blankdiploma in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"
2016-08-14 08:21
Hey Uncomfortable -
I'm making slow & steady progress on both the 250 box and 250 cylinder challenges (as a warm-up before doing other things,) but I'm hoping you can clarify something about line weights with ink.
You emphasize adding extra weight to the edges of forms, but is this something I'm supposed to be doing in a single stroke, or should I be going back over my edges multiple times to reinforce them? It seems difficult to really emphasize some lines over others with a felt-tip pen without re-tracing my strokes.
If I am supposed to be laying in the correct amount of thickness with my initial stroke and then not touching them again, how does this work when I'm "drawing through" my ellipses? Especially when dealing with the far face of an ellipse - logic would dictate that I should only thicken the half of the far ellipse that's not occluded, but I don't see how I can do this correctly while also drawing through them.
blankdiploma in the post "25 Texture Challenge - fleshed out into an actual challenge for those of you struggling with how to render different materials"
2016-08-09 01:39
Please, for God's sake, never tip-toe around anything. The entire reason I'm here is because you're blunt. It's refreshing. I'm perfectly comfortable with what a manic motherfucker I am - I'm not going to take my ball and go home just because you say it to my face :)
blankdiploma in the post "25 Texture Challenge - fleshed out into an actual challenge for those of you struggling with how to render different materials"
2016-08-09 00:59
Haha, I suppose I should take it as sort of a compliment that I'm unnaturally pigheaded. I can't say that comes as a huge shock.
And yeah, the medium is absolutely the source of my frustration - I freakin' hate ink! But I'm trying to grin and bear it because of the emphasis you've put on physical media in your lessons. I feel like I should point out again that I don't care how nice my end result looks, I just hate the fact that I don't understand the process. I don't want you to think that I'm a primadonna who throws a tantrum when things aren't gorgeous on my first attempt. I have a variety of character defects, but that's not one of them :)
I really appreciate that you took the time to do a demo - it helps a lot. It's actually kind of reassuring that yours doesn't look THAT different from mine in terms of the overall approach; it's more just a question of line economy and overall drawing experience than something I'm fucking up on a fundamental level.
I'll try to de-emphasize texture going forwards, but I'm going to keep poking at it occasionally. It would drive me completely nuts to just give up on something like this.
Also, I'm going to shoot you some extra paypal moolah because I feel guilty about taking up so much of your time. Thanks again.
blankdiploma in the post "25 Texture Challenge - fleshed out into an actual challenge for those of you struggling with how to render different materials"
2016-08-08 10:26
I'm absolutely willing to dive in head-first. It's after double-digit hours and still feeling like I haven't learned anything that I start getting frustrated, which is why these are such a stark contrast to all the other exercises. I can do form intersections for days and no matter how crappy the end result looks, I still feel like I got something out of it, because I can tell the difference between what I did and what's "correct". After that, it's just a matter of practice.
I dusted off my sketchbook to take a crack at a texture tonight. I'm using peanuts for reference.
Observations: Not a complicated texture. The actual shell material is mostly smooth with a little roughness. There's longitudinal and transverse ridges, and between them are shallow depressions that are usually rounded rectangles or triangles. On an actual peanut, the longitudinal ridges converge at the two poles. There are almost no sharp edges, just smooth rounded shapes and gentle tone transitions with occasional minor defects.
My attempt at the first square: http://i.imgur.com/TMEP3H0.jpg
So, clearly, I have no idea how to represent those smooth transitions in a way that looks remotely correct. I stippled the depressions, and it looks okay, I guess, but what the heck do I do with the ridges? You can see in the upper right of the square where I started trying to apply a similar texture to them... but it just seemed to be making things worse, so I stopped. Frankly, the texture doesn't really look right in the depressions, either, but I didn't know what else to do - I'm pretty sure cross-hatching would have been worse.
I tried a few variations on the right side. I don't think a single one of them looks close to correct, nor can I see any way to tweak them in a way that fits the reference better. This is what I'm talking about: I see the peanut. I see the bumps. I see the shadows made by the bumps. When it comes time to translate that information into solid black lines, I'm completely baffled. This feels like a basic skill that's just as important as the observational ones you listed above - isn't it the other half of the process? Understanding the texture is the input to my brain, but clearly I need to be able to output, also.
blankdiploma in the post "25 Texture Challenge - fleshed out into an actual challenge for those of you struggling with how to render different materials"
2016-08-06 07:30
Fair points all around. I actually forgot that I never submitted lesson 2 - the entire thing's been completed for months. It's been a rough summer at work; I wasn't hiding them out of shame or anything. Just got distracted by life.
I've posted them in the Lesson 2 thread. (https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtFundamentals/comments/486pvw/lesson_2_organic_forms_contour_lines_dissections/d66gk11)
My frustration is mostly related to the medium, I think. I do a lot of practicing digitally, but with nothing but a black pen and white paper I'm at a complete loss when I try to recreate anything without obvious edges. I miss my opacity slider.
You're right that I'm looking for "secrets", but to me it feels more like I'm being asked to solve algebra problems without first learning to count. Numbers aren't "secrets" in that sense - they're the most basic level of necessary knowledge required to move on to more advanced techniques, and that's what I feel like I'm missing with textures.
I'm not convinced that telling somebody "Yes, numbers exist, but i'm not going to tell you what they are. You have to invent base 10 arithmetic on your own," would be very effective, but I'll also concede that math and art clearly aren't the same thing. It's just an analogy to explain my frustration.
blankdiploma in the post "Lesson 2: Organic Forms, Contour Lines, Dissections and Form Intersections"
2016-08-06 07:21
Alright, here's my long-overdue Homework 2.
The arrows and blobby shapes felt fairly natural once I got into the groove, and the form intersections were a lot of fun.
The textures were absolute torture, but I've already ranted about them enough. I spent 30+ hours on the two pages of dissections and by the end of it I was so burned out and frustrated that I had to draw some that aren't really textures, just to keep myself sane. Sorry. Still tried to include texture information in them.
I also included some random sketchbook pages that have a couple extra little attempts I did at trying to understand texture. They weren't very helpful, honestly.
I should note that I've done a decent amount of texture work digitally and it's so much less frustrating. These pages are several months old - I'll see if I can scrounge up something that's a little more recent, but I've pretty much avoided physical media the whole summer.
blankdiploma in the post "25 Texture Challenge - fleshed out into an actual challenge for those of you struggling with how to render different materials"
2016-08-06 01:26
I have to say, I'm kind of disappointed by this challenge. I was eagerly awaiting more detailed instructions from you about texture, because the related section in Lesson 2 felt like an impossible difficulty cliff, but... I'm not seeing a lot of new information here :(
I feel like all the step-by-step examples you've provided fall into a VERY narrow category of texture, which I would describe as "a collection of forms that are clearly distinguishable to the naked eye." Gravel, fur, scales: All things that are composed of some kind of discrete shape repeated over the whole surface, and more importantly, that cast shadows on each other. This makes it very easy to scale from dark to light, and I would say I'm moderately competent at it.
But what about everything else? Metal, asphalt, cloth, skin, brick, wood, water, bone - the vast majority of everyday textures are NOT made up of a bunch of shapes that are big enough to draw individually. This is where I struggle, and I really wish you had included examples that touched on these in some way. I feel like there's some fundamental language of cross-hatching/stippling/other shading methods used to convey subtle texture that I don't understand in the least, and I have no idea how to practice them. You made a couple minor comments about one type of cross-hatching (evenly-spaced parallel lines) in early lessons, but when I look at any of the really good student submissions they're clearly utilizing techniques that haven't even been discussed.
I can't shake the feeling that there's some kind of foundation of shading techniques that I'm totally lacking and should have been a requirement before attempting this challenge or lesson 2.
blankdiploma in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"
2016-08-15 01:02
Oh, thank god. I'm doing it right, then. Just wanted to make sure I wasn't about to reinforce an atrocious habit 500 times. Thanks!