Peter's Sketchbook

[Peter]

I think you suffer from what i would call straight facing face.You tend to try to make all the feature of the face.Face the viewer instead of actually follow the image i think it might be due if i am correct that you tend to spend to much time not looking back at the reference.It also tricky to draw head from a low angle because we tend to rely on memory because we are not accustom to view the face in that angle it just the brain trying to be lazy it not all your fault you just need to be aware of it and look back at the reference.Remember that angle you put in the early stage of a drawing are the fundation of the image if there wrong you will have a drawing that feel strange.Forget shading and focus on construction, measuring and proportion.Shading is atm in your leg i would recommend that you ignore it and concentrate on focusing on the aspect i talk about.

Thanks for pointing it out darktiste. I know what your talking about, think it's very prominent on my copies of the demos from Erik and Brian. When I do my lay-in and look back on it to check for any mistakes, measure angles etc it seems to look correct to me but obviously when I finish the drawing it's all wrong.

From now on once I finish my lay-in and check it I'll spend a good view minutes really comparing it to my ref and see if I'm still making the same mistakes, Hell I'l try and spend a good view minutes analyzing whatever it is I'm drawing before I actually start drawing.

[Peter]

So yhhhh completely forgot to post last weekend, had family over so iddn't have the time unfortunately. Had to do extra hours this week at first so spent any free time i had drawing so again didn't have time to post.

Here's some of the stuff I did this week.

First here is my weekly life drawings. Had a male model this week which was good, don't know why the club I go to has difficulties hiring male models but oh well.

I liked the model since he had quite defined muscles, particulary on his arms but my drawings weren't all that great. Had a tough time with the long drawing, drew his body but realized the proportions were off (damn foreshortening) so had to redo it.






Here are the crits for the last 2 weeks. Having trouble accessing the week 1 crit for Brian's class so hopefully that will be resolved soon so that I can make notes. Couldn't quite get the draw-overs to fit my images for week 2 so I took a screenshot instead.








Usual demos for this week aswell as the homeworks for each class.

Had to rush Erik's demo drawing since I didn't have as much time as usual  which shows, mine turned out an ugly mess.




I was drawing towards the back of my pad for Erik's hw and it seemd to have picked up the grain of the cardboard backing which was annoying. Not pleased with this one, from start to finish it was a struggle for me.




Brian's lessons have been a really big help for me. Seeing how he hold the pencil and lays down strokes has made things alot clearer for me. Feel like my edges on this weeks homework were an improvement, feel like they transition well between the light and shade.

Demos




Homework



Lastly some more loomis skeletons from ref. I'm gonna start laying some tracing poaper over a photo, draw the skeleton and then re draw it in my pad since these have alot of issues.





Oh allmost forgot my head quicksketches from work from the other week which I kept forgetting to post. These are from Hal Foster.

[Fedodika]

I think youre drawing eyes too big sometimes, like on that bust study and the life drawing, but keep truckin peter you need all the mileage you can fit in <3

[Peter]

I think youre drawing eyes too big sometimes, like on that bust study and the life drawing, but keep truckin peter you need all the mileage you can fit in <3

Yh I realised it myself, especially after the cast study. Lately I've been blocking in the shadow shape rather than actually constructing the eye fully so that is most likely what's causing it haha.

[Fedodika]

its more just gonna come down to intuitive decisions you make in a lay in before you commit to a line, like you'll put a line in and say ehh, that's too big/small, and that entirely comes from mielage. I think you have a super solid foundation to go off from its just going that's gonna be the going itself thats gonna be the biggest challenge

[Peter]

its more just gonna come down to intuitive decisions you make in a lay in before you commit to a line, like you'll put a line in and say ehh, that's too big/small, and that entirely comes from mielage. I think you have a super solid foundation to go off from its just going that's gonna be the going itself thats gonna be the biggest challenge

Yh your totally right man, Brian made the same points in the week 2 crit video saying that the next step in my improvement is just pure milage and there's no shortcut to that apart from just doing a shit ton of drawings.

[Peter]

Fell behind on updating but I've still been doing work although not as much as usual the past week, pretty much just focusing on my portraiture skills.

My live stream classes end this week (well next week counting the crit video) and with doing taking 2 head drawing classes I've not had much time to work on my figure drawing. Brian has a 10 week basic figure construction class next term (beginning of October) so my plan is to enroll in that and work on my figures, might take another class although I'm not sure which one yet.

Portrait from life last week, still have shit lighting at my classes, they are pretty much overhead like in a classroom. Struggled with the shadow mapping on it as when I squinted pretty much the entire head looked like it was in shadow but when I opened my eyes her right cheek (left in drawing) looked to be 2-3 shades lighter than under the chin...weird. I've brought up the lighting situation again so will wait and see.




Bought the female head from planes of the head so wanted to draw from that, working on breaking it down into 2 values but didn't really get a likeness.




Erik's Homework

My rendering has definitely improved although I didn;t get the width of his cheek right, made him look skinnier haha.




Brian's Homework

Made a study of his drawing then tried applying it to the homework below.






I've watched the crits for last weeks homeworks, just need to do a draw over and add notes which I'll do this week.

Lastly tried drawing some heads from imagination, feel like they have improved but still got a long way to go.

[Fedodika]

I like the shadow mapped imagination sketch. I learned a ton about simple face drawing from copying john grello's stuff. With the asian man portrait i feel like if i could like grab the top of his head and jaw as if it was putty and widen it, like compress it, itd be more accurate. his nose is too long and his eyes look female. Again dude its just mileage i mean, doing more quick studies without values will help you get that.

Like get a pen and go through the entire loomis head book or something, dont spend tons of time on each drawing. In laying in that many heads, you'll go through tons of blunders and find what lay in techniques are resonating with you. Slowly it all pieces itself together, you'll see the mistakes as you lay it in, and correct them on the fly

[darktiste]

I have noted that you tend to elongate the head in your study you make people skinnier than they really are.I would also revisit the construction of those nose to me they feel to much like there boxy and rigid.Make sure to study the construction in various angle to get a better sense of the structure .

[Peter]

I like the shadow mapped imagination sketch. I learned a ton about simple face drawing from copying john grello's stuff. With the asian man portrait i feel like if i could like grab the top of his head and jaw as if it was putty and widen it, like compress it, itd be more accurate. his nose is too long and his eyes look female. Again dude its just mileage i mean, doing more quick studies without values will help you get that.

Like get a pen and go through the entire loomis head book or something, dont spend tons of time on each drawing. In laying in that many heads, you'll go through tons of blunders and find what lay in techniques are resonating with you. Slowly it all pieces itself together, you'll see the mistakes as you lay it in, and correct them on the fly

Haven't heard of that artist before, I'll have to go check him out now. :) Yh I fucked up proportion wise on the asian man portrait, I remember looking at my lay-in and knowing something was off but didn't know what, only afterwards did I realise the points you made.

As you said just gotta put the miles in, I remember Jeff saying doing sketchs in pen is a good exercise so I'll be sure to try it out thanks. :)
x (x)

#ir-ext-ui { position: fixed; padding: 1px; z-index: 9999; display: none; font-family: Consolas, "Lucida Console", "Courier New", Courier, monospace; text-align: right; }

[Peter]

I have noted that you tend to elongate the head in your study you make people skinnier than they really are.I would also revisit the construction of those nose to me they feel to much like there boxy and rigid.Make sure to study the construction in various angle to get a better sense of the structure .

Thanks for the crit darkiste much appreciated. :) Yh I've been more aware of those mistakes you pointed out recently, especially in regards to drawing heads too long and skinny, I've been making myself aware of it the past week when drawing so hopefully I'll start weeding that problem out.

Yh I want to go back to vanderpoole's book and study his construction of the facial features and learn them off by heart since they still suck (especially my eyes.)
x (x)

#ir-ext-ui { position: fixed; padding: 1px; z-index: 9999; display: none; font-family: Consolas, "Lucida Console", "Courier New", Courier, monospace; text-align: right; }

[Peter]

Apologies for the week without updating, this week and last week I've been feeling really burnt out, every day I've been feeling more tired than usual.

For some odd reason I keep making lots of stupid mistakes in my drawings for the past 2 weeks, mistakes i feel like I shouldn't be making at this point and it's been driving me crazy! things like proportions being off or forgetting how a bloody eye looks, I've been getting really angry at myself which doesn't help so overall it's been a shitty 2 weeks.

Here's some of the stuff that I did. not happy with any of it like I said apart from my figure lay-in maybe and even that has issues.

Portraits from life for the past 2 weeks, both 1.5 hours each. They are absolutely terrible, struggled so much with them and I kept making mistake after mistake with them. I remember panicking and rushing the first drawing as I was trying to complete a fully rendered drawing which usually take me 2.5 hours and do it in 1.5 hours. Tried taking my time on the 2nd drawing but again kept making lots of mistakes.






I'm gonna go and study Vanderpoole's features until I can memorise them from the 3 basic angles, in my class there's obviously ditance between us and the model unlike the photo ref so you obviously need to rely more on what the basic structure of the features are to help fill in the gaps which obviously I do not no.

Erik's and Brian's final homeworks. Again struggled alot with them, took me 8 tries for Erik's hw. Had issues accesing the live streaming pages the past week, finally got it working after contacting support so I'll post ref and critiques for the last 2 weeks this week at some point.





Some 2 value head lay-ins from the planes of the head model.




Figure lay-in




x (x)
 
#ir-ext-ui { position: fixed; padding: 1px; z-index: 9999; display: none; font-family: Consolas, "Lucida Console", "Courier New", Courier, monospace; text-align: right; }
x (x)
 
#ir-ext-ui { position: fixed; padding: 1px; z-index: 9999; display: none; font-family: Consolas, "Lucida Console", "Courier New", Courier, monospace; text-align: right; }
x (x)
 
#ir-ext-ui { position: fixed; padding: 1px; z-index: 9999; display: none; font-family: Consolas, "Lucida Console", "Courier New", Courier, monospace; text-align: right; }
x (x)
 
#ir-ext-ui { position: fixed; padding: 1px; z-index: 9999; display: none; font-family: Consolas, "Lucida Console", "Courier New", Courier, monospace; text-align: right; }
x (x)
 
#ir-ext-ui { position: fixed; padding: 1px; z-index: 9999; display: none; font-family: Consolas, "Lucida Console", "Courier New", Courier, monospace; text-align: right; }
x (x)
 
#ir-ext-ui { position: fixed; padding: 1px; z-index: 9999; display: none; font-family: Consolas, "Lucida Console", "Courier New", Courier, monospace; text-align: right; }
x (x)
 
#ir-ext-ui { position: fixed; padding: 1px; z-index: 9999; display: none; font-family: Consolas, "Lucida Console", "Courier New", Courier, monospace; text-align: right; }
x (x)

#ir-ext-ui { position: fixed; padding: 1px; z-index: 9999; display: none; font-family: Consolas, "Lucida Console", "Courier New", Courier, monospace; text-align: right; }

[Fedodika]

somethings wrong with your signature lol, maye message dennis about it or its just me, its like tons of black text under your sig.

I think your latest efforts are an improvement proportionwise for sure. You need to not make your shapes so perfect and mechanical all the time. Like that one girls neck is a perfect cylinder.

The figure drawing you did is getting there, and i wouldnt worry too much about the likeness being off as its a decent face. Make sure you pay attention to the full mass of the epigastrial section as jeff calls it, like the way you have the line wrapping the shadow map from the stomach is sunk in a bit and it looks strange. It seems like the under drawing you had the idea of that section, its just a tad too far over. And also dont hesitate to indicate that pussyhoohavag thing with a small black line since it helps show the end of that landmark

But yea, that whole mileage thing i was talking about, itd really help the mistakes you made say in the first portrait. You know, when youre doing a portrait think, what if this came alive right now? Would this drawing ive done, would they be happy with how ive indicated them? I always run that kinda cerebral thought through my head in a drawing and it always makes me edit some things. Having some kinda life on the line, kinda messes with my head, makes me feel guilty if im fudging proportions here and there.

<3

[darktiste]

One of my other observation i wish to share with you is you also tend to make eye slightly bigger than they really are.

[Peter]

somethings wrong with your signature lol, maye message dennis about it or its just me, its like tons of black text under your sig.

I think your latest efforts are an improvement proportionwise for sure. You need to not make your shapes so perfect and mechanical all the time. Like that one girls neck is a perfect cylinder.

The figure drawing you did is getting there, and i wouldnt worry too much about the likeness being off as its a decent face. Make sure you pay attention to the full mass of the epigastrial section as jeff calls it, like the way you have the line wrapping the shadow map from the stomach is sunk in a bit and it looks strange. It seems like the under drawing you had the idea of that section, its just a tad too far over. And also dont hesitate to indicate that pussyhoohavag thing with a small black line since it helps show the end of that landmark

But yea, that whole mileage thing i was talking about, itd really help the mistakes you made say in the first portrait. You know, when youre doing a portrait think, what if this came alive right now? Would this drawing ive done, would they be happy with how ive indicated them? I always run that kinda cerebral thought through my head in a drawing and it always makes me edit some things. Having some kinda life on the line, kinda messes with my head, makes me feel guilty if im fudging proportions here and there.

<3

Sorry for the late response man, had some pc issues. Yh I have no idea what is going on with the black text, I notcied it when I posted but thought it would disappear on its own so I'll see if it's still occuring.

Stiffness in ym drawigns are definitely still a bitch for me, I was thinknig starting next week to start doing a bunch of studies of Jeff's and the other Watts instructors work and figure out how they idealise the form, thinking that might help with the stiffness. Feel like I'm at the point now that I won't improve just by simply doing lots of portrait and figure drawings since I'll keep making the same mistakes, need to learn how to idealise the forms and then incorporate it into my work.

Regarding the figure drawing I think it comes down to my understanding of anatomy, well lack of it haha, I can remember the upper torso and upper arms but the rest I'm shaky on. I've signed up for the structual figure drawing with Brian next month so my plan was to dive back into anatomy at the same time and focus on that for the following 10 weeks.

I like your thought process for portrait drawing I'll have to give it ago next week. :)

[Peter]

One of my other observation i wish to share with you is you also tend to make eye slightly bigger than they really are.

Hey darktiste sorry for the late response. Yh I agree with you definitely, I'm still making silly proportional arrors which I'm hopefully addressing and weeding out, think I've gotten better but still got a ways to go.

[Peter]

Had some computer issues over the weekend, pc crashed and had to reinstall windows along with all of my programmes. It was pretty straight forward just time consuming so thought I'd post at the end of the week instead when I had some free time.

This is mainly work from last week and the first half of this week.

Life drawing from last week, felt really rusty even though it had only been 2 weeks, did terrible on my quick sketches and will have to re upload my 10 min drawings since the photo I took was terrible. I've been watching Jeff's videos on quick skecth and trying to mimic him but it's not turning out too great. I'm gonna revisit Proko's gesture videos and use his approach and then once I feel comfortable with it incorporate Jeff's way of adding the muscles and mapping on top.






Got back into paitning on Saturday. Followed along with Watts online video for this one. Did the drawing using the ref and then referred to Jeff's to help abit with the shadow mapping. Spent way too long on the final drawingand my shadow mapping turned out terrible, Jeff suggested working through the gouache phase to help with mapping so I'm gonna give that ago tomorrow.






Portrait from Tuesday which turned out horrible. Not sure why I'm having such a hard time in my class, I seem to do ok with my female cast that I draw from but when it comes to my class it just seems to fall apart. I'm not sure if I'm sitting too far away or if the poor lighting is the cause? I'll try moving closer next week and see if that helps.




Skulls from life.




Study of Jeff's quick sketching and some 5 min quick skecthing from photos.






Some imaginary heads. Regarding the middle male head, I tried reallly exxagerating the abstraction lines but the face became really weird haha.




Lastly some Vanderpoel eye studies.

[Fedodika]

yea nice job on the quick sketches, Heads in those sizes are extremely hard to get looking decent. Any time i draw one that looks decent. That whole 15 second drawing thing jeff talks about could be useful for developing small heads on quicksketch figures.

Again bro you need to shade less and just do more lay ins of heads, that improves mileage a lot. Fill pages of just lay in's some tasteful lineweight like you do with the skulls, and really UP that volume. Also the memory study thing ive been doing has helped loads; Study the reference without drawing and take little written notes, then put the ref aside draw from memory then take notes on everything thats wrong. Youll notice so many things you do subconciously that most people dont have the patience to point out as its hard to be so precise and articulate <3

[Peter]

yea nice job on the quick sketches, Heads in those sizes are extremely hard to get looking decent. Any time i draw one that looks decent. That whole 15 second drawing thing jeff talks about could be useful for developing small heads on quicksketch figures.

Again bro you need to shade less and just do more lay ins of heads, that improves mileage a lot. Fill pages of just lay in's some tasteful lineweight like you do with the skulls, and really UP that volume. Also the memory study thing ive been doing has helped loads; Study the reference without drawing and take little written notes, then put the ref aside draw from memory then take notes on everything thats wrong. Youll notice so many things you do subconciously that most people dont have the patience to point out as its hard to be so precise and articulate <3

I keep meaning to go back to head quick sketching, even bought the book he recommended and everything. Don;t know how you feel but I always find quick sketching very taxing mentally I think just becuase I'm analyzing so much haha.

I've actually just started getting back into head lay ins (although i took them to the 2 value stage) and I think your right about doing a shit ton of lay ins to increase my milage, I beleive Jeff also talks about this is in one of his videos?

I was hoping to have enough money to sign up for another live streaming class alongside with the structual figure drawing class that I have already signed up. I wa slooking at the head,fig,quick sketch class but leaning more towards the 20 min head lay ins now based on what you said, currently saving for a nice head bust so we'll see.

I really like the memory study exercise you suggested, I know I'm still guilty of making the same consistent mistakes but prob only remember 1-2 of them. I'll have to give it a try and see what I consistently do wrong. :)

[Peter]

Figure drawing from life from last Thursday. As I said in my last post I'm going to revist Proko's gesture drawing videos since right now I'm getting to caought up in the little anatomical details and not the overall flow of the pose.








Head lay ins from today and yesterday. Tokk most of them to the 2 value stage and left some as lay ins, think aI'm gonna start leaving them at the lay in stage so that I can work on my line weight.








I've also switched from the Conte pencils to Wolff's Carbon. Don't know if anyone else who uses conte has had the same issues with them as me the past few months where they were arriving broken and just very very brittle, I'd order say 10 and maybe get 1-2 pencils that weren't broken it was that bad. Atm I'm really liking the Wolff's pencils, they aren't as soft as the contes but think that works better for me since I felt like I was still heavy handed with the contes and going way too dark with my values and right now I'm not having that issue so for the foreseeable future I'll be using these instead.

P.s I'm working extra hours this coming week so I'll only have a couple hours a night after work to work on my art so will post next weekend so that I can focus on cranking out more drawing.