Hi, I'm a student at the Art Student's League of New York, with around 1.5 years of art experience so far.
Right now, I'm training following Yuhong Ding's self study advice, along with 2 hours of figure drawing from life, and 3 hours cast drawing from life monday-friday, along with some brainstorm / CDA / etc classwork on the weekend.
I want to keep a log of my progress as I move from an amateur into a professional, with the end goal of becoming a splash illustrator. Here's some sketches, and a study, still a long way to go...
Nice studies dude! It's nice to soo someone doing traditional atelier type studies as well as more fantasy stuff.
On the latest sculpture there are a few small differences in size and angles, probably most clearly the shape of the hat is a little different in yours, to be nitpicky. But generally your drawing skills are solid and the value accuracy on it is great, so keep it up!
All i got to say is watch your constrast you could go brighter in the highlight. This feel a bit to mid range. One other thing is take a bit more time to develop the initial sketch if you can take a pause and come back flip the canva and check for proportional anomaly this will trick your brain in thinking it something fresh it looking at and it won't be so hasty to go to work on value. One other thing is let your eye jump from the reference alot more like pick a point and compare to your reference it not much use to look at the image for to long because what you need is to compare against what already inside the canva see if it already going in the right direction or if it starting to getting sked by the previous line you put down .Small detail require more jump between the reference and the copy to accurately place it otherwise it kinda blind faith in the mark making process.
A way i like to think analytically is to divide the picture in 4 quadran with 9 quadran in each of the quadran and then you ask yourself ok where does my detail go to and you have actually a mathematical way to analysis the stroke because now it like a curve on a graphic.I think it a great way to implicate your brain both the right and left hemisphere which have different way to look at thing.
I think I still struggle a bit with proportion unless I really take a long time and measure, which I should probably do more of, to be honest. I kind of prefer to just fix the obvious mistakes and wait until the more subtle mistakes become obvious as I finish and refine more, which probably is way more work than just taking the time to really solve the drawing at the beginning, I think it's good advice.
I've been doing a lot of fun work recently, as I have a couple weeks before I start analytical figure drawing at CDA, which will probably eat up all of my free time.
Still got a lot of work to do on all of these images and the photo study...
Hitting a bit more on the nail with you on other point concerning observational drawing. I am not to sure how familiar you are with the structure of the face but also having the underline structure knowledge of the face is such a help to solidify the bone structure and not rely so much on visually ''copying without understanding'' which is very bad if your in a path toward drawing from imagination. One other thing is understanding the centerline of the face so the nose can actually side in it proper spacial slot.I feel here the nose was done hastly but it such a important piece it the direction of the face to a certain degree. Also a very important trick for you is to take advantage of any hard edge that you can pick up on because they are great ''natural guideline''.
The trick there is to remember that even if something look like a line it probably not and as to follow the form for example the soft ''line'' found on the cheek or the almost hard edge on neck on the last study.
One problem is often find oneself stuck dealing with the eye to early it important to avoid that not over spending time creating the eye at the start because the other feature are alot bigger and more important to place first but the eye is just a visual ''magnet'' that siphon were attention when priority can be found elsewhere. If you have to ''deal with the eye'' i would suggest to just quick create a box for them like found there lenght and eye and indicate it with 4 point so you can deal with them later so that those point can be easly adjusted also.
A nice thing with the nose and socket of the eye is that you will often find that they create strong abstract shadow you can use to your advantage to situate the eye in it socket. Being also able to find the browridge and where it turn on the face help find the cheek and the box of the mouth.
