02-01-2013, 10:31 PM
Hey Devan (right?), first of all, great you joined the daggers and you're taking the challenge to improve! Also I like that you already added some serious studies to this very sketchbook here.
Your studies on the planes of the head are a good start, but I think you're missing the overall proportions of the head, e.g. where excactly the eyesockets are placed and how big they are compared to anything else in the face. Maybe you want to check this out: http://www.youtube.com/user/ProkoTV?feature=watch. Since you're already working with the Loomis' books this will probably sound familiar to you, but he explains quite nicely how the different parts relate to each other. Otherwise I'd suggest to do some more studies from real humans (whether real-life real or photography-real) and try to apply what you learned about planes, forms(!) etc from your previous studies.
And how to apply your studies to art projects? Well, the obvious answer would be, paint something from your mind, most probably some portraits from what you've studied. But since that's probably not of much help for you, here are some other suggestions what you might try:
Take two photographies and try to combine them, e.g. the facial features from the first, the lighting and colours from the other. Or take a reference and change things: add a hat, an enormous nose, eyebrows or beard or something like that. In this way you still have a guideline you can refer to, but you're also creating something on your own. If you're on the I-want-to-paint-the-complete-thing-on-my-own path, think about WHAT you want to paint, then (still!) search for some reference, have a close look on it or even copy it once; and then paint whatever you wanted to paint in the first place, but with that extra-information in your mind.
After all one final point; your linework on the last figure studies look a bit messy; since it's much more clean on the life-drawings I suppose this is because you're still figuring things out here. Draw your humans more often (and maybe do some of these seemingly unavoidable gesturedrawings), and I'm sure you'll gain some more confidence with these.
I hope I wasn't to harsh here, but you asked for some comment, so here it was :)
Just keep this sketchbook alive, you're on the right track and I'm looking forward to see what can accomplish!
Your studies on the planes of the head are a good start, but I think you're missing the overall proportions of the head, e.g. where excactly the eyesockets are placed and how big they are compared to anything else in the face. Maybe you want to check this out: http://www.youtube.com/user/ProkoTV?feature=watch. Since you're already working with the Loomis' books this will probably sound familiar to you, but he explains quite nicely how the different parts relate to each other. Otherwise I'd suggest to do some more studies from real humans (whether real-life real or photography-real) and try to apply what you learned about planes, forms(!) etc from your previous studies.
And how to apply your studies to art projects? Well, the obvious answer would be, paint something from your mind, most probably some portraits from what you've studied. But since that's probably not of much help for you, here are some other suggestions what you might try:
Take two photographies and try to combine them, e.g. the facial features from the first, the lighting and colours from the other. Or take a reference and change things: add a hat, an enormous nose, eyebrows or beard or something like that. In this way you still have a guideline you can refer to, but you're also creating something on your own. If you're on the I-want-to-paint-the-complete-thing-on-my-own path, think about WHAT you want to paint, then (still!) search for some reference, have a close look on it or even copy it once; and then paint whatever you wanted to paint in the first place, but with that extra-information in your mind.
After all one final point; your linework on the last figure studies look a bit messy; since it's much more clean on the life-drawings I suppose this is because you're still figuring things out here. Draw your humans more often (and maybe do some of these seemingly unavoidable gesturedrawings), and I'm sure you'll gain some more confidence with these.
I hope I wasn't to harsh here, but you asked for some comment, so here it was :)
Just keep this sketchbook alive, you're on the right track and I'm looking forward to see what can accomplish!