Would you like to come up and see my etchings?
@Adam
Keep up the hard work!

You've almost completely fixed your balance in posing issues (Meaning most images read well, only a few are off). Good job! I'm glad to see you consistently making better work. So, I've got some new suggestions for you too!


Lighting:
I was flipping through to get a glance at your value studies, and you don't actually seem to have much consistency between your shaded studies. Some are better than others, but the quality and technique jumps around in almost every piece. I would suggest learning more about lighting and light theory/physics. I would love to see you do some lit primitive shapes where you're really dissecting and focusing on the properties of light and shadow. I can see a lot of the formally understood properties of lighting missing from your work, and where one part is correct another will be off. If you're confused about it, there are errors that I can point out for you.

Here's an article dissecting the properties of light: Click me!

It's kind of a dry read and I can't find something more fun right now, but if you're antsy just skip to the "A Light Source and Shadows" bit and skip the introduction.

It would be a good exercise for you to do some spheres and identify the highlight, midtone, core shadow, reflected light, and cast shadow. Boring, I know, but it's also easy and should help you to understand how to construct your lighted subjects.

Line Quality
This one is easy.

Your drawings are looking pretty good now. So how do you make them better?
LINE QUALITY! (This is something my teachers yell at me for all the time, HAHA.)

Line "quality" is the formal term, but it's a bit misleading because it's more or less synonymous with line weight. If you want to make your line drawings look better, simply vary how heavy you make your line while you're drawing. Looking at the work you're making now, nearly every line is exactly the same thickness. Varying your line weight is the difference between someone really having to LOOK at your drawing to understand what is happening, versus understanding at a glance.

Traditionally, you'll make the line darker and heavier as the form turns away from shadow, and lighter and fainter as it goes towards the light. Or, for cartoonier styles, the line is heavier on the outline of the figure and its individual objects (while the interior details will be a lighter weight) or to emphasize which part lays over another (Heavier line brings it closer to the viewer, while a lighter one recedes it into the background.)
Really, it doesn't matter how you do it, any amount of variation will add a new level of interest to your work. In my personal opinion, it's best to use your line weight to describe the form, as describing a form with clarity is the chief interest of representational art.

Hopefully that gives you some new stuff to think about! Go forth and conquer!

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Vicianus is right about lineweight/linequality.It`s clear that your pencils are sharpening up. But I would recommend you to use different pencils (maybe H for the mainsketch and something around 6B for heavier "darker" lines something that doesn’t require you to push down as much).
Arms and wrist are pretty vulnerable;-)
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Hey-ho
I'm actually going to pop in and dispute that...!

Arms and wrists are pretty vulnerable, but especially when it comes to stuff like artistic line weight and a "dynamic" quality to your drawing, drawing from your shoulder is the best bet. You can make all the marks you need to outside of the smallest details using your larger, more distant muscles. In addition to not damaging your arm, you get a more dynamic line by doing your variation in a single stroke. For me, I would choose something softer like 2B - 6B or whatever suits your fancy, and do both your lightest and boldest strokes with that. Well, I mean I go straight with ink 90% of the time....

In any case, for dynamics and injury avoidance, drawing from your shoulder is the best thing to do. But what Construction said is also totally valid, it come down to what you like best. Personally, I don't like to tool hop so I like something that can do the whole job on its own. Anyway, it's all up to the artist!

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Stephany, I do actually know about how light works surprisingly. I just dont apply it very well out of laziness and just not having done enough value studies. Plus im struggling to get a handle on using paint. I could see why it would look like I dont know. Usually I spend all my energy just trying to get my paints mixed to the right value and fixing the drawing mistakes. By the end of it Im too gassed to add reflective light and fix my edges. This month is going to be my month of painting so expect to see me struggling a lot more with all this.

The same thing kinda goes with my line work. A lot of the time its just laziness. I do a lot of quick studies of objects just to learn the forms so I can draw it from different angles. So I dont bother making the lines thicker to show form since the drawing is just for my own understanding. I try to focus of line quality when I do my nicer sketches in my toned sketchbook. Im definitely not a pro at it of course and should spend more time on my drawings to work that out. Thanks for your feed back. Those are my weak spots for sure, no denying it.

As for what constructicon and you said about pencils. I dont really like using graphite for finished drawings anymore. I usually only use it for a rough lay in and go over in pen or just skip it and start in pen. And for charcoals I use a fairly soft pencil and use a light touch for the lay in lines. Thanks for the suggestions though.

Heres a quick sketch from imagination to warm up. Tried to pay more attention to line quality. Some figures and last nights life drawing session. It was painting night so I broke out the gouache. I didnt quite get to bring it to a finish that i liked but it was a good practice. Took about 2 hours on it.


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That gouache painting of the figure looks great. The highlighted areas perhaps could be a little lighter, though that might be me. If I recall correctly, gouache is isn't always as vibrant as other painting mediums anyway. Keep up the wonderful work!

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figure stuffs are good. i suggest study from the masters at home after doing these life ones. just to see how they did it. like for example look at how they do the knee, copy it then next life drawing session youll be able to subconciously remember how to draw a knee in a simplified way , in turn making it easier to draw from a live model. at least thats how i go about it. i havent been able to go on a figure drawing session before. but from practing from the masters i was able to understand the forms and anatomy enough for me to draw it much easier the next time. hope this makes sense.

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I actually thought you probably knew about it (since you've been drawing for a long time) but I wrote out that much anyway because I think it's good to review the basics and it's nice to make it as easy as possible. I hope I didn't offend you!

All the practice you do is great, but I'd also be wary about having a mindset where you stop considering the basic visual principles because it's more of a shorthand while you observe the form and understand it more in your head. Mileage is great, but drawing a lot will only get you so far; practice making an unclear image is practice to make an unclear image, regardless of whether you understand how to make it better or not.

I know I say things that can be blunt or offensive a lot, so I hope what I'm saying doesn't come across maliciously or talk-down(y)? I love watching you progress, so I'm rooting for you and want to see you make big leaps!

As far as lighting goes, one thing I haven't seen in any of your work is the specular highlight. You tend to block in the light masses, but this approach is losing some directionality and dimensionality. Having your brightest specular highlights clearly places in the image will help solidify the direction the lighting is coming from and define the peaks of your forms.

Keep it up! Nice update.

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Stardust, yea it needs specular highlights. I toned down the white to save pure white for the hot spots but never got that far. I might go back and try to work on it later. Thanks for the feedback.

foxfire, I've done that a bit with Frazetta. When i took a month of Watts online figure drawing I pick up a lot of Jeff's style I think which is also heavily influenced by Frazetta. Jeff actually recommends the same thing too. I might go back in a couple months and find some other masters to study, thanks!

Stephany, Oh you didnt offend me. I really appreciate all your feed back! Yea Im trying to work on my habit of doing unfinished sloppy work. Usually I only have an hour or two to work on something. Then I come back to it I have to fight off the urge to drop it and move on to something new. Once I get over the hump of working on something for an hour I get focused in but then I run out of time. My days off are the only days I can really get anything done but then life gets in the way. Im getting better at managing my time though.

Heres a couple more skulls from life. I've found my skull replica is the only thing I can do a still life of that wont put me to sleep. I dont know how people can do still lifes of vases and flowers.


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" I dont know how people can do still lifes of vases and flowers." Well, I feel equipped to answer that! It's all about personal preference, son... personal preference. We must all be true to our ... particular tastes. :D All joking aside, skull is an important thing to learn well, so keep repeating it, just like lifting if you want nice muscle tones.


Focus.
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Meat, haha yea what ever tickles your pickle as they say. I plan on doing a lot more, thanks!

The last week or so I've had computer trouble and havnt gotten much done. I'm finally ordering my new machine which will be a lot better. Im thinking of getting a nice video camera too so I can do streams, hangouts and youtube vids of my drawing and painting.

I feel really good about my life drawings this week. I can see my own improvement in figure drawing. It helped that we had an amazing model too. The athletic figures are always a lot easier because the muslces are more defined so theres more points of reference. She was intense though. She did a handstand with one leg held horizontal for a whole minute and didnt move an inch!


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Some sketches from today except for the stiff knight.


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some more stuff


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awesome loose sketches at the last one.
i didnt know youve been going to watts atelier. how is it like there? is everyone nice? how much is the longest pose that you guys can draw? is jeff the same as he is on his videos?
sorry for so many questions. it must have been an amazing experience being with people who has the same passion. i wish to one day i would go there. dramatic camera pans out*

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Oh no I only took a month of online drawing from Watts. I go to a local life drawing group. I wish I could afford to live in So Cal and go to Watts. The online classes are great though. And you should search for a life drawing group near you. Most cities have at least one.

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moar draaaawrings


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Hey, really nice progress over the last few pages or so. A lot of these pencil drawings are strong, and I especially like your use of white on a lot of these.

It looks like your construction is getting better as well. The line work is improving, most definitely. The painting of that skull has some really tasty strokes in it, also!

You've been doing a lot of studies and sketches, but it looks like there hasn't been any real long point of application. A few posts back it looks like you had a character line up, and that was looking like a good start for something. It's always very easy to get stuck in the habit of doing studies all the time with little to no application.

It'd be really cool to see what you do with all this stuff! :]

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Thanks Arch! Yea I've been working on sketching without reference to build my visualizing. Im still struggling pretty bad with it. I have a lot of scratch pages that I dont bother uploading because they're just warm ups and working through ideas. My design skills need a lot of work too so when I feel better about it I'll try to push myself to do finished portfolio pieces. The way I see it Im still a first year art student and theres no big need for me to be worried about building a portfolio yet. I have a painting I've started the lines on but Im too busy at the moment to work on it.


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More skulls and a 2 hour painting from life. I cut the size of my paper in half from last months nekkid lady painting. I got all the basic values in and worked it as much as I could. March was going to be my painting month. It kinda fell flat with only a handful of skull studies. But April is going to be painting month version 2.0!!


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I have never seen so many gesture studies on one place. I'm seriously motivated by your skatchbook. When i saw how much you improved I'm going to do more gesture studies starting tommorow.

And this way i want to say thank you for following my work. ^^

// Sketchbook // DeviantArt //

May the painting skills be with you! :3
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Hey Adam, great studies. I really like the way you suggest shadow on a cylinder (legs, arms and body) it's really fascinating sometimes and some others I would like to see a different way of drawing the blacks. Like a rembrandt way of sketching :) Keep up the good work! your proportions are great as well and love your gestural studies!!

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