Cocheese's Sketchbook

[Cocheese]

i! My name is Ethan and this is my sketchbook. Or, at least the pages I don't find horribly embarrassing. For some background, I've been at the whole drawing thing for about three months now (I know, an underwhelming figure), and as of 2-3 weeks ago I discovered that actually drawing is incidentally the most important aspect of learning to. Beforehand I simply watched a lot of tutorials hoping understanding of drawing concepts would be enough.



Anyways, since then I've spent a whole lot of time just wandering aimlessly around sketching any objects that capture a vague amount of my attention.


Here's the "highlight reel" of my past three weeks! Yes, I assure you. The highlight reel. :/

The first two weeks mostly consisted of, as I stated before, drawing from life around my house! Very messy and unfocused, but quite a fun process!






This last week I purchased Marshall Vandruff's series on perspective and, after doing a bit of reading on perspective's importance to imaginative drawing, have been attempting to drill perspective as deep into my intuition as possible. (freehand- if that wasn't already apparent)



I realized a big bad habit: repeatedly drawing over my lines when I don't need to, and tried to clean up a bit, although the process admittedly now feels stiflingly meticulous and I find myself lapsing frequently back into the comfort of messiness. 



To alleviate the dryness of drawing a bunch of boxes all day every day I'm also dipping my toes into the free version of Proko's figure drawing course. I would have never guessed in trying to learn to draw I would both (a) be tasked to draw stick figures, and (b) struggle to draw stick figures. 




The largest problem I feel like I'm facing myself is a heavy lack of focus in my practice. On one hand I'm basically a complete beginner and I've heard mileage "is king" for a while, but on the other I worry I'm just dilly-dallying and won't see significant improvement. If mileage is the way to go, at what point would I know it's time to switch to far more deliberate practice like the sorts of things you all do? I know a lot of these questions are immensely subjective and equate to me basically asking you to tell me what my favorite color is but I just feel really lost.


Also, criticism is entirely welcome! In fact, if there's anything I'm missing please let me know!

P.S. I'm trying to get the scanner on my printer to work, so I apologize entirely for the awful camera quality.

[darktiste]

There nothing bad about restating a line what is wrong is stressing a line.What i mean by stressing a line it when you don't take your time to do the first pass of a line correctly so you go over it way to many time just out of stess.You should strive for clean looking line.When you should restate a line is when you don't have the angle right or when you made a curve to weak or to strong of a curve.It specially ok to restate line when you learn anatomy since the body is such a delicat combination of curve.Like i said previously you should not have to restate a line unless you working with a pen something pro encourage there student to use to be more mindful of what they put on the page.If you have trouble with straight line a trick is to rotate your paper so that you can use your most natural hand movement.I have attach a picture to show you how to tilt your paper to have easier time drawing straight line.Of course if you want to draw line that are not horizontale you need to adjust the orientation of the paper to be somewhat of a 45 angle.

[Pubic Enemy]

Hey man. You seem like you're on the right track already, so I haven't got any pointers. I second darktiste's advice about lines; and keep in mind that clean lines are something people strive for years to achieve, and making something that looks clean and nice is not of the utmost importance when sketching (though it's always good to practice), so don't pull out any hairs over it.

Yeah, figures and any other organic thing are always the hardest to draw at first. Too many unpredictable complex shapes.

Regarding your question of how and what to focus on in practice. As you've already suspected, there is no single good answer to that question. All I can tell you is that drawing helps, period (except if you're just drawing Anime Mona Lisa repeatedly, maybe, but you are obviously at no risk of doing that), as does thinking about the concepts behind what you're doing (theory without practice is lame, practice without theory is blind, and so on). The only suggestion I have is to think about the kind of subjects you ultimately want to draw, and what you want your art to look like, and what you need to practice should naturally follow from that. There isn't a different sort of practice you switch to when you reach a certain skill level, except that you become able to focus on more specific things, I guess.

Also, don't worry. If there was a fool-proof path to becoming good, everyone would improve at a predictable rate and become good within a singular time frame. Ralph McQuarrie started drawing seriously around age 24 and felt that he did not truly become "good" until he had been working at it for 20 years. Meanwhile, there are others who seem to reach an advanced level in less than a decade (those BASTARDS). If you keep working at it, you WILL see results... eventually. So don't get all neurotic if you felt you have not improved by X amount in Y time period when you felt you should have; it'll just be a waste of energy.

[Cocheese]

Thanks for the helpful advice! I never actually thought of moving the sketchbook around to make certain lines more comfortable. Vertical lines have been haunting my every waking moment ever since I started perspective.
I appreciate the comforting words, pubic. I've found myself, even in the pursuit of this as a hobby, expending large amounts of energy worrying about whether or not I'm practicing at 100% capacity, which ironically just results in me practicing less.

[Artloader]

Hey there Ethan, nice start here :).

In response to your point about focus, I will pass on to you something that someone shared with me in these every forums :).

In my experience my art journey has been like a slow upward spiral.

I have found myself focussing on maybe just one thing until I get tired of it or feel like I have had a major break through and then moving onto another thing.

However sooner or later I find myself going back round again and studying the same things but in more depth.

So for me my spiral kinda looks like this:

perspective - figures - light - colour - rendering - invention

And then back around again.

Also because I have a full time job that is not related to art, my progress is very slow, so one cycle of the above could take me a year or so.

Also along-side the studies, I've found it useful to make some art just for fun to diffuse the heaviness of studying all the time.

Hope that helps :).

Good luck and keep going :).

[Cocheese]

Hi all!

I intend from this point onward to upload pages daily to this, just these past few days I've felt like I had nothing worthy of posting. I've come to the realization that all those bad pieces are the very ones I should upload, though, so here they are:

I continued 30 second gesture poses and felt like I've improved tangibly, at least with my speed(the ones I posted previously I had completed in one minute); I'm largely struggling to give them any feeling of solidity though. (I've heard they're supposed to be noodly but it's unsatisfying...)





My 2 minute gestures range from hilariously bad to okay, and I've felt a slight shift from one to the other in the past two days. I feel like I'm having large difficulties with limbs and how they fit onto the body, though, as well as a prevailing stiffness.


(This is one of many. Many.)





I watched another Proko video on the Loomis head method, and decided to do 10 a day for practice. I've self-corrected somewhat with the side-ellipse and placement of the browline within it, but (as noted) I'm still confused with the chin-ear rhythm and how you determine the length of the portion you "chop off" of the ball when the head is turned enough towards the viewer. Also sorry for patting myself on the back for the 20th, I was just thrilled to have drawn something that vaguely looks like a head. (Also sorry for the cutoff my sketchbook's too big for my scanner, might just take pictures of these from now on.)



(please ignore the pitiful cylinders- I really need to work on my allignment)




I started Drawabox two days ago as well, although I think it would be pointless to upload sheets of the initial exercises of lines and ellipses.

As always I would love any feedback if any of you have it! Especially on the 20th Loomis head I can't really tell what's wrong with it at my current level of experience.

[darktiste]

You think it useless.But in reality is it show us if you should do more line and ellipse.The answers is in my opinion that it more important right now than it will be later to post those kind of exercise.Right now what you might cruelly need is feed back so don't let yourself get in the way of progress.

[Cocheese]

Hello again.

Not much of anything new today, on second thought I'm not sure the daily post commitment is the best idea as I think I might fall into simply spewing arbitrary stuff out and I don't really want to waste anyone's time. (More than I already have   )

Today I figured I would try actually measuring something's proportions and capturing its form (to a degree, I simplified the top) instead of just messily sketching everything. If i'm on my way to figure/portrait drawing I think a disregard to accuracy/measuring could make things significantly harder than they have to be. I must admit I sort of hate sighting and prefer attempting to "train my eye" by eyeballing everything but that sounds like something I shouldn't do in interest of learning how to be accurate. ( I especially don't want to fall into the trap of being opinionated on something I don't have the expertise to form any valid opinion on, as many beginners seem to.)



(my subject- I drew it from life, not the image)

Whenever I have an eraser in hand I tend to be an aggressive perfectionist- to the point to where I had to stop myself doing this one for the interest of time. I know accuracy is important for a beginner, but to what extent? I'm unsure if correcting every minor mistake is valuable to my learning or it just produces a prettier picture.

Also, per darktiste's request, here are some of my lines and ellipses. It seems I'm not very graceful with the scanner, but I think it's enough to get the idea.

[Pubic Enemy]

Regarding that 20th Loomis head. It looks like Proko might teach it a little differently than Loomis does in his books (I've never seen Proko's videos) but I'll comment anyway. I think the main problem is that the jaw joint isn't as clearly indicated as in your other heads, and it looks like the angle of the mandible* is roughly on-level with the bottom of the cranium, when it's normally lower. This gets harder to indicate with heads that are a bit upward-facing like that one, though.

Now I have to complain about the "draw the rest of the owl"* factor that's inherently present in all art instruction (and in instruction for anything that requires a lot of hands-on experience). When guys like Proko and Loomis draw those heads, they're doing it with decades of knowledge gained from studying anatomy and drawing from life and photographs, so their Loomis heads naturally look good and head-like, and they automatically chop off just the right amount off the sides of the cranium. In fact, it's probably impossible to get really good at drawing Loomis heads without having some degree of proficiency in drawing actual heads, because the Loomis head is an abstraction of the real thing.

This is why it's actually productive for you to spend some time on just drawing what you feel like for fun. If you like drawing hot chicks (or guys, whatever), you can use that as an opportunity to get some figure drawing practice. It's definitely helpful to draw simplified things like Loomis heads and stick figures, since the human body is too complex to tackle all at once, but you can't get really good at drawing one without the other.

Regarding being a perfectonist and erasing things too much. My personal opinion is that it's more productive to move on and try to do better in the next sketch instead of trying to make existing ones better, since you're going to hate them by tomorrow anyway. One exception is if you've actually got an idea for how to improve an existing drawing and you're not just groping aimlessly. That's just my opinion, though.

Lastly, while I admire your enthusiasm in posting every day, there's no need to push yourself too much (unless you want to). Taking a break for a day or more can actually be beneficial. I know lots of guys say you need to draw 8 HOURS A DAY EVERY DAY, but that's far from being a universal strategy of genuinely successful artists, and if you need to do regular human things like go to work, school, do laundry, and/or cook, it's flat-out impossible on most days.


*Angle of mandible: https://www.bartleby.com/107/illus176.html
*Draw the rest of the owl: http://yannesposito.com/Scratch/img/blog...l_draw.png

[Cocheese]

Regarding that 20th Loomis head. It looks like Proko might teach it a little differently than Loomis does in his books (I've never seen Proko's videos) but I'll comment anyway. I think the main problem is that the jaw joint isn't as clearly indicated as in your other heads, and it looks like the angle of the mandible* is roughly on-level with the bottom of the cranium, when it's normally lower. This gets harder to indicate with heads that are a bit upward-facing like that one, though.

Now I have to complain about the "draw the rest of the owl"* factor that's inherently present in all art instruction (and in instruction for anything that requires a lot of hands-on experience). When guys like Proko and Loomis draw those heads, they're doing it with decades of knowledge gained from studying anatomy and drawing from life and photographs, so their Loomis heads naturally look good and head-like, and they automatically chop off just the right amount off the sides of the cranium. In fact, it's probably impossible to get really good at drawing Loomis heads without having some degree of proficiency in drawing actual heads, because the Loomis head is an abstraction of the real thing.

This is why it's actually productive for you to spend some time on just drawing what you feel like for fun. If you like drawing hot chicks (or guys, whatever), you can use that as an opportunity to get some figure drawing practice. It's definitely helpful to draw simplified things like Loomis heads and stick figures, since the human body is too complex to tackle all at once, but you can't get really good at drawing one without the other.

Regarding being a perfectonist and erasing things too much. My personal opinion is that it's more productive to move on and try to do better in the next sketch instead of trying to make existing ones better, since you're going to hate them by tomorrow anyway. One exception is if you've actually got an idea for how to improve an existing drawing and you're not just groping aimlessly. That's just my opinion, though.

Lastly, while I admire your enthusiasm in posting every day, there's no need to push yourself too much (unless you want to). Taking a break for a day or more can actually be beneficial. I know lots of guys say you need to draw 8 HOURS A DAY EVERY DAY, but that's far from being a universal strategy of genuinely successful artists, and if you need to do regular human things like go to work, school, do laundry, and/or cook, it's flat-out impossible on most days.


*Angle of mandible: https://www.bartleby.com/107/illus176.html
*Draw the rest of the owl: http://yannesposito.com/Scratch/img/blog...l_draw.png

Thanks for being a voice of reason. I feel like it's very easy to adopt a "studying for the sake of studying" mentality and forget why one wanted to learn to draw in the first place. I've been avoiding doing it just for fun out of a feeling of "I'm not ready yet," but deep down I know the only way to get rid of that feeling is by trying to do what I want to. It seems like that's really the best way to internalize the scholarly concepts in practical ways (assuming one still has an analytical mindset and isn't just doodling) rather than them existing in this sort of vacuum where people only ever want to draw bowls of fruit all day. Forcing yourself to draw just for the sake of drawing seems like an easy path to little improvement and fast burnout, and I sort of noticed myself slipping into that mindset yesterday. Thanks again for giving some grounded advice (and stuff on the Loomis head,) it's really what I needed to hear.