Sketchbook: justjake
polycounter lvl 11
Hi there. I call myself a "digital artist in training". My goal is to be able to draw and paint any character I can imagine in 2D, and in 3D to be able to model and render anything I can imagine. These first couple of posts are my last efforts in the 3D world before I went on a sabbatical to learn traditional art, properly. Please be harsh in your critique.
Two projects I have been working on recently:
This is an enchanted Dwarven axe used to kill a Balrog, set in a Lord of the Rings universe.
I'm not very happy with the normal map for this or the outlines I made for the gold on the diffuse.
Comments and Critique welcome.
Replies
First photo has a little auto contrast done, the lighting cause the picture to be a little washed out.
The next two images, not great but an odd pattern came through the board I was drawing on onto the newsprint.
Thank you for your comment.
If you see this could you describe more what my style is, please? It would be nice to hear it.
I have two pieces of advice for you. The first is to make sure you are measuring and comparing everything you are trying to draw accurately from life. Use your thumb, a pencil, a string, ruler, whatever you have at your disposal. Proportions are difficult and as you draw more and more you will start to remember them without having to measure every time, but for now it's a good practice to make sure the size of everything in relation is proper.
second, is perhaps take some time again to JUST do 1-2 pages of eyes, noses, ears, hands, etc. What do you have the most trouble with? Draw nothing but that for a couple days, really try to understand the form so you can picture it from lots of angles in your head.
Most importantly just stay persistent and continue your hard work. I look forward to seeing your evolution as an artist!
Thank you very much! My main problems are, well, everything! But I do want to fix my anatomy first and foremost.
The difficulty to nail correct shapes are partly to the way you 'construct' your drawings. I presume (from lines) you start from one end of figure and work your way to the other, but it's almost impossible to get correct proportions like that. You'd need to put your hand further from paper to be able to draw in long strokes and quickly sketch the full figure.
Try changing your grip to this:
or this:
You would loose control over fine details for some time, but that's one point to this, to make one think in slightly larger scale. Enlarge your studies' format if it helps.
The same grip will also improve your shading, because you want to learn shade stuff in multiple layers, each layer consisting of uniform shade of parallel lines. This is most helpful because it's unsuitable to immediate reproduction of visible tones. However it makes you think of each surface as 3D shape made of roughly flat planes (sounds familiar?) and to think how light falls and hugs that surface. One can equally achieve photorealistic effect by having more layers.
So this plugs into how you should be constructing your anatomy - from geometric 'cuboid' shapes to final smooth surface, by sculpting details pass by pass.
In the olden days in Art school I know, they made people shade full sheets of paper with equally spaced lines, to learn the dispcipline. Also for similar reason one always starts by drawing geometrical still-lifes, for one, to learn construct perfectly straight or curved lines by holding pencil as in examples.
Apart all this I really recommend you get into drawing courses, you'd get feedback and tips every half an hour or so, instead being at the mercy of forums. It also takes tremendous discipline to learn it by oneself. Since your first posts, frankly, you haven't shown much progress, but 2 years of 2 days a week can elevate one from your level, to almost photorealism.
Hope it's helpful and patience learning!
Don't forget to do simple pencil studies of anatomy. Live stuff is all about speed and sharp eye, so you have to have a foundation of proportions beforehand. Do all those carefully measured 'boxy' line figures you see in drawing manuals. Don't forget the skeletons-only too,
they'll help you get motion and poses from various angles. There's been years after I learned drawing, now being back to skeleton after skeleton, because can't get poses right..
The daily habit is coming back to me. Changing my study, holding the pencil different, drawing boxes and "gestures" mostly now, it's fun, I like it.
Keep on drawing from ref/life, A LOT!
You will get there one day
http://annagilhespy.com/blog/2013/08/21/how-to-measure-drawing/
As there still is no real volumetric strucure in those studies, maybe this will help with 'copying life'.
I believe your ultimate goal is to be able to draw humans, and most teaching systems are structured towards it. However, one does not arrive to figure trough figure. I'm sure many would agree with me here, that to draw, realistically or not, is to have an understanding how to translate 3D space to 2D one. Means, even if one does comic books, abstraction to a shape comes from knowing how it looks in real life first. Thus, the skill to acquire is VOLUME and PERSPECTIVE. I'm thought in the spirit of Russian school, and we do it, starting like this:
One could simultaniously start with body, firstly learning overall proportions (7,5 heads etc.), then learning to pose a skeleton:
and making 'box-figures':
and you refine it to a point of AT LEAST this:
When you can draw a white sculpture like that at any angle, only then there is a point to move to a live subject. One can't draw a live person not knowing what his bodily volume are made of, because real form is so complicated, that easiest way is, to pose a learned typical human form, and personalize it from there. Most of my friends moved to a live subject only after being able to make this (even if it takes 20 hrs ):
I've seen some people starting at the wrong point, and that's sad to look at, there is much self- deception there. Some just like to feel cool being in front of an easel and a naked body. Or just too lazy to do it proper, from the beginning.
I hope you won't fall into this trap. Master the basics(perspective, volume, shade, anatomy), then move on.
https://www.youtube.com/user/FZDSCHOOL/videos
These were rather bad photos unfortunately so had to adjust the levels on a few.
What has remained though, is my ability to draw almost every day and that I can get over my reservations or insecurities on a daily basis and pick up the sketchbook.
Doing a quick head/face study is something I need to work on, always turns out horrible.
The facial features are kinda fun to bust out in bulk, but they get frustrating. There seems so little to draw but the difference between my sketches and the source material is always massive.
Sometimes when drawing the eye I find it helps to draw a circle first to represent the eyeball. Then it is easier to place the eyelids and eyebrow as they wrap around the sphere and sit ontop of it as the eyebrow does.
I have got more sites that I study from now. I was originaly using:
http://artists.pixelovely.com/practice-tools/figure-drawing/
Another similar site I found would be:
http://www.quickposes.com/
And finaly, something a little different:
http://anatomy360.net/
Offers a very good anatomy study tool that is a little unintuitive and I don't think they have quite got where they wanted with it yet.
I can only recommend starting at more basic level. You are trying advanced stuff without foundations. Tons of lips and eyes won't help you if you won't start to see them in 3D, not just squigly contours. Your art teacher should be telling the same this everytime you show your sketch to him (mine did). CONSTRUCTIVE drawing that's supposed to be!
I guess with such overwhelming evidence I will have to start at a more basic level now. Which means you probably shouldn't scroll further past this message for the time being
My tutor was really big on us getting the "values" across in my latest drawing session. I feel sometimes he pushes for a contrast that I feel is too strong. I'm not the tutor though so I slave to his command.
On another note. My life drawing tutor seemed really pleased with my progress over the past year, which was great to hear!
Now that I have been doing life drawing classes for so long, with the same models, you can see some identical poses from the past year or so.