BD's Sketchbook?http://crimsondaggers.com/forum/thread-8844.html

[bonjidogen]

Looks like it is custom here to make one of these

Have not been doing this for long, so I have little for now.

[bonjidogen]

I had a terrible art day, so I drew in only a small amount of pages in my paper sketchbook. These are portrait doodles where I would loosely take a few looks at a photo, and then try to invent something about it for a unique portrait. Some came out really well (top and middle right), some came out mediocre (bottom left). Such is life I guess :')



My weakest point here are slightly odd angles and noses, so I guess that is what I am going to be studying for a while

[darktiste]

A day where you draw is never a terrible day.

[bonjidogen]

A day where you draw is never a terrible day.

Very true words, you're totally right.

Today was much better though haha.

I got a lot of work done. I studied noses / did quick portrait sketches with some focus on noses, because I realised yesterday I wasn't a fan.



They're mixed imagination-reference. 

Also, quickly went through some resources that ognjiša recommended to me. I can't say I remembered even a quarter of what I read since I speed-ran them in one evening haha, but some of it stuck. I did a few perspective exercises, and a couple of pages of some fun experiments with forms and giving them a graphical look (and ellipses from the drawabox exercise to the left)



I burned through a lot of paper today haha. I started keeping track of how much I drew in the sketchbooks only six days ago, so the picture is incomplete! But just for fun, paper consumption pic


Today is 2.5.2020, and I started keeping track on 26.4.2020. I started this sketchbook around maybe 3 weeks ago haha, and I am kind of running out of paper, only one more sketchbook left before I have to try and buy some :')

[darktiste]

Actually i don't know your artistic level yet but a ''good practice'' as a beginner artist is to create mileage.To go slow and to absorb what you read and to draw the illustration you see in the book or do the suggested exercise they propose.

Here a post i made a long time ago to isolate problem in one person attitude toward drawing.I hope you can use it as a trampline.

http://crimsondaggers.com/forum/thread-4785.html

[Zorrentos]

darktiste had some very good points!

I think this is looking quite good so far! You are filling up sketchbooks nicely, witch is always a good start.

I suggest that you start to try and take the classes a bit more slowly. Absorb as much knowledge as possible and try to replicate it from your imagination, then go back and see where you vent wrong!

Good luck, and hope you keep posting! :)

[bonjidogen]

Actually i don't know your artistic level yet but a ''good practice'' as a beginner artist is to create mileage.To go slow and to absorb what you read and to draw the illustration you see in the book or do the suggested exercise they propose.

Here a post i made a long time ago to isolate problem in one person attitude toward drawing.I hope you can use it as a trampline.

http://crimsondaggers.com/forum/thread-4785.html

darktiste had some very good points!

I think this is looking quite good so far! You are filling up sketchbooks nicely, witch is always a good start.

I suggest that you start to try and take the classes a bit more slowly. Absorb as much knowledge as possible and try to replicate it from your imagination, then go back and see where you vent wrong!

Good luck, and hope you keep posting! :)

I agree! I just had to go through them really quickly to see what they were about and how the dots connect, I was too curious to take my time haha. Today I started going slowly (well, the normal pace) through Drawabox, but I think I'll space the homework out over a few sessions since it's very tedious.

That is a great post, btw darktiste. I really love reading about the philosophy behind the art creation process.

I took Uncomfortable's 50/50 principle (half your art should be studies and at least half should be you having fun) to heart though haha, so I also did something I found really enjoyable. Today I went with a lot of stuff as my fun side-dish. I did a lot of quick (<5min) and medium? (5~15) minute face constructions, for example. Here are the 3/4 and one frontal-from-above heads


I also drew several tattooed women from reference but I forgot to take a picture haha; it's visible through the paper on this picture though.

Also had a lot of fun doing experiments with hatching and light.


I basically figured out (for now) what my brain seems to think is cool in terms of value selection and stuff. I was really inspired by Cesar Santos' video "How to See Values", and some other painting value videos on Youtube (whose authors I forgot haha). I really like cross hatching and it's one of the things I can spend hours doing, so I tried to replicate some of his ideas in line (how successful I was, I cannot tell). I also really like JC Leyendecker's graphical solutions for backgrounds that give a lot of contrast but look very hatchy, so I did more of that (I already attached one pic here with that, with the man with the mask).

These last portraits took me a bit more to make, about half an hour each, from photo reference. Since the photos I looked at weren't high contrast, I made up the lighting scenarios to varying degrees of success haha. I'm not good at likeness of subject yet: top left is supposed to be Kim Jung Gi, but I am not feeling it from the drawing. Maybe tomorrow it will look clearer.

The previous photos, and these ones as well, have been edited a bit so they may look grainy. This is because I draw with 4H pencils and use HB for the darkest darks. I guess I just really like hard pencils, but they also don't wear out quickly so I don't have to sharpen them. If I figure out a better post-processing method so that they don't look grainy, I might go and re-take the photos. For now, this will do.

[bonjidogen]

Finished first and second lessons of Drawabox today and finished 196/250 cubes for the 250 cube challenge haha. Got tired, studied some figures (turned out really bad), and decided to relive my childhood with some freehand CRT monitors and TV sets.



All done first with 3H pencil, then pen for final edges, then a marker for rough shadows. Had to invent the shadow solutions for them, not satisfied with a lot, but I can see where I'm going wrong, so my next boxes won't be so bad haha.

[bonjidogen]

Today wasn't a great art day haha, but I still got something out. Finished the 250 cube challenge, drew some figure sketches from the old masters, rotated some boxes in perspective, but my focus just wasn't there.



Couldn't put in more than 5~10 minutes per portrait today, and some of them got bent out of shape but I didn't really bother fixing them. Tomorrow might be the day for that.

Didn't have much fun doing art today. Not even the CRTs were very attractive



But hey tomorrow might just be a bit better.

[bonjidogen]

That "tomorrow" wasn't really all that better haha, but today was. I finished that sketchbook yesterday, and on with the new one.

Today I tried sitting down for some 60-120sec gestures, my heart was not quite in them:



I tried doing some skeleton doodles for poses/standing figures, imagining where the main masses of their skeletons would be like in some anatomy books I have seen. That wasn't all too fun either haha



What I had the most fun with was sketching some boxes and boxmen from imagination., mostly freehand perspective, very little measuring.






Finally, tried my hand at some simplistic robot design:



It turned out mediocre, but it is my first time dabbling at it, so I imagine there is nowhere to go but up. Not a very productive day.

[bonjidogen]

Yesterday was the first day I skipped drawing, and it feels somewhat terrible haha. Today was difficult, too, but I pushed through a bit.

Did multiple quick invertebrate drawings.



Decided to have some fun at the end, designed a slightly anachronistic ceremonial battle garb for the Roman emperor Elagabalus/Heliogabalus.



He would've been in his teenage years when ascending to the title of emperor

[darktiste]

Habit are hard to create but if you stick to them you can make it a new normal.

[bonjidogen]

Habit are hard to create but if you stick to them you can make it a new normal.

Haha wish it were that easy! It is not a habit thing (I have been drawing consistently for 6-12 hours per day for several months now), but I have a few health issues that make it hard to draw sometimes, so some days I can only do an hour or two, and on particularly poor ones I can't draw at all.

I didn't do too much today, but it was not a bad day haha. Aside from the regular warm ups and doodles, I decided to try and put together some rooms from imagination using 1pt perspective for creativity practice.

This one was an okay experiment, I was inspired by someone else's drawing. It is also the first one I did today:




Another one was also really okay (I loved the concept I had), but I played too much with the marker and made it look really mediocre haha:



Only the basic form of the room was gridded out, most things in in it are freehand; I did not use a ruler/straightedge at all. The boxes challenge really paid off, to be honest. It is much easier to imagine form in things now. I might do the rest of the Drawabox challenges tomorrow.

[bonjidogen]

Today was anatomy and gestures day.

[bonjidogen]

I had a bit of an art crisis hahah, ended up realizing I should maybe draw more things that are enjoyable for me and do studies more directly applicable to something I want to do





In addition to this, I went back to doing head and neck studies, to help me draw these things better. Hope the fun lasts.

[darktiste]

Feel like those neck are stylize but if they aren't go back to learn the proper proportion.

[bonjidogen]

Feel like those neck are stylize but if they aren't go back to learn the proper proportion.

Yeah I know they're supposed to be somewhat shorter and defined more by the forms of the sternocleidomastoid and trapezoid, but I really like exaggerating necks haha. Might want to tone it down

But I'm back! I won't be on a lot, but I was away because my computer's networking card broke. I haven't been drawing as much as I should, but that is because I have exams now. Here are some doodles from today when I went to a cafe.

[bonjidogen]

Holy hell. I lost the URL to this forum and then just didn't post anymore. I have a lot of backlog to post in the next few days.

[bonjidogen]

A day where you draw is never a terrible day.

I took this to heart for the months I was away, but not as much the other things said here haha. Here is a smattering of drawings I've done. I think I am doing better in capturing likenesses now, but I always need more work. It is a combination of imagination, drawing from photos (usually sourcing those from Pinterest) and imagination with references. Now that I have much more time, I am also doing oil, but I sadly don't have photos with me right now. I still feel like I rushed a lot of these, and I still haven't quite worked on that.

I might want to try structuring my studies much more firmly than I have done for now.

[Zorrentos]

Overall, your work is good! And you are improving with every new update!

There are a few beginners errors still in your works though, such as a bit "skratchey" line work and some problems with the shapes and flow/rhythm in some of your work. I made an overpaint that I hope helps a bit: