Would you like to come up and see my etchings?

[Adam Lina]

Wow awesome interview, thanks! I was working my way up to his really complex ink drawings. Im still a little intimidated by them. Thanks again Sam!

[Adam Lina]

I Spent Im guessing over 6 hours spread out over a few days to complete this one. Did an imagination drawing to apply what I learned. I'll be spending the next 3 days studying from Scott Robertson's How to Draw book.

[Samszym]

Yo, that study is impressive as hell! Nice work getting the hatching to read as a flat value. Application looks more readable too! keep up the good work

[dracken]

Interesting studies.

I don't know if I would study Frazetta ink sketches though, I mean they have a lot of energy and fluid lines, which might not be the best to study in a slow, careful manner. I feel it's a bit like making a master study after a gesture drawing, you know? Like that naked woman on a horse, the animal's legs are just scribbled lines to indicate value, not sure how much there is to gain from copying those lines.

The last one of the pterodactyls and sabertooth feels more like what you should study, but why not just set up a still life and render it in pen while looking at several images done by Frazetta so you can emulate his style. That way you can directly apply what you see from him.

Maybe that doesn't make sense, just my opinion.

Either way, good luck.

[Olooriel]

Wow, your sketchbook is inspiring! Great inks!

I can recommend the fabric studies btw., they were fun to do! :)

[Adam Lina]

Thanks Sam and Olooriel!

Dracken, I do need to try to force myself to do still lifes. They were always my least favorite part of art class. I've just never been able to get excited about drawing fruit on a table. I know if I really put forth the effort to give it a chance I could learn to appreciate it for the sake of learning. And thanks for the honest opinion. I was just working my way up to the difficult ink drawings with those more simple ones. I do think drawing them helped improve my visual library some plus they were fun. I really just wanted to study how he drew a woman on a horse with very few lines. I believe in the old saying of "less is more".

Ugh i've been in a rut lately. I felt really good about practicing line work but then I shifted directions to studying Scott Robertson's book and lost my steam. I dont think it was because the book is boring. I actually started getting excited about mirroring arches and 2 curve combos! Its mostly just all the aimless shifting back and forth of my study goals from week to week. When I was doing gestures for 2 solid months I woke up everyday with a singular objective. Now I'm sort of all over the place. It seems like for me its easier to have a single focus for months on end rather than trying to do everything week to week.

I've been avoiding drawing from imagination and I feel really bad about how terrible I am at it. I shall focus solely on imagination drawing for the next few months or however long it takes before I have a decent visual library to draw upon. I want to be filling sketch books up with cool shit so time to get on that. Heres some sketches from the last few days. Trying to work out the blood sport swamp elder design.

[Felime]

You've got some really cool stuff, especially when you focus on structure and form rather than contour. When you do mostly contour, your stuff feels like it kinda falls apart.

For example, the first post on page 5 has a wide range of stuff, some of which looks massively better than others. Your structured gestures and imagination look great, but the drawings converted to lines are a lot flatter (In a lot of them, I feel like your initial sketch looks better, and then they flatten out.

Feels like when you've got a subject that forces you to consider contour and form a lot, like the croc and snake heads, it's leaps and bounds better.

And, with your lines, line weight is important. A completely continuous line that's the same length around everything also flattens things and removes depth.

[Adam Lina]

Thanks Felime for the feed back. I need to spend more time of sketches but sometimes I just lose motivation to add anything except a crappy outline with no line weight. I've always been lazy about adding shading.

You guys dont understand how stoked I am about the new practice tools on pixellovely! I could be just looking up random faces to draw on google but this is just so much more convenient. Plus I love the challenge of doing 30 second sketches. You're a freakin beast if you can nail a likeness in 30 seconds. I know I cant do it. Its fun to try though!

[gchong]

I Spent Im guessing over 6 hours spread out over a few days to complete this one. Did an imagination drawing to apply what I learned. I'll be spending the next 3 days studying from Scott Robertson's How to Draw book.

Thanks for visiting my Sketchbook!
You've put in a lot of good effort in your sketchbook! Really love the ink study you did. Keep it up, you're on the right track!

Since you're at it (with H2DR) Would you like to study the book together? I'm taking my time to do the drills in the first chapters before going into the nitty gritty lol

[Adam Lina]

Sounds like a good idea man. Some people where talking in the shout box about starting a thread just for the H2D book but I dont think it ever got made. I think it would be good to just start a thread in the study group forum section because I know a lot of people are working through that book right now.

More faces, hands and feet!

[Samszym]

Oh woah pixelovely has a head tool!?! I have to check that business out, thanks for the heads up! (punintentional)

I think in those fast head drawings you should shift your focus to nailing the direction the head is facing in space and describing it in simple forms; a sphere with the sides lobbed off for the cranium, a mask-like shape for the face, a block for the cheekbones, a wedge for the nose, two large spheres to represent the eyeballs and orbicularis muscles. Not features. Features come after the structural stuff, and if you don't get to features in 30 seconds that's fine, they're not the most important things to nail.

[Adam Lina]

Oh I definitely am not neglecting the Loomis construction lines. I spend the first 15-20 seconds finding my bearings with the center line and brow line and all that. I do need to spend a little more time on construction and place the eye socket and cheek bones in there. I think the red pen I was using is harder to see when I do light lines. So Im using the blue one now so you can see my construction lines better. 30 seconds is kind of unrealistic for a decent head drawing too. Especially for some of the poses with the difficult foreshortened angles on the face. I still like to keep my sketches down to 2 minutes at the most.

[Lyraina]

Oh, now that's a good idea.. quick head gesture drawings.. why didn't I think of that yet? D:

Funny that you mention the excitement of mirroring arches. I've done exactly the same over the last days and even if it turns out horrible, it is kind of fun ;) The right amount of "challenging yet doable" I think. I agree that it is helpful to stick to some kind of battle plan, or schedule, or whatever works best - focusing on one or two areas at a time, with a fixed plan or goal in mind (i.e. work through a book or do a pre-set amount of studies of whatever). That way you have a sense of progress, and can really focus on the topic. And after a while (few weeks or whatever works), changing to a new subject can help avoid getting bored and lets the information settle in.

I feel you about the avoiding imagination work ... it can be really frustrating. But keep in mind that you don't fill your visual library by drawing from imagination, but from looking and drawing from reference and trying to collect as much (visual and functional) information as possible. Only then you can come up with your own designs, developed through your own interpretation of the information you collected.

[Adam Lina]

Yea Lyraina, I was doing quick head sketches this time last year when I was doing caricatures but its always a pain to find good reference. Plus theres this thing where I spend more time deciding which photo to draw than actually drawing. With the pixellovely tool you have to just keep drawing and its a constant pace.

I think I've got my new everyday grinding practice with the head drawings now. I'll try to do it everyday and do a sketch page of random subjects that I want to build visual library on. Thanks for the advice. I realize visual library is built from copying. Its just that I copy things and dont apply it so it doesnt really sink into my memory. The memory or imagination part of it in combination with reference copying is what I meant by focusing on building visual library. I tend not explain what I mean very well so its my poor communication skills at fault :)

[Adam Lina]

More heads and study/application of fabric folds.

[razvanb08]

Cool inks man. Those gesture head drawings are not a bad idea. I'm gonna give them a try.
Keep it up!

[Adam Lina]

Thanks razvanb! Yea theyre a lot of fun!

Been reading Dynamic Wrinkles and Drapery by Hogarth. Also if anyones interested in caricatures I highly recommend The Mad Art of Caricature by Tom Richmond. I got it last year and have been remembering some great info from it recently drawing these heads. I've only really brushed the surface of all the info in it. Im hoping to work up to exaggerating features when I get better at nailing likenesses.

[Adam Lina]

heres sum stuuuuufffff

[Adam Lina]

I got this program for free called Irfan view that lets you make slideshows out of image files. It lets you pick which files you want and has a randomized option. So I've been making my own pixellovely with new categories like machines for more variety. I highly recommend trying it out. Supposedly you can do this with your desktop in other operating systems. I dont know if it has all the options that Irfan view has like setting cycle times by the second, selecting specific files from specified folders and randomized cycling of images.

[Jaik]

Great studies man. Really good. Also, sweet mustache.. I think I equally impressed with your luscious face pubes as I am with the drawings... For the mechanical drawings, Dont forget to rough in the base shape before adding the details on top. Really important for hard surface stuff to get that perspective down.

Keep killing it!