I've been drawing for a while now (a few years), but I haven't gotten really serious with my art. I've only been doing actual studying/learning of art in an on-and-off basis. Besides that I've just been making various miscellaneous things that I felt like creating with no real guidance or thought of improvement of my art. But now, I plan to start studying art more vigorously, to better my works. I want to take a thorough systematic approach if at all possible in my studying, learning, and practice. Starting from the very basics so as not to miss anything (or at least as little as possible).
Any and all critiques/comments/help/info/resources/questions/ect. are all welcome, of course.
So let's get to the art! Here are a few pieces I made recently to start it off.
Welcome to the Crimson Daggers gang! I think you have some solid understanding of art and fundamentals already from what I can see! Maybe the best thing for you would be to start a schedule of learning the art fundamentals and then try some project-based learning with every new piece of artwork that you start.
When you are starting out, I personally think it's important to try and get out of your comfort zone as much as possible, so maybe you'd want to try your hand on some stuff like landscapes/environments, vehicles, and realistic character design in order to learn as much as possible and expand your horizons?
Welcome and great start! Your character designs already look ace, so I'm really looking forward to seeing more work from you in that regard. Keep it up!
@Zorrentos - Awww yeahhh! Thanks for the kinds words, although I think it is a bit deceptive of my true level a bit since I tend to draw quite a bit of random sci-fi/fantasy stuff. So I am sorta more comfortable making that kind of stuff and have a bit more experience built up in that realm, but most anything else I make you'll see a drastic decrease in execution.
Yeah I definitely plan to go through the fundamentals. Especially since I never really have done so. The most I've done is just through the years randomly maybe seeing an "Art Basics" or "Art for Beginners" type video I've stumbled across or starting & stalling after a month is pretty much the most I've done in terms of a more rigorous/scholastic approach.
Yeah for sure I agree. I don't just want to draw any 1 particular thing, so for sure I will be going into other genres and aspects. As you said, I wanna try to get more out of my comfort zone of drawing. To increase the variety of things I can potentially implement into my pieces + to get guud. Thanks again for the comment!
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@Artloader - Thank you! Hrmmm, that is a good question... lol. I'd like to tell you some in-depth backstory for it, but in reality, I just came up with it on the spot. It's just a random skeleton of an unknown creature is all I can say, the rest is up to you.
Thanks for the comment!
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@cgmythology - Thanks! Oh, you can be sure of more stuff along the lines of that for sure. Thank you for your comment!
Thanks for all the welcomes + anybody who even views this thread lol.
So I've now begun going through the book The Natural Way to Draw by Kimon Nicolaïdes. Though I should mention that I'm up to chapter/section 21 already. A few years ago I use to post on ConceptArt.org (rip) going through this book, I cringe at how long ago that was and I still haven't completed the book yet, due to stopping & going constantly lol. But here we go, I just wanna get this book done with since I'm already the majority way through it.
Here is some random stuff + some NWTD gesture drawings, which you will be seeing a lot of from now on. I'll try to filter them down to just a few good ones & a few bad ones as well so you can get a better overall view of my ability. Also I'm using just good ol' pencil & paper for most of these pieces, so I'm figuring out the best method to digitize them. Was going to use an old scanner printer I have, but after testing and comparing it to my smartphone, the smartphone seems to takes a better image. So you may see some image quality variation as I test and play around with setting + my setup for the camera.
Hey there and welcome to Crimson Daggers! Your renderings are already looking really nice. I love the industrial designy looking ship and mech that your drew. Are these charcoal sketches that you finished in photoshop? Its so hard to tell what is traditional and digital now days, but either way the rendering is really nice! You may have already heard of him, but you may be interested in Scott's Robertson's books/youtube videos, he a master of industrial design drawing/painting.
Your gesture drawing are also looking really nice. The shapes are very attractive and have great 3-dimensionality for being so simple.
@tchangchang - Ayeeee thanks! Hah, nah there all done digitally. Up to this point only the gesture drawings + the 1 portrait study were done traditionally. Although that may be something I need to try testing out now that I think about it.
I've kinda heard of Scott Robertson, as in, now that I did a search of him I do remember seeing some stuff of his. I'll definitely look into his stuff and add him to my list.
Yeah having done so much I do start to see that they are overall looking more orderly compared to gesture drawings from a year plus back.
Thanks for the kind words & recommendation!
Okay, so now I am starting to do studies on the side as well seeing how that is something commonly recommended to do, especially real life studies or at least from photos. My general plan for right now is basically 3 main categories: Art Learning (which is currently going through the basic beginner resources, currently The Natural Way to Draw) - Studies (still life's, photos, screencaps, “old masters”, current pro artist, ect.) - Funsies (any personal projects). With most of the time allotted to learning, then studies, then personal fun art stuffs (but of course there are always exceptions to the rules every once in a while...). Once I've gotten these 3 things down, meaning they've become a reasonably solid habit, then I plan to start increasing + adding more things down the line to the workload.
Also just want to credit the image sources I use for references. http://reference.sketchdaily.net/en - great tool for gesture drawing + they seem to update it a few times a year https://unsplash.com/ - found it just this week, seems like a great website with tons of high quality photos that are all under a free license model so no worry about copyright (but be sure to look at their license page yourself too)
But anyways here is more NWTD gesture drawings + some more original character/creature designs. I've diverged awhile back from the NWTD lessons on gesture drawings, looking at other sources like Proko, Croquis Cafe, and Love Life Drawing for more info + other methods of doing gesture drawings. Doing so helped a lot, doing the scribbly method of the NWTD was getting tiresome and wasn't yielding very good results. But perhaps I'll start to mix it up more and reincorporate the NWTD method.
Not too much to report at the moment, just some more stuff from The Natural Way to Draw and random original stuffs. NWTD is starting to dip into the more interesting stuff like bone + muscle studies and also gestures + studies using oil paints. I never used oil before so that was new, even if I don't have all the proper equipment, just 3 different colors, some brushes, and some printer paper lol.
Thanks for that Unsplash link, awesome website!
Your sketches are so very dynamic, great work on gesture
And I love that one eyed alien, and the skull!
@neopatogen - Thanks! Glad you found the website useful! I'm always a bit paranoid about copyright and all that especially when posting online, so it's great knowing all that websites content is under an open license. Plus I just wanna credit the sources/tools I use in general when possible.
Posting my stuff on here has started to already show me my work in a different light. I don't really "review" or go over past works I've made, but putting content on here kinda forces me to do so. Just when I look at my stuff on here it is like putting it in a completely new environment to look at it differently, just as if you'd mirrored your image. Also the people pointing particular things out helps focus on certain aspects you don't notice.
Yeah, thank you, the gesture drawings are coming along I think as well. It's kinda cool to think in just 30 seconds or just 1 minute you were able to capture enough and scribble it down to have a readable image with all the basic essential aspects within it.
Thanks for the kinds words!
So I have more of the same again this go around in terms of art. But, on the side I have been working on something I personally haven't really heard anybody talk about, within art communities at least. Which is organizing your content + other content you collect (this includes obviously images, but also photos, screenshots, books, games, movies, series, music, ect.). I have 2+ TB's of stuff I've collected over the years. I never (personally) have heard artist talk about this, how do they manage it? How do they catalog it all? How do they format it, and where exactly do they put their art? It may not be the top most pressing issue for an artist, but I think if left unattended it can become a pretty big issue like it has for myself. With tens of thousands of loose images in folders mixed with all other sorts of media all with no tags or labels for the most part, and if they are tagged/labeled it isn't in a standardized format. If your content is well formatted + tagged + labeled + ect. then it will speed up the process for finding it quickly on your local drive(s). Even none image related content, it's all useful for: inspiration, reference, studies, learning, ect. But yeah, that is just a side thing I've been researching and setting up and thinking through.
Here is some more images, mostly NWTD gesture stuff though, and 2 rough images.
In terms of organisation, have you considered using something like pinterest? They have a good way to organising images into different categories (but of course that means putting everything online lol). I used to be in a similar situation where I had a bunch of images saved on my PC. In the end I just deleted them all lmao. I'm not a very sentimental person but it boiled down to the idea of if you have all these images how often are you actually looking at them? Or are they just sitting there taking up space? I don't believe there is a right or wrong way to do it so I guess it's a matter of finding out what works for you! :)
@Artloader - Hello there! Thanks, the gestures drawings are abundant in The Natural Way to Draw book I am currently going through. They are rewarding to create, the ability to get the essence of whatever it is your drawing/creating down in potentially seconds with a gesture drawing is a great tool to have. For the painted gestures I just used some old chep acrylic paints I had laying around.
Thank yous!
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@chubby_cat - Hey, thanks! Hrmmmm, I know of Pinterest, but never knew/thought of using it for organizing imagery. Also, as you stated, I don't really like the idea of having to put all the content I've collected onto an online service - which probably has some limitation(s) (only certain file types / file amount limit / file size limit /ect.) and if not one of those, just the sheer amount of stuff I'd have to upload onto it would take some time lol. Not to mention several other factors of storing stuff online - hope their site doesn't go down for 1 reason or another - hope your internet doesn't go down - potential security risks - hope the site doesn't decided to put up some sorta paywall - ect. But all that said, this isn't to say storing stuff online is a bad idea, just that I don't think it is best to make it your primary way of storing content. Using it as a backup/ease of use secondary type system is a good thing to do.
Lol yeah I get what ya mean, the thought of all this effort being put into creating this system... is it even worth it in the end. Like I said, I have hundreds of thousands of images, so yeah, there are probably images I will never look at or have completely forgotten about. But in a way I think that bolsters up the idea that one should use some form of a organization system. There have been multiple times where I remember certain elements of a picture, and would search my collection & even online again for that picture, but couldn't find it - or situations where it took hours to find a image again. All due to not being labeled/tagged. But with all that said, there will always be content that'll fall into the void, especially if your at the point of having several thousand or more images let alone hundreds of thousands lol. But with a system in place, it gives you the chance to rediscover that stuff rather than if you didn't at all.
Thank you for your perspective on this topic!
Phew! It has been a little while since my last post, sorry about that. I've been drawing regularly, but not doing much of NWTD till a few days ago. I've been looking more into cataloging and storing data. I made a lot of improvements to my system and sorta mishmashed several ideas together with some of my own. So through my researching I found a lot of good stuff I'd like to share some of it.
https://www.digikam.org/ - Program to manage + organize + view all sorts of image formats + gifs + videos
https://hydrusnetwork.github.io/hydrus/help/ - A guide for Hydrus program - even if you don't use the program has very useful info about standardized methods used (specifically in Booru's) about tagging stuffs
https://github.com/roboyoshi/datacurator...aster/root - A community made folder structure for all things! Though I don't use the exact setup it's a good starting point or to then alter as seen fit or to use as is
Those are some of the man tools + places that I found to be very beneficial in helping me improve upon my organization system overall. But yeah, sorry about that info dump. Just wanted to share some good stuff I found that could potentially help others organize their stuffz.
really digging your original pieces, the textures you are going for are really coming through. I would love to see the Rock-like character (yellowish BG) developed more and more of him :)
@CBinnsIllustration - Hey, thanks a lot! Well it's funny you say that, cause I'm starting to work on developing pieces more, so I'll go back and add more to that piece. It was 1 that I developed a bit more than usual, but an issue of mine is never (or just very rarely) bringing any pieces to a more polished state.
@Jephyr - Yeah, I need to start doing some more studies, I've been slacking on those a bit in favor of the more fun stuff of making original content lol. Thanks for the kind words!
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A major issue of mine that I've noticed is that I rarely ever bring my pieces to a completed state. If I do spend time on a piece, it's usually no more than 4-ish hours. After spending that much time on a piece, it's sorta like the fun part of it is over (at least for me). In the first few hours that's when you make all the big changes and your still making big impacts on the piece. But then you start getting to the detailed part which you could spend several hours doing and see very little difference in the piece as a whole from it. But that's something I am going to begin to address in my art. I've made a art tracking page in my notes, to be able to list projects I'm working on, and see the major ones that I want to bring to a fully rendered (to the best of my abilities) state and have a constant reminder to work on them!
This first piece is a WIP I'm working on (thing coming out of the tall grass), something about it seems kinda off though. Not sure if the creature is too big, or I put too strong foreshortening on it or something else...
For the piece for ''the thing come out of the grass i think you have made the grass outline look a bit to even but that might work if it could be clear that is a dirt path or a road but the texture of the ground suggest it a very flat surface which make it look unnatural if it in the middle of nowhere nor does it make it look like one of the two suggestion i formulated.
The razor sharp drip of blood isn't very realistic there no splashing and there no indication of damage where the blood is coming out from.
The head design doesn't make alot of sense from a viewer stand point .It hard to get an idea how it would see it navigate it environnement.Not only that it I think the issue is mainly that this might feel a bit to alien without a android looking face(face are one of the first thing we connect to as human so mybe try to establish some kind of emotion on the face right now there a disconnect we don't really feel anything toward it.Imagine the visual impact you are missing i think you want to make it look like it suffering or that it look for help or maybe it face is all deform(i know it might be a big challenge it seem you took a easy approch for the head for some reason)
I would assume it would have a more humanoid head since it as clear humanoid arm.
For a stand point of the composition i think there alot of empty space that serve no real purpose but to dilute the subject matter. I think a nice triangle composition and reframing and streching to keep the more illustrative frame would help a little bit i crop out some of the empty space.(Not to happy with the strech one)But the square one look to much like a storyboard i feel.
@darktiste - I saw your reply, and managed to take a few things into consideration for this current post of the progress. I do agree the grass line is a bit discernible, so I started to make the bottom of where the transition from the dirt to grass/tall grass to be not so uniform. Yeah the blood was kinda still just roughed out, and still is in a very rough state currently, but I will keep that in mind for it. As for the face, I see where your coming from, and I do need to work on actual human faces more (I tend to make a lot of alien creatures or people wearing helmets lol), but at least in this case I was kinda going for a strange absurd, illogical fantasy/dream like "thing" made of all different... stuff (bone, metal, cybernetics, muscle, stone, ect.). I also cut the image down a bit, the (especially on the right side) was a bit too much for sure. Thanks a lot for all the helpful insight!
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The main WIP piece of the creature coming out of the tall grass has made some progress, but I didn't put a lot of focus on that the last few days, but there has been some progression there - cropped down some of the empty space, tried to fix the perspective issues a bit via making the horizon line higher up & making the foreshortening on the creature a little less intense, still seems to be a bit off to me...
I've also been working on another previous piece of a rock creature. I was enjoying working on that one a lot, and also by request I have been working on it more. I probably will continue even more so on that piece. There are still some really rough areas I wanna refine a bit more on that 1.
