Zizka's Sketchbook (Nudity and Vulgarity, NSFW)

[Skeffin]

great improvement in the leg studies btw. When you feel up to tackling gesture drawing its going to come together great.

[Zizka]

Haha thanks. Actually, after reading your comments I decided to work on improving the legs. I hesitate between:

Studying bones OR studying muscles OR just focusing on basic geometric shapes.

[Zizka]

Practice for today:

[Zizka]

Practice for today:

I'm wondering what's the secret of a cross-hatching which systematically looks good.

[darktiste]

Form understanding+Following the curvature of the surface or indicating flatness of surface. Hatching generally represent the shadow portion but still there is a direction of intensity of light even in shadow .Your main problem is you tail they all read flat and there also some confusion on the direction on sphere.

[Skeffin]

Haha thanks. Actually, after reading your comments I decided to work on improving the legs. I hesitate between:

Studying bones OR studying muscles OR just focusing on basic geometric shapes.

generally it should go geometric shapes => bones => muscles


however, I personally reckon doing things out of order is fine, maybe not the most efficient but the important thing is - you're still gaining useful knowledge irregardless of the order. Muscles are more interesting than bones, which are more interesting than form studies. So if you're the type to go spare if you knuckle down on dull exercises ( although you seem pretty rigorous about that sort of thing ) do them in whatever order you feel like or learn them all at once, or switch between them. 

love the pokemon btw, the clefairy is the best one

[Zizka]

Ah I see thanks. So I decided to study bones further then.


The shading of the bones is acceptable I feel.

Could someone point out how to shade the bird? I'd like an example or a mockup if possible. Even partly shaded would help. This is why I've left the bird A as essentially without shading.

The shading of the clouds seems to work to me even though they are just straight lines.

[darktiste]

The review of a working book i recommend if you want to get quicker answers to your cross hatching question.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ETYtpTLL1Y

I recommend you buy this book if full of crosshatching and Pen and inking exercise and it under 20$

https://www.amazon.com/Pen-Ink-Drawing-S...0997046538

[Zizka]

I have Alphonso Don’s books. I still don’t know how to shade the bird properly.

[Zizka]

Practice for today:

[Zizka]

Practice for today. I think this is about my 100% as far as portrait goes at the moment. I honestly can't say what else I could improve on (being my own critic).

[darktiste]

As i said previously it one thing to understand how to copy it an other to invent.What about trying to inventing your own portrait using reference?See that not the end at all.I think perhaps your still in a comfort zone not that you want to stay there but that your still stuck in that way of thinking.

You need to move from observation to application. Just take that simple cup you draw could you draw it without the reference? Could you draw it an add a pattern to it? Could you invent a new cup base on the old one? Could you draw it and make it look like it broken into many piece and still resemble the cup it was made from? You see there a long way to be a master of a subject and there an infinity of possibility of improving a simple object into something out of the ordinary.

What about trying to draw draw the cup in 5 different view using atleast 3 different perspective.That the type of challenge you need to start to give yourself to break your pattern.

You use to make more creative stuff but it slowly turning into a i can copy sketchbook no offense to that it require patience and precision but i think i really want to encourage you to move toward wanting to do better than that.But i also want to stress the importance of being your own vision of yourself.You need to expand beyond what you see.You need to move form seeing thing to seeing what is beyond that point which mean knowing enough about certain subject to create new possibility.

Honestly you drawn portrait but it still very minimal right now you don't even have 50 portrait(and that probaly even a low number)and they are repetition of the same head so please try to get the idea out of your system that there nothing you can learn.

Ask yourself what are you not able to do yet in term of fudamental and from there you can work to move yourself toward achieving what ever you feel you need to achieve to fix those fundamental.But to understand how to do that you need to know 'where to put ''skill point'' you have to understand the skill tree if you understand what i mean.If you want help to understand those skill tree you simply have to ask yourself what your able to do and not do the biggest problem is figuring the why you can't do something but the answers is often simply that some fundamental require other fundamental because they work together.

Let me give you an example let say you want to draw a greyscale cube and add a cast shadow to it.You can't even start to do that without choosing the type of your surface because it will be essential for rendering later on.


What Fundamental would you need to use?Well than you would need to understand what is a cube that mean understanding form&construction than after that you would need to get the proportion right ops that where is start to get tricky how can you get the proportion right if you want to draw the cube in perspective? That where you need to understand perspective and it rule.Ok now let say you manage to draw correctly a cube in whatever perspective now you gotta understand how to cast the shadow and you also need to be able to correctly map the value of each plane of your cube.So this mean you are require to have prio understand of some skill or else you are missing some of the piece to create more complex subject.

Let take a look at what drawing principle was involve just to create a basic cube with a cast shadow.
Surface,Proportion&placement,form&construction,perspective,Light scheme,value and Edge

Why i give you that example is to simply try to explain that fundamental support each other.

So to finish of i want you to take a good look at the image provided.

Here a few image of the principle you need to invest in and ultimately combine i provided two image just to reinforce there importance.

This is a very limited skill tree but they represent the major branch.Each one of them splitting in there own set of rule and relation to other branch.

[Zizka]

Well at the moment I'm focusing on shading because I'm having trouble getting feedback about how to do this efficiently so I'm experimenting on my own. A lot of people are familiar with painting but creating volume with pencil strokes is a lot less well known. I mean without smudging that is.

So what I'm doing recently (with the mug for example) is trying to understand how to shade correctly with lines, curves, etc...

This is a hobby for me, I'm in no rush to draw from imagination. As a hobby, it's also important that I find enjoyment in what I'm doing. Drawing boxes day in, day out would burn me out and likely make me quit.

[Ash]

I love that you show your daily practice!


I noticed that your lines are very thin, like it's not easy to shade that way, you could try a (digital) pencil with a thicker linewidth?

[Zizka]

Thank you. That's a good suggestion, I will try it.

[Zizka]

Ok so I've decided to get out of my comfort zone a bit and focus more on breaking things down in basic shapes instead of copying. I'm definitely out of my comfort zone but it's the right way to go.

[Zizka]

Practice for today, more feet:

[Skeffin]

Ok so I've decided to get out of my comfort zone a bit and focus more on breaking things down in basic shapes instead of copying. I'm definitely out of my comfort zone but it's the right way to go

yea defo, you learn the most when you go out of it


Unfort I don't have any advice on shading, other than look at works with shading you like and analysing why these styles work for these forms, then experimenting yourself, which you seem to be doing anyway. There's also shading with the long flat side of the pencil if you want to cover areas quickly

[Zizka]

The way I see it, there are two kinds of shading when done by pencil. "hue shading" where you fill the shaded area as you would with paint by varying pressure on the pencil and "hatching" where you convey shading with lines and crossed hatching.



I'd like comments on the shapes themselves (look at the bottom right). I'm definitely not in my comfort zone, the struggle is real.

EDIT: Note that you can zoom in on the image by clicking on it. Useful for checking out the bones and muscle deconstruction.

[darktiste]

I don't see a complete foot yet keep deconstructing until you get the toe than start to worry about the asymetrical nature of the foot.You could start to try to get this simplified construction nail down than transition into your other construction.This one is much more box so i guess it a better base.Which is in a way just taking away some part of this simple construction as you can probably tell you foot for the most part move as a unit exepted the toe that just an observation that might be useful to you .

If you want a comment on your work remember that your middle section there a wedge like shape on top of that bridge like shape.Else you don't have the right angle going toward the tibia.Look at the angle of the toe compare to the middle section and now look at where the tibia sit lower than the highest point of the middle section.