Nigelpik's sketchbook

[ThereIsNoJustice]

I admire your determination and worship of our lord and savior, the box. His cubiness accepts your continual tributes.

[nigelpik]

All hail the Box!

Wasn't able to do much today, but planning to go all in tomorrow. I've been trying to draw more slowly and be more aware of the horizon and vanishing lines. I think, I've improved a little bit already, but of course, there are still miles to go.

[nigelpik]

It is done.

















Next is the lesson 2 of drawabox.

[darktiste]

Good job bro.As i promise here the gift.
I know it not a real gift but just being aware and make sure to get this book you will not regret.It the type of book you must have in any artist libreary.

You can see a preview here of the book he flip rapidly through the book so go in the option and set the video to 0.25

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAb2wUzm-b8

You can also have an idea of the price here.

https://www.amazon.com/How-Draw-sketchin...bc?ie=UTF8

You could waste time looking else where to assemble all the knowledge there is in this one book.Don't underestimate it.It a must have for anyone who want to improve there perspective.It go rapidly to advance concept so it might require you be patience until you can really start to see how valuable that book is.Forget those old book this is the only book you need on perspective.

I am not even paid to promote this book so i think it fair to say i strongly believe it can help anyone to get better at perspective.

[nigelpik]

Thanks a ton for the book recommendation, darktiste. I actually never heard about that one. Looks very useful, I'll definitely look into getting one.


I also started second drawabox lesson today, Organic forms.

First are the arrows. I messed up couple of them (got confused), and I marked those with X. Overall, though, I think it's a moderate success.




Now, organic jelly beans definitely went way better than boxes. At lest, that's what I like to think.





I also managed to do one sheet of dissections. I think it's a mixed bag. I choose all my textures from the first website with free textures that I found. I tried to choose a variety of stuff and take things that looked hard to do. Never have focused on textures in my drawings before, so that is something new to me.

For the first one, wrinkled paper is definitely something that I was dreading. It came out better than I was expecting, but it can't be called a success. I like popcorn, wood, and three bark. I  think those are relatively fine. Shingles and moss are complete failures, though.

For the second one, leave turned out to be a bad idea in a hindsight. Didn't really know what to do with it. I think, dried paint and lemon turned out okay. Brick wall looks ridiculously bad, should've thought that one through more. I also wasn't really able to capture marble texture. It definitely needs some shading.

For the third one, the sand is a complete failure, and meat doesn't look too hot either. Water droplets are spread too uniformly. I tried to add some small ones univenly to break the monotony, but I don't think it helped that much. Also, overall shape of the droplets is wrong, and I don't think they come off as water. I do think, wood planks ended up being okay.

Overall, definitely need to plan better before I draw, and pay more attention to the shape. This is the theme of the whole course so far for me. Need to start thinking before putting the lines. It's hard to stop yourself from doing stuff intuitively, when you're so used to it. With pencil, if I made a mistake, I can just erase it and do it again, but these ink pens don't allow that. Definitely see why they are recommended. Tomorrow gonna do some more dissections, and will try to make less mistakes.

[nigelpik]

Second page of dissections.

I think, textures I had here were more challenging, and I think I didn't manage to do so hot. The third one is horrible, particularly, scales and tree bark. Broken tree is the only thing I'm relatively satisfied with. For the second one, I think leaves turned out okay, but everything else - not so much. The first one doesn't look bad to me on the first glance, but it's a complete failure when you look at the reference.

Overall, textures are hard and I definitely need way more work in this department.






I also did a quick digital sketch, just so that I'm drawing something beyond just exercises. Didn't put much time into it, though, and it shows.




Next time I'm aiming to finish lesson two of drawabox. Need to pick up my pace or I wouldn't finish the whole course before Christmas.

[darktiste]

Do more of those organic jelly bean as you call them.But draw through.The problem is that you do pointy ellipse and you don't draw the ellipse in there proper degre but also there not symetrial ellipse.Remember and elipse should be able to fold on it self perfectly this mean it symetric in both axis.You don't need to be exact but focus on how the ellipse wrap around the bean.Do 25 of those minimum.

[nigelpik]

I definitely see what you're talking about. My ellipses are indeed pointy and not symmetrical. I don't know about the degree, though, since it indicates the thickness of the bean, but the thickness itself is arbitrary. The bean can be thicker of thinner in certain places and the only way to know is the ellipse. It's hard for me to imagine how I can improve my degrees, except to draw more and have a better feel of the form.

But I will definitely keep working on my ellipses, since I plan on doing 250 cylinder challenge in the near future, and I will add organic jelly beans to the repertoire of my daily art workout.

Today, I tried to do more beans, and focus a lot more on the shape and the curvature.




I wanted to do more, but sadly, didn't have an opportunity today. I aim to advance with second lesson tomorrow.

[nigelpik]

Yesterday was busy day at work, wasn't able to do much afterwards. Today I finally tried form and organic intersections (drawabox lesson 2). This exercise turned out to be very hard and extremely frustrated me. I ended up spending tone of time on just two pages, and I redid both of them several times. 

First, organic intersections. I really don't understand how to do them. There are tons of errors with cast shadows and my line weight is all whack, not to mention the actual shapes. It's a disaster.



But then form intersections turned out no better. Goodbye, the whatever amount of precision and confidence I had in my lines, welcome shakiness and jigglines.



I will do three more pages of form intersections next, and I will try to improve.

I also did some sketching on paper just to unwind a little after the frustration. Face anatomy is something that I will have to learn at some point as well.

[ThereIsNoJustice]

You're being way hard on yourself. Those exercises came out pretty well. Keep going!

[Fedodika]

might be shaky and jiggly, but they look a lot more solid and correct!

[darktiste]

Practice drawing cercle daily for atleast 2 month aside from the study you do.1 or 2 page a day with a different size cercle and also draw ellipse.You want mileage specially with cercle and ellipse.

[nigelpik]

Thanks for encouragement, ThereIsNoJustice and Fedodika, it's greatly appreciated. And thanks for the tip darktiste, definitely going to do some more circles and ellipses (and boxes) in the future.

Today I finished three more pages of form intersections. They were just as frustrating as the first one.






This marks the completion of a second drawabox lesson. Next, there's gonna be plenty ellipses (500 to be precise), since I'm doing 250 cylinders challenge. And after that I can finally draw something that is not a geometric primitive. And this something is a treasure chest! That's right, after cylinders I'm doing a 100 treasure chests challenge.

[Fedodika]

you will level up beast doing this shit, nice updates on the shapes!

[nigelpik]

Thanks, Fedodika, I'm definitely keeping it up. However, not today  
Had a rough day at work and didn't have an energy to do any studies. All I did was this sketch of Thanos just for fun. He looks funny, but that's all I've got.





Tomorrow, though, I'm definitely starting on those cylinders.

[darktiste]

Yea those leg need the cyclinder.

[nigelpik]

The idea behind his legs is that they are supposed to fade into the background for the sake of composition. I wanted to indicate the legs, but didn't want to draw them so that they wouldn't distract from the main thing. This is why I did only the silhouette. I also didn't want to make them muscular, I wanted it to look like he skipped leg days at the gym just to give some flaws to the character design.

Looking at it, the idea may not come across that well, but it was done intentionally. Cylinders are definitely coming, and more realistic anatomy also hopefully someday, when I start learning it.

[nigelpik]

Here's the first 125 cylinders. I drew 60 of them yesterday, but wasn't able to post them. Another 65 were done today.















Tomorrow will be more cylinders.

[Fedodika]

youre gettin there with these, its good youre getting this outta the way :) keep doing more and your eye will see the symmetry. And you could also correct a few digitally if you see where one could be improved

[nigelpik]

Thanks, Fedodika. I'm hoping to pick up the pace at some point. Lately, it was hard for me to find time to draw in a day, but hopefully that will change soon.

I also have been focusing on studies and didn't do enough of just drawing and sketching, which is not that healthy in my opinion. I will definitely do some sketches before I'm going to work on those 100 chests. But for now, here's the rest of the 250 cylinders challenge.