Hello, people. I finally mustered the courage my... Let's call them "drawings", right?
Yes, they are not good.
So, to improve, first and foremost I am developing a study plan. For the moment, my two main source of learning are:
1- Drawabox
2-Proko
(by the way, do you guys think they are good sources?)
I will try to focus in a subject each week. Unfortunately, I don't have much time to draw, I have a somewhat of a demanding job, therefore I must make the most of my free time.
To enter in more detail, I will allocate my time in developing technique and quality while saving some time to copy artists that I find interesting (or just drawing from imagination).
Your lines show you aren't confident in putting them down on the paper. Line quality is one of the foundations in drawing. Check this video out by Scott Robertson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RPa-r8MQgA
Quote:(by the way, do you guys think they are good sources?)
Never did Proko. And I didn't go through drawabox comprehensively. People say they are good. But here's the thing: what works for one person isn't necessarily true for another.
You got to try and explore these things for yourself. On the other hand, you got to be self aware and honest about this too. People sometimes get lost on the exploration part; looking for the perfect tutorial, video, story, readings on how to get good and never actually putting in the effort to apply these things. Or worse, losing their focus on why they started this art thing in the first place and get lost in the technical aspect of things.
Quote:Unfortunately, I don't have much time to draw
Sadly, there is never enough time in general.
Good luck. The initial push is always the hardest. Hope you find what you're looking for.
If you are reading this, I most likely just gave you a crappy crit! What I'm basically trying to say is, don't give up! ---- IG: @thatpuddinhead
So so far you didn't put enought effort in the line exercise you need to do way more than that to actually start to feel comfortable just putting line on a paper so many people under estimate how to put a line on the paper thinking it is simple but there bit more to it than you would expect.It just common sense but people think it just like writing and that not really true because to do line you need to have a continous straight segment and it actually hard to do long line because of pressure and speed of the hand once you draw enough you start to actually learn to be aware of those factor.It either to fast or to slow in your case it either to slow or to much pressure on the pen.
@John and @Darktiste, thank you both for taking your time to analyse those images. Both of you are right, I do need to train my line quality.
Quote:Your lines show you aren't confident in putting them down on the paper. Line quality is one of the foundations in drawing. Check this video out by Scott Robertson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RPa-r8MQgA
The firsts lessons of Drawabox is exactly this exercise and I did find a video of Peter Han in YT demonstrating this exactly exercise for his class (as his first lesson). I am more than enough convinced of its importance.
The fun part is that I did this exercise 2 years ago and wrongly believed that "Well, I am past that!".
Wrong. I will be adding those exercises as a warm-up in all my practices. After doing some pages of it (including "ghosting") even my circles came out better.
I am not saying that they are great, but noticeable better.
Quote:Sadly, there is never enough time in general.
Quote:Good luck. The initial push is always the hardest. Hope you find what you're looking for.
Thank you! Kind of a bittersweet, but true.
I did, today, some studies using Loomis "Fun with a Pencil".
This forum isnt too active but i am always on so i can offer help.
I think proko and drawabox are fantastic resources, obviously proko being superior imo, but both are probably the strongest place to start for a beginner, or someone like me who's a clumsy fool and tried to skip a lot of the stuff you are now doing.
If you have a limited time, id suggest, learning something each day that you can verbalize, like write down in an intelligent way. it could be, pointing out a mistake you made, or learning an anatomy part, But yea, id reccomend if you have the money to get proko's courses and just do them and the assignments, multiple times if needed. Probably starting with the portrait drawing, then figure, then anatomy, and hold off on the others until youre pretty beast at those.
But again to peg on the limited time thing, ask yourself, "What did I learn from this drawing?" and it should get you on the right track. Yes mileage is clearly required, but thinking about where youre going wrong and fixing those things, will get you good fast. If youre smart about how you learn, it could mean the difference of years, even decades of how quickly you arrive at a desired skill level.
I think drawabox has like a 100 box challenge or something, so thatd be a good way to get some mileage in, and yes, the better you draw boxes, it will fine tune your eye to plane changes and stuff so it will be worth it to do and do correctly. If you want an idea of how not to study smart, look at the first 60 or so pages of my sketchbook to get an idea lol
Hello, Fedodika! Thanks for the feedback. Your tips are on point: I am planning to dedicate 1 hour for drawing daily, so, like you said, it must be focused (and daily. If I don't have too much time I must be at least consistent).
I will try to do exactly as you said. Trying to learn something each day and analyse it.
By the way, you mentioned Proko's course. Let me ask 2 questions about them:
1) I'm not very interested in doing photorealism... I really like more of a character design/comic art stuff. However I do understand the importance of knowing to draw your surrounds. Taking this in consideration, could I skip portrait drawing and go directly to figure and then anatomy?
2) Besides Proko, do you know other good paid sources? I did one course in Udemy about anatomy and while serviceable, I think it could had gone better.
(And come on! Your Sketchbook is great! I know my opinion isn't that important (being pratically a baby in drawing), but I like it.)
By the way, I just remembered that I do have to set some goals, people!
well, ill put it this way, you need to ditch the idea that 1, learning realism is exclusively about learning photorealistic rednering, and 2 that your tastes will be consistent with who you are now and who you will become after a few years of training.
Proko teaches very little about shading, and mostly about line drawing and proper construction. He even discourages people on the program to shade the drawings.
Fundamentals, being perspective, anatomy, form, line weight, value, are what proko will teach you, and it maybe hard to track but any character design or comic artist who shows a high level of skill, will be well versed in the classical approach to drawing the figure and portrait. Kusha Krenz would be an example; He has a stylized approach, but can still draw portraits very well in a realist style.
The fundamentals of portraiture and figure drawing let you very easily dissect and adapt to any drawing style lightning fast because you can see what people are pushing and pulling to get that style. So ultimately, it would be a very bad move to skip studying portraiture on a realist level, the quicker you can get that skill the faster you can draw kickass faces in any style because youll know the function of each feature.
as far as other paid sources, i really adore watts online and New Masters Academy. again, they are teaching realism, but youll need to learn that stuff to push yourself deeper into art. Schoolism, is good too, if you want a good character design course, maybe check Stephen Silvers course on there.
The reason i said look at my sketchbook for how not to learn is so you can see someone, trying to skip important things like proper construction and drawing weird wonky things and trying to pass it off as style. Overall i like your attitude and wish you the best my dude, stap in
@Fedodika, no shortcuts there, I assume. I will have to face the beast of portrait drawing. I found it boring, but a man got to do what he got to do.
Concerning Proko, thanks for your input. I will give some context first: I am changing my career now. I am civil engineer and soon I am going to work in IT (thank God!). Therefore, my salary will be smaller than it was (in Brazil, things are pretty bad economically) but depending how things go, I might be able to take a drawing course next to my home in an atelier. There is a better one not very far from where I live too and I believe it is not impossible to arrive there.
If, by some circumstance, those options becomes unavailable, I will take quality onlines courses such as Proko or Watts. Hell, if I don't like how the drawing classes are going I will scrap them completely and go full online. I do have Loomis and Scott Robertson's books in my PC but I sense I could really use some good professional guidance. But I will have to schedule this decision to middle January.
(I won't go in detail here, but I don't want to waste more time: I threw out 10 years -and some great people- of my life because of... Some really bad habits.)
I've been trying to practice everyday and following Drawabox's lessions and Loomis' "Fun with a Pencil". But, before I start, I am doing line "warm-up" exercises.
I am pretty happy with the results so far. I do feel my lines are getting cleaner/more confident. I will post this week highlights.
Oh, by the way, I took time to copy Mia Goodwin's character from the comic book "Tomboy".
And, in a series of good news, I will probably start attending a drawing course in February!!!!
Draw on a hard surface or with something hard under the sketchpad also don't draw with mechanical pencil it not gonna teach you how to control your line.I advice drawing with a pen to start it help increase control over the line
Before you guys grab the pitchforks and the torches, let me clear something up: I drew last year. A lot. I focused myself in drawing almost everyday. And I was able to reach this goal almost every week! That was awesome!
Oh, I did improve, but not as much as I would like to and more important, now I know why, so if you guys want a little story, continue reading:
To learning something there is a process that if one does not follow, he will probably not be effective in his journey:
UNDERSTANDING => PRACTICING => APPLYING
To give you, my friends, an example of what I mean:
You are "studying the eye":
First, you find materials that explain the eye for you, for example, anatomy book, a (good) tutorial about this specific face feature and its anatomy, etc. This is UNDERSTANDING.
Second, you find some eyes (pictures of models, please don't extract someone's else eye) and draw them, being mindful of what you learn. This is PRACTICING.
Third, you apply what you learn in your personal projects. Something you wish to create. Can be just copying a picture of some artist that you like or designing your own character or creature. This is APPLYING.
So, what I did wrong? I just did the steps one and two. I totally forgot WHY I started drawing (to tell stories). I became an drawing exercise machine... Does this helped me improve?
Yes.
But a lot? Hell, no. It is in the third step that you will face challenges that no tutorial will cover and YOU, as the ARTIST will have to find the answers. That is where the learning process will create the true roots in your brain.
So, why I wouldn't do this? Well, in my search for more learning materials, I ended up in a certain anonymous image board . I am not going to lie: they did have really great materials that where not... regionally and financially available for me. But they also had the stupid mindset of grinding, treating learning art as some form of game where you can speedrun it to get good. I thought it made sense at the time (but it didn't).
(Oh, they had other very imbecile mindsets, but that is out of the scope of this post).
When I finally got my good sense back together and realized that I was not moving in the direction I wanted, I changed drastically the way I train, I call it:
"50-50". 50% of the time I would study, other 50% I would work in stuff that I wanted, trying, of course, to apply what I was studying. It worked much better and became a much more pleasure experience.
Wow, and I also started, finally, to move to digital art and... I love it! It is so fast! I am having a blast!
I will try to post more and now that I am doing digitally, it is much more easy to share with you guys!
LEARNING=> UNDERSTANDING => PRACTICING => APPLYING => REVIEWING => PUTTING OUT YOUR WORK FOR THE WORLD TO SEE TO GET FEED BACK(optional but highly recommend for quicker improvement) => RESEARCHING COMPLEMENTARY INFORMATION TO IMPROVE YOUR WORK
Now time for the pitch and fork question where the years worth of content?You could have posted that instead.
(07-05-2020, 02:16 AM)darktiste Wrote: LEARNING=> UNDERSTANDING => PRACTICING => APPLYING => REVIEWING => PUTTING OUT YOUR WORK FOR THE WORLD TO SEE TO GET FEED BACK(optional but highly recommend for quicker improvement) => RESEARCHING COMPLEMENTARY INFORMATION TO IMPROVE YOUR WORK
Now time for the pitch and fork question where the years worth of content?You could have posted that instead.
I ain't posting an entire sketchbook pal, you will have to do without it.
Settle down darktiste! Let the man post what he wants in his own thread. You can take the pitchforks out if he turns his sketchbook into a 24/7 text blog, LOL.
bonesworth: I think I've been on the same anonymous image board as you. I agree with your assessment of it. There are great resources to be found there, and the occasionally inexplicably insightful post, but most of it seemed to be shitposting by people who procrastinate too much. The tagline of it ought to be "I could be the next sakimichan... if I felt like it".
Some grinding and repetition is good, but I agree that they take it too far. I'm glad to hear that you found a strategy that works better for you.
You guy remember what a joking is?I mean it all nice to recap what you did but it feel dry without anything to back it up.Sorry if dry humour isn't you thing guy.
My apologies darktiste, it's easy for misunderstandings to happen in pure text communication. I suggest adding a silly icon to your post next time, like this. It's the closest substitute to a human face.
Anyway, he said he'll probably post art in the future, so the critique-sword can be busted out then.
Quote:Settle down darktiste! Let the man post what he wants in his own thread. You can take the pitchforks out if he turns his sketchbook into a 24/7 text blog, LOL.
Don't worry Pubic Enemy (good username, btw!), I don't think that I even have time to do this! And thanks for dropping by!
Quote:bonesworth: I think I've been on the same anonymous image board as you. I agree with your assessment of it. There are great resources to be found there, and the occasionally inexplicably insightful post, but most of it seemed to be shitposting by people who procrastinate too much. The tagline of it ought to be "I could be the next sakimichan... if I felt like it".
Hahhaaha, no doubt you have! Lets just say that 90% of that board doesn't draw... If I may, a more accurate version of tagline would be: "Sakimichan SUCKS: this line is 2 pixels wrong! SHE IS HORRIBLE! I could be much better... if I felt like it!"
Today was somewhat a busy day, so I studied some hands, but I was not able to copy a Kendal Halle drawing that I was looking forward to.... Oh, and tried to add some light value to them using this new tablet drawing technology ! I am having a blast with it! What is next? Cellphones taking pictures?
I totally agree with your text about the learning process, it took me a long time to understand that if I draw every day I will not necessarily get better quickly it depends on how I am studying, understanding and applying. When I was a teenager I used to draw every day but I had no knowledge of fundamentals and today at 21 I think that if I had taken the Vilppu or Steve Huston course or any other good fundamental course at that time I would be a much better artist nowadays.
I look forward to seeing your studies now with this new mindset
Yep, we've definitely been on the same image board, LOL.
I see you've gone from completely avoiding hands to drawing pretty well-elaborated hands, so progress has definitely been made. The main thing I want to comment on is that it would be good to define the metacarpal of the thumb more; it's usually very long and prominent. So watch out for that.
