12-25-2014, 10:45 AM
Adam Thanks man, I feel the hand drawing is going ok, just need to work on getting the right proportions. Thanks for the encouragement too, it's helped me identify a few things; firstly just too many interruptions the last week or so, not managing to get more than 30 mins - 1 hour at a time for drawing, secondly I usually warm up with gestures / heads / skulls etc. then have been moving on to anatomy study, which is just diagrams and stuff from video lectures and books. So haven't been drawing when I'm at my best. Gonna chill out a bit on that and not get too disheartened, I only have the feet left to do and then I'll focus a lot on doing drawings to bring it all together, so I can warm up properly and then launch into something great.
Also, I feel most disheartened when my imaginative drawings look bad - and I realised that I draw way way too quickly when I do them, rushing through loose gestures into shapes without taking much time to check if things are working. Need to really slow down, think about all the important things - gesture, proportion, perspective, try and see the image in my mind and draw it as if it was from reference instead of just speeding through like a youtube tutorial on time lapse.
Anyways, couple of studies from the animal photos Adam posted earlier. The tiger & crocodile looked better when it was gestures, I kinda stiffened it up too much adding the shapes - must remember to exaggerate the gestures! Monkey is a bit meh, but was good hand practice.
Last image are characters from Guardians of the Galaxy. Watched that movie tonight with the family, really loved the size difference and personalities of these characters - the brains and the brawn. Drew it from imagination having just finished the movie. Quite a nice exercise to have a kind of reference in mind but not right in front of you. I've heard about artists doing similar things with models in a different room that they can go look at but not draw from directly. I used HB pencil for an underdrawing then black coloured pencil on top, I'm starting to really like this process - it's kind of like inking a pencil drawing but you can get hard and soft edges and add tone as well. Plus it's a lot more forgiving than ink...
![[Image: NfV9ao6.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/NfV9ao6.jpg)
![[Image: xnr8Uu7.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/xnr8Uu7.jpg)
![[Image: FJRQzL0.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/FJRQzL0.jpg)
(there's a gradient map on this cause the white of the paper was too harsh)
Also, I feel most disheartened when my imaginative drawings look bad - and I realised that I draw way way too quickly when I do them, rushing through loose gestures into shapes without taking much time to check if things are working. Need to really slow down, think about all the important things - gesture, proportion, perspective, try and see the image in my mind and draw it as if it was from reference instead of just speeding through like a youtube tutorial on time lapse.
Anyways, couple of studies from the animal photos Adam posted earlier. The tiger & crocodile looked better when it was gestures, I kinda stiffened it up too much adding the shapes - must remember to exaggerate the gestures! Monkey is a bit meh, but was good hand practice.
Last image are characters from Guardians of the Galaxy. Watched that movie tonight with the family, really loved the size difference and personalities of these characters - the brains and the brawn. Drew it from imagination having just finished the movie. Quite a nice exercise to have a kind of reference in mind but not right in front of you. I've heard about artists doing similar things with models in a different room that they can go look at but not draw from directly. I used HB pencil for an underdrawing then black coloured pencil on top, I'm starting to really like this process - it's kind of like inking a pencil drawing but you can get hard and soft edges and add tone as well. Plus it's a lot more forgiving than ink...
(there's a gradient map on this cause the white of the paper was too harsh)