Check Out NMA    About our Partnership    Collapse this Ad

To Stripe a tiger or not.

9:55 PM, Thursday November 5th 2020

I have moved onto animals from insects and have been watching the demos. Feedback from insects was not to use black to colour anything. Cast shadows only.

So watching the tiger demo black is used for stripes and this obviously helps describe form. Uncomfortable has replied in a comment below the video that using black was a mistake. I think that is consistent with what is being taught.

My question is do we accept that the lack of stripes will just means it is not as easily identifiable as a tiger ( or any other animal we choose ) or is there some other way of aiding recognition of animal or form? I assume that the only distinction between white/orange/black fur is colour.

Report
1 users agree
6:20 AM, Friday November 6th 2020

This is one of the reasons I'm really eager, as soon as I have the time cleared out, to start going in and redoing all of the video demos. All of those intro videos are very old, and over the last several years of giving critiques and revising lesson material, I've been changing the standards to which I hold students.

The way I'm currently teaching the material is to focus on all filled black shapes as being reserved for cast shadows only. That does indeed rule out the stripes on a tiger. That said, a tiger is not just its stripes (they have a fairly distinct overall frame and appearance), and beyond that, the recognizability of your drawing is not really a big deal. I'm not concerned with how closely you match your reference, but rather in how believable your constructions are. Observing your reference carefully is obviously the best way to build up your construction in a way that is believable, but plenty of students have bungled their proportions at times, but have still pulled off the construction well enough to have it considered a victory. The result looks strange, but still believable.

6:34 PM, Friday November 6th 2020

Thanks. In a similar vein, should legs all be initially drawn as sausage forms and built up? Most of the demos tend to have a fair degree of shape or form in their initial construction.

I have watched all the demo videos and am about to get started. And I want to get it right.

12:58 AM, Saturday November 7th 2020

So the sausage method is something I introduced within the last year or two, so it's not as present in the demo videos as it should be. I did however mention it in the critique of your lesson 4 work, so refer to what I mentioned there, that you start with sausage chains and then build up additional forms around them.

1:31 AM, Saturday November 7th 2020

Thankyou!. Will get started tomorrow.

Below this point is mostly ads. Indie projects, and tool/course recommendations from us.
This section is reserved for low-cost advertising space for art related indie projects.
With how saturated the market is, it is tough for such projects to get eyes on their work.
By providing this section, we hope to help with that.
If you'd like to advertise here, you can do so through comicad.net
The recommendation below is an advertisement. Most of the links here are part of Amazon's affiliate program (unless otherwise stated), which helps support this website. It's also more than that - it's a hand-picked recommendation of something we've used ourselves, or know to be of impeccable quality. If you're interested, here is a full list.
Marshall Vandruff's Perspective Course

Marshall Vandruff's Perspective Course

Marshall Vandruff is a ubiquitous name in art instruction - not just through his work on the Draftsmen podcast and his other collaborations with Proko, but in his own right. He's been teaching anatomy, gesture, and perspective for decades, and a number of my own friends have taken his classes at the Laguna College of Art and Design (back around 2010), and had only good things to say about him. Not just as an instructor, but as a wonderful person as well.

Many of you will be familiar with his extremely cheap 1994 Perspective Drawing lectures, but here he kicks it up to a whole new level.

Remember that when you agree with something another user has written, you are putting your own reputation behind it.

Consider the following:

  • If it's homework feedback, does it address each section of the lesson/challenge, or only briefly touch upon one or two exercises?
  • Does it provide clearly defined next steps for the student to follow?
  • Have you read through it thoroughly, or are you simply agreeing so the student earns a superficial badge?
  • Replies you agree with will be visible in your sketchbook

Agreeing blindly just to be nice is a good way to get your permissions associated with this function revoked, so make sure that you genuinely feel that the response is beneficial to the student.

We use cookies in conjunction with Google Analytics to anonymously track how our website is used.

This data is not shared with any other parties or sold to anyone. They are also disabled until consent is provided by clicking the button below, and this consent can be revoked at any time by clicking the "Revoke Analytics Cookie Consent" link in our website footer.

You can read more about what we do with them, read our privacy policy.