Crimson Daggers — Art forum

You've been doing a killer job man! these studies are paying off like crazy! Keep pushing! We're all rooting for yah! X)

Heliux Thanks for cheering for me dude! Great to have all your guys support from the group.

Heads turned out not too bad today so posting an update on them. Bottom one is my daughter from a photo about a year and a half old, I didn't capture the cuteness but when I showed it to her she recognised herself straight away.

Also been working on this overhand pencil technique, I've been trying it on and off for a while but been forcing myself to use it solely over the last few days. It's still a bit wobbly but when it works out the lines are so much nicer and the drawing is just overall more artistic looking.



The current problem with my faces (apart from proportion issues, which I'm gradually improving over) is with setting a plan and managing to stick to it. Where I have some understanding of the skull, planes and face rhythms now, I can plan out a head and fit in silhouettes and placeholders for all the features, but when I come in to add in the details after things end up getting shifted ever so slightly and it ends up looking off. I think my construction lines are too faint, or too loose or there are too many searching attempts at finding the right spot that confuses me when I focus in. Will just keep practising, being mindful of this and hope it'll take care of itself when my ability to place lines exactly where I want them improves.

Great anatomy studies, keep them up! :)

You're working a lot man.
You're leveling up a lot too ! Keep on goin :)

Nowio Thanks, I will do! Thanks for looking at my stuff.

Adrian Thanks man, I've got a lot more time for art at the moment, no work right now so I'm living the dream and spending all my time drawing!

Small update from the stuff in the last few days, I've been hammering out about 8 - 10 A4 pages per day, been doing a lot a lot a lot of head and face practice. It's really fitting together now, they have a long way to go still but where I hated drawing faces now I am really enjoying it!

These are random picks from 5 - 10 minute heads, some from ref some from imagination, plus a few skull studies, Asaro heads etc.

I felt another update was due, some more head stuff, starting to come together a bit more:



I saw this course on gesture drawing: http://www.schoolism.com/school.php?id=14 which looks really awesome but out of my price range unfortunately, even still I read the lesson topics and a some online notes from other students and am trying to use them as prompts for my gesture drawing; he breaks it down into a few categories: line of action, shape, silhouette, exaggeration, depth, extrapolation and story so I'm using those topics as exercises when I do gesture drawing; in these pages below I'm practising exaggeration / depth and story, goal is to not spend too much time on the story so there are plenty of little errors - but as an exercise for the imagination it's really good, basically just starting with a photo reference and doing a 45 second gesture then closing the picture and creating a character / little scene out of it. It's really fun:



And lastly some life drawing stuff from the last couple weeks:

Isn't life drawing wonderful?

Great stuff, man. Try to get more stuff up everyday.

I'd recommend doing studies of stuff on your desk, or around you in the everyday. It's actually something I should do as well, haha.

Anywho-- Just keep going! Do it!

Bookend Thanks for looking at my stuff, not really finding it useful to post my progress everyday since I'm just hammering out the same stuff over and over, I'll try to update more often though. And you're right I should do more still life type stuff, I have a reminder that beeps every week reminding me to do that and it's about 2 weeks overdue now! Although this month for me is all about powering through the anatomy and getting that base knowledge in my head once and for all. There'll be more varied stuff coming when I get all that locked in.


So update on my progress, some 2 min heads / gestures, anatomy notes on the arms and some notes and studies of drapery. I have the hands and feet left to do and then I'll have covered all the relevant anatomy. It's really liberating to have that knowledge in my head so I'm not guessing anymore or relying overly on reference. Need to practice a lot and keep studying the anatomy to improve on the more intricate details and shapes and relationships but the basis of it is firmly in there! I'd planned to work on this til the end of December, so that leaves 12 days to cover the hands and feet. Think I can do that easily with some spare days for hammering out tons of practice. *cheer*















Sorry if the writing is too small / low res to read, if anyone's interested in reading the notes let me know and I'll post up bigger scans.

Very cool progress-- Looking awesome. But, you definitely need to do some moar skull studies, I think, because your heads are a bit wonky. Fill up a page o' skullz. And keep rocking!

Some more drapery studies:



Drawing stuff from imagination - challenged myself to only draw from imagination today, no reference at all, some of it's kinda stiff but it was a good exercise, might try to make this a sunday thing and do it every week (as well as other imaginative stuff).

Some more anatomy and gesture stuff coming below. Feeling pretty demotivated in the last couple of days, hit some really nice drawings and was getting to be where I wanted to but then totally lost it and everything is just looking sloppy and it seems no matter how carefully (or loosely) I try to place a line it just isn't landing where I want it too. Need to do some exercise for my hand eye coordination, I can see exactly what I want to draw but can't seem to place the right line, I even know it's off as I'm drawing it (these issues are mostly with my heads / skulls / still life, which I'll post up when I get something half decent done). Anyway, will do a lot of still life to try and develop that a bit more - not sure what else to try really.

Here's some gestures and hand anatomy stuff, I know the hands are off but it's my first attempt, just practising.

Hey nice looking hand studies! Dont worry its normal to feel like you lost the ability to draw a day or a week after you do some good drawings. Its just a natural part of the learning process to experience those ups and downs. And I heard recently that it takes about an hour of drawing to warm up your eye and hand. I found this to be true for the most part. So just keep that in mind when you start drawing for the day and it takes a while before you can even get the lines that you want. Take it easy and do some basic shapes and quick gestures for the first hour. Gradually build up to longer, more complex drawings.

Adam Thanks man, I feel the hand drawing is going ok, just need to work on getting the right proportions. Thanks for the encouragement too, it's helped me identify a few things; firstly just too many interruptions the last week or so, not managing to get more than 30 mins - 1 hour at a time for drawing, secondly I usually warm up with gestures / heads / skulls etc. then have been moving on to anatomy study, which is just diagrams and stuff from video lectures and books. So haven't been drawing when I'm at my best. Gonna chill out a bit on that and not get too disheartened, I only have the feet left to do and then I'll focus a lot on doing drawings to bring it all together, so I can warm up properly and then launch into something great.

Also, I feel most disheartened when my imaginative drawings look bad - and I realised that I draw way way too quickly when I do them, rushing through loose gestures into shapes without taking much time to check if things are working. Need to really slow down, think about all the important things - gesture, proportion, perspective, try and see the image in my mind and draw it as if it was from reference instead of just speeding through like a youtube tutorial on time lapse.

Anyways, couple of studies from the animal photos Adam posted earlier. The tiger & crocodile looked better when it was gestures, I kinda stiffened it up too much adding the shapes - must remember to exaggerate the gestures! Monkey is a bit meh, but was good hand practice.

Last image are characters from Guardians of the Galaxy. Watched that movie tonight with the family, really loved the size difference and personalities of these characters - the brains and the brawn. Drew it from imagination having just finished the movie. Quite a nice exercise to have a kind of reference in mind but not right in front of you. I've heard about artists doing similar things with models in a different room that they can go look at but not draw from directly. I used HB pencil for an underdrawing then black coloured pencil on top, I'm starting to really like this process - it's kind of like inking a pencil drawing but you can get hard and soft edges and add tone as well. Plus it's a lot more forgiving than ink...






(there's a gradient map on this cause the white of the paper was too harsh)

Feel a bit more on it today, made another realisation about head drawing too - I've always struggled placing landmarks on a face, I find it straightforward on a figure (clavicle, ribcage, iliac crest etc are all pretty prominent) but matching up the skull with a face has been hard, like where exactly the brow is, bottom of the sockets, cheekbones etc. Anyway I realised today that I was letting eyebrows mislead me - sometimes they lie along the brow line but often not, I'd been using them to find rhythms into the nose and around the eye sockets. Now I know where I was going wrong I can see the proper brow line much easier and hopefully it's making my drawings better.

Also using the brush pen more to try and slow me down to stop so many quick hasty lines.

Some gestures and heads:







Got the How to Render book for christmas, gonna go through it properly in February but just had a quick flick through and some really rough drawings:

Stuff from the last few days:

Heads, mostly trash but hopefully some progress:



Hands, getting there little by little:



Gestures and figures; trying to bring together my head and hand studies and fit them onto a figure, it's hard when they're studied in isolation to make them work as a whole - more often than not just ruin the drawing by putting a horrible face and broken hands, hopefully if I just keep doing these pages it'll start to work out:



Some thumbnail stuff, trying to break out from just studying all the time and get some illustrations on the go:



Elsa from Frozen, that movie's been on about 5 times in my house in the last few days thanks to my daughter, the characters are kinda stuck in my head now. Kinda flawed moving from a graphite underdrawing to coloured pencil since it's hard to erase the graphite without smudging the black pencil and adding colour smudges all the graphite around and makes it too dark, so I didn't take this any further. Have to find a good working method for drawing and colouring with coloured pencil - a lot of artists trace their underdrawing or use some kind of transfer method, but that seems like a lot of hassle for these simple little drawings I do:

Love the way you study man! I know that I told that before but damn... Keep up that good work, you'll make it! Keep rocking!

Jyonny! Hey man thanks for the warm welcome back! :)

Mega props for using coloured pencils for that Elsa piece - shit's hard to use, thus all the more reason for you to keep at it ;)

I also see a lot of great studyin'... like holy hell how'd you think about studying like that?!

Hoping I'll see a lot of updates here in 2015 - keep up the good work!!

Caisne & Smrr Thanks so much guys! These encouragements give so much boost in motivation! Smrr do you mean those anatomy breakdowns? I just copy along with video lectures and stuff.

Felt a bit burned out from so much heavy anatomy study so I took some time to do something a bit more fun and have been working through this tutorial: http://www.toonboxstudio.com/cherry_course.html It's one of those courses that are aimed at beginners but are not really suitable for beginners, since he takes too much stuff for granted when demonstrating his stuff. Even still, it's a really great tutorial for anyone who's got a bit of knowledge of anatomy and proportion who wants to get into cartoony drawing. I'm about halfway through now.

If you want to see this page bigger and read the notes I've put it here: http://i.imgur.com/vnH0kt2.jpg



Few gestures / quick poses too:

Still messing with the cartoon style. Some digital stuff, scanning takes too damn long...

Not updating as much these days because I'm generating too much paper and scanning it all takes time. Gonna be focusing, probably til the end of February, on perspective; will keep doing poses and faces from reference & imagination to keep those skills going.

Some heads, mixed imagination / reference:



Poses from reference:



Poses from imagination:



And a monster load of perspective drills and practices; haven't tried to do a nice clean drawing yet, just trying to get really specific with the practice. It's all done traditionally and freehand, just used a gradient map to make it look nicer / clearer: