With my last sketchbook on CA more than 2 years old, I haven't spent my free time studying like I should. With changes in schools, living situations, jobs, it's been wild.
But things have settled down and it's about time I get serious about my studies again. I tried to do some studies for the past few months but it was on and off, I need something to keep me on task, even if working at this for 6 years and haven't made the progress I want to due to laziness isn't enough.
Public accountability.
I was most active in my studies when I had sketchbooks going, so I'm going to post my studies, WIPs, and finished illustrations here on a regular basis so I can stay on track.
I'm hoping in one to two years time, I can start getting client work for illustrations. I'm planning on making a story driven webcomic early next year, so I really want to improve my drawing and painting skills for that.
Just some figure drawings today to help get me back on the swing of things. I need to get used to digital painting again, and figure out a way to take better pictures of my work.
Some warm up 30 sec to 1 min poses, 2 min, 5, 10, and the painting is 30 mins.
Isnt it crazy feeling like you need to work because others are waiting for it?
Anyways its always good to see people pickin up the pencil again. Its saddening when people meet an obstacle in their art path that totally throws them off. I mean I get why they might stop, but still. Cant wait to see more man, this is a good start
@Beardly Thanks man, I definitely have the fact that I gave a public commitment about this in the back of my mind every day. Even if I didn't get as much done as I wanted to, it pushed me to do something nonetheless.
I did some head construction studies from Micheal Hampton along with specific nose studies towards the bottom. I still have eyes and the ears left to do, as well as putting the construction into practice from imagination and off models.
Also I fixed my image photography. Outside light coming from a window is much better than a lamp.
did some more studies from Micheal Hampton's book, and drew a face from photo reference. I feel that my faces have more solid construction and I'm retaining what I've been studying. (See 7-28(1).jpg for comparison) That said, I took a crack at color painting from reference, something I haven't done in a long, long time and it shows. I have a trouble picking colors and just painting in general, and I'd like to get better at it, it's a rough start. Any tips for things to watch out for on my next study? General critiques also super cool and wanted.
I added the photo reference so there's something to compare.
Hey Flakari, welcome to the forum! It's wonderful that you made the commitment to move ahead with your art, despite your setbacks! A life free of problems and obstacles doesn't exist, so just keep at it when life gets crazy again! A little bit, every day, and you will progress ^^
For the painting, while learning this stuff what I'm finding helps is to have the reference image in the same document as my painting; then have a layer filled with black and set to 'saturation' blending mode right at the top of the layer stack. Hide / unhide the black saturation layer to see your drawing and the reference in greyscale - this way you can check the values, which gives the depth and shape to your painting.
Hey man! Wellcome! Nice to see you're cracking up the studies, keep those up, they always pay off. As a little advice for the studies I'd suggest you focus on doing it in a way that's easy for you to memorize and try to find a method that works for you, doesn't have to be strictly what you see from Loomis or tutorials or whatever, whatever works for you, that's what will help you the most.
I did a really quick tracing of your ref and adapted it to your painting. This is really a good exercise when you're done with a painting, trace the reference in a new layer, and put it over the painting, that way it's really easy to see where you went wrong.
The best advice I can give is: focus on nailing down the proportions and the structure the best you can before comiting to the painting, you don't necessarily have to draw, you can do it with painting by using basic landmarks. But if you don't have it as accurate as you can before you dive into rendering, you might realise they're wrong at a later stage and will be forced to whipe out all of the hard work you did in rendering.
@JyonnyNovice: Thanks man, glad to be here! I could go on and on with what's gone on in my life with different schools and jobs and all sorts of wackyness, but I'll save everyone from that. I had the painting reference in its own window in PS. It might've helped the initial blocking and measurements if I had the painting directly on the side of the ref, I'll do that next time.
@Suira: Thanks for the tip, I didn't know quite how far off my proportions are, I'll make sure to really pay attention to them.
So, originally, I wanted to post on Tuesday and get a more consistent update schedule going, but over the past few days, there was a ton of construction work to the inside of my house, I had to assist, leaving no time to do anything. But it's all done and I'm back to it.
First are some more reference portrait studies, then a 2.5-3 hour self-portrait with pencil that I liked while working on it, but whenever I took a progress shot, immediately hated it. Lastly are some studies from the last part of the head section in the Michael Hampton book.
I tried to draw a few head drawings from imagination, but I still have some work to do on those. I'll post them next time.
It's been some time since I've posted, a whole school year went by and I hardly drew for myself or studied for myself. But here I am.
Some Reilly Method facial abstractions, well, attempts of it. I have no training in it and no real knowledge base to get a ton of information/step-by-step. I derived what I could from various sources/videos to try it out. These are of the same face, so my work in this method with proper proportion is still a ways off. That’s why I’m getting back into practicing for myself again, starting off slow, trying some new things.
![[Image: crit.jpg]](http://s267.photobucket.com/user/Suira/media/crit.jpg.html)