back to using some hard board that I primed with gesso.
Before the class started I re-read the inital painting chapters in Speed's book and made some notes to use as a guide for how to tackle this painting. I premixed my values before hand into 4 puddles ranging from my lightest value (white) to darkest (burnt umber) and mixed inbetween values with my brush when needed from those 4 puddles. I also used far less turps than usual.
I felt like my approach this time was far better than my previous attempts but still got along way to go with my painting skillls. I'm gonna spend the next week or 2 doing some painting studies, mainly from casts to get some practice in.
I transfered my block-in from week 1 to my masonite board and spent 2.5 hours on the painting.
Portrait Class
A protrait from my last class before the christmas break. My block-in for this felt stronger compared to previous attempts from life.
Still need to do the corrections for my live streaming classes for the past 2 weeks which I'll get to next week and post then.
I was wondering if anyone here has any experience with any of the CGMA classes (particulary anatomy) or Scott Eaton's Online Anatomy Class (Full Subscription)? I want to take an anatomy class and get some much needed feedback but mainly use treat it as a bootcamp to get my anatomy skills up. Atm I'm leaning more towards Scott's class but i'm unsure how good it is and considering it is alot of money I'd like to be sure it's worth it.
Work from last week. I've been spending most of my time working on improving my painting skills. I've been reading through both of Harold Speed's books and found them to be really helpful and started working through the beginner painting exercises that he suggests.
Painting
I own a couple of casts so I spent my time last week working from them.
For the first painting of David's lips I followed Speeds advice in his drawing book. Started by first doing a block-in which I then keyed with a middle value and worked from my lights to my darks.
The second painting of David's eye I followd the same process as above.
For both paintings I was working on Frederix's canvas 9x12 and stuck to using filberts and a medium of linseed oil and turps like Speed suggests with Burnt Umber and Titanium White as my palette. Both of these I did after work and completed in one sitting like Speed also suggests. Roughly around 5 hours from start to finish.
Third painting I spent more time on as I was working from a more complex cast of Michelangelo. I spent much longer on the block-in for this one over a couple of nights. Spent more time than I probably should have on it but I wanted to do the best job I could. Probably 5 hours maybe 6 on the block-in and spent Saturday afternoon/evening painting it which was roughly 5 hours so 10 hours from start to finish. I didn't realise that my previous paintings took a few days to dry due to the medium I used. I'm used to my previous paintings drying over night so I could of spent more time on it but oh well. Atleast I know for next time I have more time.
Same materials as the first two but this time I followed Speed's advice from his painting book of painting in the background first and then lights to darks.
With the last painting things definitely clicked with me more, not sure if that's becuase I spent more time working on it but things like grouping my values and working strategically made alot more sense.
Portrait Class
Block-in from my long pose portrait class. I beleive the model was a samba dancer? She was wearing this head piece with a ton of feathers on top.
Life Class
Back at my regualr life class aswell.
Those two anatomy courses were fully booked by the time I made up my mind so I'll have to wait till April before I can start that. I decided on Scott Eaton's course in the end so when I can book for the Spring term I will. Not 100% sure what to do in the meantime though or what to focus on. I decided to not take any live streaming course this term at Watts and just audit one class so I can save money for Scott's class aswell as Edinburgh Atelier as I want to do another short course soon.
Right now I'm thinking of spending January on just painting, February on learning digital screen printing as I found some videos that will hopefully explain the process to me and do another poster design afterwards, then maybe March getting back into anatomy and just learning all the muscles I need to know in the standard poses of front/side/back like you see in the anatomy books which would then take me into April for Scotts class and then dive more into anatomy after that. That's what I'm thinking atm, I'm up for suggestions if anyone has them or if they agree with my plan?
i think you can keep pushing the values on say the eye, like the background on that and lips is much darker and dont be afraid to try and push those brights all the way up to what they are in the photo, just keep laying in white and blending without getting it too caked, or use solvent and a rag to pull out and get those brights up right now they're like a mid tone and could be so much more
The bust looks really good! I do feel like in the final picture you lose some of the unity you had before it was modeled in the previous stages. I think Speed recommends brushing the whole together to kind of bring it back if you accidentally go too far, which I tend to have to do a lot myself.
The drawing of the casts is really nice, though. Really good shadow shapes.
I think your paint is a bit on the oily side. I know Speed suggests using oil and turpentine with the paint but in general, professional oil paints in the late 18, early 1900's were a lot stiffer than the commercial paints we have today. So when he says the paint in the tube is a bit stiff for free handling, that paint is much more stiff than a modern Winsor & Newton paint. Old holland is the only company I know of that prepares their colors traditionally stiff, but it does vary with age. Paints soften as they age, so paints companies that store tubes for a long time change in consistency as they age (I've noticed this with some of the colors I rarely use and have had for years). Winsor & Newton who Speed mentions also changed in quality (becoming softer) after being bought out by a bank years ago, they used to be the golden standard but have fallen a bit since then. If you like fluid painting, by all means keep doing it, but if you're trying to take advice from people like Speed, it's good to know how his paints are different from ours.
With the values, they seem to be kind of weird. Like, the difference between the highlights and light shape value is huge making the cast look like a shiny grey object when it's actually a matte white object. There are other value issues based on the photo. One example is when I squint at it, the half-tones on the side of the nose group more with the shadows than they do the light, in your painting they group with the light. This kind of stuff repeats all over the place where the big values are proportionally incorrect. Now this is based on a photo but considering how greyed out the painting is, I think it still may be a correct observation. The big values are important, they will be what communicate the big impression and overall sense of form and volume. Seems like you were more concerned with the details and it maybe distracted you from the big stuff? This can happen when you lock yourself into a "method" where you can't easily fix things. Like if you paint with one color at a time, you can't just mix up the right value and place it where it needs to be because you're following a process where it assumes you're not making mistakes.
(01-15-2020, 04:53 AM)Fedodika Wrote: i think you can keep pushing the values on say the eye, like the background on that and lips is much darker and dont be afraid to try and push those brights all the way up to what they are in the photo, just keep laying in white and blending without getting it too caked, or use solvent and a rag to pull out and get those brights up right now they're like a mid tone and could be so much more
Thanks Fedodika. I think I definitely got sloppy towards the end on both of them as I was trying to complete them in a set time limit after work, especailly on the eye , for some reason I struggled alot with that one. I think I need to spend more time on these paintings.
(01-16-2020, 02:33 PM)JosephCow Wrote: The bust looks really good! I do feel like in the final picture you lose some of the unity you had before it was modeled in the previous stages. I think Speed recommends brushing the whole together to kind of bring it back if you accidentally go too far, which I tend to have to do a lot myself.
The drawing of the casts is really nice, though. Really good shadow shapes.
Thanks Joe :) I thought that myself actually, especially with the half tones on the side of the nose, once I finsihed it definitely looked off to me. I think I need to study his book more and try and understand everything he is saying.
(01-20-2020, 04:37 AM)Tristan Berndt Wrote: I think your paint is a bit on the oily side. I know Speed suggests using oil and turpentine with the paint but in general, professional oil paints in the late 18, early 1900's were a lot stiffer than the commercial paints we have today. So when he says the paint in the tube is a bit stiff for free handling, that paint is much more stiff than a modern Winsor & Newton paint. Old holland is the only company I know of that prepares their colors traditionally stiff, but it does vary with age. Paints soften as they age, so paints companies that store tubes for a long time change in consistency as they age (I've noticed this with some of the colors I rarely use and have had for years). Winsor & Newton who Speed mentions also changed in quality (becoming softer) after being bought out by a bank years ago, they used to be the golden standard but have fallen a bit since then. If you like fluid painting, by all means keep doing it, but if you're trying to take advice from people like Speed, it's good to know how his paints are different from ours.
With the values, they seem to be kind of weird. Like, the difference between the highlights and light shape value is huge making the cast look like a shiny grey object when it's actually a matte white object. There are other value issues based on the photo. One example is when I squint at it, the half-tones on the side of the nose group more with the shadows than they do the light, in your painting they group with the light. This kind of stuff repeats all over the place where the big values are proportionally incorrect. Now this is based on a photo but considering how greyed out the painting is, I think it still may be a correct observation. The big values are important, they will be what communicate the big impression and overall sense of form and volume. Seems like you were more concerned with the details and it maybe distracted you from the big stuff? This can happen when you lock yourself into a "method" where you can't easily fix things. Like if you paint with one color at a time, you can't just mix up the right value and place it where it needs to be because you're following a process where it assumes you're not making mistakes.
Thanks for pointing out my mistakes Tristan. In regards to the paints being oily do you suggest that I use no medium at all? I find them to be a tad stiff out of the tube but if the paint doesn't need it I'll try it.
I didn't realise I was making mistakes in the groupings of my values, it looked correct when I mapping out the lights and darks but when I compare it to the photo it is definitely off. I'm definitely having some issue with assigning the vlaues correctly and grouping them. I didn't feel like I was getting distracted from the overall big forms as I was trying to stick to Speed's approach of working from the bigs to the smalls but maybe I did at the very end?
Would you suggest spending more time on these then? Say over a few days? I'm trying to stick to Speed's advice of completing the painting in one sitting which I have been with these but please say if I'm wring. :)
Still focusing on painting which I'll work on until next week as I wanted to work on my understanding of screen printing over Feb.
Painting
Attempt 1
Attempted a portrait, again following the same procedure as before. During the later half of the painting I was having a hard time concentrating and as a result completely fudged the painting up which I wasn't happy with.
Attempt 2
The following day I attempted the same portrait again to make up for the mistakes the first time round and had a much better time at concentrating. Still think I went too dark for her skin tone, I thought once I put the mid tone of my shadows in I would be able to tell but it made it no easier.
Photo Ref
Portrait Class
Rendered drawing from the 2nd week of the long pose. I think my rendering has definitely gotten better but my lay-in is definitely holding me back.
Painting from the 3rd week. Not the best photos as I was taking them in class, I'll take another photo once I pick it up.
It's ok but 2h30m I think is still too quick for me.
Life Class
Life drawing from the last 2 weeks. I'm thinking of going back to the constructive approach for abit on the longer poses and combine the block-in approach with it if possible since I haven't done any constructive drawing in a while.
this http://crimsondaggers.com/forum/attachme...02%205.jpg is a big improvement on the female face looking pretty. Her lip is a little noodley at the top, and her hair could use more volume. her lips and jaw are actually fuller, but you did well playing it down to be safe. Her neck is also too short, which will hurt the feminine qualities of a portrait.
This looks better than the sketch for sure, but it has that noodly lip problem, and her nose is slurring over to the right; id also angle it more, make it less of a tube shape. Her cheekbone feels weird to me, not seeing the ref i imagine that shape is not the right contour, which makes her jaw look very masculine and unnatractive.
(01-27-2020, 03:38 AM)Fedodika Wrote: this http://crimsondaggers.com/forum/attachme...02%205.jpg is a big improvement on the female face looking pretty. Her lip is a little noodley at the top, and her hair could use more volume. her lips and jaw are actually fuller, but you did well playing it down to be safe. Her neck is also too short, which will hurt the feminine qualities of a portrait.
This looks better than the sketch for sure, but it has that noodly lip problem, and her nose is slurring over to the right; id also angle it more, make it less of a tube shape. Her cheekbone feels weird to me, not seeing the ref i imagine that shape is not the right contour, which makes her jaw look very masculine and unnatractive.
big step up on the first portrait peter!
Thanks Man, I didn't realise I made so many mistakes on the portrait painting. Not gonna lie... I was struggling with some of the smaller details like the eyes and lips, probably should of worked larger (these are 9x12) to help with that but atleast I know for next time.
Yh I can't seem to shake this habit of tiny heads in my quicksketch. Doesn't help that I don't actively work on my quicksketch apart from the 40mins or so a week in my life class. I'm planning on working on my figure drawings come March leading up to te anatomy course I want to take with Scott Eaton that starts end of April and continue wokring on my figure skills along side it, see if I can give myself a good 3 hour block every week for quicksketch and hopefully correct my tiny heads.
