Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes
10:03 PM, Monday December 28th 2020
Feedback needed. Just started drawing.
It looks to me like you're still struggling with line quality and confidence. I'll include a few of the stand-out assignments I noticed, and summarize at the end.
For your superimposed lines, it looks to me like your lines are not very confident. I would recommend rewatching this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wsqyKW0iFw
Your lines are in general very accurate, but are very wobbly. It seems to me like you were drawing very slowly and trying to be as accurate as possible, but remember that accuracy isn't as important as making a smooth and confident line. If you're having trouble with loosening up, it might help to just make curves and loops on a piece of paper, like this: https://s31531.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/skbk_feb01_gesture22.gif
If you have no particular goal when making a line quickly, your brain can't get in the way by trying to slow down and be accurate. Just draw whatever feels good- smooth spirals and curves and figure 8's and such on the page with your shoulder. It'll probably mean you're drawing very fast in order to be smooth, but with time you'll be able to slow down and improve your accuracy while remaining confident as well. Remember, accuracy is not your main goal- it comes secondary to smooth and confident lines! If you feel you're wobbling, try making the mark faster.
This applies as well to the ghosted planes. While your accuracy is great, it feels like you've missed the point. The lines are once again shaky, so while they all hit the target, they are not useful lines. It's ok to miss your mark- in fact, you should expect it! Even Uncomfortable's example homework and videos don't always hit their mark, and unless you're a drawing god with decades of experience, you will not have 100% accuracy, and that's ok! Returning to the ghosted lines exercise might be useful, and just focus on drawing as straight a line as you can without any wobbles.
Next, table of elipses. Again, you're trading confidence for accuracy. Your elipses are bumpy and overall are not very smooth. Once again, if you watch Uncomfortable doing the exercises, he is not always accurate, as that's not the ultimate goal. It's ok if you go a bit outside the box, or if the lines don't match up at the end, or if going around multiple times means the lines drift apart from one another. This is especially something that will be helped with the smooth scribbling I mentioned before- just make smooth loops and spirals around the paper to understand how to make smooth curves. Once you are comfortable with that, use that same loose method to draw the elipses. They will be much less accurate (especially if you're new to drawing), but they'll be much smoother (and feel better to draw!)
I would say that's the main problem I noticed, so that would be your first priority to work on.
Next Steps:
I would recommend redoing the superimposed lines as well as the ghosted planes w/ elipses to start off.
Because it feels like you're having trouble with focusing on accuracy over line quality, I might even recommend making floating circles on a page, similar to this: https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/a76a8906.jpg
before you do elipses again. Your goal is smooth and confident lines, from your shoulder. Once you feel good about that, then you can return to those exercises and work on your accuracy. Good luck!
Here we're getting into the subjective - Gerald Brom is one of my favourite artists (and a pretty fantastic novelist!). That said, if I recommended art books just for the beautiful images contained therein, my list of recommendations would be miles long.
The reason this book is close to my heart is because of its introduction, where Brom goes explains in detail just how he went from being an army brat to one of the most highly respected dark fantasy artists in the world today. I believe that one's work is flavoured by their life's experiences, and discovering the roots from which other artists hail can help give one perspective on their own beginnings, and perhaps their eventual destination as well.
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