JyonnyNovice - from Novice to Master!

[Suira]

Sup Buddy! Cool stuff, nice to see you struggling and trying hard, you certainly have a thing for hard surface, it seems to come out wasier for you than organic stuff, which is a pretty cool thing.

Regarding advice on faces I have a few tips since I've been where you are and I know how fucking frustrating it can be ( it still is haha). I feel that your problem is that you're trying to define in a very specific way every feature and every structure, and while that's important for you to do when studying and understand, it's something that isn't very heplfull in the stage you're in, since it will be very complicated to get proper proportions and the overall results won't look apealing to you.

My sugestion to keep advancing on your portrait studies is a bit long, but I think it will help you if you try it out:

First of all, keep up studying the asaro heads and skulls and al that good stuff, loomis, whatever you feel helps you understand the actual shape of a face, but here's a REALLY IMPORTANT tip on this. Try not to copy what you see at all, just focus on the shape you see on the facem on the major shapes, just that, and try to make it as simple as you can, don't dig into the needy greedy details, only focus on the propotion overall, in a very abstract and simple way, the really detailed shit will come a long time after you really master that ( it hasn't come for me yet).

And second, when studying faces from reference, try to focus on a more pictoric approach, trying to see, where are generally the darkest spots, and why is that, what natural gradients you think make faces interesting ( the nose tends to be a bit darker and more contrasty for example) and exagerate these properties to the point where they don't look natural or real, try to see how much you can get away with and what works or doesn't.

Third , when building your initial heads, be very loose, instead of trying to do rounded shapes, do squarish block-ins and ve very loose when placing your features, try to allow your subconscious to guide you and don't be afraid to erase or redraw stuff over and over till you find proportions that are satisfying to you. I made a really quick demo for ya on this topic, on the left being what you shouldn't do ( it took me longer to take this approach and the result sucks) and on the right being what more or less you should give a try to. Remember, you don't need to be as precise as a surgeon when drawing faces, make them resonate with what you think a real face looks like instead of trying to get an exact copy. If you want an example of this just check out Wesley Burt's pencil portraits and really look: how realistic proportion-wise or feature-wise are those faces? and why do they seem realistic anyway?



Hope this helps a bit, also try to paint, and forget about drawing every now and then, some of the things you will learn will intuitively apply when you get back to your pencil.

And lastly, faces are imho the hardest subject to learn and mastering it is really hard and really time-energy consuming, so don't get discouraged if you feel your progress stagnates.

[JyonnyNovice]

Suira Thanks so much for the detailed advice! I find the hard stuff easier as I'm very technically minded (I love maths and stuff), so it comes pretty naturally (like solving an equation, from the start point there's only one 'solution' to where the line goes). Faces are just a big mystery for me, I've been hunting through so many books and videos for a good approach that I can apply but as you saw am struggling badly. I thought the Reilly rhythms were the answer, and they probably are but I need to build up to that. I will try your blocky approach, try some painting, spend more time with skulls and asaro heads (great great link in your SB by the way, for that 3D skull) and keep practising! Thanks again dude!

[art44]

Great Perspective Stuff , I'm learning Perspective too . any books or videos you recommend ?

keep it up

[JyonnyNovice]

Art44 Thanks man! Definitely Scott Robertson's 'How to Draw', if you don't have it already it's an absolute must for perspective - it has absolutely everything you need. I've started it three times now but determined to finish it finally. The first couple of times it was all so new and it's really complex that I missed a lot of the finer points and got confused and distracted by other things. He also has a Gnomon Workshop video, that is a kind of crash course through the first half of the book - but what he does on that video which he doesn't focus on as much in the book is drawing freehand perspective grids with vanishing points that are off the page, just eyeballing it and drawing them quickly, and adding other guidelines to that - which is a pretty important skill since you aren't practically going to draw a complete 100% accurate grid for every drawing. Definitely those would be my recommendations, there are other books but his approach is pretty comprehensive and adaptable. He also has tons of free tutorials on his youtube channel (and the book has a lot of accompanying videos that you access through a website as well). Best of luck man!


Devoting some more time to heads to practice some of Suira's suggestions, not sure if I understood it all right but I'm trying to really look at the faces and map out the planes, paying attention to shadow shapes and whether things are turned up or down. It's pretty challenging for me but I really feel like I'm learning stuff, the faces feel more 3D as well.

[StardustLarva]

Wow, your understanding of the structure of human faces is really getting much better! Keep going, Mr Novice!

[Suira]

Cool stuff man! Glad to see my feedback helped! :D Here goes the feedback:

I think you're approaching things in a more volumetrical way which is an improvement, you seem to be more aware of the spatial properties of the heads.

On the other hand, those eyes are way too streched, in the second picture for example they're almost eating into the ridge of the nose, so might wanna watch out for that, what works for me with eyes ( and sometimes I screw up pretty bad anyway) is to just put a couple of spheres as placeholders and work on the rest of the face, keep the spheres there and space them as best you can. When you're fairly done with the rest of the face you can start erasing parts of the spheres depending on how down the brow is or how shaggy you want the eyes to be, but don't work on that till you're done with the rest, just use placeholders.

Same for the nose, a triangular shape should work for most perspectives, use placeholders and focus on establishing the main facial volumes, and then wor your features so they work with the perspective and characteristics you have in mind, remember , from big to small is always the way to go. The simpler you can make something and still have it work, the better.

It's always hard to keep up that approach and many times I get entangled into overworking planes and stuff like that to later on realise that just showing a transition or a simple plane change would have worked better.

Overall, keep it up man, this is hard as fuck to master and you're doing the right thing just working your ass off. Oh! Also, before I forget, take your time, specially now that you're starting to establish your approach and to understand how them planes work, if you rush through you might even get good results, but you won't know where they came from.

When I started doing head studies and shit it took me about 30-40 minutes to finish one of the tiny heads I was studying, because I was taking my time to see and understand how to simplify the values or the structures and still make them work. In fact, I still take quite some time to pull off really simple looking shit, but speed comes with practice and understanding, so don't try to force the speed of your pipeline! :D

[Adrian]

Good job man ! Keep going. I keep saying I'll try these Asaro heads but I always forget. I totally have to do it today haha. TBH the so many planes scare me a bit.

Oii man I just remembered ! You're from England , right ? If you're not already in some sort of hangout you could join CD hangouts. I'm usually there most of the times and some other ppls ocasionally that have similar timelines.

[JyonnyNovice]

Stardust Thanks so much! We forget how much progress we make I suppose, thanks for reminding me!

Suira Thanks again dude, I really appreciate the feedback, I guess I'm aware of those issues you mentioned (the eyes definitely, always end up too big for me). Now just need to work on fixing them instead of making the same mistakes every time : ) I'm finding I slip back to going straight for the organic curvy lines, even when I'm trying to keep things blocky and simple, but I'll keep working at it!

Adrian Yea I have a folder of Asaro head pictures but rarely draw them, I should do it more often - you know there is a simple side and a complex side too right? So if you're feeling off or not confident one day you can draw it from the (right?) side, where the planes are simplified. I meant to drop into the hangout today but got distracted! I'll come and hang with you guys soon though.



Thought I'd post up my 'ellipse training routine' for anyone who wants to get better at ellipses for perspective drawing - I've been doing this every day, I've gotten much better after just 4 days or so. It takes about 30 minutes I reckon. It's all Scott Robertson's exercises but I find if I write down a strict set of things to do, and the order in which to do them, I can just focus and draw every day instead of thinking about what I should do or practice next.



Some more heads; a skull in ball point, a quick sketch head and a longer sketch head - I scanned each stage of the drawing so you guys can see what I do, in case there's something I'm missing that'd help me get better. Was trying to keep the blocky approach going but slipped quickly back into defining the features too soon. Will work on that!

[JyonnyNovice]

Some of today's scribblings:

Some perspective stuff:



Another skull:



And a scene from Harry Potter - was just drawing Hermione mainly but decided to sketch in the rest of the scene as well. Her eyes are a little bit better than usual, lips are looking flat and head is a bit skewed, keep trying Jon!



I noticed, now I'm trying to do a more thorough block in, that my heads look a lot better before I try to carve out the details. Somehow adding all the intricate stuff kills my drawings, like too much going on? No one focal point? Uninteresting design? (as well as the usual problems of skewed heads and flat features) Not sure... but will try to explore this some more and figure out how to make them more appealing.

[JyonnyNovice]

No heads today, pushed on with the perspective training, was hoping to start an illustration I've been planning but ran out of time:



Going to Finland tomorrow for a week, hopefully I'll be back with a lot of drawings from life.

[JyonnyNovice]

Nearly a full week of drawing only from life or imagination, it was a really good experience just to draw whatever I liked or whatever looked interesting and I had the time to sit and draw it. Really loosened up - plus this feeling that people are watching me (like in the airport waiting room, on the plane etc.) seemed to make my drawings come out much nicer. Probably because I was going slowly and thinking a lot more before putting down marks (I guess I understand now why fancy artists have a muse). I must really try to carry this mentality into my work at home because I was really happy with the results.

It's a big file (3Mb), hope it doesn't slow down too much loading this page:

[StardustLarva]

Hey there Jyonny, hope your trip went well. The drawings from life are looking good, particularly that one of the sleigh. One thing I would suggest is to perphaps really go a bit stronger with your tones. I think that would make the subjects pop out a lot more.

[Adam Lina]

Nice work, dude. The line weight on that sleigh looks good. It might help you do approach your skull studies the way you do your perspective stuff. Just simplify and draw the curves as more basic flat planes. As if it was turned into a blocky 3D model from the 90s. You just want to cement the basic structure for now, not all the fine details.

[crackedskull]

Your doin it right.

[desirulz123]

I love how hard you are working it is an inspiration, keep it up :)

[JyonnyNovice]

Stardust Thanks man, I agree totally, I do have a 9B super soft pencil that I use for accents but I don't use it as much as I could, mostly just draw with my HB clutch pencil since I like to draw with it and couldn't find any 2B leads anywhere for it. Getting to render light and shadow with some accuracy will be the next piece of the puzzle, until now I've just used shading to hint at the form.

Adam Cheers dude, yes I will definitely try that! I kinda thought the same thing recently, will probably start simple with Loomis planes or something and build up to a skull.

Crackedskull & Desirulz Thanks so much guys! Really means a lot : )


The usual perspective / gesture / head drawing drills that I didn't scan today, as well as some thumbnails. I was originally planning to sketch out some ideas for scenes that used some of the more complex perspective stuff I've been studying (working with complex volumes), so I could find a good one to develop into something finished, but it turned out pretty hard to shove that stuff into the environments, so the perspective stuff is relatively simple, just establishing grids basically. I had a real blast doing these though, like so much fun, it's like I got to a point now when I can get what's in my head down on paper finally and have it not look all screwed up and like a 10 year old drew it. Kinda milestone point with these. Great to just create scenes from imagination as well.

[ShinOkami]

Hey man, tnx for replying in my sketchbook and sorry i'm kinda late tou xP

I'm really glad to see you leveling up like this, just keep on studying anatomy and perspective and try to be loose, it's more fun that way. ; )

Keep it up ! : )

[JyonnyNovice]

Shin Cheers mate, thanks for dropping by and the encouragement!


Some more head stuff, going back to basics to try and get it 100% solid from the start, gotta get those wrapping lines spot on, nearly there...




Set myself an assignment to try and lock in this perspective stuff; design a siege tower and draw orthographic + perspective views for it. Today some research and a messy thumbnail playing around with a design.





Not really sure what order I should approach things with this; I wanted to do a few thumbnails to test out different design ideas, then produce an orthographic view of the one I liked, then construct it more carefully / accurately in perspective view. Thing is the thumbnail sketch ended up taking more time than I thought, and it got complex enough that it'd be hard for me to translate it to ortho view - maybe I should design it in ortho view and just see how it turns out in perspective. Not sure what the usual working pipeline is for this kind of thing. It's good fun though.

[smrr]

All of the work... alllll offf theee woooooooorkkkk!

Really cool to see how much of the fundamentals you've been trying to nail! (makes me feel shitty about my studying! :D)

Yeeeaaah, Suira was on point with the head studies. And it's good to see that you're going back to the "wrapping lines" exercise. When it comes down to it, really just thinking/visualising what a basic form looks like in 3D space and what that'd look like in every position is the way to go. And continuing with those ellipse exercises, as well as drawing a lot more like you have been will help you improve in so many more areas than you could have thought!

Keep up the solid work maaaaaaaaaayn!

Also, happy late birthdayyyyy (Jones' butts gif :') = the best present ever wahaha)!

[JyonnyNovice]

Cheers smrr, yea it feels good to know what I need to do to get better, even if it's a long way off. At least I can just get down and do it instead of floating around going WTFamIdoing. You know enough fundamentals to do cool drawings, I'm not there yet, so I get frustrated much quicker with my stuff and go back to studying. Probably that's a good thing...? It wasn't my birthday, but thanks anyway! I'm 35 this year, technically middle aged o.o still feel like a kid though... wonder when I'll feel like a grown up...



Trying to paint my throne room scene from above... idkwtfimdoing with digital drawing / painting. It's been so long since I tried it, just playing around for now trying to find a brush I like for lines and adding value. Kinda fixed up the perspective a bit on this one, I'll do another pass and get the perspective and scale on the near torches fixed up, get the scale of the characters right, then I'll probably follow Shaddy Safadi's painting series and get all of the objects silhouettes on separate layers. Then do the same with the characters, fix up the poses, then work on values and who knows maybe even colour... I might abandon it halfway as that'll take me a long time to do all that, and the time might be better spent working on other stuff, but we'll see!