whew I am smoked from today. tons of live caricature lots of $$ and some more tomorrow. This is all I could muster; hehe. Today was fooking awesome though, so many great reactions! only got about 100 or so more of Tom Richmonds "500 bad caricatures" and then I think the goof shall be truly unleashed!
1 not drawing eyes all the same almond shape (fuck eyelids!)
2 structure within crazy shapes
3 stop drawing a head shape without thinking of the chin as a protrusion
4 stop thinking you need to get everything in one big swoop even the pros don't do that
5 make more observations, less generic portrait stuff
6. remember eye sockets
7. cheek lines aren't always unattractive, for many it is defining feature
8. be neater with hair/beard/brow shading, it will look nicer
9.don't put down lines that betray form
10. distort less exaggerate more/ always think of/visualize planes and form
11. Study more Tom Richmond, his stuffs more in line with how I naturally draw yet way more developed. super crazy guys like Nate Kap I admire can have good influence, but are a distraction ATM.
I didn't quite finish the oil painting course, but I will get back to it later. I switched over to Silver's character design course, and did his first assignment of like an entrepreneur, which turned out way better than I expected loll.
Uuuhh also doing these Tom Richmond studies where I wrap the form after drawing with marker, in pencil. I'm trying to force my brain to just visualize facial dimensions within a caricature. These crazy shapes do go off the rails even in the pros, but they still maintain the structure. Not really sure what my style is right now, someone going through this sketchbook would see basically a different style every few months or even weeks. Well, at least I'll have some sort of visual library built up!
more tom Richmond studies, the more I do these the more I can kinda gauge how big lines are on the page in relation to each other. Also wrapping the forms really helps kinda see where things should resolve to look more functional, it's really a cerebral thing I am training. I enjoy that my scribbling is much less now, and I'm trying to make my shading lines more in one direction, and not so patchy... Got a lot more to do haha! I have a crazy idea of copying the whole book he made about caricature. We'll see if I can do that, maybe!
Sooo, didn't get much done today, I have a stifling pain going up my bicep and shoulder and neck. Hardcore arting isn't without it's consequences. Probably gonna try to go outside a lot tomorrow or something. Watched a lot of stephen silver's stuff today, it confirmed alot of things I had been learning from Tom Richmond about shapes, but I noticed one fatal flaw I had made in those last two painted caricatures I did.
I got a cool shape IMO, and I did the thumbnailing, researched other peoples interpretations, but I did not establish the planes of the face before I began painting it. Hence, I ended up with this kind of mushy mouth area and the lighting isn't as precise as I'd like it. I feel a lot of other things are coming along, but tbh I don't know when or how this will pay off so, one day soon, I'll try to do something else like another fantasy thing and see if the studies in fundamentals helped it.
Its about tracing and well, I spent a few hours tracing today, taking notes of some other artists drawing and what do you know? it teaches you shit. It teaches you how to stay consistent with things and pay attention. But I wasn't copying just contour, I was adding contour lines around every single form.
Doing that you'll notice a lot of pros even can't keep 100% everything three dimensional. I mean like hands, arms, torsoes everything, ALOT of it gets flattened. Wow, really makes ya think! And I'm sure even these I did today have some inconsistencies in the form and perspective, but man, tracing is quite cool, try it out!
But I'm not showing you any of my tracing, I spent hours on it today. It's tedious, a lot of labor if you will, like wrapping really tight lines is work, and boy it makes you pay attention. Made me anyways :) Lets see what I can try tomorrow...
All my faces are FUCKING UGLY lol, no appeal in the cartoons I draw, nobody cares, it's a lot of factors, and fuck I gotta figure it out! I don't want it to be goofy! I want it to be cool! I'll probably change my mind next week but that's how I feel today at this moment in time goddammit!!
I wanna draw AMAZINGLY hot women and VERY sexy men. And they will look COOL as FUCK!! I just have NO IDEA how that should look in my head. I have a semblance, maybe a bit anime influenced or something, we'll see. Whatever I'm doing now I don't like at all!! Gotta fix it somehow, hmm need to scribblies!!
Whew! thought I'd try to actually design something today. Got kinda distracted and didn't completely finish it, but I'll add a lot more tomorrow! Also, doing some more tracing/form wrapping stuff, it's a great way to learn how certain things you have trouble with work like collar bones for example. the more you do the more you realize you don't know!
oookay, so did about twenty or so total pages of just drawing from my mind, about 60% imagined figures and faces. Feeling a little better about it, I think once I do a few hundred of these I'll be pretty damn good, because it works on everything at once. When you're face to face with issues like, for instance I was drawing heads waay to small, and the way I drew various things like collarbones and deltoids was fucked. Being able to acknowledge and make those painful mistakes burns that into your mind. Then you fix it and things start slowly looking better.
PS chess with an AI is a great way to get sleepy ;)
tryina make poses with basic shapes; I feel if I just do more of these it'll sort a lot of the line problems I'm having out. I'm often unsure how to make a leg look right on the first line, but then I go over and make hairy lines, but some lines actually turn out okay! I also noticed that I can draw a lot smaller now and that was something that bugged me for a long time...
There's a cool filter in painter called "Sketch" and if you want to save a lot of time if relatives or something want you to draw them that's very helpful!
Nice figure studies. Do more of them they will help you immensely. Maybe tatke a look at Krenz Cusharts stuff. It really helps me understand the simplification of the body shapes :D
Those Tom Richmond form wrapping studies look really useful Fedo, nice work. I find that understanding form like that really feeds into lighting and shading later on.
Keep it going!
“Today, give a stranger one of your smiles. It might be the only sunshine he sees all day.” -- H. Jackson Brown Jr.
Noodle: Thanks! I would but I'm worried I'd have a similar experience to when I get any instructional thing. It's usually from a foreigner who goes, "herroo, wercome to my tutiorial veedio uuh, I use dis brush and I make da picture." and like its really quiet and all this amazing shit is happening on screen while I don't learn a damn thing from the voiceover. Despite that! I actually was basing my drawings on what I've seen him in particular do, just the previews for his tutorials. Maybe they are good, I'm just skeptical I'll get another one of those unhelpful tutorials though.
So Didn't get much time to work today on studies, was doing other things... Gonna try to draw a SHIT ton tomorrow, lets see if I can..
Gotta funny feeling these are starting to look better! All 100% from imagination no reference used at all. I also caved and bought Cushart Krenz gumroad, was not surprised with what I got! But I guess it never hurts to affirm what you thought about something, when it comes to fundamentals.
I had been doing it the way he teaches in that, sort of. He more uses like grids drawn with really wobbly lines almost like he's using his foot to draw or a mouse. Then he targets points on figure from a profile pose and translates it to the space on the grid. I wouldn't reccomend buying the tutorial, unless you wanna see someone doing that. But looking just at the picture gave me the general Idea. I don't know, it could be insanely helpful for a beginner, so go with your gut.
went on like a photo hunt today and figured out why I like certain things, like Winona Ryder for example. So, there's three parts to my personality, each shows through in my art in different fashions. There is a goofy side, a red blooded American southerner, and a very serious intellectual metalhead. I realized I dislike the extremes of these things, but really love a blend of them, especially when the goth/metal stuff is in tact.
And, the reason I like Winona Ryder over most other women is her versatility. She can be a book store beauty, a tomboy, a goth, can look like a farm girl or your average high school sweetheart, or your typical hollywood actress. Aside from hollywood actress, those are all things I like. And you can't beat that husky voice too ;)
Now the reason my choices can be chaotic is because I'm always trying to express one of these over the other, instead of blending them. So, I know it sounds corny and dumb, but I really resonate with these simple moody photos (that tend to be taken by pouty young women) For example:
Most of these kinds of pictures have everything I seem to like the most:
1. An attractive young lady
2. artificially balanced colors and mid range, lower contrast and fuller value ranges
3. A tasteful and mild use of sexuality
4. usually rural or natural locations
5. A gothy, somewhat staged, but somewhat believable atmosphere.
6. Some sort of emotion being expressed even if it's contrived or phony.
7. Simple and often iconic compositions that often feel spontaneous
The only thing I dislike about them is they tend to be completely devoid of a sense of humor. Serge Birault on the other hand, a favorite artist of mine, combines goth with humor; Making serious goth clothing and style feel relatable and fun. Quite tough.
So, that explains it really. And the more I look at these photos the more I realize I could never study (as in paint a copy of) each one of them. There's too many good things to paint a study of. So, just use it as a jump off point and pull things from it. Copying a photo or painting isn't the ONLY way to absorb information. This should be obvious and I know this, but I feel I truly understand it now.
Alas, the last sketch is an idea I had for a painting, like two girls, one sitting higher on a stair than the other. The duo have a somber expression, but the girl on the bottom left is very distraught. They are both in black dresses that are tailored to be very well fitted and tight, mildly lowcut and subtly sexy, but one could perceive the photo as not being sexy at all, more gloomy and striking. Also behind the sad girl is a bouquet of dark flowers that contrast against the empty bleak overcast sky behind them. The girl on top is reaching her hand to the other girls back to console her and is about to weep with her. Again, it's got all those things I like in it.
I think the closest I ever came to getting "all the things I like" in a picture was Menage A Quatre, and that piece with the goth girl with the spiky arm band I got a bunch of crits on. La Pari de Pascal I think. Interestingly, I tend to give the pieces I really enjoyed doing French titles. The problems with those pieces are more fundamental with me, that and Pari De Pascal, despite the pleasure it was to paint, I know people think she is ugly and the armpit throws it off big time.
Today I also did a lot of studies of these very lean sexy ladies, and I think I'm getting a better sense of structure, but man pen really highlights how terrible you are lol. Especially cheap drippy ones ;) I love it though, that greasy cheap feeling of pen against copy paper, can't beat it. Then when you come back to digital, things just slide into place so fast, can't wait!
aight so did caricatures today made some money, also watched Ginger Snaps, which was such an inspiring and fun movie for me! Might make the idea I had for the two girls sitting the actresses from that film so I get bonus fanart points! Realized some issues with my figures, so is'all good.
1. need to draw more proportionate heads on figures.
2. need to work on how legs connect to the ground, like in standing poses. my anatomy knowledge gets all jumbled and confused when I put two legs that are bent or the hips goes up a bit
3. need to draw WAAAAY more figures :)
