Nigelpik's sketchbook

[nigelpik]

Hi, good folks at Crimson Daggers!

I've been drawing on and off (mostly off) for several years now as a hobby. Last year I got a tablet but never gave it the time of the day. Thus, I'm starting this sketchbook here to motivate myself to practice. I'll be posting my tablet drawings, and, hopefully, improve along the way.

Here's what I got so far:

[Anton_Fort]

If you wanna learn then learn from the start. For now you have to acquire basic skills like understanding perspective, value and structure. For that you have to draw basic geometry like cubes, spheres, elipses. You can find a lot of lessons about that. I can recommend drawabox. Just google it and start your journey.

[nigelpik]

Yeah, thanks for the advice, and for sure, you're right. I'm definitely going to tackle the basics and practice drawing some cubes. Right now I'm just trying to get used to the tablet, it does feel weird to use after not touching it for half a year.

Here's today's doodle.

[nigelpik]

So, today's been a rough day at work and I'm tired as hell, but I still forced myself to check out drawabox lessons afterwards (Thanks a ton for the advice, Anton_Fort that website is pretty awesome). The bulk of what I did today is just drawing a bunch of lines and planes, but I'm not gonna post them here, because I don't think that's would be valuable.

Instead I threw together this abomination real quick, just to have something and to keep in mind that it's not only about studies but also about putting what you learned into practice and enjoying it. In any case, I hope that I will be able to post some boxes real soon.

[darktiste]

Well post a few of the draw box exercise just to see where you at in term of control.Specially the ellipse exercise,the perspective exercise and the volume exercise.

[nigelpik]

I spend a better half of today's evening going through the drawabox lesson on drawing ellipses. It took surprisingly a long time to get this done, so I wasn't able to actually draw any boxes yet. Tomorrow, though, will be a different story.








I also threw together this real quick so that I can say I did an actual drawing today. I did tried to plan and ghost all my lines before making them, so there's at least that.

[darktiste]

Well not only can you ghost line but you can also make a undersketch than you can than refine with a pen you can than after that erase the under drawing it take time but the result is worth but it tend to lose it energy it why it important to remember to be expressive in the line making.

[darktiste]

Well not only can you ghost line but you can also make a undersketch than you can than refine with a pen you can than after that erase the under drawing it take time but the result is worth but it tend to lose it energy it why it important to remember to be expressive in the line making.For those ellipse i would say you at a 6 or 7/10.Try to change the angle of the pen and try different hand grip and gyou can also change where you grip the pen at the tips or more at the center also varie the rotation /clockwise/counter clockwise.Never let the hand block the eye from looking at what you drawing.

You might know peter han if you doing the drawbox exercise if not you can probably look him up on youtube i think draw box is borrowing alot of it fundamental from this school of learning.

[nigelpik]

Thanks a ton for the advice, darktiste. I will definitely check out Peter Han, and I will be working on those ellipses.

Today I finally started to work on the box part of the first drawabox lesson. It's late and I'm dead tired so I managed to finish only the first two exercises, being plotted 2-point perspective and free-hand one-point perspective. I naively thought that it would be fairly easy, since I did practice drawing boxes that one week five years ago, but it turned out to be extremely hard.

These two were done with the ruler. Pretty straightforward. Kinda reminded myself how to construct a box and how a box should look like.





These two were done free-hand. I did one frame, then painted over with the red pencil to see my mistakes, and then tried to do the next frame better. Hilariously enough, I didn't understood how you supposed to do this exercise at first. I thought you were allowed to ghost outlines of the box, but were not allowed to ghost the construction lines going to the vanishing point. So for the whole first sheet I was trying to guess how to draw these boxes without tracing my hand to a vanishing point and seeing how things actually line up. Thus, results are hilariously bad.

I also tried to highlight my mistakes with two colors in the second frame, because I thought it would make them more visible. But I think, it made it worse, so I returned to the good old red after that.



After doing the first sheet I realized that something is wrong since just guessing seemed impossible. So I re-watch a video of the lesson, and lo and behold, you shouldn't guess. This last sheet is done correctly. I think the first frame turned out pretty well. But then I suddenly got worse. After the last frame I knew, that I'm too tired to go on, and thus I'm calling quits for today. But alas, the boxes will continue tomorrow.

[darktiste]

First of all define the Frame with a ruler it will incredibly help you later on with my trick i am about to share with you.

Now the best is to start with a square that represent one side of the cube place it near a corner.
To determine if you did a perfect cube compare it agains the verticality or the horizontality of the nearest frame section.
Now you should have a perfect square use that square as if it was the frame to compare future next vertical and horizontal.
Don't forget to also use the horizon line to compare the horizontal segment of the square if it the nearest thing to compare it against.

[nigelpik]

Thanks a ton for the advice. I see what you're saying, and I definitely will pay attention to that. I did use the ruler, lines come off as crooked because the paper is too thin and has bent at the edges.

Today I finished the box drawing lesson from drawabox. For the sphere, I did more boxes than I should've done, and thus the outer layer looks very bad. There was just too much construction lines at this point and I couldn't even see what I was drawing. I will definitely try to do the sphere again and make it better.





At this point, I have been drawing boxes for a while, I have been thinking like a box, living like a box, and finally, I have become a box.



Next is 250 box challenge.

[Fedodika]

thanks for the critique! crank the boxes out!!

[nigelpik]

Thanks, Fedodika.

So, today I started my 250 box challenge. Wasn't able to spent much time on it so far, but I think it's still was productive. I tried to analyze my mistakes and it's quite apparent that I suck at three point perspective and that my lowest plane is almost always larger than my top plane. This is something I will have 225 boxes to correct.

[darktiste]

Don't go on 3 point before getting the hang of 2 point perspective just a advice.I also encourage you to put the horizon line but sometime vanishing point are outside of the page so you have to guess but it a good thing to be able to check vanishing point inside the scene it help spot mistake what is fun with perspective is you can compare against other element of a scene to determine if an object is following the perspective or not it might not be easy at first but it develop over time.What is important is to know if a element is below or over the horizon.After that it pretty much a question of vanishing point and overlap.Don't just draw the cube try to also afterward to correct your mistake if possible set the horizon line and check if you made error.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPDfcC7Z...e=youtu.be

[nigelpik]

So, today I managed to finish up to a 100th box. I did try to go back to the two-point perspective, and I tried to use a horizon line for several of them (thanks again, Darktiste for the advice). Eventually, I decided to stop analyzing every box and tried to do it a little more organically. I think, I improved a little bit. Tomorrow, I will try to go slower and probably will go back to adding construction lines after I finish, to see how stuff changed in terms of my mistakes.








I also did this goblin so that I wouldn't be doing just studies all day.

[Fedodika]

they look painful but keep doin it!!

[nigelpik]

Had a rough couple of days at work, didn't have time to really draw anything. However, I'm back on track with boxes. At this point I said screw it, and started to correct some lines. If I could correct my mistakes when I notice them, it would've been so much easier.







As a practical application of the box, here is Spider-box to the rescue. His symbol was supposed to be a spider, but I forgot that Spiders have 8 legs, so that didn't work out.

[Fedodika]

yea bro make those lines right, go over em and shiz you gotta make good habits, train yourself to see whats right dont feel like you gotta get it all right the first try

[darktiste]

My opinion is that when you learn construction you won't learn anything from redrawing a line you need to re-draw the form instead.My advice for you is to think of the term converging and parallel those are the key ingredient of perspective don't forget to also check the horizon and the vanishing point this is key for 2 point perspective.It sure is hard to think about perspective when there no visible horizon or vanishing point in the page but with enought pratice you start to be able to guess more and more.

Draw 250 of those box and i will share with you the holy grail of perspective book that you need to have for more advance concept related to perspective.I am not telling you so that it a kind of reward for you so i hope if people know what i am talking about they wait before you did those 250 box.

[nigelpik]

Thanks for all advices, as always. My personal opinion is that when learning, it's good to fix your mistakes, but it's better to redraw the whole thing, rather than erase a single line. If consequences for mistake are bigger, than there is more incentive to learn. So I guess, I agree with darktiste here. But sometimes it's just an instinct to fix a line. I guess, I'm too used to draw with pencils.

I'm for sure finishing these 250 boxes, and the whole course after that, hopefully. I may not have that much time to draw daily (I can usually spare maybe couple of hours, and sometimes not even that), but I definitely plan to persist. Can't wait to learn about that book on perspective!

Here's what I managed to do today.