Hey there. It's been forever - 8 years actually - since I looked in my sketchbook. Having been to other social media platforms and never really found a happy place, I decided to come all the way back here and try posting in my ancient sketchbook again. I made some decent progress over the years but it could have been more drastic I'd say. Feedback and a regular "posting schedule" did help me back in the day and I hope I can get back to it, improve even more, work out the kinks and become the illustrator I want to be. Honestly I've been slacking, life got in the way of my goals and I just want back on that hardcore art journey train. Nothing toxic, nothing unhealthy, but some good old hard work to overcome mediocrity. I hope there is still a place for that here and I hope someone out there is with me or finds what I post helpful or whatever. Cheers
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Original Post:
I became "serious" about drawing and painting in Winter 2013 and my goal is it to become professional.. that's pretty common here I guess.
What's kind of cool for me is I'm living at my parents right now and I am willing to dedicade my whole time and life to get better at art.
I just turned 20 and the plan is to teach myself everything I have to know with books and the internet.
So the big challenge is to get a job after one year of being totally concentrated on learning the basics/fundamentals of drawing and painting otherwise I gotta go to college/university and study design so that there is more time to get better.
I will be posting (almost) every day here and try to get to at least 8-10 hours of drawing a day.
So hey please help me out on this one, leave comments, be critical, I'm open for every piece of advice. :)
So here are some first drawings that's where I'm at.. long way to go!
Soo I'm finally back from my weekend trip, took a little bit more time 'off' than first planned but now it's time for some studys and sketches again! :)
Today I just did a lot of Steve Huston so like gesture drawing and a bit of Villpu. Nothing that I'd call art but good practice I hope.
Cheers
welcome! looking good so far. Just one thing I noticed on your 2pt. perspective drawing: push your vanishing point further away or draw the actual object smaller. Otherwise your drawing will be distorted. Keep sharing!
Hi constructicon and thanks for your reply! :) and your right the vp's are pretty close there. otherwise they don't fit on the paper though and I'll have to guess where they are so it would end up in a mess... probably just a matter of practice :D I'll work on that.
Here's the stuff from today nothing special but I did some gestures again, way too many to load em all up but here are some of the cleaner ones :D
And some brain guy and quick shark sketch.<
Cheers!
Welcome to the forum! I'm relatively new to drawing too. Your stuff looks really good so far!
Some things that have helped me in my journey - Scott Robertson's 'How to Draw' book, you've seen his style this is years of his knowledge in a book; it's all about perspective, amongst other things it teaches you where you can draw in relation to vanishing points so as not to distort images and how to construct drawings when the vanishing point is off the page. It's really taught me so much, well worth the price tag.
I've studied a lot of anatomy over the past 6 months but it wasn't until I started working through Loomis that things started to click and I was able to draw convincing figures.
Have a look, if it's for you we could support each other through anatomy studies : )
Hey JyonnyNovice :) Thanks for the compliment and tipps!
I've read and studied Loomis' book til he goes into shadowing the body it's at like page 80 or so, so yeah did that already but big thanks anyways I've heard lots of good things about Robertsons book so I just bought it, see how it can help me ;) I also have a copy of his basic perspective dvd which is awesome! You should look into that if you havent yet :)
I'm also looking at Vilppus drawing manual, michael hamptons figure drawing book and a crazy hogarth book as well as hu's anatomy dvd so my gesture drawings and anatomy studies are very different always :D
If youre struggling with anatomy or anyone who reads this I can only recommend everything I mentioned, maybe hogarth for more experienced guys because hes a big stylist :D
Anyways that's that :)
Which Hogarth book are you using? Dynamic Anatomy? That one is awesome for seeing how the muscles tense and stuff; I'm not quite ready for that yet but soon I hope! Haven't heard of the others, I'll check them out : )
Hi JyonnyNovice, I got the "Dynamic Firgure Drawing" - Book, it's also full of crazy stuff like the other one :D
So for today I was asking myself lots of questions like why am I doing this again, am I really that stupid thinking not going to art school and trying to teach myself is going to work out?! My motivation wasn't really high for figure drawing so I thought about some color, landscape and all that because that's kinda what interests me the most.. so yeah I tried to jump right into the cold water and just experimented around :D
Some cloud studies, first one with hard brush til I figured out I need my soft brush and opacity!
Then a study from a photo I took a while ago, but it didn't turn out good I was just stuck on the clouds again and couldn't find a way to get them like they were on the picture! Very sad :D
Found out that I really enjoy drawing animals these days, don't know why :o
And this weird stilllife because I thought it's good practice and I need lots of that!
That's it for today, hope it's kinda entertaining to look at these ;D
Cheers!
Hi guys!
Today I was quite happy with the stuff I did, I also came up with a weekly plan of things that I have to do every week at least (i.e. like 50 hands, 50 noses, you get it) and I can wait to practice all of that to get better every week and then compare the new and the old stuff :)
Here's some figure drawing from this morning, I did a lot of things digitally today again because I realized that's what I want to get good at and right now I'm far away from where I want to be! Anyway nothing finished there but I did some of these practice drawing of eyes (I used different mediums as well) and mouths because that's what I'm really really bad at :D
Hey sketchers! Nothing much to upload today, I was working on shading digitally most of the time! Spent a good amount of time on one character but I couldn't finish it yet so she's maybe coming tomorrow ;)
To loose your line a bit in your figure drawings, I suggest you to do some 1 minute gesture drawings, calmy, and paying attention to what you see and without concerning about the time you got left to draw.
Try to explore the values a bit further in you drawings, darker tones darker, and highlights brighter, instead of a general grey tone; having a higher value contrast helps building up the volume.
Should try to study the shapes of the body constructively, it helps understanding the shapes in a tri-demensional way. To do so, you should read/study George Bridgeman's "Constructive Anatomy".
Secondly, it's a great idea to study each feature of the face separately, altough I'd say that these studies look a bit flat. Try to think in its 3D shape; try to draw it like if they were geometric solids, and again, darker tones and highlights help a lot to get this 3D look.
Anyway, you're on the right track! It's awesome to see so many interest and a lot a varied efforts! Hope this helps, keep pushing! :)
Hi and thanks Clarisse!
I watched your video and I think his method is awesome and can help a lot with figure drawing! On the other hand it totally takes away everything that I learn at the moment such as making egg shapes or box shapes out of the body, split the parts into pieces, arms are cylinders and so on... he just takes the reference and copies it over to his page but I kinda want to learn how to come up with my own poses, understand anatomy and be able to do stuff like that without copying the entire thing like it is! I hope that makes any sense... :D
But yea the rest is great thinking in 3d shapes is very important and I have to work a lot on that!
Now to some art.. so I finished my lady today, took another 1,5hours to get it all to an ok - stage where I am kinda happy with it :D
Tell me what you think! ;)
I definitely think this one is much better than the previous that you've posted. Dont' worry about the time it takes you to make a study, take all the time you think it's necessary to make it look good. I usually take much longer than I'd like to admit...
Now it's just a matter of trying different approaches and to figure out which one you like best and helps you getting the result you're trying to achieve. Looking good, keep studying! :)
Thank you both Clarisse and construction! Your comments motivate me so much to keep doing what I do and especially sharing it, too!
The time thing is a big problem for me right now, if something doesn't look like I want it to or is just awful after I worked like let's say 30 minutes on it I'm just throwing it away or deleting it. I wouldn't say I'm giving up on it but I simply see nothing good in it most of the time so I go back to practicing basic anatomy and drawing egg-shapes :D
But yeah I think I just keep on walking small steps forward or something and it'll work out.
So today I started on working on the skeleton and studying it, I got the Stephen Rogers Peck book for it and I will work my way through it in the next days or weeks.
As I said more skulls today, concentrated longer on the front view, side and back view are just roughly drawn I don't think they are that important but I'll keep practicing to draw the skull in every view and hopefully it's helpful for portraits :)
I posted some gesture drawings from this morning, too. I do them now every day as a little warm up exercise just 60 second poses from different websites or whatever I can find on the internet!
