Hola everyone, this will be my sketch-book to help me learn the following things:
Everything, and uh, a little bit more of everything.
But seriously, I'm hoping to improve on colour theory, composition, overall creativity (this is a really big deal because I find that I settle for what is 'ok' rather than pushing my imagination) which includes using less references. Also anatomy and discovering my own style.
The mediums I'll be using will mainly be traditional pencil and paper and photoshop.
Also, going back to overall creativity, please ask me to draw the craziest most imaginative thing possible, or alternatively the most boring thing you can think of and I'll try and make it interesting. That would really help :D
To start off I'll upload an eye I drew I draw a while ago which I'm somewhat proud of, the skin tone is totally off though, and a hand study I did a couple of days ago. I'm fairly certain the height and width of the hand image is going to be ginormous, sorry about that :P
That eye study looks pretty solid, man. Perhaps the values of the lashes could have been a little more varied but that may just be me. Also, if you're looking for interesting things to draw, I dare you to draw an omnipotent Opabinia. Sorry if that isn't interesting to you, haha.
Nice hands and eye. I've been struggling with being imaginative myself for a while. I've realized however the best way to improve it is to look at references rather than avoiding them like you said. The key is to observe everything and make notes on their design. Referencing things if you dont know how to draw it is not a sin. Its the only way to actually learn and grow your own design language skills.
Think of design as a language, with basic shapes and lines as your alphabet and building them up into complex sentences. Use compositional choices that lead the eye to intended focal points. Try to figure out how to make every inch of a drawing interesting. Learn how to move the viewers eye through it without being too busy.
You can do this by looking at other artists designs and doing very basic information sketches to understand the design choices and why they're appealing to you. Also studying real life objects to understand how things actually look and how they work. Dont just copy reference, either. Draw it from a different angle to force you to understand its 3D form. Draw an object from reference until you can draw it purely from imagination is key as well.
Hope you find this helpful and Im not just coming off preachy :D
@ StardustLarva
Thanks, I have to agree about the eyelashes :P And today I learnt that opabinia's used to exist. I'll give it a shot but wooboy I don't know how to make an opabinia look as cool as zeus or something. Thanks for the fun challenge :D. If you've got more similar things feel free to recommend it!
@ Hypnogogic_haze
I'm at a loss for words, sheesh. Thanks explaining all of that, I didn't find it preachy at all. I'm going to make and effort to keep this in mind from now on, thanks for that :D I feel like it'll be a long long time until I'm at the point where I can apply the advice on design on anything that'll actually look good haha
And to both of you, sorry for the late reply, I kind of procrastinated... alot.. which is bad.. but fun.. but mostly bad
Anyway, more artwork! I tried to study skin colour and basic colour theory, and I've concluded that skin colour is a mythical beast in the art world that cannot be conquered unless you're a god. I also gave up half way through both drawings which I'm not proud of. I'm kind of sort of getting there but eafhdsg it's going to take time. Also a study of anatomy.
Oh and I started a really lame attempt at a landscape painting or something, I like the idea of it because in my mind it looks really calm and nature-tastic but I just can't apply atmosphere well at all, and I didn't know where to add detail and where not to. Or how to. So much to learn in photoshop ._.
Oh man I need to get out of the habit of making the canvas so big lol
