Aramande in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"
2017-05-25 18:12
Just a single page of free circles seems to have remedied most of my circle wobbles. I think I might add that as a warmup rutine for future homework.
I hope it looks slightly better, even though I still don't feel like it looks like a racoon. It's less of a monstrosity this time :D
Aramande in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"
2017-05-25 05:12
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But my linework is wobbly because I draw from the shoulder. D:
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I thought I was supposed to draw through my elipses, even when they were only half elipses
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That explains why the pelvis looked so wrong..
I may have misinterpreted your demo/video tutorial, but it looked like the chest and pelvis was supposed to point at the belly, or is that just when they are standing sideways?
I suspected I'd have to go again. I need to know that I can do this as well. Thanks for the notes! :D
Aramande in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"
2017-05-23 20:19
I tried to be more confident, I tried to turn the ribcage and butt like in your guide. But in the end, it feels like I created a monstrosity. Did my measurement system fail? Am I missing something obvious?
Some things did work better I think though. With the half-elipses, I tried to aim slightly further than the edge, so I ended up with a bit of the background part, but it's difficult to time the lifting-up-part so some of the half elipses became almost full elipses.
Aramande in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"
2017-05-23 08:28
I see what you mean with the circles, and that's most likely a confidence issue that I need to work on then. Completely round circles and half ellipses appear to be my weakness right now which is why I have them as a warmup.
As for the sketchy lines inside the squirrel, at least that left circle was a misplaced torso, which is one of the downsides of not being able to erase. :P
The extra fur parts (especially the squirrel tail) was me trying to make sense of what I saw in the image. Old habits die hard.
Tonight, I'll try to stop myself at each of the three steps you indicated to take a picture of it.
Aramande in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"
2017-05-22 20:42
I lost my inspiration around page 4, and had to take a break after page 5. And then other projects popped up to distract even more. But I finally managed to grab my discipline and create the 6th page, and on a workday no less.
I hope this looks better than my last attempt.
Aramande in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals (new 50min intro video, 3 new demos)"
2017-02-26 17:05
The sketchbook I'm using is A4 size though, it should be about the same as a printer paper, minus the threading.
In any case, I will do 6 more pages of (I assume random selection) animal constructions and get back to you, thank you for your time.
Aramande in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals (new 50min intro video, 3 new demos)"
2017-02-26 11:51
I have a couple of questions that might help me as I continue.
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I do try to draw from the shoulder as much as I can, but end up with shaky, uncertain lines due to it. And my first instinct is to go over the line again, until it looks less shaky in my mind. But basically, draw a line and let it be, no matter how shaky or misplaced it ends up?
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When you say room to work, do you mean I shouldn't plan for having more than one drawing per page? Would it be better to turn the page sideways (like the brontosaurus) and have the page dedicated to a single drawing?
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Should I still draw parts of animals, such as head or feet, in higher detail in order to study them?
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Is measuring distances as pen-caps a good idea in your mind? It seems to work well for the bigger picture, such as the body masses, but less effective on feet and eyes.
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Is there any trick to draw less symbolic details, because I did try my best to try to replicate what I saw.
Aramande in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals (new 50min intro video, 3 new demos)"
2017-02-25 13:07
Sorry it took so long, time has been scarce, and my inability to just do as much as I can and continue later has been ever present. And it didn't help that I decided to get into Overwatch either..
Anyway!
A drawing was always preceded by a warmup. A couple of the warmups ended up not having an animal drawn after it, due to taking too long searching for good references and ending up not drawing anything.
Aramande in the post "Lesson 4: Drawing Insects and Arachnids (new 40min intro video, 3 new demos)"
2016-10-30 19:11
I completely understand what you mean, and once again, I must blame my damn perfectionism. The two problems you're describing are actually one and the same thing. As you say, I've applied ghosting to my initial lines, and then basically gone over them with slow wrist-like-strokes to make things look like they do in my mind. Some of the time, it just makes a thicker line, but most of the time it ends up like chicken scratches.
And as I said in my original post, I have done warmups before each drawing, The Tubes and the Cubes: http://imgur.com/a/fWgQw
They actually do help to soften me up a bit, and I like their variety because they contain both lines and circles, perspective and planning. As you can probably see, I suffer from the same chicken scratch problem on most of the thickened circles.
It will be difficult to break this habit, but I want this to work so I'm going to try my best for the next challenge.
Thank you for your time.
Aramande in the post "Lesson 4: Drawing Insects and Arachnids (new 40min intro video, 3 new demos)"
2016-10-29 17:48
Finished! http://imgur.com/a/bjRF2
I'm not sure if my lay-ins are too detailed and focused, or if my drawings are not detailed enough, because they ended up looking slightly similar. I still feel my texture-sense may need some work, but I feel my construction abilities are getting better for every drawing.
I also, as a warm up, continued the tubes and the cubes (hey, that rhymed!), #29-#60 are finished, just poke me if you want to see them as well.
Happy halloween!
Aramande in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants (new 40min intro video, 3 new demos)"
2016-09-25 19:41
Alright, I'll try to keep that in mind for next lesson. Thank you for your time.
Aramande in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants (new 40min intro video, 3 new demos)"
2016-09-25 18:52
Hm, I've tried to understand what it means, and thought I did as the blurb explains. I definitely draw through the ellipse if I miss my target, but maybe I'm just satisfied with their shape too often? Or maybe I shouldn't go around thickening all the circles to reduce their noise from previous attempts.
Aramande in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants (new 40min intro video, 3 new demos)"
2016-09-25 18:37
Do you have an example where you felt I didn't draw through my ellipses?
I'll make sure to get more and better pens for next lesson. :P
Aramande in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants (new 40min intro video, 3 new demos)"
2016-09-25 18:18
At least it didn't take half a year to complete the lesson again. I managed to devote my weekends to at least finishing one flower page, prefaced with a 15 minute warm-up as per your suggestion.
I feel like it went a lot better this time, but I'll let you be the judge of that.
Lesson 3.1: http://imgur.com/a/lDLNW
The warm-up started out as a cylinder/stem challenge, but later added boxes just for getting those ghosting muscles to wake up. I managed to draw 28 boxes and 28 tubes (I wouldn't call them cylinders as they are usually not straight) over 10 pages with 15 minutes per page.
If you feel like seeing my warm-up art, you can find them here: http://imgur.com/a/vT4wF but by no means should you feel like you need to critique them.
Aramande in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"
2016-08-22 19:54
The problem for me is that I often only get an hour a day for my self at most, and by then I'm usually so tired I don't feel like drawing. And when I do want to draw, I want it to be perfect and finished when I have to go to bed. I've read your advice you gave to others before me, to have a practice-session before the main course, but I've always felt like it would remove too much time from my already short window. I just wanted to get done and move on.
But I want to get better, so I guess I just have to fight my impatience and face the fact that I won't always be able to finish things on the same day.
I skipped the stems because I felt like I didn't need them after the fact, since they weren't part of the homework when I started. I did the leaves for myself to better understand leaves.
I'll do my best with this lesson once more. Here's to hoping it won't take more than a month this time.
Aramande in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"
2016-08-20 20:41
Hey hey, I'm back! ... only took me half a year.
I'm sure you don't need excuses, but essentially, I had initially promised myself I'd draw something every day. When I couldn't keep that promise I lost confidence in myself, and ended up being swayed by the dark side (Unlimited gaming!)
But I've managed to get back on the horse now, and ready to improve again. Since I started this so long ago, I've learnt a lot along the way, and the lesson even changed when I wasn't looking, so I hope that shows in my submission.
Now for the good part: http://imgur.com/a/4ZLEs
Now, I had no idea how to apply construction to my creations in the beginning, but around plant drawing p.5, I believe you added more information about that subject, and man did it make things a lot clearer. I also saw that you added more homework to improve the experience and I decided to add a page of leaves at the end, because I felt like I was weak in that area.
Aramande in the post "Lesson 2: Organic Forms, Contour Lines, Dissections and Form Intersections (version 3)"
2016-01-07 23:21
I thank you for the encouragement. I think I'm going to at least finish this page (2-3 more shapes) before I move on, now that I know I was on the right track.
I looked ahead a bit at lesson 3 and figured that i wasn't going to gain anything from jumping ahead just yet.
Aramande in the post "Lesson 2: Organic Forms, Contour Lines, Dissections and Form Intersections (version 3)"
2016-01-07 16:50
I feel so lost right now. I tried to study what other people did, but I think I just ended up trying to be a copycat, like I usually do. I don't know how to plan my pen strokes, because I have no idea how I want the end result to look like, and if I draw too much, it gets messy and noisy.
Is there any resource I can go to to learn about the step I'm apparently skipping? I haven't been able to draw for days because I have no idea what I'm doing. All I've been able to do are these http://i.imgur.com/mVKscfm.jpg
I have no idea if they are better or worse, and I don't feel like I'm learning anything.
But the shapes feel like they are more rounded now, so I've got that going for me.
Aramande in the post "Lesson 2: Organic Forms, Contour Lines, Dissections and Form Intersections (version 3)"
2016-01-02 22:56
I know it's probably a bad excuse, and that it probably doesn't matter. But my blue pen was running out of color, which probably caused me to both redraw lines multiple times, and make them flatter. I've switched to a purple now.
I keep running in to the problem of not really being sure of what reference images to use. And I don't understand how you get from the beetle shell to that texture in your example. To me, it looks nothing like the beetle shell.
I feel like I'm missing something in the "how to simplify a texture" department. I'll keep trying my best to understand though.
Aramande in the post "Lesson 2: Organic Forms, Contour Lines, Dissections and Form Intersections (version 3)"
2016-01-02 02:40
Happy new year!
Have some more dissections
I hope these should be more accurate to the lesson description.
Aramande in the post "Lesson 2: Organic Forms, Contour Lines, Dissections and Form Intersections (version 3)"
2015-12-28 11:41
I think that seems fair. I was doing the curves like ghosted circles, and only pushed down on one side, and tended to go an extra couple of passes, just to get them to go the direction I wanted them to. I think my technique was good, but I'll try my best to stop myself from trying to redraw it.
I did use photo reference for the fruit, but I suppose the outside texture would be more interesting since it has to follow the form. I'll get to drawing a couple of textured dissections this week.
Thank you for your continued support and feedback! :D
Aramande in the post "Lesson 2: Organic Forms, Contour Lines, Dissections and Form Intersections (version 3)"
2015-12-26 13:31
I hope you had a Merry Christmas and will have a Happy New Year :D
I must say, the intersections surprised me. I expected them to be easy to pull off. I had a bit of problem with drawing through the boxes, especially when they were without perspective points. They tended to turn inside out in my mind, making it difficult to tell where one ended and the other began, even though the back-parts were drawn in green. And the tubes and cones just made things even more confusing with their ellipses turning backwards.
I wasn't confident enough to draw any fish-scales or heads for the dissections, so I skipped that part and saved that for later. I hope just having cut fruit was good enough. :D
Aramande in the post "250 Box Challenge (#3)"
2015-12-12 18:26
I have returned! I hope your December stress isn't too high, feel free to take your time. :D
At the beginning, 250 boxes seemed like a lot to draw, but day after day the gap kept decreasing, and now, 14 days later, I'm done. It feels like I improved more and more the further I went, but I would love some critique.
Aramande in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"
2017-05-27 09:14
Okay, but do the legs bend that way? It feels like there's at least a knee too many, but the fur seems to indicate another bend. Or is the pelvis or hip higher than I think?
I kind of want to keep to an A4 paper, mostly because I don't have any bigger paper, but also because I want to get used to drawing circles and all that, even when they are small. I think most of the problem with facial features is again a question of confidence that I need to overcome.