Alex's Sketcbook

[dracken]

Older stuff, charcoal quick sketch and shitty anatomy. I have a bunch more quick sketch stuff, but I don't think I'll post more since it's rather boring stuff.

Still working through hogarth

[dracken]

More stuff

[razvanb08]

Nice sketchbook. A lot of work here. I would suggest some gesture drawing for the figure drawings and also try and study the proportions from the Loomis book.
Good luck, keep posting!

[kidult]

Yeah man, just keep it up and learn those foundations good!

[dracken]

Thank you for the advice and thank you for stopping by.

Yeah I need more gestures and more attention to proportions, just gotta pay more attention.

Here is some more recent stuff.

[Einver]

Good stuff! keep up the studies, you're making progress.

I recommend reading the first few chapters in The Practice and Science of Drawing by Harold Speed. You'll gain such a great understanding of the master-tier techniques that have helped many artists for centuries with the figure.

Other than that, just keep up the volume!

[dracken]

Thank you. I think I downloaded the book by Harold Speed, but didn't get around to reading too much into it. I want to take things one at a time, but I will go back through my books as soon as I can.

So far I read and worked about half of Fun with a pencil and half of Figure drawing by Loomis, all of Hampton, a bunch of Bridgman and I'm working on Hograth now. Also some dvd's from Scott Robertson.

Anyhow, enough talking, here are some gestures, done in pen to force me to think about line strength instead of scratchy lines

[Gliger]

If those Scott Robertson DVDs, you are watching are the ones on perspective, try to apply that knowledge when placing items on paper for still lifes, it will give you a solid drawing from which you can easily focus on shading.

In my opinion you should work on your proportions and form, for those, Hampton is great, revisit his book and try to do what he does when you are doing figure studies, I'm talking about the ''rubber band'' technique and simplifying forms into 3D looking shapes, do it with a couple of figure drawings, for practice.
And even if they are gesture drawings, applying line weight will help you, I see some of it, but you could improve it, take a look at how Ryan Woodward does his gesture drawings, he really captures the gesture which is something I rarely see in people's sketchbooks in general, not enough exaggeration where it is needed and too much where it is not, try starting with a line that describes the flow of the pose and work from it.

Oh, and Proko uploaded a video with Glenn Vilppu doing gesture drawings, watch it.

I believe there was something else I wanted to say but I forgot, besides that, good work with this sketchbook, you are pushing yourself.
The first sketch of your last post has some good things in it, the red lines have a good flow in most parts.

Keep posting, I like it.

[Lyraina]

Lots of studies, that's the way to go! :) But don't forget to also put them to use now and then with doing some personal work. That will also help you see what areas you should work on next.
Your figure work is nice, you seem to have a grasp on the main muscles (and bones) and how they show on the surface. Proportions are a bit off sometimes, but that will come with time and practice. Just keep up the studies :) And I agree with what someone said earlier - do some quick gestures as well, as a warmup for example. Those will not look good at first, but they really help in the long term.

Keep it up! :)

[dracken]

Oh, so many answers! Thank you people thank you.

More personal work. More gestures, I need to push those proportions.

This is awesome advice, if nothing else it will help me push myself in the upcoming months. I have been really trying to get better proportions, but I need to think of the next stuff to tackle.

In the meantime some older work. A bad portrait and some charcoal still life.







Photo of my still life set-up

[DoubleThink]

next time you're drawing from life, try this method:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHefdroQd...tOxoA37_uM

It's quite a lenghty movie, if you've got time, have a look at it

I found it helped me a lot, and you'll understand the objects you're drawing way better.

[Jaik]

Good stuff, can't crit anything in particular, just keep working on placing objects in space. A good exercise it to try and free hand some cubes and cylinders and make them look correct in regards to perspective. While you may get them slightly wrong at times, it will help you to develop the slkills of seeing when a shape is out of perspective and why, and then how to fix it :) I found it a more flexible approach than 'drawing in the horizion like, then drawing a bunch of cubes perfectly'

[dracken]

Thank you,

I'll have to check that channel out.

In the meantime some more poop

[dracken]

More stuff, including some quicker gestures and head gestures. Trying to do more quick gestures and build stuff in a 3d approach as some people suggested.

[dracken]

Two portraits along with some in between steps, so I can hopefully see where I start going wrong. each one is about 3 hours from life.

[dracken]

Sorry for the double post, just wanted to share a few older portraits and their steps.

[JonHop]

since youve been building stuff up in a 3d approach i think your portraits have seen a nice improvement, and very nice pencil rnedering btw keep pushing!

[dracken]

Thank you,

This is again some older stuff from November, but I want to have it here so I can establish sort of a baseline. This is where I am at at the end of 2013/ beginning of 2014. I am determined to not slip up and keep posting daily-ish so we'll see where I am at the end of 2014.

The proportions in this one are so bad. It pains me to look at it, Let it be a lesson in rendering something without measuring/ building forms first.

[dracken]

A few more older digital portraits. I need to get back into doing these.

[dracken]

Stuff from last Wednesday and Yesterday (today is Friday btw.)