Hello. A little bit about me. I got interested in drawing because I saw a lot of anime when I was in high school, and from that I wanted to make my own manga and anime. As I got older I realized I couldn't draw despite occasionally sketching in my sketchbooks I'd get from Michaels. I started liking non Japanese stuff again such as Blacksad and Bone. I wanted to do stuff like this, so I tried searching on the internet for leads that would show me the way. Resources would lead me to other resources which led more resources.
I'm not very disciplined, as in I haven't been doing studies and sketches everyday of my life. The best I've ever done was study everyday for about 2 months and then there would be a huge gap of no activity. I'm trying to work towards a more commited lifestyle. I definitely want to do this for a career because it feels the most satisfying for myself. I decided to make a sketchbook here hoping to get additional feedback.
This image was an 1 hour study. I'm trying out shorter studies to see if they'll help. So far they're very stressful. I'm always open to crits and suggestions.
Last thing for tonight. Naked lady poses. Sorry for terrible camera quality, and photo editing.
Some female poses that I spent an hour on. Haven't done that kind of study or gesture studies in a long time. A 1 hour Sargent study that is super crap.
Indeed, welcome to Crimson Daggers! I agree with Bookend, some very nice stuff so far. It would be great if you did something more fleshed out with those digital paintings.
StardustLarva - Thank you. I've been looking at Johannes Voss's sketchbook (which is amazing), and he did lots of short timed studies. I wanted to see if that could help me as well. I do long studies as well, but I usually post them with the stages of progression when I finish it. My conceptart link in my first post has a few recent posts that I spent more time on, also still updating that sketchbook.
I did some doodoo doodles. The hand studies were done within an hour. I tried for 5 hands but only got 3 and has tons of value issues. I also made a crappy comic based on the true life of me.
LOOK AT ALL THESE ISSUES. 2 1/2 hours Sargent study. I was aiming for an hour but extended it because it was looking really really bad. Off to do more drawings.
Watch out here comes some poo poo. So some random sketches and a digital sketch together is about 3 hours. Now I remember why I hardly ever do sketches is because my mind is often blank, and I scribble nonsense. I'm going to do sketches everytime I do a study, because I feel I need to. I use to think I'll just get good at studies and it'll naturally transfer to my personal sketches.
Applying my studies into my sketches is super hard. I don't think it completely makes sense to me yet, so I'll just keep doing it and see what happens.
Hmm, looks really great! My only suggestion would be that you should be breaking down your figures more often, and attempting to start from gesture drawing. In your latest, you do this a lot more often, which improves your work.
Your work looks a bit stiff in the previous images of women figures, maybe because you were relying too heavily on the outline of the figure. Try to get the line of action in there and work outwards from there! Basically-- Keep doing what you've been doing lately!
Bookend - Thanks. Not sure exactly what you mean by breaking down figures. You mean simplying them? Gesture drawings are fairly important, and I have been neglecting them. I agree the sketches. I'll just have to keep trying.
Trying smaller scaled studies, so some nose studies. All this took much, much longer than I thought it was going to take, Like about 4 hours I think. Experiencing some rsi issues in both my arms, not bad right now but might have to scale things down. Just for a bit.
Super long post ahead, you've been warned. If you skip it, then Merrry Christmas and happy holidays everyone.
1 hour greyscale Sargent study. Man it's been 3 days. That's like a gazillion years in art time. Aaaargh. These last few days I've been resting becuase the nerves in my arms have not been treating me well. I've basically been staying away from my computer and drawing as to recover and have this pain subside. I've been applying ice on the affected areas to speed up the process, but I'm not sure it does much (I only have one ice pack to use). Things are better than they were a few days ago, but I think I may need a few more days.
I've had this pain once before and much worse. It was intense throbbing within my right shoulder which was really painful. Eventually that went away after lots of ice and just letting my arm go limp.
Now there's something I'd like to share, and this could be total bs or common sense to you, but this is how I analyzed it from my experience of the last week. I tried different things that would potentially benefit me in getting better at drawing faster. I tried staying up late and waking up earlier (together), so I tried staying up to midnight and waking up at 6 AM. That ended by the second or thrid day. That was stupid hard and doing studies in the morning was almost not possible, or really difficult, because I was just too tired. Another thing I tried was to do a bunch of drawings so I could upload frequently, as in a few hours apart from each other. I wanted to be like Johannes or Dave in this case and upload a whole bunch of stuff really fast, but that backfired and I eneded up with the pains I have now.
I've realized there's a difference between just working hard and working responsibly and smart. Working hard, to me, meant that you did study after study, drawing after drawing until you couldn't anymore. I've realized now that is quite unhealthy to do. Working responsibly is sticking to the task that needs to be done, but nothing bad should happen to you after it's done (in this case an injury). You should want to have the task done, but also give yourself adequate rest. Probably around an hour at least after a few hours of work, and you shouldn't be doing anything with your arms and hands during that rest. Working smart, I think, is to be able to complete task in an efficient manner that requires as little effort on your part. Afterall I think most people don't want to work hard for their entire life. They want to work towards an easier life, or make task easier for themselves.
In my drawing today I timed myself so I wouldn't go overboard and hurt myself. I went about this painting slowly and applied as few stroke as I could, yet still get as close of a likeness as possible. In other words I tried to make my brushstrokes count instead of painting haphazardly and hoping something to happen. I use to do a lot of meaningless short strokes thinking that it would help my painting, when I was just not adding anything of value to it. This is what I'm going to try to discipline myself in.
Lastly I'm going to talk about my new years resolutions. I want to get up to page 30 by the end of next year (2015). I have other sketchbooks on other websites, and if I can get up to page 30 on those too then that would be cool as well. I feel that this is a tought goal, but accomplishable. I essentially will have to post everyday, at least twice maybe more within the day (assuming all the posts are by me). If you've read this vomit of words, then thank you, and if you wish to call me out on any of this nonsense then by all means I'm ready for a beat down.
Here is a 1 hour photo portrait study, 30 minute portrait from imagination, and 30 minute of doing hand studies from Bridgman. Well, I can confidently say today could have been better. My arms are still stressing out. When I'm drawing it feels like something in my arms, mainly my forearms and wrists, are tightening and just makes it uncomfortable to do anything.
If you read my previous super long post then you know I'm trying to be smarter with my brushstrokes, as in few strokes with maximum results. Guess what I did in my studies. Not that. I was just being stupid and doing meaningless strokes, that was neither good for the drawing nor my arms. Also the hand studies, man, doing them on the computer right from the start was a bad choice. I should of went with pencil and paper. I thought doing it digitally would be faster, since I don't have to scan or take pictures.
She looks like she has a scar or cut. Suppose to be hair.
1 hour hand study
1 hour portrait study
30 minute imaginative illustration
So yesterday I tried doing studies from a book digitally. That kind of sucked so I went traditional and did them on good ol paper and mechanical pencil. Doing stuff on paper and pencil was very pleasant. Of course I still want to translate that stuff to digital painting. I did an old person portrait, which I don't do too much. Old people are hard to draw. Old people need to stop being wrinkly.
The short digital studies are meant for me to practice my brushstrokes, so I don't intend to finish these. The short imaginitive illustration was suppose to be me regurgitating the studies I just did, except it became an anime manga thing. Applied studies are harrrd. Also my hand studies look so much better when sized down.
Hey man, been having a look and a read through your sketchbook. Looks like you're really serious about this, trying to break things down and try different ways to study - I read somewhere that muscian's say that it's not 'practice makes perfect' but 'perfect practice makes perfect', so I think it's really important to keep checking yourself and how your studying and stuff.
I feel you on the imaginative stuff too, you think if you study the right things it'll just come naturally, but as you've been trying, applying your studies is a whole other area that needs practice as well. Great work with it all man! Some drawings look bad to you, good to others but as long as you make a mental note of what went wrong and try to address it next time you just need to keep doing it and you'll improve.
I wanna say about your injury too, since I had a hand injury a few months ago - put me out of action for a good 6 weeks. From what I understand about RSI and drawing related injuries, without being a doctor or knowing the specifics of your situation, they are mostly caused by holding the pen / pencil too tightly for too long. Someone told me that the pen / pencil should be so loose that someone could easily slap it out of your hand. Recently I forced myself to learn the overhand pencil technique (or violin bow grip or whatever you want to call it), it sucked for about a week, felt like I'd regressed a good year or two but with discipline not switching back to the tripod grip the muscle memory adapts quickly, now I can draw for a long long time without feeling any fatigue or pain since the grip is really natural for holding the pencil lightly. It doesn't work with a tablet but for traditional stuff it's great, plus my drawing is now much much better, more fluid and lively than the tripod grip.
JyonnyNovice Thanks a lot man for sharing all that, I really appreciate it. I've read the article from that link and it does seem really helpful particularly for traditional stuff. I'm not sure it'll apply as well with the stylus and tablet though. But I'm doing pencils as well, so I'll definitely try it out.
1 hour hand study
1hour portrait study
The hands are, uh, hard. I kept making the hands and wrists wider than they actually were. The portrait is at the actual size, I just cropped out all the empty bits. You can see all my crappy blending. Still practicing doing as few strokes as I can and going about it slowly. No sketches because I'm lame.
1 hour hand study
1 hour fashion? study
2 (30 min) portrait
So some more Bridgman hands. Pretty much drawing everything from that book. I mentioned I had a few days of rsi pains, I was suggested to by a community member to try out the overhand method of holding a pencil. My initial impressions is that it is far more comfortable and allows for greater range of movement. The cons to the overhand method is that I can't really do small drawings, as in it feels that overhand is meant for a fairly large canvas (I draw on cheap 8.5x11 print paper mainly). Going to keep trying the overhand method out, I like it and I don't like rsi.
Tried figure/fashion study and failed really hard on that. Man those drawings are growing in size as you go. Trying to draw fashion stuff, because I never know what to put on a character when I draw from my mind. Usually it's a t-shirt, jeans, and something that looks like shoes.
Annnd back to the dungeon.
Last are two 30 minute portrait studies. I decided to cut that hour portrait study in half because I felt I was spending too long on small details. I'm trying it this way to force myself to concentrate on the important stuff and not the small details. I feel this way if I manage to get down the important general stuff that it'll still look fairly good even if I don't get to the more detailed stuff.
Morning stuff. Not much at all. The crappy sketch is for the daily sketch group. I didn't want to spend too much on it because it's only a sketch and all.
