Well I didn't post last week like I said I would, tried to do more work but nothing seemed to be going right for me and all the worrying and self doubt got to me so I decided to step back and just take some time off (it's been awhile) and come back strong next week. Same as usual Monday's are my life drawing day, I can definitely see some mistakes I've made such as making the head too small and elongating the torso in a few of the drawings.
I struggled abit with the longer single pose as I didn't like the view I had but there was nowhere else to move to unfortunately. The lighting wasn't too great today aswell, where I go they don't use an artificial light but rely on natural daylight and today was cloudy but oh well, gotta make the best of it haha. As usual any feedback would be much appreciated. :)
.rikudousen - Thanks man will do and apologies for the late response.
I've been away the last few days visiting family so I didn't get time to get any work done but I'm back. I've started working through the Proko anatomy course to help me understand bone placement and anatomy better. I'm going to work through the torso bones sections first before trying to draw them from the model as I noticed today I kept making mistakes when it came to ribcage and pelvis placement on a trace over.
P.s. I messed up on the second page and copied Stan's drawing rather than the picture provided, the numbered drawings are my own attempts from the reference.
Been ill in bed the last few days so I haven't been able to get as much done as I would of liked but I still managed to get some work done. Been working my way (slowly) through the Proko torso course working on the pelvis, simplifying it into a bucket and drawing it from various angles. The top half of the page where done using the 3d model provided and the bottom half was done from imagination. I'm hoping to push through the bones videos by Tuesday so I can start on learning the actual anatomy since I feel like I'm not really doing much atm.
I wanted to work on my rendering skills since it feels like it's been forever since I've done it so I decided to sit down and work from my plaster cast and see how well I could render it. Think I tried this atleast 3 times before I got to the end result. I don't have an image of my first attempt because I binned it but the first try and second try I worked on for about 3 hours each before I stopped since I felt like I wasn't doing it correctly.
The page with the 2 eye casts are little lighting comps I did (about 5-10 mins each) with the top right drawing being my original lighting set up and the bottom left the new one. The final drawing took about 6 hours roughly, I could of worked on it longer but felt that I pushed it as far as I could with my current skills. I feel like I could of pushed the shadows darker and I definitely went too dark on the shading on the bottom of the eye lid but I'm glad I kept persevering. :)
I was going to post last night but the work I was doing yesterday took alot longer than I thought and I was way too tired so I thought I would post today instead. A collection of work since Monday, same stuff as usual from my life drawing class. Didn't do too well this week, I had quite a few awkward views and the longer pose was almost entirely in shadow which isn't good but oh well.
Started working through the actual anatomy section from the Proko course with the Pecs so I did a few notes, some stationary views of the pecs, and then model trace overs aswell as inventing the pecs on the skeleton. The first lot are my own attempts and the next set with the notes are when I made corrections after following the crit videos. And lastly some simplified drawings of the skeleton from reference which I completely forgot to draw the hands and feet for (yikes).
I'm going to redo the trace overs and invention exercises now to start cementing the ideas into my head.
Here's some of the stuff I've been working on recently. I re did some of the anatomy trace overs and invention for the pecs to test myself and see if I had learned anything from the critique videos and the notes I made. Lastly some life drawing from today. The group that I attend has moved location so this was my first session in the new building, still inconsistent lighting but they do evening classes so I thought I'd attend one one week and see if the lighting is any better.
What I've been noticing the last few weeks is that I seem to draw the head way too small sometimes on my 5 min poses (I think), hopefully someone else can confirm if I am or not. On the longer pose I didn't have enough time to render the entire figure so I thought I'd focus on the head since that is what I've practiced the most over the last few months. I really need to buckle down and learn all my anatomy so I can take my figure drawing to the next level.
Been quite busy the last few days as I had to take care of some stuff so I haven't had alot of time for any art work so I was only able to do a little which I guess is better than nothing. I thought I'd try out a new schedule of focusing on the head one week and then the next week I'd work on my figure drawing skills, and then rotate what I study every other week (e.g work on the skull and planes of the head one week, and then the next week I'd work on the abstraction, finished pieces from reference, and imaginary work) and see how it goes. I'm definitely going to start getting back into painting since I haven't done it in so long
What I was able to do over the last couple of days are some skull drawings from life since it's been awhile, and then a study of a Jeff Watt's drawing (spent a few hours on it, not sure how many, roughly 3?) with some notes where I drew the planes of the head and abstraction over the drawing as I wanted to see if his cross hatching correlated with one of them. I can notice a few areas where I went wrong such as drawing the head a tad too long, and the lips drawn smaller than they should.
Apologies for the lack of updates this week, I'm hoping that next week I should be able to start posting more regularly. This week I've just been having some fun creating figures, some from reference and some from imagination since I feel like it's been awhile since I've done anything imaginary. The first page are figures based on the skeleton manikin which where done from reference, I took some poses I liked from comics and posters and recreated them using the skelly app.
From the second page onwards are figures I did from imagination using either the skeleton manikin or the ovoid manikin. I'm not sure how correct the figures are proportion wise, hopefully someone could point me in the right direction regarding that. Today I've been working on a still life painting which I'm about half way through, so I'll finish it off tomorrow but for now I'll just include the drawing of it.
I spent more time on Saturday working on the still life painting but it just kept going from bad to worse, I tried persevering with it but I just got too frustrated with it. I think my whole procedure for tackling the painting was all wrong. I attempted another still life today of some tangerines but again I had the same problem even though I thought I fixed my procedure.
I thought I would post what I got done anyway and include the reference, perhaps someone could offer some advice and I could continue it but for now I'm going to use it as a lesson to go back and start simple, create some colour charts based off the colours I'm using, stick to value studies for the time being, work in monochrome and slowly build my way up to working in colour, I want to get back into oil painting aswell.
I'm gonna start fresh tomorrow and focus on the head for the following week.
Just a quick update. I started a new job yesterday and didn't realize that I had to do full time hours this week as apart of my training so I'm doubtful that I will be able to get the amount of work done (if any) that I wanted to do this week since I don't get home till quite late. I should be good to go once this week is over. I might just spend this week catching up on my back log of art books/videos that I've been meaning to work my way through and there's quite alot haha.
My training period is over finally so I'm actually able to get some work done, I know I only took a week off but it feels like forever haha. I'm working different hours and days than I use to so I'm hoping that I'll have more time now to get work done and post more frequently.
Anyway some stuff from today, I got myself the classic asaro head the other week and this week I was focusing on the head so I thought I'd start it off my drawing the asaro head from some different angles. I was hoping to draw it from profile, straight on, and 3/4 view but the straight on view was more challenging than I thought so I didn't get a chance to get any of the 3/4 views done, that will have to wait till tomorrow. Again any feedback would be much appreciated. :)
Hi Peter. Thought I'd offer some tips on the still life, in no particular order.
I'm guessing you're using Gouache here. First thing I would do is to take any kind of premixed black off your pallet. Premixed blacks are really difficult to use, and tend to muddy any colour your using. Basically a giant killjoy. You can mix chromatic blacks, which mix much better with other colours. An example would be Ultramarine blue and Burnt Sienna (I've found that this tends to a dark purple, where as with oils it tends to a warm, saturated, grey/black).
Remember that you can lower the value, and saturation, of a colour by adding it's complimentary. Red to green, blue to orange etc... If a blue it too strong, at a touch of orange. Too green? Chuck a little red at it.
Traditional paints aren't ever a pure, neutral hue. Your tubed paints will lean towards one of its adjacent on the colour wheel. That is, a yellow will lean slightly towards orange, or towards green. This means that if you're mixing greens using a warm yellow, and a warm blue, the red in those colours will act to neutralize the green, resulting in a slightly less saturated, duller mix. Thats probably poorly explained, but should hopefully put you on the right path.
Mixing a colour with white will also reduce the saturation. There are some high value, high saturation colours that you can't mix, and will need to buy tubed. An example would be magenta.
You may find it easier to kill the white of your page with a thin wash. This will make your value judgments much easier, and will let you add your light areas, rather than subtracting from them.
Colour doesn't exist by itself. The way a colour (and value) appears to the eye is influenced by the colour around it. A colour may might light or dark, depending on the colour next to it. Similarly, a colour may look warmer or cooler depending on it's surroundings. This becomes more obvious when painting reflections (the reflection of green grass on a red car)
If you're having difficulty seeing what a colour is, try isolating it. I often look at a colour through my fingers.
Pay close attention to how light bounces. The wall to the right of Jake isn't black, but actually has allot of reflected light on it. Similarly, the left side of Jake is being slightly lit by the light bouncing off Finn.
It look like there's a bit of sub surface scattering happening with the Jake figure. The shadow side of a solid yellow object probably wouldn't be so light or saturated.
The shadow side of an object tends to be more saturated, where the light side is less so.
Painting from photo reference is better than nothing, but cameras compress values and alter colours.
Gouache looks a little different when wet. Really pale colours will darken when dry, and dark colours will lighten when dry. Blues are particularly guilty of this.
Another issue specific to gouache is a difficulty achieving really dark, really saturated mixes. Whatever they add to make the paint opaque (presumably titanium?) makes your mixes slightly milky when compared to say, watercolour. Just something to be aware of.
I like to use a "wet pallet", to stop my paint drying out so quick. I lay my paints out on damp paper towel.
Hope this helps, good luck with your next attempt.
(11-01-2017, 03:40 PM)Matthew M Wrote: Hi Peter. Thought I'd offer some tips on the still life, in no particular order.
I'm guessing you're using Gouache here. First thing I would do is to take any kind of premixed black off your pallet. Premixed blacks are really difficult to use, and tend to muddy any colour your using. Basically a giant killjoy. You can mix chromatic blacks, which mix much better with other colours. An example would be Ultramarine blue and Burnt Sienna (I've found that this tends to a dark purple, where as with oils it tends to a warm, saturated, grey/black).
Remember that you can lower the value, and saturation, of a colour by adding it's complimentary. Red to green, blue to orange etc... If a blue it too strong, at a touch of orange. Too green? Chuck a little red at it.
Traditional paints aren't ever a pure, neutral hue. Your tubed paints will lean towards one of its adjacent on the colour wheel. That is, a yellow will lean slightly towards orange, or towards green. This means that if you're mixing greens using a warm yellow, and a warm blue, the red in those colours will act to neutralize the green, resulting in a slightly less saturated, duller mix. Thats probably poorly explained, but should hopefully put you on the right path.
Mixing a colour with white will also reduce the saturation. There are some high value, high saturation colours that you can't mix, and will need to buy tubed. An example would be magenta.
You may find it easier to kill the white of your page with a thin wash. This will make your value judgments much easier, and will let you add your light areas, rather than subtracting from them.
Colour doesn't exist by itself. The way a colour (and value) appears to the eye is influenced by the colour around it. A colour may might light or dark, depending on the colour next to it. Similarly, a colour may look warmer or cooler depending on it's surroundings. This becomes more obvious when painting reflections (the reflection of green grass on a red car)
If you're having difficulty seeing what a colour is, try isolating it. I often look at a colour through my fingers.
Pay close attention to how light bounces. The wall to the right of Jake isn't black, but actually has allot of reflected light on it. Similarly, the left side of Jake is being slightly lit by the light bouncing off Finn.
It look like there's a bit of sub surface scattering happening with the Jake figure. The shadow side of a solid yellow object probably wouldn't be so light or saturated.
The shadow side of an object tends to be more saturated, where the light side is less so.
Painting from photo reference is better than nothing, but cameras compress values and alter colours.
Gouache looks a little different when wet. Really pale colours will darken when dry, and dark colours will lighten when dry. Blues are particularly guilty of this.
Another issue specific to gouache is a difficulty achieving really dark, really saturated mixes. Whatever they add to make the paint opaque (presumably titanium?) makes your mixes slightly milky when compared to say, watercolour. Just something to be aware of.
I like to use a "wet pallet", to stop my paint drying out so quick. I lay my paints out on damp paper towel.
Hope this helps, good luck with your next attempt.
ps, you're killing it dude, keep going!
Wow Matthew thanks for such a meaty response! Yeah I am using gouache, I was actually painting the figures from life but I thought I'd include a photo so people could see what I was actually painting. I kind of knew about some of the points you made but when it comes to painting I just seem to forget the knowledge side of things haha.
Thank you for such a thorough reply, I'll refer back to the points you made when I try another still life. I was wondering if you could possibly point me in the right direction in things such as books or videos to help me get a better understanding of colour as I find it's an area that I struggle in.
Haven't had as much time the last two days work wise, had plans yesterday with a friend and had to sort some things out today so I didn't get as much done as I would have liked. I moved onto the 3/4 view of the asaro head which I then transferred onto a 9/12 canvas and fixed some mistakes that I didn't notice when I was drawing it the first time. I've sealed the drawing and my plan is to start painting it tomorrow in oil, again I have pre existing plans with friends tomorrow night so I'll probably have to finish it on Saturday, and then move onto the 3/4 view from the left side.
As far as books go, Color and Light by James Gurney is very good. Gurney actually produces allot of instructional videos, working mainly in gouache, which I'd recommend having a look through. https://www.youtube.com/user/gurneyjourney
Noah Bradly has put out some gud stuff, but it is a bit pricey, and I haven't gone though his paid catalog.
He did put out a 2 hour video for free on youtube, and its really worth a watch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQfF-P70V2Q
(11-03-2017, 08:44 AM)Matthew M Wrote: Yeah sure, not a problem.
As far as books go, Color and Light by James Gurney is very good. Gurney actually produces allot of instructional videos, working mainly in gouache, which I'd recommend having a look through. https://www.youtube.com/user/gurneyjourney
Noah Bradly has put out some gud stuff, but it is a bit pricey, and I haven't gone though his paid catalog.
He did put out a 2 hour video for free on youtube, and its really worth a watch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQfF-P70V2Q
Thanks for getting back to me :) I actually already own Color and Light aswell as a few of his gumroad videos, haven't read/watched them in awhile so I'll definitely go back to them. Haven't seen the other two links but I'll definitely check them out!
Spent most of yesterday working on the painting, I was going to take photos of the whole process at various stages but completely forgot (I'll make sure I do it on the next one). I used a monochrome palette (burnt umber and titanium white) and I was quite happy with the result. Feel like I understand value relationships abit better now, how a light value may not look particularly light on its own but it does compared to its surrounding values (if that makes any sense?).
Had alot of fun doing it and felt like I learned alot from it, might try another one sometime this coming week. :)
Heya!
Real impressed by the quality and quantity of studies you're doing! Especially the face-construction ones :)
A nice addition to gestural practice imo is drawing quick poses without lifting the pen, not only doing the outlines of the form but letting the pen travel to and fro within the form as well. Can really help with rythm and construction as well as overall line quality as well.
Also I think you should do/post more personal work. Even if you're into super-study mode right now it's important to draw something from imagination I find, to check if those studies actually helped. Often very rewarding too since you'll often see that yes, yes they have!
(11-06-2017, 08:09 PM)Adzerak Wrote: Heya!
Real impressed by the quality and quantity of studies you're doing! Especially the face-construction ones :)
A nice addition to gestural practice imo is drawing quick poses without lifting the pen, not only doing the outlines of the form but letting the pen travel to and fro within the form as well. Can really help with rythm and construction as well as overall line quality as well.
Also I think you should do/post more personal work. Even if you're into super-study mode right now it's important to draw something from imagination I find, to check if those studies actually helped. Often very rewarding too since you'll often see that yes, yes they have!
Hey Adzerak thanks man! I haven't tried that quick pose approach before, I've got a life drawing class this Thursday so I'll give it a go then.
Yeah I'm really bad at doing personal work. I always say to myself that towards the end of the week, whether I'd been drawing heads or learning anatomy I'd spend some time applying what I had been studying, whether it was invention or simply drawing from memory. Sometimes I get round to it and other times I feel like I haven't done enough studying in the week and want to do more. I also seem to make a big deal out of it aswell, that I need to do this big finished illustration and it has to be perfect etc etc, which daunts me, but I guess there is nothing wrong with starting small and working my way up to those finished pieces.
Some anatomy studies from today from the Artistic Anatomy book, adding additional notes from Proko's video series.
Based on what Adzerak said I'm gonna try a personal piece tomorrow, been messing around with some rough sketches. My idea was to do a portrait of a skull king (very generic) since I have been focusing on the head this week. I think a good idea that I could try is to break down an illustration into smaller components and tackling them one at a time rather than jumping into doing a big finished piece. Work on figure construction, apply that knowledge to figure invention which I would do in pencil and then paint and just work my way up.
