Hobbyist here, I finally found the courage to open my sketchbook here... My goal is to become better at figure drawing, environment and digital painting. I'll be posting everything I do daily as practice or as fun time.
Critiques are welcome and please don't go easy on me.
well well well, what do we have here ! Welcome to CD ! It's really nice for a first post ! your portraits are very interesting, hope to see more ! For the crits don't hesitate to tell us what you're trying to achieve in term of style/ level/ maybe some artists that inspire you etc, you'll get better ctitics this way !
keep it up and looking for more !
Welcome to the forums. You have a neat collection of studies and some imaginative thumbnails I presume? I agree with wld.89 that it would be nice to know more about your goals so we could help you move towards them.
(02-21-2021, 04:16 AM)wld.89 Wrote: well well well, what do we have here ! Welcome to CD ! It's really nice for a first post ! your portraits are very interesting, hope to see more ! For the crits don't hesitate to tell us what you're trying to achieve in term of style/ level/ maybe some artists that inspire you etc, you'll get better critics this way !
keep it up and looking for more !
Thank you! I'm trying to get to a professional concept artist level. For the style, I really like Aaron Griffin, Craig Mullins and Sinix (specially how he paints).
(02-21-2021, 04:23 AM)VitorCardoso Wrote: Welcome, good variety of studies here, you seem to be on the right way I hope to see more studies of gesture and construction.
Today I did a portrait painting from reference and some more gesture with construction. I find it difficult to work from a photo when painting a portrait, identifying soft vs hard edges is always confusing to me. This portrait ended up a complete mess. I abused the smudge tool
Also, I noticed that whenever I start a painting with line drawing, it always end up flat looking. The only process that "works" for me, is to start with mass blocking directly.
I have to start doing master copies and studies of azaro head planes.
I started the infamous 250 box challenge... need to work on my weakest point ....perspective. I find it almost impossible to make poses from imagination that looks 3D.
(02-22-2021, 11:39 AM)Kassatay Wrote: Also, I noticed that whenever I start a painting with line drawing, it always end up flat looking. The only process that "works" for me, is to start with mass blocking directly.
I started the infamous 250 box challenge... need to work on my weakest point ....perspective. I find it almost impossible to make poses from imagination that looks 3D.
Nice studies ! for the process of blocking in directly i feel you, it's quite the same with me, when i try to paint over a sketch it's messy. i think it comes with practice but more importantly find a process that you enjoy, there are countless different process that end up getting great results !
For the challenge, i advise you to open some photos in photoshop and try to locate some vanishing points, make the canvas bigger around the picture and trace them. you'll be astonished by how far they really are. it opened my eyes to the fact that i was putting them too close, even if they were ouf of the page !
Hey Kassatay - really nice start here - I love those head sketches and your gesture drawings are really dynamic!
I like how you're including landmarks of the body in your figure sketches - are you studying from Michael Hampton? I found his teaching on landmarks to be really useful - especially when trying to draw figures in perspective.
On your point about painting on a linedrawing - have you tried drawing in the shadow shapes as part of your line drawing? I've found that this really helps with achieving 3-dimensionality when I get to the painting stage - it's really easy to see where to put my shadows.
Anyway - keep up the good work and all the best!
“Today, give a stranger one of your smiles. It might be the only sunshine he sees all day.” -- H. Jackson Brown Jr.
Quote:Also, I noticed that whenever I start a painting with line drawing, it always end up flat looking. The only process that "works" for me, is to start with mass blocking directly.
When I opened your thread I didn't thought your faces look flat at all. I actually really like your studies, especially from post #7 and admired how dynamic they look and how the face is very expressive.
One small tip I can give you about line drawing though is: Try to vary the lineweight. This simple change can really help to support perspectives in an ink drawing. :)
I am really looking forward to see more of your works! Keep up the great work! :)
All of your studies are looking really good. Are you planning on using them all in a project/illustration of your own? It's important to apply the studies and use them in your personal/imaginative work.
Nice work here, I like the painted portraits and gesture drawings a lot. About your line drawings looking flat - drawabox.com has exercises that will sort that out right for you. The exercises start off dull but its worth it I promise once you get to the lesson on animals
Artloader: Thank you! Yes indeed I'm studying from Hampton's book. I prefer his process over Loomis. I find Loomis very difficult, specially posing the mannequin with the muscle frame, without understanding of anatomy. I prefer his "head and hand" drawing book.
Kaiko: Thank you for your support. You're right, I should start varying my line weight to give more depth. I'll start implementing that.
Zorrentos: Thank you for your kind words. Not yet I'm not confident enough in my skills to do work from imagination. Whenever I try, It end up a complete mess or I need to constantly check for references.
I have the mental image, but putting it on paper is another story. It involves so many skills at the same time, perspective, environment design, anatomy, proportion, light and color that I feel overwhelmed.
I think I'm going to give myself some time (and more practice) before attempting an illustration from imagination.
I'm actually not sure about the process, do I start doing work from imagination now, even if it's a complete crap at the end or do I wait do get basic skills for that.
Skeffin: Thank you so much. I'll check that once I finish the 250 boxes challenge, it takes more time than I thought.
Didn't have time to post these days so here are some sketches for today (yesterday's one also).Mostly 1min and 2min gesture and anatomy studies. Some are from imagination, I got to apply what I learn.
There is no starting point to imaginative work in my opinion it actually probably the best way to find out where you need improvement. Right now your probably overwelm by what ahead but that normal feeling to have if you are more the kind of person who only copy what it see.Taking a direction is probably the hardest choose you have to make will drawing it require confidence in your ability to excute what your asking yourself to do.Learning what are the fundamental and practicing them instead of going blind and direct trying to copy everything without any notion of what specific fundamental your trying to improve is your shortcut toward imagination.Of course there is a balance and one can be under the impression one need to have exellent fundamental skill to draw from imagination which isn't far from the truth but it in no way necessary to start doing it you don't need to get bug down by all the rule of fundamental right away and you probably shouldn't as to not discourage yourself and shut down your imagination but you should try to determine the level of difficulty before attempting something you know is above your currenty skill level i mean by that let say you have a idea for a imaginative piece well you could do a few study on certain subject before attempting your imaginative piece so as to be prepare and comfirm if it to big to pull off .But as i said previously imaginative work is your friend it never lie to you in term of what to improve in term of fundamental so it always a useful tool to generate progress.The rest is a matter of conscious effort to work toward your fundamental goal.
Hi there, Nice gesture drawings, a good start! I think your evaluation of the digital portrait in post #7 is a bit harsher than necessary. It is pretty volumetric and doesn't look overly smudged to me. I do recommend working from life if you can. It helps to see the 3d form and ofc judge edges better than possible with a photo. Selifes with a mirror always a brilliant portrait exercise in a pinch!
Kassatay Wrote:I'm not confident enough in my skills to do work from imagination. Whenever I try, It end up a complete mess or I need to constantly check for references.
Nobody gets into a special club or gets a badge of honour, because they finished a painting or illustration without reference. Use reference. Use MORE reference. Use nothing but reference. It's fine. When you don't know how to depict something it requires reference and likely some studies to figure out an effective and relevant process for you to approach the subject matter in your finished piece. Plain and simple.
Quote:I'm actually not sure about the process, do I start doing work from imagination now, even if it's a complete crap at the end or do I wait do
Yes. Start now. Don't wait for the magic and imaginary moment when you suddenly "feel ready" to do it.
The outcome should even be largely irrelevant to the very positive action of trying to do something to the best of your current ability and then repeating. This is how you learn.
From the very little I've seen so far, I think you're probably more capable of producing some finished work and I am going to wager you are more harsh on yourself than necessary, but have to see your attempts first ofc.
Earlier on when I was self studying, I had a rule of finishing at least one illustration or folio ready work a month. The frequency is arbitrary, the action of pushing yourself to complete things to a higher and higher standard each time, is highly useful. So get to it! ;)
If you're discouraged about working from imagination ( believe me I understand that all too well), one thing you can do is bang out a portrait or figure drawing (give yourself a time limit if you're the type to fiddle with stuff that's not working for ages), then use yourself and full length mirror to check where you went wrong. If you're doing funny angles then it's a pain to hold that but I recently came across this great site for face angles http://referenceangle.com/ , so you could use that as a comparison.
Darktiste: Thanks a lot for the advice. You're totally right, I'll just dive in and start doing more work from imagination, otherwise all these studies would be useless.
Who: Thank you! Great idea I'll start doing self portrait it might be a better exercise than practicing from photo references. For the imagination part, I'll just start doing more whether the end result is good or bad. I guess I'm just worrying too much about producing good art instead of having fun.
Skeffin: Thank you , I'll give it a try. That website is amazing, thanks a lot for sharing!
This morning I tried to apply all the great advices I received from you guys, about starting work from imagination. So here is my first attempt, completely from imagination no references used. I guess I should have used some to make the hands and the posture. I'll try to keep it up and balance it with my studies. So much too learn....
Imaginative work doesn't mean completely from imagination that an other misconception.
As who said previously
''Nobody gets into a special club or gets a badge of honour, because they finished a painting or illustration without reference. Use reference. Use MORE reference. Use nothing but reference. It's fine. When you don't know how to depict something it requires reference and likely some studies to figure out an effective and relevant process for you to approach the subject matter in your finished piece. Plain and simple.''
Of course it doesn't mean you cannot draw from a visual library that an other term to learn research if your not aware of what it mean. Everyone can draw from memory but that require a great deal of spacial visualisation training.
I think it's great that you try to draw the human figure of imagination from time to time. When you draw by imagination, your doubts become evident, which is usually not noticeable when we are using a photo for reference. the Ideal would be to do several studies with reference and then try to apply it in imagination, that way the things you studied fixed in your mind and you can find out what you need to improve
Darktiste: Yes you're right It always confuse me. I always thought drawing from imagination is relying only on memory. So when I see a finished painting, and the author states "from imagination", I always thought that means he did it completely from imagination without any reference. I guess I was wrong.
Thank you for clarifying that for me!
VitorCardoso: Thanks. Yes It helps me figure out what are my flaws and where I should focus my studies on.
Today's stuff, mostly focusing on learning anatomy of the torso. Studies and application from imagination.
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and the posture. I'll try to keep it up and balance it with my studies. So much too learn....