Hello, Polycount!

So uh, new guy here! Well, actually I've lurking for quite some time in this forum, and finally decided to make this is my first post. My name's Junhong, 20 years old, from Singapore. And I'm hoping to hone my drawing and design skills right here in this sketchbook.

I was fortunate enough to go a digital media design school, where they taught drawing, colour theory, 3D, animation, etc. Halfway through I got hooked onto digital painting and concept art all the while doing 3D stuff for school projects (I specialized in game art and design, which focused a lot of 3D and production). So when I graduated my portfolio works were just all over the place - I had digital paintings here and 3D environments there and all sorts of random stuff.

I still want to do concept art and design. So after graduation I tried to work on some digital paintings.

And well, all I found out was that my skills were seriously lacking and that it was pointless to do all these paintings if I didn't even get the basics of drawing, anatomy, light and colour right. I did some practicing by myself for awhile but I found it was difficult (and boring) doing it alone. Also it was quite hard to judge my work for myself and to see what are the aspects that I need to improve on. So I decided it was time to stop lurking around and to get some serious help!

So that's why I decided make a sketchbook post here in polycount. You guys were a great help when I was doing 3D, and the community here is amazing. I know this is mostly a 3D-oriented forum, but I hope you guys will be willing to guide me along. And any critiques, tips or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Aaand so, here's the stuff I did recently. I started with a bunch of studies figure studies from photographs, movies and even game screenshots lol. And also a bunch of 30 second poses. They all came out.. well, not so good. But I'll keep practicing!

I'll do my best to update as often as I can. Though in my current situation, I'm afraid I can only post during the weekends as the rest of the time I'll be away from home. But I won't be giving up!

Thank you for your patience!

More recent stuff here. More 30 second poses from posemaniacs.com, plus a 10min pose. And some eye studies from photographs.

Now that I look at it my scanner looks a little blurry lol. Or maybe I draw too lightly.

I'll be posting sketchbooks in cghub and conceptart.org too. Hopefully that will prevent me from getting lazy and motivate myself to do better each day!

Here's more 30 second poses and eye studies, some hand studies from life. Also tried some 60 second poses. For some reason my 60s poses look just like 30s ones even though I have twice the time to draw.

These are all the studies I did earlier this week. I'm trying to clear them out of the way so I can post the most recent ones.

Hope it's not to boring :/

Hey everyone! Here's this week's update - These are last week's work that I scanned today, some hands, nose and face studies. Was trying to study the rough placements of facial features

Btw, I edited the previous pictures so that they are a little smaller and more compact. The previous sizes of the pics were like obnoxiously huge lol.

keep it up, drawing so many studies will surely pay off. i wish i was less lazy and did this kind of stuff more often.

Thank you, Blaisoid! I'm actually really lazy too lol. Sometimes when I'm supposed to be drawing I just drift off into the vast confines of the internet and before I know it a whole hour will be gone. Ah well.

Anyways, more stuff! Finally caught up to the present.

First pics are some perspective stuff I did while studying Loomis' Successful Drawing book. Its such an awesome book, though the first few chapters of perspective stuff are pretty intimidating, right now I'm still at the spheres page, and the next few pages are looking even more challenging lol. I have a whole bunch of other perspective stuff but I don't think I'll be scanning those, it's really just a whole bunch of cubes and cones and stuff, not exactly very exciting, though I learned a whole lot.

Next are some really embarrassing heads done in an attempt to draw without reference. I keep messing up the proportions and size of the features. After that I went into a rage and searched "male models" and drew these four head studies.

Sup all! A bunch of stuff this time! I'm dumping my old perspective studies here, which are done along with Loomis' Successful Drawing book. It's not very exciting, yeah, I'm mostly uploading it for archiving purposes.





Next are some digi landscape studies! Haven't touched my wacom in ages lol, so this was pretty fun. Pictures are from terragalleria.com, lots of pretty landscape photos there! My goal here is mostly to study colours (which I'm really pathetic at).



Aaand more perspective stuff from Loomis. These are done just last week. I'm progressing the pages of that book sloooowly lol. I'm at page 36 now. Getting a little more comfortable with this construction drawing stuff now, though I'm still doing simple forms. Hoping to apply all this to something useful soon.

Studies.. AWESOME. That is the BEST way to improve. I try to do anatomy sketches of animals and people every day. I really need to do more gesture stuff though. Sometimes I find it hard to retain a lot of the minute details. I am very impressed by your sheer quantity of studies.

amandarien: Haha, thank you! Yeah details are tough. Sometimes I always can't seem to put in the correct details properly. Probably need to start studying details too!

Ahh, a little slow on the update this time. I entered the imagineFX monthly challenge (the theme was Sky Harbour), so I was kinda busy with that the whole weekend. Soo that's what I'll be posting now!

These are the sketches and thumbnails I did to get an idea of what to draw for the final piece. Originally I planned to have to characters near the foreground buuut I gave up on that idea because I was afraid I couldn't finish it in time. Plus I was also struggling with scale and rendering so I didn't really have the confidence. So I went with itty bitty characters instead.


After I decided on what to do, I did a basic perspective drawing first, before scanning and adding more details and linework digitally. The line took a hell of a long time because I kept getting stuck not knowing what to draw next.




Aand the final piece. To be honest it didn't really come out the way I liked. I struggled a lot with stuff like lighting, colour and design details. There's also so much like "empty" areas all around. Plus it looks pretty bad when zoomed up lol, since the brushwork is really sloppy. Soo I probably will have to practice on all these things.

Anatomy stuff! Some torso studies here. Trying to use the side of my pencil stead of the tip to do values instead of just line. Pretty fun but messy lol. Need to practice controlling my values to do those really nice high contrast drawings.


Back to gestures. The last two are done with the side of my pencil, wanted to mimic charcoal.


These are some crappy master copies of charcoal figure drawings done by Ryan Woodward. The way he draws with charcoal is amazing, and I wanted to study how he uses so few strokes to convey so much in his figures. Check out his stuff at conteanimated.com, he's crazy!

Update!

Some poses from imagination - which are pretty bad lol, need to study proportions of the figure properly, plus learn all the landmarks of the human body so that I know where to render shadows and stuff. Also got a calligraphy pen today! Did some 30s gestures with it and random figure studies with it. And finally some arm anatomy studies.

For some reason I couldn't concentrate properly and I have no idea why soo I didn't do as much drawing as I wanted today. Bleh.

I really like the direction of those arm studies! Awesome job man, only way to get better at drawing, IS drawing! I will definitely be following your progress I really like your stuff

go ahead and put 2 dots down on a big page, and try join them up. repeat x100. ?????. Your draftsmanship level will dramatically improve. also freehand ellipses and dare you try, the perfect Circle are good practise/warm ups. keep studying hard!

Keep them studies going!

Add3r - Haha, thanks! It means a lot to me. I can only hope my works won't end up boring you lol.

SSquir33 - Ah wow! I did try practising lines the way you mentioned before, though I must admit I ended up getting really bored with it too quickly. But your words are motivating me to start doing it again. And again! AND AGAIN! I saw these exercises being recommend by Feng Zhu in his videos, it's pretty inspiring. Wonder how long it will take to reach his level of draftsmanship. Freehand circles are immensely hard lol. But yeah I'll start practising that too. Thanks!

Eoq - Thank you! I will!

More studies! Focused on arm anatomy these few days. Still gotta study a little on the muscle and bone to know how to render the form of the arm properly. Also need to study how the arm works when it's bent and twisted, and how it connects to the shoulders and the torso. Oh yeah, and arms in perspective too lol. Ahh so much to learn!



Also tried to do a few full figure poses from imagination. I had to do a really messy way of figuring out the pose though and most of it was guesswork instead of really understanding though. Soo that means I gotta do more full figure studies then.



Next are some heads from imagination and hands from life. Uhh, I think I was on autopilot when I drew these. Wasn't really concentrating much, especially the hands lol. And my heads are still really terrible bleh. Think I'll be doing head anatomy studies next.



And lastly some 30s gestures with a calligraphy pen!

Some digital painting photo studies. Mostly trying to study colour and lighting, so I used a brush with no opacity setting so I had to see and apply each individual colour instead of relying too much on blending to get the colours.

It's a pretty cool way to practice colours I think, although it doesn't provide blending and shading practice, which is another thing I'm really weak in. I'll most probably do some blending exercises soon! And try to paint some figures as well. To be honest I hardly ever paint figures - it's mostly environments, sooo it's gonna be a bit of a challenge.

Studies from terragalleria




Then a couple of quick ones from imagination - I think they turned out okay, though the colours I've chosen could've been more... harmonious?



And last two studies from some holiday travel website.

This is a great sketchbook dude, many of those studies are elegantly handled, keep at it!

Joseph Silverman - Thanks man, I'll keep doing my best! You know your works are really inspiring btw!

Another update! Did some random thumbnail-ish sketches of environments to see if I can come up with interesting ideas and compositions. For some reason when I started doing these my mind suddenly froze up and I couldn't seem to come up with any interesting ideas aaand so I just sort of vomited out some generic rocks and cliffs and other boring stuff. My imagination seems to be at an all time low recently... has anyone ever experienced this before? And if so, any ideas on how to jump start the good 'ol creative brain?

Also bought a new sketchbook! To be honest I'm really nervous to start drawing on it lol. All my recent studies and sketches were all done on plain old copy paper because there is no pressure. But I guess I gotta get over that fear sooner or later.



And here's some studies from The Fundementals of Figure Drawing by Barrington Barber that I borrowed from the library.



And lastly, back some good ol' perspective studies from Loomis!

Hey there, looking good brah - you're on the right path. Maybe throw in some skull studies, I found that helped with faces.

As for keeping going; one thing that's kept me drawing consistently is life drawing. If you can find a drop in life drawing session you can attend every week, it's a big boost. If it's anything like Malaysia the models can't be completely naked, but it's still worth the time and money.

Naugat - Thank you! Yeah, I've been meaning to do some skull studies soon - always ended up doing other stuff though, haha, I'll start soon! Also I would really love to go to some life drawing sessions, haven't found one yet, though, in the meantime I'll be sticking to books and the internet lol.

Gaaaah! I didn't draw anything at all yesterday! Gotta make up for lost time!

More Barrington Barber studies! I changed the male and female figures at the bottom a little though, instead of copying straight from the book - 'cause I felt their poses were a little stiff and awkward. Nooot sure if I made an improvement though.



Aaand skeletons! Gotta figure out stuff like how the bones twist and turn and landmarks and all that good stuff. Might do some quick skeletal poses in the future maybe?



I ought to do some sketches and drawings of my own. But lately my mind is totally blank so all I can do are studies. Bleh...

Heh, I wouldn't worry about drawing from your head so much - it's a myth the best work without reference.

If you're more comfortable having a ton of photos to reference from, you're not alone - The Dinotopia Guy loves his reference and I know Ghibli artists who swear by youtube and their iPhone camera. Print it out, pin it up, reference dat. Whatever gets the job done.

Naugat is dead right, Reference is key to a lot of great and solid art work. But hey, great studies! You're really going at it and it shows in the quality of your work. At this rate you are just going to get better and better. If I had to give you any sort of critique it would be that anatomy is still eluding you a bit in terms of proportions. Good news is, you are on your way to fixing that keeping up with this sketchbook! keep going at it!

Naugat - Yeah, I understand. My interest in drawing from head is mostly so that when I relax to draw and sketch, I won't go into a rage because I keep can't draw a decent face, hand or foot properly and have to run screaming to the internet. I think it's more fun if you can draw basic stuff like anatomy uninhibited from your mind. But I totally understand what you're saying, I'll definitely still use reference! There's just too much cool stuff out there to ignore!

gillmeister74 - Thanks! Yeah, proportions is tough lol. Everytime I leave and look at my studies a day or two later I always cringe when I notice all the mistakes. Face proportions are especially hard for me. Get that eye a little too big or that nose too low (both of which I'm constantly guilty of) and you just ruin everything.

Anyway, started drawing on my new sketchbook! Just some really random stuff. Really messy and badly drawn lol, it reminds me to practice more!



And more perspective studies from Loomis. About halfway through the perspective section, learning new stuff every page, though I admittedly I think I'm going a bit slow. (I keep stopping after doing one page)



Aaand some heads practice. First one's from imagination - which was a disaster, second one's from photo refs - which are also disasters. I feel kinda bad for the models in the photos I drew from. Will be doing more heads this weekend.

Hi all! It's been a pretty busy week. But uhhh here's some stuff!

Some envi studies. First one is from imagination, second is from photo ref. Coming up with realistic and harmonious colours is tough!




Also tried painting some heads. Black and white cuz I'm afraid of colours atm.



Sketches! Went drawing with a friend at mac's. Sketched a character from a manga I was reading and practiced drawing heads.



Portraits from photo refs! Added more shading and stuff instead of just line, think it helps a little, might add more darker values next time. The last two portraits at the bottom didn't turn up so well... sorry about that.



Aaand finally, more perspective from Loomis! First one is a little sketch projected into perspective as sort of a "test" to see what I have learnt, instead of just copying from the book. Pretty excited cuz the next few pages looks like it's going into more practical perspective stuff!

Went sketching with some friends yesterday, practiced nature and stuff. The second pic started off as a tree sketch but soon my impatience took over and I just ruined everything. So I just filled the page with studies of leaves and grass. It's pretty interesting too see how they bend and twist in reality. Need to practice how to draw clumps of foliage and trees though.




Also, a DRAGON! Haven't done dragons much now that I think about it. My first few attempts were a disaster though, because of my lack of knowledge of animal anatomy.



And finally some figures from imagination. Still bad... yeah. Curse my messy lines!