Tyger sketches

[imPhelikz]

I think your gestures are solid, I would've like to see the 30 min of gestures though, I think you need to improve the most on the anatomy of the arms and foreshortening, specially on the fist drawing and a bit on the second. Overall the second drawing is killer I really liked it!.

Kudos for you for steeping out of the comfort zone, keep up the good work!

[Tygerson]

Awesome, I'm gradually working my way up the anatomy chain.

So today I started with an ancient unfinished painting, redesigned the dress, and played with value.  

This is more or less what I started with, a painting I got stuck on:




I pulled up Steve Argyle's thumbnails for "Vin of the Mists" and attempted some dramatic values based on those.  I love dramatic lighting so much.  The model is Faestock from deviant art.




I think I like the lower right one, the most silhouetted.

[Tygerson]

Thank you Peter, neopatogen, Triggerpigking, Darantha, darktiste, and others for your advice on value.  I've spent a lot of time thinking about the advice each of you gave.

I'm sure this is all well understood among artists, but it helped me to organize my thoughts on how to get beautiful light in my paintings someday.  

The basic idea is that I broke "value" into several smaller skillsets.  Right now I need to emphasize form drawing (to understand the planes), simple still lifes (to understand light), and some anatomy (because it's a long haul to understand those forms).

If I'm missing something, or if you know good exercises I haven't thought of, I'd love to hear.

[Tygerson]

Since I need to understand form better to understand lighting eventually, here are some ctrl+paint exercises on form.  Draw a simple object, then try to mentally rotate it and draw it again.  I definitely need more work on this.  

[Tygerson]

Here's some proko anatomy.  

I have new respect for med students--there's just so much to learn!  

I scanned every other page or so.  I also did Proko's draw-over exercises in photoshop, but it's already way to much to upload.  

I usually watch one video while working out, then I do the drawing exercises, then a couple days later watch it again while working out, and then copy Proko as he draws.  Then I try to do a few of the exercises a third time.

Since I watch them while exercising, I end up watching and reviewing them a bunch of times, and it doesn't eat up my actual pencil on paper time.  Also, I like to rewatch the relevant bone anatomy for whatever muscle I'm on.

[Abnormal]

Oh man!! I take the same path first to understand 3d form, but in the end studying forms will help you a lot but our main skill is observation/measuring proportions, it is the first thing that should be on your list, take all that theory about form and apply it to the real life, observe it with your own eyes and never again will be theory. ^^

[VoodooMama]

Hey Tygerson!
Great stuff! The form studies are really good
Will you be continuing your redrawn illustration? I like the lower right thumbnail too!

[Artloader]

Hey Tygerson, great work with the Proko studies, I love the painting of the girl in the black dress, my vote is for the bottom right value arrangement as well. I think it has the most impact.

Keep it going :)

[Tygerson]

Thanks, I think I'll give the fairy another shot.

I'm testing uploading from my phone.  These were supposed to be 2 min gestures, but I liked the poses and fussed with them for 10-15 minutes. After tons of quick gestures, I kinda like doing slow gestures.  Kind of an oxymoron, but hey, why not?




Edit: Weird, my phone rotated them horizontally.

[-echo-]

You are really putting in the work, I think you are on the right track Tygerson!

With those gesture drawings, try to be more loose with them, simplify the lines and rely more on the line of action. I think this will make your gestures more fluid. Proko talks about this in his video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74HR59yFZ7Y

Keep at it :)

[Eristhe]

Hey! You're definitely going in the right direction here - the Proko and Ctrl+Paint studies are good for your fundamentals. As far as figure drawing goes, I'd recommend doing both short poses (30 seconds to 3 minutes depending on your confidence) along with longer poses (10-30 minutes). Short poses should focus on gesture, whereas longer ones should look more at applying anatomy and form. Hampton's book Figure Drawing - Design and Invention is also a good choice for studying your anatomy fundamentals in my opinion!

Keep it up! : )

[Tygerson]

Thanks guys!

I've been doing gesture drawings as warm ups before working on anatomy.  




Here's my first attempt at the Proko abs reference images.




And then here's my next attempt, same pose set, copying Proko's drawing examples.  I'm not really sure how he figured out the core shadows, but there we go.  Writing notes on my drawings seems to help me think about what I'm doing, rather than just copy. Man, if only I could draw like this on my own!





Here's a third attempt, redrawing a few of the poses on my own again.

[Peter]

Hey Tygerson it's great to see you attempting the same drawings multiple times, seeing where you went wrong and correcting your mistakes rather than moving onto the next thing.

Keep up the good work. :)

[Eristhe]

Hey Tygerson, seconding what Peter said, great work on applying your learning. Something that might help to get the knowledge to sink in is to go through the whole process of gesture -> anatomy -> lay in for each anatomical reference, that way even if you're aiming for a copy, you're still learning the process as you go.

Gestures are looking really nice. Something that might help with figuring out core shadows/shapes from ref is to squint at your reference. For working out how they're placed, take a look at basic rendering on boxes/spheres/cylinders and then apply those to the anatomical forms.

[Tygerson]

Thanks Peter and Eristhe!  

So to work on gesture, I spent about 2 hours yesterday doing proko gesture vids.  I'd draw the pose, redraw while watching, and then draw a third time.

This approach worked well with anatomy, but didn't go well with gesture! In fact, sometimes the gestures were worse when I copied his work!  I finally realized that when I copied carefully shape by shape, I'd lose the flow between the shapes.




So today I tried a new process, which worked much better.  

1. Do a quick gesture on my own (less than 2 minutes).  
2. Copy Proko's 2 minute pose, but with a different process
           a. Watch without drawing for about 1 minute, until he gets the major forms in as a whole.
           b. Pause the video, draw out the major forms and keeping the line of action between them.
           c. Finish out the video with the minor forms.
3. Analyze the differences between his and my work and retry the pose.
4. Exaggerate the pose.

[alexdanila]

Very nice gesture studies! Really like how you simplify them!

[Eristhe]

This is a really good study method, you're gonna be learning a lot here by deconstructing your process. Gesture in itself is about free mark-making, so it makes sense that if you're trying to copy shapes it will struggle (I have the same issue with losing gesture as I consolidate anatomy/lay-ins).

I don't know if you know about action lines, but when you're doing gestures, try to reall nail where the weight of the pose is headed. It can help to draw literal arrows across the figure, through the spine and limbs.

[Tygerson]

@alexdanila Thanks Alex!

@eristhe. Thanks! I'v never tried the arrow thing.  I'll have to look that up.  

I've been doing more gestures, and trying out more egg shading.  Here I did one in direct sunlight, then moved it a foot over into the shade and tried again.  I was going to do the same lighting setup with my hands today, but we had a rare overcast day, so maybe Monday.

In any case, I need to do a ton more of these.  I'd like to do ones with egg vs. hand, egg vs. face, egg vs. figure, etc.




I was going to do obliques today, but quickly realized I needed more foundation. Thus, today I'm going back to the bean and robo bean simplification of the torso, and drawing a bunch of those. I started using cheap college ruled paper so I can just draw big and burn through it.

[Spolyk]

Heya :)

Just went to watch your whole thread. Great things inside :)

You seems to practice hard by exercices and studies, but i think you must to create and express yourself time to time. What i do is thinking about an image or character project, thinking about it in the "tall lines" to give me a direction and i begin to draw, even if i'm not ok with all bases.

Once i've the main lines drawed, i give details studying with references. That's what i made in my last video. So if you're going step by step it will be slower, but you will probably increase the pleasure you have while your practice.

Have fun :)

[Tygerson]

@Hornkreis Thanks!

@Spolyk Absolutely I need to do creative work! I keep getting stuck on form, perspective, anatomy, and shading though. That gothic fairy a page back? Totally stuck. So I'm actually really excited to tackle the basics right now.  If I hit study burn out, I'll put more time trying creative work. Thank you for looking.

Shading a simplified hand, sunlit and shade. I really do need to get to drawabox at some point to draw better forms.