The Conquest of Space

[Mechanizoid]

Hey, new sketchbook thread, always exciting! :) I'm Mechanizoid. I'm 22 years old and I want to draw and digital paint imagined worlds. I love mechanical things, alien creatures, crazy SF guns, vehicles, spaceships... basically, things that are weird, make a bang, or go really fast. Particularly spaceships, which are adept at doing all three. But I'm starting with the basics because I'm just learning how to draw. 

I'm going through the lessons at Draw a Box (link). Finally, a lesson plan that really teaches me how to draw! I'm completing the form intersections right now. BTW, I suck at circles and ellipses. That was literally the first time I drew balls, cylinders, and cones. Yes, every form involving something round sucks. And I want to draw rocket ships. Which are basically a collection of cylinders, cones, and balls full of explosive chemicals and pressurized air. *sigh* I need more practice.

So, onward towards the conquest of space, 'cause that is what I aim to do with this basic perspective form stuff. And I can't wait to draw spaceships. Please share any crit and thoughts you have. Can't wait to make new friends here!

[kylejacobsart]

You should check out SMBHAX. 

Take care.

[kylejacobsart]

That's a great education reference you've found. "Draw a box."

[AlCo]

Ehi Sagi, welcome! Awesome to see a fellow who's taking the Draw-a-Box course! I'm on form intersections too :D

Keep working hard dude!

[Mechanizoid]

Kyle Jacobs I will, thanks for the recommendation. :)

Alco Thank you, its great to see you are doing Draw a Box too! I wanna see those form intersections. XD

Uuuuuh, just another shitty form intersection. I feel so clumsy with these pens. And when I'm finally feeling sort-of-happy with my efforts, I go to take a photo of it, and my camera seems to have the power to make anything I just did look terrible LOL. :> Anyway, crit the hell out of it, tell me what I can do to improve! Should I try boosting line weights a bit more to separate the forms out from the general confusion of my drawing through forms and whatnot?

BTW, disregard the incorrect dating next to the correct date, I stayed up too late doing this and when I finished my brain had apparently fried. Data points returned indicate that dating ones drawings shows you just how much time you are wasting. Soon I shall be incapable of going a day without putting a date on a practice sheet.

[Mechanizoid]

Quick update, more form intersections, moving on to lesson 2 at Draw a Box soon!! :D I'll greatly appreciate any thoughts you guys have. I'm pretty sure of what I need to work on (ellipses, spheres, consistent perspective) but feedback always helps.


With this one I didn't finish those forms in the upper left corner 'cause my failed attempt at a sphere made me feel those forms were just doomed to failure. Probably silly. I felt much better about the forms at the bottom.


I felt much better about this bunch, and finished dem all. I feel these are cleaner and have much better handling of line weight than my first sheets, but there's still plenty of room for improvement.

More soon!

[Flo]

hey,

I just post here what I posted in the other sb of yours ^^

I spent some time doing that stuff too and man it is hard. ^^ Especially doing freehand spheres is a real bummer haha

one thing I noticed is that to me at least it was more about getting those intersection lines correctly. You could spend some time doing a quick blockout in 3ds max or sketchup to understand what is going on and than translating that into your sketches.

Also you did some (at least to me) unsuccessful lineweight here and there, I picked one of the sketches you did as an example, because it has a box in it. In your sketch it is hard to figure out, how the box sits in space, if you accentuate the closest line, then it is way easier to see. I also applied some cross-hatching to indicate what is solid form and what is intersected stuff.

Hope it helps, if you have questions, please send me a message or go to my sb :)

[ShinOkami]

I see lots of forms here, great job, I should do them often as well xD

Keep it up !

[Mechanizoid]

More stuff. : D I'm lazy but working to rectify that.

Flo Yo, thanks again for the great draw-over. I'd love to check out those intersections in 3d to catch my mistakes, sadly, I don't have 3d software right now so I just go and google "sphere intersect cylinder" etc. Just when starting out, I payed more attention to making sure the perspective was consistent across all the forms (no cylinders with shallow perspective intersecting a box with really dramatic perspective). And yeah, I need to pay more attention to the line weight. I don't like boosting the line weight too much on the interior lines because it can make the box look broken apart, like this.




I shall try to keep the draw-through lines as light as possible so I can keep the interior lines dark but not too dark, and darken up the exterior lines. Does that make sense?

ShinOkami Thank you! Yes, I really recommend these exercises. I'm learning this stuff at Draw a Box, I think you'll find it really helpful. ^^

I did more form intersections.



And went to do the the organic form intersections, and failed miserably at making contour lines wrap around a blob. D: So I had to go back and practice some more.

[kylejacobsart]

Bottom one looks like ginger root.

This course takes an interesting approach to learning.

[Flo]

hey man,

glad you like the crit so much, here is another one :D

Your lines are right nice at some places, try not to go over your mistakes too much, it just makes things darker and causes people to look there MORE.

I did an overpaint again. I found that some of your intersections are a bit forced looking. It seemed with some of the forms, as if they weren't touching, but you draw in an intersection as if they did. In that case, maybe just my spatial-relationship-recognition was off, (quite possible) or you actually placed them a bit to far from each other.

Also at some places your intersections just really small and shallow, whereas you could stick those from more into each other.

There are 3D programms that are free, so don't use money as an excuse you lazy bum :D just kidding, but for reals, just google "blender" or "google sketch up". btw I think it is great to learn visualisation from imagination, blocking them in 3D is more to check how those intersections are correct. Then use that info in your sketches.

btw when doing those ginger roots, all your ellipses look kinda the same. Try to get more experimental there. do a looping, go back in space, come to the from, get some really slim ellipses and circles too.

Keep it up

[miracoly]

Really nice fundamentals, I love it! Seems like you're taking your time with the exercises and executing them properly, thats a great habit to have I think! Just keep working and you'll be drawing spaceships in no time! (If you're interested in hard surface stuff check out the foundation patreon on gumroad, some great stuff on there!) https://gumroad.com/foundation_patreon Keep it up!

[Mechanizoid]

Kyle Yes, these organic forms often end up looking like a ginger root! People have compared them too sex toys too, LOL. I suppose that they could be both for someone who is a sexual masochist. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

miracoly Thanks man! Yes, I try to take the time to do each exercise properly. ^^ It's important to do that, I think. Thanks for the link, the Foundation Group looks great!

Flo I put you last so others can find my replies easier LOL. Thanks so much for all the draw-overs man, I love it! You're right about darkening up mistakes, it is a bad habit to get into. It just draws more attention to those lines.

Yes, you are probably right about the intersections feeling forced. I was eager to get to the intersecting part of the exercise so I drew a bunch of forms and then intersected anything that overlapped. Sort of like the guy with a hammer, everything looked like a nail- or in this case an intersection. So it's quite possible that I just made things intersect when it would make more sense for them to overlap. I'll try to avoid shallow intersections, too. : ) No, no, money is an excuse. : D I'm running a 2009 Mac Mini with OS10.6.9, I can't run new 3d software and I can't upgrade with breaking all my drawing programs. I plan on building myself a PC sometime but I don't have the money yet LOL. Until then I'll just have to wing it.

Yes, my ellipses and contours are rather bland on those organic forms, I'll try to vary them up!

Here's some more stuff. I did some more form dissections because I had a hard time with texture before. ^^ My first page kind of sucked, but then something clicked for me on the second page. I feel pretty happy about the progress I made on the two forms on the right of the second page. But I still have lots of progress to make!! Crit the hell out of 'em.

[StardustLarva]

Nice work with your form studies and such, you remind me that I need to do more of that myself. I realise it probably wasn't your intention, but I actually really like those last form dissections, simply because they resemble microbes (to me at least). :D I'd say you're doing a grand job, so just keep at it really.

[ThatDudeIsaGhost]

Dude thank you so much for sharing the draw a box program with us, i'm gonna start the lessons too, your exercises are looking awesome, thanks again!

[Mechanizoid]

Larva Yes, check out Draw a Box, it's a great resource!! So we've gotten from figging to microbes, I dunno about you but I'm not so sure about this scene. :D LOL Those are just organic forms with texture applied, so it's not too surprising that they suggest things that are organic. But they are really just abstract.

Ghost No problem, it's great to get all the encouragement and crit so thank you. ^^ Awesome, have fun with Draw a Box and be sure to share your work! 

Just the last exercise from Lesson 2- organic intersections. New for this year. :) I'm not too happy with these, they got messy and I had trouble wrapping contour lines around the forms again, but the exercise is fun. Now onward to Dynamic Skeeeeeetching!!!

[neopatogen]

Hey man! Your organic forms are just awesome! What about making a finished color sci-fi artwork with some of those bacteria-like creatures one day? :) Anyway, it's great that you're pushing the basics, keep it up!

[Hobitt]

Great form studies those will pay off in the long run!

[Triggerpigking]

Interesting studies, I should try them sometime, especially the box intersection ones.
You mentioned not being good at ellipses and circles, think this might help you.
brandondayton.com/2013/06/how-to-practice-phase-1-warm-up/ it's for lines, boxes and everything but i've been doing this 8 mins a day before getting into drawing and it's really helped me a lot with ellipses, circles and lines, try to draw them all with your whole arm as well if you are'nt already.
That being said though you've improved a lot with them already just by doing these so keep it up man.

[Mechanizoid]

Neopatogen Hey, thanks, I'm trying to do my best with those but they still aren't perfect. LOL Those creature-things are actually an exercise where I put textures from ref on a random blob, without thinking about making anything make sense! So they are totally abstract. They can end up looking cool, though.

Hobbit I know it! That's why I keep practicing.

Triggerpigking Definitely, do it! It's a great exercise. I do do warmups like that a lot, probably not enough though. :P Thanks for the advice.

Hey guys, I'm baaaaack... and this time I going to break this cycle of starting and stopping I keep getting into, LOL. Been having trouble with seeing and measuring proportions in the later Draw a Box exercises, so I decided to do some exercises to address that. First exercise I'm doing is the abstract shape copy from this Noah Bradley vid–https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgJXyEsakC8

Basically I turn a master painting into a bizarre black and white thing using Image Adjustments–>Threshold in PS, turn it upside down, and copy it. It's kind of a weird exercise, and I intend on drawing from life more as well (it's not the same on a screen), but I find that turning what I'm copying into an abstract thing helps me break the feeling of being intimidated by drawing a THING. after doing this for a bit I realize "Hey, drawing from a thing is no different!"

I've worked on it for a while but I know there are mistakes. I'm thinking I should maybe use a bigger brush, and definitely I need to try to have cleaner lines here and there. Please share whatever crit or advice you have. :D