StardustLarva's Visual Explorations

[LaleAnn]

Hey Declan! You're improving in your figures! Very nice. Don't let go, keep it up! :D Hope to see you around sometime. :)

[StardustLarva]

IrishWhiskey-Thank you! I have been recommended Hampton's book before. It might be worth looking at, though it does seem to be a bit on the pricey side.

Lale-Thank you Lale! I will carry on, heh. Also, yeah, I intend to be on the Skype group more, but alas things have to keep me busy. I'd love to speak with you guys again.

Some more bits and pieces, including more stuff from today's life drawing class.





Some fennec fox studies for some upcoming pieces.



One of the paintings in which I applied the aforementioned studies. I've started painting on paper as I find it's a bit cheaper and more efficient than painting with canvases and boards.



Additionally, I decided to get some pieces I like and attempt to analyse the perspective
used in them. These probably aren't correct. Still, after my little break from perspective, I intend to get back into it, even if that means working with Scott Robertson's book, which I honestly dread, haha.

[StardustLarva]

I finished a painting last night in which I applied what I've learnt about two point perspective.



Thoughts?

[StardustLarva]

This week's adventures in life drawing:





Also, here's a quick study of a fennec fox face.

[StardustLarva]

It's not been too great on my end recently, things I'd rather not go into on here. It's affected my output to some extent, I haven't been able to focus as much.

Anyway, here's a couple of things I have managed to get done recently:



My most recent painting, a quick one. More emotional ventilation.



More perspective analysis of a few pieces I like. I don't know if they're entirely accurate or not.

[meat]

OH I like the life drawings! Try out keeping the outer most edge of your object/subject sharp straight without fuzziness. You can do that with a flat brush or a palette knife.

[Rshin]

Hey Stardust! Thanks for commenting on my sketchbook and checking it out. I'm loving that fox study you made. Keep it up :D

[StardustLarva]

Meat-Thank you. That is something I need to work on, yes. I'll try that next time I paint.

Rshin-Thank you very much.

Still not too great on my end...I still haven't been able to draw or paint as much. I'm still doing the life drawing class though, so I have some pieces to show from that.







In addition, here's a still life perspective study I did of a wooden toy car. One of my first attempts at using conte.

[RenatoCaria]

Hey man! Long time no speak! Those life drawings are good! I can totally see the improvement :) specially that lady standing, the first one.. dat ass aha Keep Up man! :D

[StardustLarva]

Hi there Renato! Indeed, it's a been a while, man. Thank you for the compliments, I'm glad to see there's visible improvement in them.

I don't have much of an update this time, rather just a little painting I did this afternoon, more emotional ventilation. It probably looks like shite, but it was so much fun to do, and it honestly made me feel better. I really like this one, even if other people don't, so that's what matters, right?



Anyway, I'd like to ask my fellow daggers for some advice, hence the reason I am making this post. For the past month (two months? I think...) I've mainly been focusing on perspective. I feel my grasp on it has grown stronger, but I feel there is much I perhaps don't understand, though I otherwise feel as though I have the basics down. I've since become more interested in focusing on stuff like animal anatomy, which I have resources for, but I feel I have to focus on perspective given how awful I am at it.

So what I'm asking is this: should I continue with perspective for now or should I start focusing on other things you guys have suggested to me? I realise I'm probably not ready to stop with perspective for now, but I wouldn't mind a second opinion. (Maybe this is me just trying to get out of doing it, heh.)

[LaleAnn]

Alright, Dec, your dedication still impresses me, it's a great thing you have.
Now for the advice asking, I think what you really need now is to go out and start painting real life perspective, if that's what you're focus has been on lately. It's good to learn all the theory but nothing's better than going out with a sketchbook, sit somewhere and actually study a real life 3D object/perspective. Buildings, churches, a chair in a cafe, a street.. I think that would be the smartest move to do right now.

Second thing, an dI must have already told you that xD but: Slow down. I feel in your paintings that you are still rushing towards the final result instead of actually enjoying the process, which is what will make you learn best. It doesn't matter to make your figures or your perspective look juicy for now. Just do them as best as you can. Just do it slowly and consciously. Don't rush it or you won't learn it. Also, for your paintings and I guess you already know that, but you don't need to finish it in one sitting. You can start it and then come back to it and refine, slowly as you go, keeping a fresh eye.

I think your acrylics would certainly improve much quicker if you gave them a little bit more time and tried to refine them more, don't you think? Maybe I'm wrong and you're going after a very rough style and don't care so much about refining, in that case ignore my comment. :)

Your figures are getting really better! Keep practicing and, don't forget, don't rush them, find your own natural rhythm and enjoy the process more than the final result ;)

Keep it coming buddy

[StardustLarva]

Hello Lale, thanks for the thought-out response.

I’m glad someone finds my dedication impressive, even though I have (at least I feel) been making very little progress. It means a lot to me nonetheless. About what your suggestion for perspective studies-that’s a very good idea, and I’ll give it a try, so thank you for that. I think the problem really is understanding more “abstract” perspective, which I want to try and execute in some of my pieces. I guess I should just focus on the basics for now, I suppose.

On your other comment-maybe you have a point, to some extent. A couple of my recent paintings (the melting fennec fox portrait and the one I last posted) were in fact completed in one sitting each. I think a problem I have (which we’ve discussed before) is that I worry I will never have the capabilities of the artists I admire and that no one will ever like what I do. I don’t know, it’s kind of perennial, I know it’s not about doing it for the sake of being known, but I can’t help but fixate on the possibility that people may never actually like what I do.

If I may ask-what exactly do you mean specifically by “refining” my acrylic paintings more? I do care about that, the recent ones that I mentioned earlier are ones I did with a palette knife, heavily influenced by the works of artists such as Francis Bacon and James Juron. As I’ve said, they were also emotional ventilation, I was focusing more on expressing emotion through them then actually attempting to refine them. Not that it’s an excuse for my incompetence, because that’s probably another thing I’m doing wrong.

Anyway, sorry for my overly long response, I really appreciate your words, Lale.

[StardustLarva]

Been painting a bit, but the stuff I've done is garbage, so if you really want to see it, check my DeviantArt. It was more emotional ventilation, above all.

Anyway, here's a couple of things, not really relevant to perspective or anything else I should be working on:




My half of an exquisite corpse drawing with someone on DA. It's here if you want to see it.



A conte portrait drawing I did at the life drawing class. I think this is one of the best drawings I've produced, so that probably means there's something horribly wrong with it. Oh well.

[wla91]

Hey man! I really admire your dedication, and it's a nice thing that you get to assist to life drawing classes, I wish I had those where I live!

One advice I could give you with the portraits is to visualize the triangles of the face, you could practice with photos drawing a line that goes from the end of the eyebrows to the nose, the mouth shall take care of itself once you solve this. Here's an example from your portrait.

I hope you find this useful and keep it up!

[StardustLarva]

Thank you, I will keep that in mind.

I'm probably going to post here a bit more sporadically for now, as I feel I get too focused on accumulating work for the sake of posting it than learning from it, so I'm only going to post occasionally. For now, here's a few things:



A recently finished illustration.





A couple of quick watercolour paintings from my life drawing class.

Anyway, see you guys again soon.

[Fedodika]

hey bud, i like these figure drawings! i notice a lot of things you study are very design oriented, and when you make imagination pieces they design oriented but really abstract? I can see the creativity, but the fundamentals hold back your vision's true uniqueness. And we all go through that, it never ends.

I think your figures are headed in the right direction, but i'm gonna give you some advice that alotta people might not agree with. See, i never studied perspective in like the mathematical sense, i learned it from that book i recommended to you a while back, the natural way to draw. I really reccomend you dig that out and blast through it dude; i mean get some cheap paper, like some notebooks, copy paper and stuff and a cheap set of ballpoint pens, markers, hell anything and just GRIND out the crap dude. Then every other day, do a drawing or painting that takes a little longer, maybe a couple hours, but at this stage just bang em out FAST!

Like, get hundreds reference of everything you wanna draw, and figures, hands, heads, all this stuff you'll be able to apply to creatures you wanna make. Scribble the shit outta stuff, then find where the muscles are. When you do the thousands of gestures niccolaides makes you do in his book, wrap the forms like wire around the drawing. THIS WILL TEACH YOU PERSPECTIVE. and it's VERY intuitive!

Like this
http://image.slidesharecdn.com/michaelha...1420382301

Study the shit outta this guy and get his book, it's 100% worth it
http://figuredrawingdotinfo.blogspot.com/

Also, try to imagine where the floor is when you draw anything, just indicate it like the bottom of a cube, with two lines, like this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anuoOhxpPLg

And you don't have to share any of it, just do it, toss it, do some more. Draw on top of your drawings, look at the reference more than you look at the drawing. Read that BOOK DO IT!

[meat]

This is a really late answer to something you asked earlier about should you focus on more perspective studying... every time you draw something from observation from life, you're studying perspective, because your subjects exist in perspective. So don't stress out about it too much. Perspective is everywhere, you're kind of studying it all the time. There are more stuff to study and get better at than there are games on Steam anyway. Go by your interest, and your interest will probably bring up stuff you're not good and and need studying. Start studying from that. Eg. my interest is currently animal and creatures, which brings up stuff like shadow and scales and crystals and etc that I'm bad at, so already my plate is full! Just an example :)

Your figures are getting better, that's evident. Do you like taking classes? The Hampton book Fedo suggested is certainly a good figure book. I have it too and have looked through it, and it's very direct to an artist's needs.

[StardustLarva]

Koala-Thank you for the advice and reminder about the book. I suppose I'll finally get to working through it then.

Meat-That's a good way of putting it, I hadn't thought of it like that before. Perhaps I'll do that, and study the stuff of interest and see where that brings me in terms of fundamentals. For now I'll probably try and focus on drawing bugs, foxes and monsters, heh. Thank you for the compliments on my figure drawings, I feel I've learnt quite a bit about constructing figures and from the class.

Anyway, here's a couple of paintings, the first two of my Denticulation series:





Also, a recent drawing, also the start of a series.

[StardustLarva]

A fairly minor update this time. I finished that life drawing class, which I felt I learnt a lot from, so hopefully I can apply what I've learnt about construction and form. 

Below is the result of the last session; as one will be able to tell, it's not finished, as I didn't get to start painting it until late into the class.



I also have another pastel drawing I finished recently: 

[Zearthus]

A question, how long you take on each of these paintings because it almost feel as if you're rushing through the whole thing, at least it gives me that kind of impression. Aside from that, I second what the others said.

But one thing to always keep in mind, if you're learning perspective is where is the vanishing point? What about the eye level etc. As soon you identify those things, it becomes easier to do so.

This could give you some ideas of what I'm referring to:
http://thedesignsketchbook.com/tip54-man...-mistakes/

Aside from that though, keep it going buddy!