Crimson Daggers — Art forum

Art44 & Rshin Thanks a lot guys!

Here's a load of Asaro heads from the assignment at Watts online, some passed, some failed some are resubmissions. Kind of done the first part of the head drawing course to death. I've drawn so many skulls / planes / abstractions / Asaro heads in the last month I don't even know... will move on to the second part of the course now (drawing features / head sculptures), kind of burned out on these now.

thanks for sharing your watts stuff ! really inspiring. makes me want to try it for myself!
your lines are indeed gonna get better with these. i can see it now actually.
just one Question.
is this all from life ? does the assignments require you to draw from life or is it ok to ref from pics?

Thanks man. None of them are from life, you don't need your own asaro head or skull or anything. The way they do it is you watch Jeff Watts draw one of the views on video, then you draw the drawing he did, then draw it again from a photo. You get PDF files with all the reference in them and tips and teaching notes and stuff.

Like with all this stuff you need to draw all the things many times over for yourself to get it ingrained and memorised. The assignments, really, are just a way to keep you hooked into the school so you keep paying up but it is nice to see the little [0% - 100%] bar getting filled up as I pass things, and they do give you a sentence or two feedback on each one.

It's a great programme, if you got the cash definitely do it for a month and see.

Hey Jyonny. It's been a while since I talked to you last. How have you been?

Just looking at your Asaro heads and I just have to say, wow! The whole collection of head drawings shows amazing improvement from you. I'm really impressed with your draftsmanship. In fact, I was just about to call it a day after updating my sketchbook a minute ago, but after seeing this last bit of work from you I've become inspired to draw more tonight and upload another drawing to my sketchbook! I'll go back to drawing some heads, too.

Thanks for the inspiration, bro!

Thats great you signed up for the Watts classes. You should get a lot of out it. I found it useful to practice the simple asaro head until I had it memorized. Its easier than trying to memorize the complex asaro. That way you get the important forms down first before getting lost in minutia. That reminds me, I still need to get around to trying to memorize the complex asaro DX

Hi there Jon! Excellent work with those head studies, I can really see improvement in your structure and lines from those drawings. Great stuff as usual, I am hoping you are well.

Jon!! Wow it's so good to hear from you again haha :))
Thanks for visiting my SB. And about your question, I just checked out Loomis' book "Drawing the Head and Hands." I think what I did is I just went pass it a couple of times until I get the idea of it. Then from then on, I just started drawing using my imagination or go to quickposes and remember as many hands as i can, if i run out of hands to imagine.

Looking forward to your next post in your SB. It's been a while after all :) Keep safe always, okay?

Eric / Adam / Stardust Thanks for the comments guys, it's been so long I won't write anything else back <_>

Shin Thanks for the reply, my hands are improving little by little, I'll post some up here sometime. Sorry for taking so long to get back on here!

Been ages since I posted, just been focusing on getting better at drawing in every spare moment. Finally feel like I am getting somewhere with my heads / portraits (although Marilyn's head needs to be wider and connection to her body is screwed up). Also my first day for Inktober 2015, just warming up and getting back into inking for today, something more ambitious tomorrow (maybe!).

those heads are looking good, there's so much improvement throughout your sketchbook, very inspiring.

Welcome back man! AHHHHHH you've improved a crap load!

Lurch Thanks a lot! I'll get around to checking out your stuff too when I find some time.
Adam Thanks a lot man! I'm glad the improvement is visible! Starting to enjoy doing portraits now, before they were really torturous. Still a long way to go but I can just practice now and improve little by little, I think I have no major errors or gaps in knowledge to fill.


Thought I'd post my process for today's inktober challenge. I bought a lightbox recently and this is first time I've used it for a finished piece.

So I saw these girls playing around doing cartwheels in the park and their silhouettes looked pretty cool so decided to draw something like that. This is the first panel in a kishoutenketsu (4 panel comic without conflict).

First did a load of gesture type drawings to get in the mood / mind and get a feeling for the gymnastics moves. Was looking mostly at line of action, shape and silhouette:



Then a few thumbnails, trying to come up with a story, this is the final one:



Then drawing the rough layout on bigger paper:



Overlay with the lightbox to refine the poses a bit:



Final pencils - although next time I will do another overlay to make sure everything is totally worked out before inking. This time some areas, like the neck of the girl doing the cartwheel, were not properly locked in and it got messy during inking:



Then inking. Really intense! Did the characters with a brush, everything else with crow quill. I could've done more with line weight and overlaps to get the characters to read a bit better but I was scared to mess it up after doing this:





Panel 2 will be coming tomorrow!

This is my second panel, all the preparation and failed inking stuff - got it right on the 4th try, must've been beginners luck on the first one.



And this is the final version. It was a lot of work for something that looks pretty simple but I guess it will get quicker and I can skip some steps the more I practice this stuff:

More inktober stuff, practising characters and speech bubbles. I might switch to using pen for the small details like eyes / nose / head contour since it's so hard to get them precise with the brush and the tiniest difference makes the whole head look wonky. I liked how the shadows turned out one some of them:













They're all about 10 cm (4 inches) tall, which is just a touch too small for me to really go to work on the details. How the hell do they do it in comic books >.< I know they work bigger and size the pages down... but from what I understand Manga artists mostly work on A4 paper for each page. So small to get things looking so solid and tight >.< (like everything, practice I suppose ^_^)

Last panel for my comic strip. When I can get to a scanner I will post all of them together.

This is some inktober stuff I didn't post here yet and some planning / practising / head twisting figures in perspective stuff for next weeks inktober stuff. Would very much like comments / crits about the comic strip (first image in this post).

Playing around with analysing poses and putting in perspective. Tried doing the ortho views and making shapes and projecting those in perspective but it didn't help me much (seems my hard won perspective skills have withered, need to go through How to Draw again I think). It's starting to work out with just free sketching but they end up really stiff (proportions are screwed up too but that's down to carelessness). Maybe I can do those stiff boxy figures from the last image and use them as reference for a nicer drawing.

Hey again :D

Just wanted to say I really love the comic panels you did up there, the figures and their poses are fantastic! Keep 'em coming!

Holy shit, Jyonny!

I really respect all the effort that you're putting into each Inktober entry--! I mean when I saw your work in the thread, I did notice that it looked like you were taking each piece to quite the finish, but now when I check out all the work you've uploaded here in your sketchbook... mad respect!

Keep up the great work man - keep taking your work to that level of finish that you've been going for and you'll continue making them art gainssss o/ !

Seeing the way that you choose to tackle the problems of cartooning step by step is very eye opening for a beginner like me. What really struck a chord was the array of concepts you employed in the piece, like in order to both tell a story through gesture and have the accuracy of the figures strengthened via perspective. Stuff like this is very helpful to see in action and it is a refresher as to why study of the fundamentals is important.

The asaro heads look great aswell. The quantity and the effort along with it is admirable.

Tbnkaron Thanks man! Thanks for dropping by! There will be more incoming ^^

Smrr Thanks so much! So great to read your comment. I'm really pushing myself this year. I wanna do comics, so inking is what I'm all about but I spent the last year studying and studying always telling myself I'm not ready yet, need to study xyz more first. Now it's Inktober I gave myself a month off from study and just want to create stuff to see how I do. Working out so far so good! Hopefully this is the start of my future! yeeeeeaahhh!

Pax Glad it was helpful. I'm just a beginner too, this is the first time I tried to put any kind of story together and the first time since last year inktober that I even took anything to any level of finish. I really enjoy the gesture / thumbnailing part but It really hurts my head trying to arrange it into the panels and get the same level of energy but I find the more something twists your brain the more you end up learning from it (need to balance it out with stuff that's fun to draw as well else you'll burn out).



Thanks for the comments guys, I forgot how motivating it is using crimson daggers. This game can be a lonely one! I'll get around to checking out all your stuff too and commenting when I can make some time.

Starting to sketch out my next comic, I thumbnailed the whole story first this time (6 panels) and did some studies of costumes and stuff but I'll post all that when it's finished cause it has spoilers : ) These are the characters and the first panel rough version.