You know, I've realized over the last few weeks how massively different the frame of mind and the thought process is behind drawing and painting. Forget the physical differences for a second; I think that when you say you're "falling behind" or getting "rusty" between two mediums, it's not really because you're losing skill or becoming less proficient at it, but your mindset hasn't shifted gears to accommodate the different materials.
Think about it. The fundamental way you think about painting (value and contrast) is massively different from the way you approach drawing (contour and edge delineation). So maybe it's not an issue of skill but rather of mindset. I don't think there's anyway to get over that besides doing both and slowly getting used to both simultaneously. The problem gets worse the more you neglect one medium, not because you're losing skill but because you're training your brain to think in one way when it's been used to thinking a vastly different way, and more often.
Don't know if that's helpful but just felt like sharing my thoughts. And also, it sounds kind of weird but learning to do a bit sculpture actually helps a lot in painting. At least it did for me anyways. Getting hands on with a form and really feeling and investigating the shapes and the curvatures really helps feed that painter's mind IMO.
hey! thanks for stopping by my sb! i'm honored that a great talen like yourself likes my work, it is a sign that my efforts really pay off : ))) keep up the good job, i'm subscribin : )
Wow, I really love your sketches! You have a very unique way of revealing the human form. :) Enjoying the studies too-- Keep up the good habits. ;)
Annnd...
(12-11-2014, 11:13 AM)Patrick Gaumond Wrote: You know, I've realized over the last few weeks how massively different the frame of mind and the thought process is behind drawing and painting. Forget the physical differences for a second; I think that when you say you're "falling behind" or getting "rusty" between two mediums, it's not really because you're losing skill or becoming less proficient at it, but your mindset hasn't shifted gears to accommodate the different materials.
Think about it. The fundamental way you think about painting (value and contrast) is massively different from the way you approach drawing (contour and edge delineation). So maybe it's not an issue of skill but rather of mindset. I don't think there's anyway to get over that besides doing both and slowly getting used to both simultaneously. The problem gets worse the more you neglect one medium, not because you're losing skill but because you're training your brain to think in one way when it's been used to thinking a vastly different way, and more often.
Actually, I noticed something that some pros have often said about drawing/painting. I checked out your deviantart before I'd make an utter fool of myself, haha, and, well, you're obviously pro as well, and far ahead of me, so... Maybe this will help, and maybe it won't. :)
So: What the pros often say is that we should treat drawing like painting, that we should try to 'sculpt out' our forms, let them emerge, and that we should follow the contours of the form with our pencil as we would with a paintbrush, if that makes any sense.
I'm just figuring it out, and, actually, I feel like I've been treating painting like drawing rather than the other way around, slowly pulling myself in the other direction. By doing so, I do feel that my own work has improved a great deal when I put this mindset into practice.
Anyway... Obviously there is no absolute way of doing things, and every artist is different. So, this method may help some artists flourish, whereas others benefit from thinking of each medium as an art all itself.
Obviously, artistic growth involves a great deal of exploration into what works for the individual artist... So... My point is only to reveal a little bit of something that I've learned. :D
(12-15-2014, 07:21 PM)Bookend Wrote: Actually, I noticed something that some pros have often said about drawing/painting. I checked out your deviantart before I'd make an utter fool of myself, haha, and, well, you're obviously pro as well, and far ahead of me, so... Maybe this will help, and maybe it won't. :)
So: What the pros often say is that we should treat drawing like painting, that we should try to 'sculpt out' our forms, let them emerge, and that we should follow the contours of the form with our pencil as we would with a paintbrush, if that makes any sense.
I'm just figuring it out, and, actually, I feel like I've been treating painting like drawing rather than the other way around, slowly pulling myself in the other direction. By doing so, I do feel that my own work has improved a great deal when I put this mindset into practice.
Anyway... Obviously there is no absolute way of doing things, and every artist is different. So, this method may help some artists flourish, whereas others benefit from thinking of each medium as an art all itself.
Obviously, artistic growth involves a great deal of exploration into what works for the individual artist... So... My point is only to reveal a little bit of something that I've learned. :D
Haha, I'm so not pro but I appreciate it nonetheless. I hope I don't come across as authoritative; I've become a bit tired of people dancing around the point they're trying to make and trying to make it sound like they have no business saying it, but then say it anyways, so I've decided to just say it very plainly and matter of fact-ly. It should go without saying that it's just what I've gleamed from listening to other artists, from my own experiences and that it's different for everyone and that I don't expect anyone to take all or any of what I or what anyone else says blindly without trying it themselves, unless its a provable fact, which this isnt!
But i've also realized, similarly to you, that sharing your experiences and listening to others, not taking it as gospel, cherry picking the parts that are useful to you and assimilating it with your other knowledge is really the best path to higher knowledge. My own process is such an accumulation, and you sound like you're on your own path to discovering yours.
Sometimes I say things just to challenge people, to challenge the way they think. More often than not it has no effect immediately, but the fact that that seed was planted means that an idea can grow from it and it might have nothing to do with what I said, but that doesn't matter. It's happened a lot to me, where someone has said something that shifted my line of thought just 2 or 3 degrees. But if you follow that line, 2 or 3 degrees in the long run is a big change
As it relates to art, I often like to challenge people to step out of line drawing. This isn't really the case here, but it does have to do with the mindset difference that occurs when you try painting as opposed to drawing, and the problems that are associated with it. I dont think one is better than the other or that you should treat one the way you would the other, but just be aware that the way you approach them is different.
And I think when you become aware, consciously (everyone is aware subconsciously that they are different, but to sit down and think about the differences is well... different d:), that you can approach something in many different ways and combine things that are dissimilar to improve them, that's when you start to see improvement.
moleskin sketchbooks works perfectly with water media, watercolors, gouaches and acrylics I tested all and can recommend! But for marker you need special paper, totally different than for others media. It's awesome that you are working in traditional media personaly it helped a lot for my art!
Wow thanks everyone for the nice comments! Patrick, I took your advice and broke out my sculpey clay. I already had a head bust I was working on a while back but I remolded it into a simple asaro head and found quite a few mistakes I had made earlier that I was unaware of before. So my understanding of the basic forms of the head has definitely improved, which is nice to see. I didnt get a chance to take a picture of it though.
I get what you and bookend are saying about shifting my mindset. I've heard the advice about drawing like a painter before and have been trying to practice it for some time now. I find it has helped shift me to a more painterly way of thinking as before I was all line art. Also I've been following the Watts online school's curriculum which is designed to ease people into painting through drawing with charcoal in a particular way. I definitely have a lot more mindset shifting to do but I've managed to get my feet wet and hopefully I'll get my momentum going in that area in the coming year.
Jamsession and echo Thank you as well :) Madzia, I'll have to try out a moleskin. I've been kinda turning into a sketchbook hoarder lately. I see a new kind of paper and I MUST DRAW ON IT! Thats good to hear you practiced on traditional as well. I hope I can get even half as good as you some day :)
Huge update today. Some of these sketches should have been in the last update but I neglected to photograph them. I've been using a clip board and scrap paper to do these crappy practice/ warm up drawings because I dont want to fill my sketch books with circles and 30 second gestures. I found before I was drawing less because theres this pressure to only do good drawings in a sketchbook once I've got a couple nice drawings I like in it. With the clip board theres no pressure to create a book of good drawings and Im free to screw up all I like.
Looks like you're seeing the shapes of shades quite well now in those recent studies! Love those traditional studies! Even if digital studies teaches us the same thing, I just favor the traditional more somehow :P
Heya,
nice work, Haze!
i can see a lot of improvement happening here.
Though, I have one suggestion. you might wanna try doing some illustrations and design work to see how much you really know and also to have some new portfolio pieces :)
Bookend, thank you! You're too kind. I felt like my figure drawing skills plateaued for such a long time. Finally somethings started clicking and I've reached another mountain to start climbing :D
meat, Im glad you think so. Doing shadows has always been my least favorite part of a drawing but I've grown to start liking it. And I couldnt agree more about traditional.
Marjorie, Hey gurrrrl! Thank you and I took you're advice and did some design thumbs of a character I've had rattling around in my head for a while. I did the line art for the final and I plan on painting it in gouache this week. Its sad that I've been doing this art thing for a little over a year and dont have a single finished portfolio piece to show for it yet D: Hopefully I can start changing that here soon.
(12-24-2014, 02:31 PM)Adam Lina Wrote: I've been doing this art thing for a little over a year and dont have a single finished portfolio piece to show for it yet D:
ha-ha don't even worry- you've made a huge amount of progress in that time. It takes a while to produce work that you're not completely ashamed of :)
Nice character design there- but I feel like the line drawing lost some of the energy that was in the original sketches.
Thanks for the reassurance Aether. Yea, longer drawings always seem to run into the problem of losing energy. All I can do is keep practicing long and short drawings together, I guess.
So I got a skull replica and a new tablet monitor. Yiynova MSP19U, its really awesome so far. Its just like a cintiq as far as I can tell but like 1500 USD cheaper. All the complaints about it I've heard the exact same about cintiqs. The space between your pen point and where the cursor shows up(paralax?), the colors not being calibratible (thats a word now) to some peoples liking are the same with cintiqs. Though cintiqs have a "paper texture" which I see as only a down side since it doesnt add that much to the experience and just wears down the nibs like crazy.
The yiynova is a smooth surface and the nibs from the reviews I've read never wear down. I try not to fall into the trap of thinking because a product costs more than the competition it must be better quality. Its probably due to the fact that wacom hasnt had much competition for so long they can afford to jack their prices up without ever improving their products. I think its high time they start feeling some pressure to improve because their products are far from perfect to be charging what they do. Dont give into branding, guys!
thanks for always stopping by my page! I appreciate it!
When I'm looking at your work, I notice that you have a good eye for details and are fairly proficient at drawing... and looking between your recent drawings and paintings, I think you might be thinking more about shape language than form. Your painting studies look really nice, but I worry that they read better because you're good at copying shape masses versus actually understanding the form. i see in your shaded figure studies, too, that you seem to be drawing out the light mass shape vs the shadow mass shape, and you're missing some of the finer details like form overlap in either of those regions.
i think anything that gets you thinking about how form turns in space, over just copying images to study will help you out. Perhaps studying from images and doing the line work as well as imaginary cross-contours to describe the form. Maybe even primitive (sphere, cylinder, cube) studies.
After form, the other big thing I notice in your work is that often your figures are disbalanced, the torso often feels too big and cumbersome for legs that don't seem to carry the form's weight. It's only slight, but considering how the weights of each form relates to each other will strengthen your work a lot. Without it, your nice detailed line sketches are flattening out and seeming two dimensional.
I can see that you're working really hard and doing a lot of studies, that's great! For now I think your battle is to do more thinking while you study, considering the physical nature of what you're drawing more than the visual nature.
Keep up the hard work, I look forward to seeing more!
Vicianus, thanks a lot for the advice. I think I see what you mean about my form understanding being lacking. I'll focus more on doing basic forms. Im thinking of getting back into the How to Draw book here soon, so hopefully thatll help my forms too. And I always have trouble with getting the sense of weight distribution especially in my imagined figures. I guess its from starting at the head and working my way down instead of figuring out the relation of the whole body to the ground first. Again, I really appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts on my weaknesses.
Man oh man, the amount of work in here is insane, Hypna (you'll always be Hynagogic Haze to meeeee)!
Really, don't stop, keep going and going because holy crap its paying off and more so the more you go for it! Also, damn... Using gouache?! Respect... @_@
I have no crits, you're working hard and studying life models and everything, just keep it uppp :)
sketchbook | pg 52
"Not a single thing in this world isn't in the process of becoming something else." I'll be back - it's an odyssey, after all
Went through your sketchbook quickly and I am very impressed with amount of work and will you are putting in all this. I have to say really great job and you are inspiration for me to start working on anatomy even more. Keep it up like this : )
I feel spoiled with all these pretty girls posting in my (f)art thread. Smmmmmrrrrrrrr! You have such a way with words. Thank you kindly. Panda, reading that I inspired you to work on your anatomy makes my day and thank you as well.
I'm going to echo what SMR and Panda are saying, I was looking at the post dates for the beginning of your last page, and basically all of it is from December. I don't know exactly how many drawings are there, but that scroll bar is teeny-tiny!
I'm glad to see you doing the cross-contour sketches, they look good. :)
I know that balance was something I mentioned the last time I critted you in August, too, and you have improved quite a bit with it since then. If you're struggling a lot with it, then I want to leave you with some resources, too:
Drawsh - Balance
This is a site run by one of my teachers, it focuses a lot on foundational concepts for stronger drawing. There are these three pages on balance in the form.
Center of Gravity/Center of Support - I just googled for this, and while I'm not fond of the drawings in here, this more plainly and in-depth explains the "physics" for balancing a pose.
Love the figure drawings, they're phenomenal!
