JyonnyNovice - from Novice to Master!

[JyonnyNovice]

Patrick Thanks so much for all the detailed advice and comments here and in your SB. About the schedule thing I think I am the same as you really, I work better without one but I feel the need to keep one and update it - I worry that if I focus too much on perspective, for example, I will forget what I learned about figure drawing. Recently I think I realised though, that after spending time in one area and moving back to another, it wasn't that I forgot, or my drawing got worse but rather my drawing and eye had improved, so what I could do before in figures, doesn't look good to me anymore, but it seems it quickly catches up (although I definitely forgot a lot of the anatomy and muscle connections and stuff, but that's fine, just need to refresh that knowledge a bit). Still, I like to have a general sort of guide else I can get stuck in a zone of drawing crappy heads for weeks and weeks and not change it up, schedule forces me to look at what I'm doing.

You've given me a lot of clues and things to try with the head drawing. I did actually the other day get a load of photos and try to draw loomis heads on top. The planes worked out, for the most part, but the ball and the cross and the brow line etc etc, was really no where near on a lot of them. It's definitely helped me learning all that stuff but gonna take your advice and focus more on the skull. I can use the planes to help me while I draw a head but whilst I know the skull and can draw an ok one from memory, it's like it's a separate thing when I draw a head with a face - I am not thinking at all about the skull, none of it is integrated into my head drawing. Definitely need to fix that! I'll try your approach about sketching a skull and drawing a face on top.

I did try the orthographic projection for heads, since I'm pretty technical person, I figured it could be a great way to 'reason it out' to draw a face like that. The proportions came out solid but it was really fiddly - maybe I'll play with it some more since you mentioned it, kinda validates that I wasn't being a crazy technojunkie to try that. In fact Proko I remember has one exercise in a video where you draw a box and mark the brow / nose / lips / chin across the front - that could work as a quick way to start then just draw the head inside and project the lines back. Definitely lots of new things to try! Thanks!

I never noticed my figures were too short, thanks for pointing it out! I am quite short irl so maybe that's why. I'll keep that in mind next time I do figures.

Suira mentioned that I should switch to painting a while back too, I never really gave it a good shot. I'll try it out - how do you start something like that? Do you just put some nice shapes of solid value and then sculpt stuff out of it? Or do you put in some sketchy under lines first?

Thanks again man, really useful comments!



Some stuff from last couple days:

Faces, turned out not too bad; have all kinds of problems but I like the lines, I'm trying to use a super super light touch and not to kind of scratch around feeling lines out and messing up the paper - thinking, ghosting above, laying down a single guideline, looking at it, adjusting it if its not right. It's a much slower approach but makes for a cleaner, nicer looking drawing. Some people said those sketchy lines are fine, but for me I am just too messy with them, gonna try to train myself with this slow approach to be more considered.




Plus some more rendering stuff; I'm trying to find a good medium to get nice smooth renderings on paper, trying with charcoal, graphite and coloured pencil. Charcoal is the nicest looking but hardest to use, graphite is least nice looking but easiest to use, coloured pencil is somewhere in the middle. Haven't tried with marker yet.