pugsloth's sketchbook

[pugsloth]

The problem in your witch piece imo, is that the character and the background are not connected.
The background is blurred and she is flying in the air so she has no contact with the ground, which increases that feeling.

If you put the character without the background, I would find it okay. (the wand is not rendered, she has no volume)

But otherwise, great improvement in your studies !

Thanks for the critique Fincks! Yeah I definitely agree, what would help connect them together? Maybe a shadow and a better background scene? I'll bare this in mind on my next piece :)

Your studies are looking really nice. Mileage will serve to only enhance your growing abilities.

I'd say if you're focusing on figures than volume studies with small annotations are your best friends-- followed swiftly by a similar study from memory to help you cement the mass of learning that just occurred.

Over all, good stuff! Keep pushing! don't wait for natural contractions! :D :D

Hey Einver thanks for the comment, by volume studies you mean like Bridgman's figure drawing where he converts parts of the body into geometric shapes?

I'll be posting more studies later, I'm hoping to start working through Michael Hampton's book on figure drawing, it seems to be pretty good :)

[Einver]

Hey Einver thanks for the comment, by volume studies you mean like Bridgman's figure drawing where he converts parts of the body into geometric shapes?

I'll be posting more studies later, I'm hoping to start working through Michael Hampton's book on figure drawing, it seems to be pretty good :)

Ah, let me clarify! Volumetric shapes are helpful to study, but what I meant were masses of studies! For example you might do 100 gestures, then 10 more refined poses from ref.

Take good breaks, don't hurt your grips.

Finally, hit up 10 figures with no ref whatsoever, to see where you improved and where you keep making mistakes/struggling. Then logically, focus on the weak spots next time!

After 120 figures, you make some serious neural connections with them, enabling your conscious and subconscious to reproduce them more accurately.

Bridgeman is great to study for people who need help breaking down seemingly complex shapes into more digestible (and stylized) forms though.

[pugsloth]

Hey Einver thanks for the comment, by volume studies you mean like Bridgman's figure drawing where he converts parts of the body into geometric shapes?

I'll be posting more studies later, I'm hoping to start working through Michael Hampton's book on figure drawing, it seems to be pretty good :)

Ah, let me clarify! Volumetric shapes are helpful to study, but what I meant were masses of studies! For example you might do 100 gestures, then 10 more refined poses from ref.

Take good breaks, don't hurt your grips.

Finally, hit up 10 figures with no ref whatsoever, to see where you improved and where you keep making mistakes/struggling. Then logically, focus on the weak spots next time!

After 120 figures, you make some serious neural connections with them, enabling your conscious and subconscious to reproduce them more accurately.

Bridgeman is great to study for people who need help breaking down seemingly complex shapes into more digestible (and stylized) forms though.

Ahhh right I understand, yes that seems like a good practice to do, thank you for explaining, I have a lot of time so hopefully I'll start making them connections sooner rather than later :)

Yeah I have the Complete Bridgman book but I find them drawings a bit gestural to copy, so I took some advice from a few others and ordered the Stephen Rogers Peck book on anatomy to aid in learning from the Bridgman book :)

[pugsloth]

Four days not posting makes me feel very guilty, but here are some drawings I've done, got my skeleton so I've done some studies of it, started reading Michael Hampton's book Figure Drawing: Design and Invention which is amazing, been doing a lot of gestures to try and incorporate what he talks about, exaggerating poses so that they don't look so stiff when fully rendered.

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[pugsloth]

Some charcoal (conté 1710b) figure drawing from photo ref, first two are sketches and the last one had more time spent on it, need to get better.

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Also thought I'd drop in a quick head sketch I enjoyed done with a brush pen by Pentel (great!)


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[pugsloth]

Life drawing day, couldn't get too much detail with the paper they provide, going to have to start taking a newsprint pad I think, also some gladiator helmet studies, really fun to draw them, not too much today, been watching too many tutorials, binge 'learning', need to discipline myself more...

so I've decided I'm going to attempt some Bargue drawings, just to increase my patience and accuracy, learning to see properly, also going to read 'Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain' by Betty Edwards :)

The life drawings are 25 minute poses btw.

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[giorgiobaroni]

hey very nice work you got here, and as others pointed out, lot of improvements in just a few weeks!

cool to see you're super committed and want to learn and study as much as possible!

me myself wake up every day wanting to do some studies but never really do any..

since you don't mind reading and learning from books i might suggest the super classic andrew loomis.

i found out there are some of his books available to download for free due to copyright ending.
i read and studied them all, pretty good advices and even entertaining to read
you can find them here
of course there are more, but at least these are totally free so doesn't hurt to have them.

as for your art, this last page shows the greatest improvement so far, those gestures and life studies really shows you're getting the grip on how anatomy works, so good job!

[pugsloth]

hey very nice work you got here, and as others pointed out, lot of improvements in just a few weeks!

cool to see you're super committed and want to learn and study as much as possible!

me myself wake up every day wanting to do some studies but never really do any..

since you don't mind reading and learning from books i might suggest the super classic andrew loomis.

i found out there are some of his books available to download for free due to copyright ending.
i read and studied them all, pretty good advices and even entertaining to read
you can find them
of course there are more, but at least these are totally free so doesn't hurt to have them.

as for your art, this last page shows the greatest improvement so far, those gestures and life studies really shows you're getting the grip on how anatomy works, so good job!

Thanks Giorgio, means a lot to hear I'm improving from others, I stayed in bed today and feel guilty as hell, back to the routine tomorrow though!

Thanks for the link but I've actually bought a few of Loomis' books seen as they're being reprinted, prefer having the real thing to study from :)

Having second thoughts on the Bargue drawings, I want to do some but I'm in my overdraft already, plus the numerous hours I spend on a Bargue drawing could be spent studying more important things, might just delay them until the summer when I have lots of spare time.

[pugsloth]

Done a master study of In the Alpine High Valley (Landscape with Mt. Wendelstein) by Carl Spitzweg here:

https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute...rt-project

Don't know why I forgot to make the canvas larger, great to see how yellow-green the grass is and the sky colours, more of these tomorrow!

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[pugsloth]

Done another master study of Claude Joseph and then started some material studies, going to do a lot more tomorrow.

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[pugsloth]

Updates, I think I'm going to lower the amount of studies I've been doing recently, and focus on more imaginative work putting my studies into practice, so here's what I've been working on today, some character portraits from imagination, a quick character sketch and then a red riding hood sketch, I also did 2 more material studies, these are really good to do.

[pugsloth]

So far today, a study of The Golden Hour by Thomas Moran, what a great landscape artist, then some character silhouettes, I tried taking the robot/massive weapon into a full sketch but my anatomy screwed up, so going to do some figure painting now, might do some mech studies later also.

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[pugsloth]

Sketched this last night and worked on it the most of today, pretty happy with it, it's not perfect and I made her right breast way too huge so I tried to fix it by stretching the gap of her arm pit a bit, this was drawn from reference (obviously), the photo I used is part of a premium photo album by Proko (Stan Prokopenko), they're really great reference photos.

It was meant to just be a figure painting study... I started off with laying in proportions (measuring the picture on my monitor like I would from life) and then going onto the contour, a picture I missed out was the shadow pattern drawing to help lay the values down.

Lay in:

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Contour:

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Painting:

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[pugsloth]

Just got back from life drawing, I think I've gotten a lot better since I started going, made measuring a more common practice and really trying to capture the rhythm of the pose.

So here's a gesture (5 minute) and a more completed drawing (25 minute).

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[pugsloth]

Not posted in a day or two due to this study of John Singer Sargent, had great fun with this.

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Edit: here is a link to the reference for comparison :)

http://images.zeno.org/Kunstwerke/I/big/74v109a.jpg

[Nexuun]

great job on the sargent study. please post the ref for your studies so we can see the original. edges look like they were given the needed attention and the color as well; keep it up. try to compose your other paintings from either imagination or figure ref like sargent would. there is much to learn that you will better understand if you give it a try yourself.

[pugsloth]

great job on the sargent study. please post the ref for your studies so we can see the original. edges look like they were given the needed attention and the color as well; keep it up. try to compose your other paintings from either imagination or figure ref like sargent would. there is much to learn that you will better understand if you give it a try yourself.

Thank you for the feedback Nexuun! I have edited the original post with a link to the reference, I did the painting of the witch entirely from imagination so I am trying, I'm going to do more anatomy studies and then some from imagination, eventually being able to draw the figure correctly from imagination hopefully.

[pugsloth]

Been away for the weekend so not updated over the few days, so here's a collection of Bridgman drawing's I've done, need to apply what I'm learning to imaginative work, been really good to work on.

Some imaginative work also :)

[pugsloth]

Some more bridgman, going to try applying what I've learnt to some figures soon, then some character portrait sketches, warming up.

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[pugsloth]

Some figure drawings from today, going to be doing some anatomy tomorrow, need to laser etch it into my brain.

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