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Hi everyone,
New here to crimson daggers, but been following for years now, decided to get off my arse and really make a go of learning how to paint and draw.
My long term goal is to go pro making comics and illustration.
short term this year what to get my head around anatomy and photoshop
OK here what I've done today:
Im following john K $100,000 Animation Drawing Course http://animationresources.org/?p=1929, which is basically Preston Blair's animation book so heres part of 1: Construction/The Head
Also been told to copy out early cartoon work for a month, so I chose the classic Mickey Mouse, also to add correction to the drawing.
Anatomy structure
Finally trying to get the hang of photoshop by working through the great ctrl-paint tutorials:
Thats it for today, the Brasil-Chile game was too distracting :)
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Continuing the johnK course, still on the first page!
Trying something new, doing the pose from a different angle next to the one I copied, hope it help transition of drawing from memory.
Trying to get proportions in my head. will draw these out from different angles next.
Skulls! every even numbered one is from memory, having trouble with more extreme angles.
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Bit more fluid with the shapes now in the Preston blair/John K course onto page 2 tomorrow
Mickey mouse copies, getting the head about the same size but way off with the body angles which throws everything else out.
and lastly some notes on head construction
Not the most productive day but seeing some improvement in drawing out. Tomorrow will do a session on figure construction.
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Started the day with gesture drawing and some doodles:
Drawing mickey realises its all about the proportions most of my tries look like a deformed Doraemon.
And page 2 of the Preston Blair's cartooning book:
And finally some human studies only 2 but want to continue these and get proportions into my head
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Not get bored of this yet :P think i'm getting better, not sure looking at the previous attempts. moving from page 2 of the preston blair book :)
And mickey drawings, used a different model sheet now, longer torso and legs, think its less cute than the older stuff. Just trying to draw a flipped image is a brain tease for me.
Spent a few hours watching robotpencils livestream want to go back to photoshop will try out some of his advice tomorrow!
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getting more complex with the head constructions:
Trying to do a mickey poses from imagination, pretty clear which is which
and gave a go at an env study:
Not really happy with how today went have to think through more while I do these studies and have a plan to keep the day more productive.
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Hi all its been a whole 7 days since I started the sketchbook!
Getting a bit more accurate with the shapes, but the details which make the character are still difficult to make out.
Kind of easy to see which are my sketches, how to improve this? Pay more attention to proportions and detail.
finally some torso notes, will do some figure studies for the next few days to get this drilled in
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more of the same today:
trying to draw the same pose from different angles
And my first try at an anatomy ecorche of the torso using the Michael Hampton book. Pretty poor no sense of form, have to give indications of insertions and stuff too:
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Your stuff is looking great, nice to find someone else aiming for comic book art too. Consistency is the key, as you're proving, even just an hour but done everyday will ensure you keep improving. Great that your doing so much from imagination too (spinning the poses and such) - building that into your routine like you are will make it a really natural thing to do.
What might help with your mickey mouse and other cartoon stuff - I saw you did it a little at the beginning - is writing self-critique notes next to your drawings - after a 10 minute or so break is better. Physically writing out the critiques and things you missed like 'shoes too small, total shoe length is longer than leg length' or 'arms too thin' or whatever you got a little wrong can help firm it in our brains, then you remember it for next time.
Don't worry either about not picking out the details - the basic construction is really the most important thing, pushing for higher levels of detail seems to come quite naturally with time, confidence and technical ability. I think it's when you no longer have to think so hard about the construction that the doors to creativity and design can really open, and then you find yourself detailing and embellishing drawings.
Good luck!
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Thanks for the advice JyonnyNovice, your totally right about writing the self-critique, i'll do that from now on! Your also the first guy to reply to my thread a big milestone so thanks again :)
just expressions today:
for the preston blair book its onto 2 legged characters this took me a surprising amount of time about an hour and a bit.
some more anatomy ecorche will do just the torso muscles this week.
Tried to do a environment study today this time in colour instead of just values but totally failed. No idea how to get accurate colour by just eyeballing. Out of my comfort zone on this one, time to watch some video tuts to help me out tomorrow.
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Nice efforts so far. I see you did some value studies which is great. If you are having trouble eyeballing colors Id suggest trying to do value studies from full color references. That way you have to train your eye to see colors as their value. The human eye is much more sensitive to values than it is to hues of color. One of the best books on learning color is James Gurney's Color and Light. So I'd highly recommend picking that up. He talks a bit about traditional painting in it but most of the book applies to digital as well.
One of best lessons I learned from it is how color has three dimensions to it. Value, hue and saturation (also known as chroma). Value as you know is how light or dark it is. Hue is its position on the color wheel as in a greenish hue or a redish hue ect. Saturation is how pure a color is versus how grayed out it is. A hue like yellow at its highest saturation is as pure yellow as it can get and its base value if converted to gray scale is a very light gray. While a blue hue at its highest saturation has a dark gray base value. So when picking colors consider each of the 3 dimensions one at a time, starting with value. That way you narrow the scope of colors to pick from instead of trying to pick a color from out of ALL colors which can be very overwhelming for a beginner especially.
Sorry for the wall of text :) TLDR version: Read Color and Light and do more value studies.
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@Hypnagogic thanks ive got the book on order can't wait
Ok not much time for studies today so a bit sparse.
the blair book is getting much more detailed so slowing down on that
For the mickey drawing I tried something different that is to draw a gesture from a dance video and draw mickey matching that pose, not great but these are from imagination,will do it with model sheets next so hopefully will closely match the model.
Lastly did some eyeballs attaching to the skull, think i've set them too deep or drawn them too small here will defo give this a few more tries
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Just doodling from memory today, good to see what I've retained and what I need work on.
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same again with the Mickey and Preston Blair book, I was much faster with the Preston Blair studies:
Not so successful with the gesture to Mickey Mouse poses.
Not sure if i'm moving forward with these studies, the preston blair stuff is getting faster but i'm finding the Mickey Mouse drawing difficult. Will add colour and anatomy studies into the mix more.
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Hey Richie, you're putting in consistent effort so I'm sure you're improving - learning new stuff creates neural networks in our brain and practising that stuff reinforces them, so even if you don't feel you are improving you probably still are - plus there are other things like speed, technical skill, eye that also develop as you do this stuff.
Your chip, or Dale, or is it Woody? (I'm don't know my disney stuff) is really good (second line, middle on the first image above). Can really feel the energy in his pose, really dynamic - nice one : )
Just an idea, maybe you do something similar already, but what I used to do when I was learning to draw something that had very specific features (like your Mickey, or the human skeleton or whataver), I would take one image of it, copy it from reference a couple of times, then draw the same thing from memory, then draw it again from reference, then from memory - keep doing that til it was memorised; then draw it again from memory the next day, then a few days later etc.
For your mickey drawings, if you did that with a few from different angles, you'll become REALLY familiar with all the little bumps and details and it should help when drawing him in imaginary poses.
The process is kinda boring though, copy / draw / copy / draw but I thought I'd share it with you anyway : )
Good luck man!
P.S. add a link to your sketchbook in your signature, so people can come here and check out your stuff when you post in other threads.
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Thanks for the words of encouragement Jyonny will keep trucking on!
More Preston Blair work and hands
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Slowed down a bit this weekend for family time. Heres the page of Preston Blair this weekend.
Also broke a milestone, this is the 100th page of digital drawings i've done since taking art more seriously. Rejigged my schedule to do more anatomy and photoshop studies for the next two weeks.
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More Preston Blair copies:
Some anatomy studies playing to just fust on the torso this week, will do some ecorche tomorrow:
and some skeleton studies did this one in pen:
And have to finally sit down and make a list of the artists I admire and art styles I could learn from.
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Tiny amount of work today, just a Preston blair page :(
Had a good chat with another artist friend about me slowing right down with drawing and he was totally right in saying i'm not actually producing any of my own work, even though I'm still learning all the fundamentals I should dedicate some time to my own stuff, even if its poor its a start in the right direction. So will try to do that from now on more like 80% studies 20% own work then that balance will tip once i get some art fundamentals down.
Guess I didn't do that because I thought I'm not good enough yet, but have to take a leap and keep getting up :P
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