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Some sketches from a visit to the park.
Doodles from imagination:
Gestures from life. The three quick protraits are a trio of russian chessplayers from the park who were constantly loudly commenting the other players in russian, they were kind of funny, so I drew them slightly caricaturally:
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Some line sketches done in painter. I really wish that program would be more like PS in some ways, because I love the more natural brush strokes
And some pencil studies with emphasis on lighting
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Hi! Love your characters and creatures, the 3 step gentle giant was really useful to see for the line weight and shading, thanks for posting it!
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@JyonnyNovice: Thanks, good to see it was useful! Maybe I´ll do some more comparisons of different topics in the future
Small update with a muskteer inspired swordswoman and a revolting peasant:
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A bard character and some portrait practice
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Female orc archer in mid-action
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Some more illustrative pencil sketch work instead of the usual boring character standing around :) Lots of anatomy issues and the monster pose could be less stiff....
Also wanted to do some render practice and some color again, so I took the gentle giant sketch and pushed it further.
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Continuing with a more story approach to sketching characters. It´s really fun, even if the story behind this one is just a dungeon delving couple of adventurers who discovered something..
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Nice stuff! Adding in a story is always a nice way to draw the viewer into the image. Silhouettes in the second sketch are much stronger than the one with the guy fighting medusa. Try filling in the whole pose or the characters with flat black every once in a while to see if it still reads like you want it to. This is a really good post on pose clarity: http://cartoonsnap.blogspot.com/2008/09/...b-tip.html
keep killing it!
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@Samszym: Thanks a lot for the link! It´s very helpful!
Did some gestures from mind to warmup today and try to be a bit more dynamic, emphasizing on the flow not proportion, anatomy etc.
I did some gestures with the same purpose afterwards, this time with reference
Also tried to redesign something and I took the old TV series of Buck Rodgers and tried a first sketch of two characters:
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Awesome job overall, great sketchbook!
I like your redesign work!
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I think you are still paying too much attention to anatomy and proportion in those gestures, so much that I would call them quick figure constructions, not gesture drawings.
Do not care so much the muscles, or the little indentations on the forms, or how you think the knee will change the contours of the leg. Just draw the pose in the simplest way you can, using the longest and simplest lines that describe the pose. Once you get the motion and the energy down you can go back over the drawing and worry about construction and how the anatomy will change the contours of the silhouette, but not during the gesture. A good gesture might not look like a human, it might not have all the anatomical parts and definition that a complete figure drawing needs, but as long as you can tell what the pose and the motion are it's fine.
look at Matt Jonez to see how simple gestures can be, you can make the limbs out of just 2 lines and make it totally readable http://mattjonezanimation.blogspot.com/2...ction.html
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@Alexey Savchuk: Thanks very much!
@Samszym: Yes you are right, they are a bit more than gestures. One of my problems is also being carried away and try to "finish" simple stuff :)
Some gestures (more or less) this time with a timer to add stress (1-2 min)
Here is some practice I will try to incorporate more into my schedule. Draw from reference (here a very bad quick figure, wanted to keep it simple for now), then turn it in your mind and redraw that. A day later, redraw the referenced image from memory. Second part are just some doodles done while watching TV
These are some simple stick figures where I tried to think like an animator and getting some simple motion into the figure
And last, this is another character/story sketch. Not too happy with it, today is not such a great day for drawing
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Some more gestures, still concentrating on fluidity and rhythym
Portrait study
And for fun, Coanne, the Librarian...
And a quick render practice of an earlier sketch. Still very dirty and not finished, I just wanted to see it in color
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Update with gestures and quick portraits and sketches and characters
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Nice stuff dude!
I'm curious, why do you make so much of a point to draw the reverse curve of the shin in your gestures? I think it's breaking the flow of your drawings, I'd recommend trying to draw the legs as simple tube shapes, with only one bend throughout their length. A simple curve you can draw in only two lines will show the gesture much better than trying to draw in the muscles and contours.
Also, if you study the anatomy of the leg you'll find that the shin bones are straight, and maybe even a little convex. That apparent reverse curve of the leg is cause by the gastrocnemius muscle, not the structure of the leg. In my opinion, you'll get a better gesture by drawing the skeleton and structure of the body than if you focused on the musculature. save worrying about muscles for longer drawings.
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@Samszym: Thanks for the feedback as always! :) I feel, I have to explain my gestures a bit. I´m not drawing contour or muscles (maybe sometimes I indicate a bump or two, that´s right, but overall it is not anatomy) At the moment, I´m trying to intensify gestures and I go after Michael Mattesi, Jack Boson, Proko and Vilppu. I do have some volume in the gesture, but it is not contour. As for the bends in the legs, I´m experimenting a little and as the leg has (just like most parts of the body) a natural S-curve even in a "straight" pose, I try to stretch that a little. These should just be flow lines, not muscles! (I know that a shin from the side has an outward bump because there is a muscle underneath) On some gestures above, it doesn´t work and looks off, here a slight C-curve would have been better. But as I said: I´m experimenting a bit :)
Here are some gestures with different stages (the first 3 with the arrows), where I usually do start with just a few lines (takes about 20 sec) From there I refine it a bit (I´d consider this my standard gesture state). The third "gesture" is with indicated anatomy, so more of a quick figure (anatomy is not quite acurate)
The rest are just more or less ok gestures with varying stages
And some armor design
And here is the final assignment of my TAD class. Make an organic head out of the previous wood- and blockheads:
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Oh man, the ol' light and form blockhead! Didn't realize you were in that class, I had it a year ago. That was a great one :D rendering on it looks good, I'm sure Dorian's already given you better help than I can
and alright, if you're experimenting with your gestures I'm not here to police your methods, I'll just back off XD hope you experiment more with making the legs a long C curve though, I think that shape helps the flow more than the S curve you mention
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Hey there!
Really cool collection of your stuff here I just clicked through the pages and really think your nailing those gestures! I'm like way not that skilled but the proportions always look pretty much right to me and oh man respect for your faces/portraits!
What I noticed was that all the figure drawings you do are in like 'normal' perspective and don't get me wrong there is nothing bad with that and your doing some crazy poses so that's all good but how about grabbing those poses/gestures and putting them in a different perspective? like seeing characters from top or way from below, maybe playing a little bit with exaggeration?
Even in life drawing when you actually see the person doing a pose imagine yourself seeing it from another angle. Apparently that helps a lot with understanding the whole figure drawing thing using your knowloedge about anatomy to fill in the parts you can't actually see.
I don't know, like I said I'm not really in the position to give you advice or anything but those were my thoughts and maybe it can help you improve even more :)
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@Samszym: Yeah, I took the TAD class this year. Too bad that TAD had to close business, I might have taken some more classes :( Dorian is really a nice guy! He even plans on doing a one on one tutoring in Switzerland now.
And no, no, don´t back off :) I´m always grateful for insights of others, new perspectives open up new thoughts and possible ways of drawing. Maybe I should better describe what I´m doing when trying out new things :)
@Cruptic: Thanks! And you can always give advice or your opinion even if you think someone is of a higher skill level than you! Your suggestion is good as it reminds me to step more out of my comfort zones and even combine figure drawing with perspective practice!
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