Zizka's Sketchbook (Nudity and Vulgarity, NSFW)

[Zizka]

Perhaps! Anyhow, this time around I went back to previous exercises I started in April. Instead of correcting each stroke by overlapping, I drew each man in full. This gives me practice for hatching without dealing with huge surface which would take a *lot* of time which I could use to practice something else. It's good practice to figure out what connects to what and proportions of things. One thing I've noticed is I tend to repeatedly draw the torso too long. This is probably due to a misconception I have about anatomy and lack of practice. So this will be good to me. I'd say the one at the very top next to 'July 1st' is the best altough the legs are still off. 

[darktiste]

I gave you a proportion sheet somewhere in your sketchbook why don't you go and try to learn it instead of wing it?Learn the code before you try to code.This way you atleast have the head as a measuring unit.

[Zizka]

I try to learn in a different way. Anyhow, practice for today:

[Zizka]

Practice for today:

[Zizka]

Practice for today:

[Zizka]

Practice for today:

[JosephCow]

"Smooth gradation would be lot easier by using smudging but nothing worthwhile ever comes from being easy. Gotta keep at it!"

Possibly! But isn't the point of using hatching to indicate gradation? With hard outlines you cannot indicate softness, roundness, or gradation. But with hatched lines you can! And this is the reason for drawing with them. Let me explain what I mean.

You are shading your drawing mainly with perpendicular crossed lines, which creates patches of tone, but not much form. The main thing you should be wanting to get is the illusion that the form is turning away from light, that it is round. But patches of tone with no gradation it do not do this. A transition between two areas of tone does this. And this is why I say that you should focus on value, not cross hatching technique. Because it doesn't really matter what technique you use, you have to know what values you are trying to achieve with it in the first place. In my rendering of the man on the left, you can see it's not pretty, and I kind of let the lines cross in whatever way. But I can do that because when I zoom out I can see the effect the values have, and whether they are coming together or if they need to be corrected. I could just scribble and though it would not be elegant, it would have the important information.

But since you want to study cross hatching, I'd like to give you at least a few tips that I have picked up from studying drawings, though it's definitely not something I'm an expert at. 

At a. and b. I'm showing how you often see the shadow shape drawn. First there are lines that bend around the form, and then lines crossing it where the shadow begins. The lines are both bent, and the angle they cross at is a very wide X, gradating outward toward the light area. There's no line where the shadow shape starts because a hard line always represents a hard change in form, not a soft one. So the division of light and shadow is more subtle. When the rest of the lines for the shadow are filled in at b. , it makes and evenly toned shadow shape with a soft edge. Crossing the lines at this angle is useful because it creates very little space between the two directions of lines, which makes gradation easier. Sometimes you will see the lines in the shadow parallel to the form, though. 

 If you do it like at c. you see it is very flat and makes a hard edge where the shadow just starts and stops. You don't really want that unless you are drawing something which has flat planes like a cube.

So that's kind of the basics of it that I've observed anyway, I'm sure there are lots of ways to do things, but you should avoid hard patches of tone if shading something round.

The other thing to look out for is how you indicate divisions between forms and objects. at d. A hard line indicates complete division between objects, something that is overlapping or has a cut line. A hashed line indicates a soft division. You used hard lines to divide the pecs and abs, but it should be soft because the skin over the muscles softens them together. The hard line also makes it feel stiff and inorganic.

Hopefully that helps somewhat? 

[Zizka]

Wow, that's a whole lot to wrap my head around! There's a lot I don't understand.

If you do it like at c. you see it is very flat and makes a hard edge where the shadow just starts and stops. You don't really want that unless you are drawing something which has flat planes like a cube.

I don't understand the difference between a hard edge or a soft one. Do you mean the line weight?

[Zizka]

Practice for today:

[JosephCow]

No, I mean the feathering of the lines to gradate from one tone to another. The perpendicular hatching at c. creates a shape with an obvious line where the shading just stops when zoomed out. But at a. and b. that edge is feathered so that there's a bit of a transition from light to shadow. We wanna see the form roll from the shadow to the light by gradating the lines, either by drawing them gradually thinner or further apart, or both.

Anyway, I think there's a lot of more important things to worry about that hatching. I'd rather see accurate shapes with no shading at all tbh.

[Zizka]

Ok, I'll try to define shapes better tomorrow as my objective.

[VitorCardoso]

hi Zizka.I've been following your sketchbook for a while and I really admire your hard work and persistence.I think it would be great for you to take a course on drawing fundamentals so you can learn to draw in a more analytical way and then how to simplify complexes and basic geometric shapes, there is an attempt to do this here but in a flawed way.

[Zizka]

Thanks for the comment and welcome. Alas, I live in a very, very, very small town. I couldn't even find a single person to teach me how to draw (I found one but she wasn't very good herself).

ANNOUNCEMENT: I'll update once every two days instead of daily. Daily updates were overkill and I was doing it to motivate myself to commit daily. As it turns out, I commit even if I don't share so I'm therefore less dependent on forcing myself to post daily.

I don't think yesterday and today's practice will be very interesting but I want to share everything so.

I've been learning Japanese for a while and I'm drawing Kanji in order to remember what they mean. I did that yesterday. This isn't a place about learning languages so I hesitated but anyway. I'm likley the only one learning that language around here but it can still be interesting.

As for today, I tried to convey shape as I've been rightfully called out on that shortcoming. I think the clown shoes are not too bad in that aspect.

One is low-res, I overwrote the file by mistake.

[Shuty]

Hello! Nice work, I like all those studies, that croc is so damn cute :D
I see you do a lot of rendering using lines. I think you could use more pencil like brush to achieve more attractive lines. Not sure what software you are using, but I found myself a perfect pencil brush( at least to me it is perfect :D) it feels just like drawing on a paper with it. It is for clip studio paint here's link if you'd be interested: https://assets.clip-studio.com/en-us/detail?id=1850432 of course there are many others. even chalk brush in photoshop could wokr I guess.

Anyway I'd suggest to look at artist like wes burt or marko djurdjevic. they are gods when it comes to pencil drawing and you might learn a lot from the way they render forms.

I also see you are learning japanese! yo that's amazing, must be really hard to learn.

[Zizka]

I'd really like to use a different brush but I'm using Krita (since it's free). People don't use it as much so brushes aren't as readily available as for with Photoshop or Clip Studio Paint (which I don't want to pay for). I'm also used to Krita now and changing platform feels like a hurdle. I could make the switch and buy the software so they're essentially excuses. I'm just hesitant to do so.

I looked up your sketches and they look great so I could learn from you for sure. I'll look up those artists you mentioned as well.

I decided to update less often as it gives time people to comment and allows me to share more stuff to comment as well. Sometimes I just draw from imagination, other times I'll use a reference. I'm having a lot of fun and time flies by so motivation is not an issue. I try to shape things better and use 'better' lines.

[Zizka]

Quick question for clip studio users:

Is there a brush which recreates those ink brushes Kentaro Miura or Junji Ito uses for inking/crosshatching? Any to recommend?

[Zizka]

Guess not!

The four last days:

[Jephyr]

You have a very unique style - really enjoyed looking through this last page.

Your sense of volume on the l'il gator was really nicely done — and I'm a fan of your cross hatching and precise line work.

Thought JosephCow gave some excellent advice above and am applying it to my own work.

Keep 'em coming

[Zizka]

Thank you, thank you.

I know those Japanese mnemonics are not that interesting for people not interested in the language but still:





July 19th is with Clipstudio. I haven't figured out how to rotate my canevas (without pressing keyboard keys) but I'm sure it's possible. I'd say the rendering is more accurate than Krita for now.

I'd like advice for this pixel art:
   

   




I'm mostly looking for ideas to make the pixel art more readable. I don't have any limitations regarding the palette but it needs to be restricted to 32x32 px. 

[RottenPocket]

The first reads as a crab with a crocodile head, so if that's right then it does the job. The second is like a kappa type creature. 32x32 is a very small work area so there's only so much you can do. I think the animation cycle is quite fast, and could be slowed down, claw movements isolated a bit better. I'm no expert on pixel art but if I were to play the game those would be my comments. Good job!