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Uncomfortable in the post "LESSON 3: Drawing Plants"

2014-11-21 23:09

All I could think to do was to draw another example. The one in the lesson isn't.. the greatest, I guess. Here's a coconut tree.

By the third step, you're pretty much done. Frankly, I probably went a bit too far with the lines on the less important leaves. When you see one of those leaves, you should not see a bunch of tiny pieces. You should see the overall form, and then draw it as though that is exactly what you see. Not like it's a faint construction sketch. At each step, focus on the purpose of that step - don't try and pave the way for the next one, and in doing so, fumble it.

Uncomfortable in the post "EXTRA CURRICULAR: When to use 1, 2, 3 Point Perspective - For those struggling with the box exercises and challenge"

2014-11-21 18:59

Glad to hear it. I don't have any intentions of stopping! It is rather time consuming though, but not so much that I'd want to hit the brakes any time soon.

Uncomfortable in the post "LESSON 2: Organic Forms, Contour Lines, Dissections and Form Intersections"

2014-11-21 18:57

Looking good as always! I really liked your dissections, though the one with the little wriggly things coming out is creepy as all hell. your form intersections are pretty good too, though be careful with your ellipses/circles. They seem to be your weakest point.

Onwards to lesson 3!

Uncomfortable in the post "OPTIONAL CHALLENGE: 250 Boxes"

2014-11-21 18:55

Nope, I only wanted the organic. Looking good, too. Feel free to move onto lesson 2.

Uncomfortable in the post "OPTIONAL CHALLENGE: 250 Boxes"

2014-11-21 16:23

You're getting there. There's definitely improvement between the first boxes and the last - though later on, as you start to improve, you also start to make things sketchier. I'm still glad to see the improvement, but now you have to work on bringing back the sense of intent from the ones where you were drawing only a single stroke per line.

Another thing I noticed is that early on, your lines weren't always connecting. Be mindful of that.

There is one other thing I noticed - most of your boxes are oriented very similarly. It looks to me like you had a bit of a mental block that was stopping you from spinning them around too dramatically.

I'd like to see one more page of the organic/varied perspective boxes, in proper rectangular frames. Push yourself to explore all different sorts of orientations for the boxes. You may want to take a look at /u/Whirly123's work on lesson 1 to give you a rough example of the different kind of orientations and compositions you can create.

Uncomfortable in the post "OPTIONAL CHALLENGE: 250 Boxes"

2014-11-20 21:05

Yeah, that's absolutely fine. Once you've drawn your thing, feel free to go over the lines where you want them to be thicker.

Uncomfortable in the post "LESSON 3: Drawing Plants"

2014-11-20 20:42

See, it's more that these exercises aren't about drawing beautiful images. Hopefully that is the result, but it's more about understanding the forms that you see, and building those skills so that down the line, you can more effectively draw these things without relying as much on construction lines.

So always keep in mind that this is a training exercise, whose purpose is to help you learn. Not a step-by-step of how to produce something beautiful.

Uncomfortable in the post "LESSON 3: Drawing Plants"

2014-11-20 16:58

Hm... that's puzzling. Your form is still rather weak, but you nailed the foliage in that tree, it looks awesome.

It looks to me like you're worried about drawing lines that aren't actually in your reference image - like the construction lines. For now, don't worry too much about drawing the construction shapes and forms faintly and gingerly. Draw them in boldly and as closed forms. Complete spheres, solid cylinders, etc. The core of that tree trunk is a cylinder, but I don't see the construction lines of where it closes at the bottom.

Also, with the mushrooms - especially the one on the right, your lay-in for the cap was very loose. I can see how it is composed of multiple lines, in a rather sketchy manner. I think your biggest weakness is specifically with cylinders, though. Maybe practice drawing a few tube-like forms that twist and turn a bit, like stems and tree trunks. Remove them from the plant context, and draw them like the organic forms with contour lines from Lesson 2.

Uncomfortable in the post "OPTIONAL CHALLENGE: 250 Boxes"

2014-11-20 02:54

That's awesome - I'm sure you'll learn a lot about composition and leading the eye. I haven't taken a design class before, but I have heard about how much it can help in other areas, including illustration - since composition is all about looking at a piece as though it is composed of abstract 2D shapes.

Uncomfortable in the post "OPTIONAL CHALLENGE: 250 Boxes"

2014-11-20 02:20

Very, VERY nice. You can see a clear progression and improvement from the first pages to the last. I love the corrections that you're doing, they show a lot of focus and care, and gives me a real sense of your motivation to improve. Edit: Woops, I totally forgot that I actually said to do this - but whatever! I'm still really glad to see it.

I do notice that early on you have in some cases a tendency to accidentally make your 3d parallel lines (that is, on the page they're not actually 2d) converge in the wrong direction. If you've got them converging towards the front face, then the object is getting smaller as it comes closer to us which is wrong. You missed these in your corrections, but I don't actually see them at all in your last page so I think you caught on - at least subconsciously.

Another great improvement I see is with that confidence you were worried about previously. You're no longer drawing over the same line a dozen times, your boxes are clean, direct and full of intent.

I am really proud of your progress, and I look forward to seeing how you do in the next lessons.

Uncomfortable in the post "LESSON 3: Drawing Plants"

2014-11-19 17:52

Donno if it's standard, but that's sure as hell what I do. If I tried to draw in every individual leaf I guarantee you I would just die at my desk. This is a pretty good example of when I was 'preparing' myself to write up this lesson, since I hadn't done the whole observation-from-life thing in a while.

Don't take it as a strong example of what to do, because I was just kind of finding my stride - but it is basically how I think.

Specific details are very, very overwhelming. What we are doing when we draw something, aside from understanding its form and construction, is composing the image itself. We are trying to communicate what the object is to a viewer, and in doing so we have to set up a hierarchy of information. Some information isn't important at all - you could draw three leaves and just indicate/hint at the others, and you'd be communicating the idea pretty well.

What's important when you're drawing something is to balance areas of high-contrast/noise/detail with simple, clean, blank areas. The eye needs places it can rest, and it doesn't want to be screamed at.

Sometimes your reference lends itself to that, sometimes you have to make those calls yourself, deciding what details to ignore and what to emphasize.

Uncomfortable in the post "LESSON 3: Drawing Plants"

2014-11-19 17:27

Your lay-ins are alright. Page 1 has a few issues, where you're not closing your shapes/forms. If a form isn't closed, it's automatically going to look really flat and won't contain much volume. Page 2 is better, because you're actually closing those forms.

The stuff on page 5 is pretty good. On the right, you've got a lot of really nice play between complex and noisy areas with large swathes of empty leaves. The trunks/stalks/stems/whatever of the plant are looking a little odd though. Kind of irregular. When approaching things like that, just focus on the cylinder/tube shape that's being twisted around. Maybe look into the texture and see if you can find some nice natural contour lines to throw in. If you can't, just toss in some contour lines for the hell of it. The point where it's overlapping with the soil in the pot doesn't look quite right though. I think the soil would be bulging upwards, covering that end of the trunk.

One thing that I do notice you doing - which I've seen from other people - is that you're focusing too much on lighting. The 3D aspects of the drawing - volume, contour, etc. should be coming through before you start shading things. The edges show how forms turn in space, shading merely emphasizes what's already there. So if you rely on shading too early and fail to work in that 3D structure at the earlier stage, the shading will be attempting to emphasize something that isn't really there.

A good example of this is the tree on page 6. Those leaves have no structure, they're just kind of there. Often you'll find clusters of leaves forming a sort of squashed ball. The trunk's solidity is also being undermined by the hatching - it no longer feels like it's a solid object, with all of the rough and frayed edges.

The lily on page 7 looks fantastic. The shading does weaken it a little bit, but I still get a sense for the petals peeling back in space. Page 9's not bad either.

What I would recommend for you is to do at least three or four pages of plants with no shading at all. Focus on the structure and form, and try to convey that 3D-ness just using the edges and contour lines.

When you do go back to shading though, be mindful of how you apply your crosshatching. It's kind of messy right now. Hatching should almost always be very regular, almost mechanical. The lines should be parallel, or if they're following a curving surface, they should curve equally like a flock of birds flying together. No scribbling, no randomness. Do your best to convey intent.

Uncomfortable in the post "Why do I recommend doing the exercises in ink vs digitally?"

2014-11-18 22:23

Man, I can't even imagine working under that level of stress. I'm still shy when it comes to thinking about doing live streams and the like.

Uncomfortable in the post "OPTIONAL CHALLENGE: 250 Boxes"

2014-11-18 18:29

The type of perspective you use is not a decision you make - rather, it's governed by the orientation of the object you are drawing. If an object is exactly perpendicular to your view (looking at a box straight on, for example), and is not rotated up or down, it is drawn in one point perspective - because the horizontal lines are automatically parallel to the horizon, and the vertical lines are automatically perpendicular to it. The only lines left to converge anywhere are those going off into the distance.

If your object starts to rotate horizontally, however, and none of the horizontal lines are now parallel to your horizon, you are now introducing another convergence. Now you've got two point perspective.

If you start rotating it vertically, the verticals are no longer perpendicular to your horizon, and they start to converge as well, either above or below the horizon depending on its orientation. Now you've got three point perspective.

This exercise is all about exploring different rotations and orientations of boxes, so you'll definitely see a lot of 2 point and 3 point perspective, but the goal of this is not to actually plot out your perspective. You're drawing it freehand, keeping in mind the different sets of "parallel" lines (of which there should be 3) and the fact that they either converge or remain parallel, depending on their orientation relative to how they're being viewed.

After writing all this, I decided a diagram would be better - but what I ended up drawing became more of a mini-lesson, so I uploaded it as its own thread. When to use 1, 2, 3 point perspective.

Uncomfortable in the post "Who Are You? Introduce Yourselves!"

2014-11-17 16:39

I know exactly how you feel, and I definitely think these lessons will be able to help you. Just be sure to try and push everything you've learned so far to the backburner, and approach the lessons as a blank slate.

Best of luck, and I look forward to seeing your homework!

Uncomfortable in the post "Who Are You? Introduce Yourselves!"

2014-11-17 04:40

Based on the kinds of things you're doing in class and your personal goals, I think the lessons here should help you out quite a bit. Just be sure to do all the lessons, and read them carefully. I know from experience that it can be rather difficult to balance learning from two different sources, since they might contradict each other at times. Hopefully they won't, of course.

Uncomfortable in the post "Why do I recommend doing the exercises in ink vs digitally?"

2014-11-16 22:39

I support your choice in idols!

Uncomfortable in the post "So you've decided to go back to the basics. We're here to help."

2014-11-16 21:59

Technically, you're free to do the exercises however you see fit, and while it's easier for me to critique when they're done as I recommend, I'll still do my best to help you along.

That said, someone else asked the same question and I gave them a very elaborate answer. I just dug it out of my inbox and posted it to the subreddit here, so check it out.

Uncomfortable in the post "Who Are You? Introduce Yourselves!"

2014-11-15 16:51

We're happy to have you along. I like that you mentioned the bit about erasing a lot and redrawing. A lot of the core lessons here focus on working in ink - reason being, I've found that working in pencil undermines one's confidence and growth. As human beings, we're very adaptable to adversity - so shifting to a less forgiving medium often results in big results! That is, after the initial struggle.

Uncomfortable in the post "Who Are You? Introduce Yourselves!"

2014-11-15 04:25

It's always nice to see people who have a sort of dormant desire to draw crawling out of the woodworks. I really hope you'll find what you're looking for in these lessons.

Uncomfortable in the post "Who Are You? Introduce Yourselves!"

2014-11-15 02:55

Well we're glad to have you! I hope you'll find the lessons here to be helpful.

Uncomfortable in the post "Who Are You? Introduce Yourselves!"

2014-11-15 01:48

Nice work! I really like the 'Gravida Zentangle' piece, it's very interesting and well executed.

The whole copying thing you see in classes is very common. It's also extremely important, but some classes do it much better than others. The important thing is that when copying that material, in doing so you should be striving to understand its structure and construction. This builds both your observational skills and your analytical skills - and once you understand something, you can more effectively reproduce it in different contexts. For example, study a wasp from a few angles until you understand it, and you'll be able to draw it decently from any angle. That's the approach we take here.

As for your age - it's never too late. Unless of course you're on your dying bed, and even that's debatable. Even if you one day want to do it professionally, I don't think your age will get in your way. Perhaps your personal responsibilities might, but that's a whole other story.

Anyways, welcome! And it looks like you asked a question in the Lesson 1 thread, so I'll go answer that.

Uncomfortable in the post "LESSON 4: Drawing Insects, Arachnids and Other Creepy Crawlies"

2014-11-14 21:57

I took a stab at drawing that roach. Not gonna lie, I had a really rough time with it. Not entirely sure why it was so hard, might be because of the strange curvature of the shell.

At first glance, the shell looks really shiny, so I can see your urge to go for those solid black shadows. It's extremely rare that you'd ever go for those, though. With a closer inspection of the shell, you can see that it's got all these bumps and divets, and little planar shifts where the surface of the shell bends subtly. Because of that, I felt sections of crosshatching that go at different angles was the best way to communicate all of the different planes.

As for the rest of your work, it's better, but you're relying far too much on your shading still. Do another two pages, but this time - no shading at all. Convey the bends in the form by relying only on contour lines and the particular fashion in which the edges and lines of your drawing bend. Kind of like how you can technically give the impression of a cube without drawing the internal lines.

Uncomfortable in the post "LESSON 3: Drawing Plants"

2014-11-14 20:46

Hm.. It is starting to look better. Now do another two pages of the regular full drawings, but remember not to go overboard with shading or detail. Sometimes it helps to draw a circle over your focal point and restrict yourself to adding extra shading/detail only within that circle. Check Lesson 4's animal demo for a better idea of what I mean.

For these two pages, I think it would be best if you pick from the ones you already did, and simply redo them. That way we can have a direct comparison and see whether you are demonstrating a better understanding of 3D form.

Uncomfortable in the post "Who Are You? Introduce Yourselves!"

2014-11-14 04:58

That St Michael piece is really striking. I think adding to the underlying structure of your work will help bring out your other strengths. The Dynamic Sketching stuff should definitely help you out. Welcome aboard!

Uncomfortable in the post "Who Are You? Introduce Yourselves!"

2014-11-13 17:33

We're glad to have you on board! I look forward to seeing more from you.

Uncomfortable in the post "Who Are You? Introduce Yourselves!"

2014-11-13 17:32

Your stuff is great! The drawings and paintings on skin are especially impressive. It must be tricky working on skin, what with the irregularity and curvature of the surface and the natural oils/sweat.

Uncomfortable in the post "How to Draw the Head from Any Angle, by Stan Prokopenko (Proko), courtesy of /u/Stoic_Viking"

2014-11-13 17:28

Nice, I'll definitely check that out!

Uncomfortable in the post "Who Are You? Introduce Yourselves!"

2014-11-12 17:03

A game studio in Halifax, Nova Scotia offered me a job largely as a concept artist/illustrator. The studio is an indie operation however, so they look for people who can 'wear multiple hats' so to speak. I also have a lot of experience with programming and game development (having worked as a game programmer for over a year, and having done that sort of thing in school) so I'll be working in that capacity as well, when necessary.

Uncomfortable in the post "Who Are You? Introduce Yourselves!"

2014-11-12 17:00

You know, you'd be surprised. At its surface, programming and art obviously polar opposites, but if you scratch under the surface and look at things like design (as in, the design of costume, characters, environments, architecture, vehicles, etc.) I've found quite a bit of similarity.

Generally we write programs that serve as solutions to problems (in the general sense). We carry a toolbox of design patterns, conditional and loop structures, whatever prebuilt functions the language offers us, libraries, etc. and we have to figure out how to apply those tools in a way that will solve the problem efficiently.

In a similar fashion, when you have to solve a design problem - say, design a vehicle that would be able to drive on mars - we carry with us a toolbox full of visual elements and details that we've gathered from studying reference material. This is usually referred to as a visual library. For example, you may have studied various shock absorption mechanics, different kinds of engines, wheel construction, etc. You combine this knowledge you have tucked away with your sensibilities regarding proportion and other inspiration you may have, and from that you create a solution.

It's for this reason that analytical minds are highly prized when it comes to concept design. It's more of a matter of being able to see the similarities between the kinds of problems you solve now, and a much wider scope to which those same skills could be applied.

Of course, all of that gets developed over time, but I'm sure that if you keep with it, you'll come to understand what I mean.

And if it helps, I'm a programmer too. I worked for a year as a web developer, and a little more than that as a game programmer. I started to move away from doing that professionally after that point, when I started to pursue all of this art stuff, but I still do it in my spare time.

Uncomfortable in the post "Who Are You? Introduce Yourselves!"

2014-11-12 16:49

The time between lessons is usually a week or so, but it's not always consistent. Also I'm not sure which topics I intend to go into after drawing people. I have been trying to stay away from things that I would best communicate through digital painting, largely because once people see that they tend to rush towards it and ignore all of the traditional drawing. Still, I will have to get to it fairly soon.

The coming weeks may see a bit of a slowdown though. I just got offered a job in a different city, and I have to start planning my move.

Uncomfortable in the post "Who Are You? Introduce Yourselves!"

2014-11-12 06:37

I think you're the first graffiti enthusiast to drop by. It's definitely nice to have a variety in the kinds of art people come from, considering the vast majority here seem to be more interested in game art.

I think the lessons here will be able to help you out a fair bit, since we focus a lot on how to show form in 3D space.

Uncomfortable in the post "Who Are You? Introduce Yourselves!"

2014-11-12 06:09

Man, your drawings - especially the stuff done from life - is damn impressive. Going through the stuff that we've been tackling here will no doubt help you get even better, but I think you'll probably start to benefit more noticeably when we get into the topics of rendering, colour/light, and composition.

Uncomfortable in the post "LESSON 3: Drawing Plants"

2014-11-12 05:15

Yeah, just the linework. Think about it as the form intersection exercise, but applied to an actual object. I want to see you convey 3D form without having to resort to shading. Also, about slowing down - it's more about giving yourself the time to think and plan, rather than actual speed.

Uncomfortable in the post "LESSON 3: Drawing Plants"

2014-11-12 04:50

Haha, your pen is dying 'cause you're torturing the poor thing! I think you're not putting enough time/thought into the lay-ins and the early stages, and your instinct seems to be to compensate for the weakness in form with detail and lighting. As we saw from things like the organic forms with contour lines, you should be able to see form in the linework - the shading only reinforces what is already there.

With your lay-ins, be a little less sketchy, and a little more deliberate. Where you see a cylinder, start with the ellipse on the top (a couple rounds, not a cyclone), then draw the other ellipse, and connect them with two solid lines. From the looks of it, you're in sketch-mode, which naturally seems to mean a billion marks on the page. Slow down, think about everything you do before you do it.

Your pitcher plant lay-in looks pretty good. Still probably a little sketchier, but it's fairly clear and it seems to start suggesting its own volume. Your palm tree is on the other hand, pretty weak. It's not giving you any idea of 3D space, or even concrete form. The palm leaves aren't defined. Also, the trunk is not closed off, so it doesn't give us the sense of being a form at all.

I like the maple tree lay-in , it's simple but it summarizes everything that's going on.

As for the full drawings, once again the pitcher plant is pretty good, but you made a mistake in the way you approach your hatching for the shading. It's still pretty scribbly (though I see you did the texture exercise, and it's looking pretty decent albeit a bit rushed). The bigger problem though is that your hatching doesn't follow the contour of the form. This is really important. The contour lines we explored in lesson 2 are not limited to what you're drawing, but also how you draw. Hatching lines can reinforce the curvature of a surface if they run along it - but conversely, if they go against that curvature, the object will appear completely flat. This also works for paint strokes, once we get to that.

I'd like you to do two pages of plants, but don't go into lighting or detail. Focus on their structure and 3D form. Take advantage of natural contour lines (and if you feel it helps you understand the form, feel free to throw in one or two of your own if there aren't any), and remember to be deliberate with what you draw. Think before you make a mark, and absolutely conserve your lines.

Uncomfortable in the post "OPTIONAL CHALLENGE: 250 Boxes"

2014-11-11 16:46

That scifi piece looks pretty damn snazzy!

I suppose we are eventually going to have to venture into the more digital-painty territory, since it works best when teaching composition and rendering. I've been avoiding it til now though, because I didn't want to have a sudden inundation of students jumping straight into that, because they think it looks the coolest.

We might have to throw in some sort of a hard prerequisite - if you don't have the badges for Dynamic Sketching completion, no entry! All this kind of makes me want to build a dedicated website for this stuff, where those lessons can actually be locked until their prerequisites have been completed. I have a lot of background as a web developer, so I might do that in the future, but I fear that moving away from Reddit in any capacity might be a bad move.

Uncomfortable in the post "OPTIONAL CHALLENGE: 250 Boxes"

2014-11-11 16:28

Man, I thought you DIED. It's good to have you back. I hope the mentorship was good!

Your boxes are looking great. I donno about messy, aside from overshooting lines a little bit (which at least in this context looks a bit charming), they look pretty good to me. Obviously there were a few hilariously bad ones (95, 154, 174) but it's not like that matters. I did notice though that it wasn't until the first page that it looks like you started to force yourself to start turning the form more and exploring different angles. That might actually be something I might suggest to people who are struggling with this challenge - to start off with very little variation, as a warmup, and then start turning things about.

Uncomfortable in the post "Who Are You? Introduce Yourselves!"

2014-11-10 23:12

I hope you get a lot out of these lessons, and I look forward to seeing your work!

Uncomfortable in the post "LESSON 4: Drawing Insects, Arachnids and Other Creepy Crawlies"

2014-11-10 01:31

The wasp (#6) is definitely the strongest one there. The attention goes directly to the darkest areas (the head and upper abdomen), and the rest is left fairly simple and clean, aside from those few stripes on the thorax which add a bit of extra, but non-show-stealing points of interest.

I also think that you used the segmentation on the thorax to your advantage - they're natural contour lines, so they naturally make the form seem more three dimensional. From what I can see, for this wasp you drew the bulky areas and then carved into them to find the actual more accurate shape of the wasp's body.

This is missing in, say, the scorpion (#13). The core of the body is okay, but as you go further down the tail, the lay-in gets weaker, and the rest of the form suffers. Without the solid scaffolding, the darker linework comes out flat and desperate.

The spider (#19) is an interesting case study. Overall, I like it, because the forms are nice and rounded, and it gives the overall feel of the spider fairly well. I do however think that when you were drawing it, you seemed a bit timid and perhaps too careful. Probably drawing with your wrist, rather than drawing complete, closed forms/shapes from your elbow or shoulder. I really do like how you've got the darker texture/shading fading out as you reach the ends of the legs, that's a really cool effect. On the downside though, the head of the spider gets really muddy, since it pretty much ends up all being dark dark dark. Consider thinking about how you're going to balance those lights and darks before you start putting them in, so that the major elements of the spider read clearly.

I would like you to do two more pages of these. Overall, I think you're showing a lot of strengths, but I can't shake the feeling that you have a lot more to offer, if I just push you a little more.

Think on the following:

As for your question about the hairy spider, I'm REALLY glad you asked, because it is relevant to what I mentioned above. Surprisingly enough, to draw a spider like that you don't have to draw a bazillion little hairs all over his body. In fact, you only need to break up the outlines themselves, and you can leave most of the inside of the forms relatively empty.

There's a hierarchy of places we look when we want to discern the surface texture of an object. Highest on the list is the edges of that form. Is the outline clean and smooth? Does it curve or is it straight and flat? Is it broken and are little bits coming off it?

Only after we look at that, do we start looking inside the shape for extra, often unnecessary information. Keeping this in mind will keep your drawings clean and will allow you to create clear focal points without giving the viewer less information than they need about the object they're looking at.

Uncomfortable in the post "Who Are You? Introduce Yourselves!"

2014-11-09 17:20

Looks like you do a lot of studies! I love seeing that. I think the lessons here should definitely help you along, though. Good luck!

Uncomfortable in the post "Announcement: New curriculum and some questions for the community"

2014-11-07 17:11

I didn't think that'd be possible, but I figured it out. Thanks for the suggestion!

Uncomfortable in the post "Announcement: New curriculum and some questions for the community"

2014-11-06 20:11

So I pretty much went with this, and used some of my web-dev knowledge to spice it up a bit. Differently coloured icons/badges seem to be a bit easier to understand at a glance, and they look quite a bit fancier too. Here's hoping they give people a bit of incentive, too. People like achievements, right?

Uncomfortable in the post "LESSON 3: Drawing Plants"

2014-11-03 20:50

For trees like that, instead of focusing on drawing little closed shapes for each leaf, look at the shadows instead. Designing your shadow shapes carefully can still give you the sense of leaves (because you'd have little divets in the shadow shape in the shape of leaves) but very much reduces the density of detail, which is the primary issue with this one.

This is how I approached it when I did this assignment, though I found using a brush pen helped me cover those shadow shapes a little more easily.

You've done quite well, though. I especially like 7 and 8, and the rectangular frame was a nice touch on 17. My neck, however, hates you. Rotate the images next time!

Go ahead and move on to the next lesson.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 7: The Head and Face from the Front"

2014-11-02 11:33

You are very welcome.

Uncomfortable in the post "LESSON 4: Drawing Insects, Arachnids and Other Creepy Crawlies"

2014-11-01 20:29

Nope, I think you're comfortably bobbing well above the surface! These look great. Especially loving the ants and the spiders, but they're all pretty much fantastic. The only page that seems a bit weaker would be number 5 - they look a bit flat compared to the rest.

I really like the way you shade, mostly how you use a lot of regular/repeated patterning. The drop shadows come out nice and flat, which in turn makes the rest of the object pop and feel round and bulky.

I can see that you did learn a lot, especially with your 'shading experiments'. You went a bit too far with your tarantula and were heading off in a weird direction with the scorpion, but you clearly were aware of that and learned from your mistakes.

In the next lesson, you'll see a method of drawing a circle around the focal point and shading/detailing the fuck out of that area, and leaving everything outside the ellipse blank. You might find that helps you maintain a clear focal point and find a good balance between simplicity and detail.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 7: The Head and Face from the Front"

2014-10-31 17:19

Ahh.. I think I get it. He's not incorrect by any means, it's just that the approach is completely different - so he compensates for certain differences from the method I was taught with other changes. I'll give the method a shot, it definitely seems very flexible.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 7: The Head and Face from the Front"

2014-10-31 16:28

Nice find! That whole oval concept is really neat. I do have a concern about how he deals with the depth of the head, but I'll get into that in my next lesson.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 7: The Head and Face from the Front"

2014-10-30 19:20

Long time no lesson, folks. This one's in honour of national self portrait day, which is this Saturday (November 1st). Technically speaking, it's national (American) not international, but hell - I'm a Canadian and I don't give a damn. I want in on it too!

As with all lesson sets, be sure to complete the basics lessons before moving onto this one. Completing the Dynamic Sketching lessons will also help, though it is not mandatory.

  1. LESSON 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

  2. LESSON 2: Organic Forms, Contour Lines, Dissections and Form Intersections

Notes

Bonus Content

Homework

Don't forget, November 1st is National Self Portrait day! And as always, all questions and homework submissions go in the comments.

Uncomfortable in the post "LESSON 3: Drawing Plants"

2014-10-29 03:24

The lines definitely look way better. Still a bit concerned about the shorter lines (in the handwriting) but we'll see how it goes.

Uncomfortable in the post "LESSON 3: Drawing Plants"

2014-10-29 02:10

The tablet you purchased is just fine, and will last you for several years once you get the driver issues sorted out - which like I said, are super common. I've got the Intuos Pro right now, and when I installed the latest drivers, I encountered the same clusterfuck.

I still think you should work on paper for now, while you do the lessons from /r/ArtFundamentals, but once you get your tablet working properly, you should still play around with it and get used to it.