been painstakingly trying to figure out this method nathan fowkes is teaching in the book. im really internalizing the importance of form wrapping in shading. And i know now why i was struggling with it, my first attempt with the compressed charcoal i did all vertical lines which as you can guess, dont follow the form and any mark you make of any other direction betrays that and flattens the image. soooo, i tried some sketches in my sb to work smaller, im not editing or holding anything back on the boo boos on these. whacky proportions here and there, sometimes a stroke of correctness.
These are all studies from nathan fowkes book im on pg 72 now
Ill give a self critique of each of these in order
1. I did a fine job on the left image, the right face has cartooney unrealistic proportions but the shading is following the form and getting the right idea. i used a blending stump for the first time in a very long time, and was pleasantly surprised
2. the top image has a shoddy job on the cheek bone shading and the shape design on the nose and forehead doesnt hit the mark as the reference. as for most of these the excuse is just clocking it around 10-25 minutes and just lack of seeing the mistakes till hindsight
3. Learned some cool things from this piece, main issue is just pushing values deeper, but the photo isnt very accurate to the actual values which are more accurate and less high key
4. this was more succesful, got the lay in decent, had a mannish look for a while but it ended up with a nice feel and im not ashamed of this one despite still being manly, its supposed to be a woman
5. the face jaw has a weird quality, but i got some decent luminosity on the hair for the lead i was using, not a great study by any means
6. you can see clearly here the problem with not using a well sharpened pencil and trying to render a young womans face. The pencil lines lay itchy looking marks that make the skin look ugly. at the same time you can see the compressed charcoal in the hair has nice thick marks that are appealing. I was struggling to follow the form on this, as usually when im drawing a young womans face its in light and rarely in shadow, so id usually add minimal shadow and plane work
7. This ones nose bothers me being too narrow, but i sharpened the pencil and you can see a big difference in the mark making on the face. the hair is done with the stick and has nicer marks. the face isnt a great likeness, but it got me appreciating the sharpness aspect to begin with.
8. This is probably the worst of the bunch, bad values sloppy lines, bad likeness, just a complete faliure.
9.This is where id figured out the form wrapping thing with the charcoal stick. I think the image reads well and the strokes are starting to catch on mentally for me. i think the cheeck bone is sloppy but i like the side of the face in light and i think its a decent likeness and a solid drawing for what it is. i feel like i nailed the eye in light so that was a good feeling
10. proportions are whacky, cheeks too wide and the angle of the head is off, the shading isnt anything im stressed out over though, again more contrast is better but mechanical pencils dont get that dark
I think i agree that 9 is your best attempt there is a nice contrast something alway appreciate.You can really feel the difference in volume between those with straight stroke and this one with more curved stroke.I think the next step is to improve your awareness of how you hold the charcoal.
Personally i never liked spiral sketchbook there in the way of the hand drawing freely and they create a surface that doesn't rest near the surface there rest on creating a drag sometime.Not ideal for big piece in my opinion i think the best would be a sheet pad you can still carry around as one block but when you need a sheet you can just tear it as a individual unit.This way the sheet is loose and you can easly flip it around just like if you were on a digital program.I find it useful to flip the sheet to adjust to the wrist or elbow natural limit this way it create more option to create natural flowing curve.
another long ass day drawing nathan fowkes, getting the hang of the blending stump and being faithful to the direction of the strokes and even surprising myself with successful edge work. most of these are about 10-20 minutes each, and you can see a few goofy proportions but they are starting to self correct
Some good attempts here Fed. Some of them are working pretty well. In terms of shading what could be useful is to try (vine) charcoal on butchers paper. It's really handy because you can essentially layer it by wiping you hand across it to fade out the values. Anyway, great stuff as always :) Keep on keeping on
these go from pretty novice looking to decent today, getting the hang of the blending stick. im working with a mechanical pencil from walmart, its pretty decent value range
most the mistakes im making are over or under committing to values, and a few symmetry, perspective things, occasionally proportions, but i definitely think i was nailing some of the edges today. gonna try charcoal sticks again tomorrow to challenge myself
I see why your getting those kind of stroke and why it hard for you to create curve.Mechanical pen have often a lead that is thinner than a pencil lead so it easier to break the lead when you try to change the angle of the pen there best for fine line of same thickness but there not the best to create value.For charcoal it recommend to use a shield to avoid oil from the hand to create deposit of charcoal or for the hand to accidentally destroy the value you just created.A sheet of loose paper under you're drawing hand should prevent such accident.
I definitively recommend experimenting with charcoal since there really soft material you can use a tissue to blend them
An other approch would be normal pencil with a large exposed lead and for smaller detail you can go with the mechanical pencil.
If you can get one try to find one of those soft mailable eraser there the best to erase and hold charcoal.
whew so im not gonna hold back on the big booboos i was making but i think i can offer some insight. these were posted in the order i did them, each goin about 25 mins to 1 hr.
So by the first one i was already to give up on the charcoal/finger blending technique i was like ill never understand this and its totally fucked. so i flipped the page and said, that outta be fun to draw, so i tried again. I figured a lot more stuff out on the second one but the eyes look really bad and the drawing overall is a complete piece of shit, but stuff was learned! The third was another proportion goof on the width of the head, and some sloppy rendering here and there.
Then the fourth went a lot smoother, a lot more controlled, im hitting the strokes in the right direction, theyre blending better, using finger only when its necessary. 5th was the most successful i feel, got good proportions, i think one eye is too far over or something but its the best proportionwise and quality wise. 6th i think was the best control of the medium, the eyes arent exact likeness and the mouth is jutting out weirdly but its nice and clean and some of the shadows have that smudgy look but its the best ive controlled it so far
So big tip for this stuff is, yes there is oil in your finger, if you dip it on the page, it will NEVER erase out. the trick, make big blocks heavy where its most needed, and then go into the heavy pool of charcoal first then smear, it dries your finger and if it leaves a mark itll be dark anyways so its harder to see. i live in the south, its hot here, no matter how good your AC is, but im gettin the hang of it!
page 110/170
goal after this is do full copies of loomis head book, the female masters of anatomy book, and try to copy each head sketch john grello has on artstation
Just a tip with the charcoal - try holding it like a monkey would. So put it down, and pick it up with your thumb and all your fingers placed on it. When using it on paper, try to always rest all your fingers on the paper and don't lift them off.
If you don't know what I mean, watch how Patrick J. Jones does it in his youtube vids. It's a tip I picked up during one of his classes. It's a hard hand posture to remain in at first, but then it gets easier and easier and you'll find your strokes becoming a lot more fluid
Also maybe try not being so heavy handed. With charcoal you can always build up ;)
I certainly would recommend doing some greyscale gradation to practice your pressure sensitivity with the different medium such as the charcoal, mechanical pen and standard pencil and practicing the control of the value.It never a bad thing to do before drawing.It like musicien practicing there scale before a show.It good to do so when switching you tool alot by doing it like adjust your pressure sensitivity ''memory".
worked all day yesterday on the mural, i think it turned out cool, also got a big oil commission from a rich lady to paint her dogs, so ill be doing that in the near future. Uhh, had life drawing today, was fun, was kinda rusty on figures as id predicted. they are better than usual though, i guess im just better and disappointed in them because the tiny micro measurements i am painfully aware of now
i watched some demos of nathan on youtube, he uses several tools for the images, i was using the stick for mostly the whole picture. i just gotta do more and figure it out. Its so simple with a pencil and blending stick on sketch paper but on the big scale its more intimidating. gonna see how many i can knock out tomorrow!
I read the Fowkes book, too! I was kind of disappointed to find the "secret technique" I was looking for was just being really good at drawing. Like underneath all the drawings is a precise construction. Sigh!
You haven't tested your face modelling skills in a while, now that you are doing portraits it'd would be a good moment to grab a pen and design faces structurally from imagination, with wireframes and all that
Darkiste: probably no more than 15, i got about 5 from my very first client, and just random sporadic ones from people id meet downtown and one industry job and one job on a kickstarter
Joseph: its a great book still! lots of great pictures to copy, its hard to find good pencil and charcoal portraits that arent you know "omg so realistic"
Gliger: i tried a few in the first post, but didnt spend a lot of time on em, i might try a more sustained imagination head tomorrow
fedo still makin all kindsa booboos but figurin shit ouuuuuut!
(06-09-2019, 01:27 PM)Fedodika Wrote: Joseph: its a great book still! lots of great pictures to copy, its hard to find good pencil and charcoal portraits that arent you know "omg so realistic"
Yeah I agree. It just made me resolve to practice my accuracy more than actually try the technique.
Joseph: ya im gonna wrap the last 20 pages of this book up with careful lay ins to focus on accuracy as ive noticed the big issues i get in the rendering is just proportions. Ill get it pretty close but theres usually a fatal structure issue or the likeness is wrong, so much that it looks like the opposite sex
found a way to compress these today so i can upload these in 5 seconds instead of sitting on my slow ass internet for 20 minutes uploading 10 pictures lol, anyways, pg 150/180
Thinkin of loomis heads next or the other masters of anatomy book. i wanna get the loomis figure drawing book, but i might do something else like that anatomy for sculptors book looks interesting
This repetition, and you know, trying to get it accurate in a time constraint for the less rendered heads i think is much more useful. i get so carried away with the charcoal and not being used to it i feel i ruin the picture a lot of the time. i thik i just need more experience with it, its very difficult to control, but i feel im getting better each day so its not imposisble. pencil has gotten so fun to use now its feels easy, specially with the blending stump but i still run into thinks im not sure how to deal with like images with very soft edges, as i get this soupy look.
I love the compressed charcoal though, its a visceral experience. so fast, so unpredictable, but very rewarding
I think one of the problem can be rooted to your personal work i could be wrong but you seem to have a preference toward drawing feminine character that could translate into creating rounder face with less jawline and less of the normal characteristic associated with male face.My recommendation would be to do some study on the topic of male and female facial difference.
I recommend going through again the book (Andrew loomis drawing the head )and drawing the Plate.Plate are series of image with a number associated with them.
Here those i recommend it also a good idea to read the chapter to soak in more information in obviously.
Plate 18&19 and plate 40&41
You probably know this already but there a few diffence in the skull structure and there difference in how fatty the face is between gender.I think the real secret reside in the jawline and the nose and lips and more feminine looking eye brow.
As the face age it can become more difficult to differentiate the male and female figure since hairstyle tend to become more short due to hair lose there also the factor of the sagging of the skin and wrinkle.
finished up my 10 minute lay ins of the fowkes book, i could obviously go and get a lot more out of it, which i certainly will from time to time. Mural piece, and loomis is next, and john grello, ill be drawing all the head sketches of his i could find, i got about 40 jpegs ill be going through most with multiple sketches, may also do charles dana gibson and leyendecker at some point
