Uncomfortable in the post "Who Are You? Introduce Yourselves!"
2014-09-15 20:26
The more detailed the better! I really enjoy reading about the routes people have taken to get where they are now.
As for your work, I think you're putting yourself down far more than you deserve, but I can understand why. When you're getting nothing but praise from those around you, it's very easy to fall into the trap of actually believing it. So, to compensate, you insist that you are a hack and a fraud, that nothing of yours is original or whatever else.
Nothing exists in a vacuum, and every piece of art is inspired by something. Whether it is by the styles of other artists, observations in architecture or machinery, or the beauty of nature - there is something that inspires everyone. You are not copying, you are not deriving, you are building something new and original out of a few bits and pieces from other artists, and a lot from yourself. The panda thing is probably the closest to your self-criticisms, and even that - surprisingly enough - is common in various facets of illustration and entertainment design, what with the common use of photobashing.
Don't forget that a piece of artwork is composed of many aspects. Composition, linework, colour palette, and the concept/idea/message itself. The majority of that is coming from you.
Uncomfortable in the post "Who Are You? Introduce Yourselves!"
2014-09-15 20:16
I hope you can get started soon! Don't forget though, while I'm not forcing anyone to use any particular medium, I am attempting to breed a culture of peer pressure to encourage everyone to use traditional media. It's all very clandestine and sneaky, but for good reason. The benefits of first applying these lessons traditionally are enormous. And that's coming from someone who has worked digitally for most of his life. ..That somebody is me.
Uncomfortable in the post "Who Are You? Introduce Yourselves!"
2014-09-15 18:16
Very pretty! Your meticulous attention to detail will come in handy in the future, especially when it comes to creating surface textures.
Uncomfortable in the post "Who Are You? Introduce Yourselves!"
2014-09-15 17:52
I'll get us started.
It's hard to say when I started taking art more seriously - I guess it's always been a bit of a sliding scale. As with a lot of people, I loved drawing from a very early age (I remember when I was eight, insisting that I'd one day become either a cartoonist or a game programmer). Still, I'd say I started taking it seriously (drawing almost every day and posting things online) when I was thirteen or fourteen.
Unfortunately, most of that time was spent wasted, as I was almost entirely self-taught, and I came from a heavily anime-inspired background. I didn't start taking things truly seriously (doing studies and other things that were not directly intended to produce presentable works of art) until I was 21 years old, and that was largely because a friend of mine who lived in Los Angeles and attended an art school there introduced me to that world.
I joined eventually a group sketchblog that consisted of that friend and a number of her schoolmates, and it drove me to push myself much harder. The first thing I did upon joining was embarking on a personal challenge to do at least one study a day for 31 days straight. I managed to complete 36 studies in that time.
This was all while I was working as a game programmer for a studio that produced educational games (seems that I at least achieved one of my eight-year-old goals... sort of). Around this time one year ago (I was just short of 24 years old), I decided to quit that job, pack up my things and throw myself across the continent to Los Angeles, to attend Concept Design Academy, where I learned a lot of the things you'll find in my lessons. They are, of course, only a fragment of what my instructors there taught, because I could only absorb so much in the six months I attended. Unfortunately, tourist visas (I'm Canadian) allow for a fairly limited stay, and CDA, being a small private unaccredited school was not able to provide student visas.
Despite my short stay there, I think I made the right decision in spending one of the two terms completely focused on relearning my fundamentals. Up until this point, I had been drawing for nearly a decade, so it's safe to say I thought I knew how to draw 3D shapes and the correct proportions for a human figure. I was dead wrong. The best thing I did for myself was to temporarily tuck my natural arrogance into my back pocket and tell myself that I knew nothing.
So now, I'm back home, teetering on the brink of insanity as I finish off my portfolio. I intend to send it off to game studios in Toronto soon, in the hopes that I can get back to moving on with my life. The industry is extremely competitive, with an enormous number of skilled artists floating about, so it's not going to be easy. Frankly, I don't think I'm ready, but I don't think I will ever be ready. All I can do is dive in.
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Here's a gallery of my old work. Keep in mind these were all produced over the course of three years, with very little change in skill level. This was before I decided to start taking things truly seriously.
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Here's a gallery of my current body of work, between December 2013 and now.
Uncomfortable in the post "LESSON 5: Drawing Animals"
2014-09-14 02:29
If you haven't completed the previous lessons in this set, please do so before moving onto this one.
Notes
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Strongly recommended that this lesson be done traditionally with a 0.5mm felt tip marker. Your results will likely not be as helpful if it's done digitally. Of course, it's up to you.
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If you've done the previous lessons, you should be building up your ability to ignore the overwhelming detail in your subject and break it down into its simplest shapes and forms. This is going to be a hell of a lot more of that.
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If you can, try doing this at a zoo - or at least, try doing the 'quick warmup sketches' that aim at exploring the animal's proportions there. Seeing the animals live definitely helps understand how they move around, and how they're built. It's always hard to draw living things from life, since they're always moving - but the majority of animals are exhibited in groups, which means that if one sleeping zebra gets up, there's a lot more zebra butts that are still lying down. That's an issue that is also common to drawing people, and the solution is much the same. The world is just a zoo for people!
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As always, even if your drawing feels like crap, keep pushing through it. It may look like crap at the end as well, but everyone makes mistakes, and everyone needs to learn how to recover from them and save the drawing. Or how not to do it.
Bonus Content
- As always, here's the album of my own sketches. The cassowaries, rhinos and lions were done from photo reference, and all the others were done live at the LA Zoo. I've included the shittier pages (I could never figure out those goddamn warty pigs, and the buggers kept on moving!) to show you that not everything comes out well. In fact, most things tend to come out badly. BUT IT IS FOR THE LEARNING THAT WE KEEP DOING THEM! HUZZAH!
Homework
- Minimum of 8 pages of animals. A bunch of quicker warm-up sketches, exploring the general form, construction and proportion of the animals. How the segments of their body relate to one another and such. Then do two or three more detailed drawings. The lesson sheet says one animal per page, but you're welcome to devote more pages to a single animal - but I do want you to do a LOT of exploration of each animal. As much as you can.
As always, all questions and homework submissions go in the comments.
Uncomfortable in the post "So you've decided to go back to the basics. We're here to help."
2014-09-13 16:41
Yes to both of those questions, but of course I'm not going to stop you if you decide you want to jump ahead. I will however judge you quietly, and possibly have one of those snarky "i-told-you-so-but-i-wont-explicitly-say-so" tones while critiquing and telling you to go back to earlier lessons if it just so happens that you do need to.
Ultimately, each lesson builds on top of the one before it, even if it doesn't seem entirely related. Furthermore, most artists (especially self-taught, but not limited to it) have not approached learning to draw in this particular fashion, and as such they may have a solid knowledge of some concepts, with holes in various places. If those holes do not get filled, the artist will stumble and get frustrated.
When I took the course whose curriculum I've been following for these lessons, I had already been drawing at least semi-seriously (and moreso in the later years) for a decade. I found that I had to leave everything I thought I knew at the door and approach the lessons with an entirely blank mind, with no preconceptions of "oh I know how to do THAAT, obviously". It's difficult, and I wasn't always successful in that, but it definitely helped me digest the material and put it all to good use.
It is your decision, but frankly I do think there's a right and wrong answer here.
Uncomfortable in the post "OPTIONAL CHALLENGE: 250 Boxes"
2014-09-12 04:52
The issue with not being able to draw lines in certain directions is a common one. Scott Robertson (a well known and respected artist/designer/instructor) has talked about it, and has mentioned how much he spins his paper in order to line up his strokes so they coincide with what feels most natural for his arm. So there's no real problem there.
Of course, if you're having trouble figuring out the angle of your stroke once you spin the pad, that's going to be an issue - one that you'll have to focus on as you draw, so you can consciously work towards correcting it.
There's one exercise that Scott Robertson's mentioned before, about the whole A to B thing. Draw a point on your page, then draw another point some distance away. Then try to draw a line that connects those two points.
He recommends 'ghosting' over the line you intend to draw - this means going through the motion of drawing the line without actually letting the tip of your pen touch the page. Do this a few times before it feels comfortable, then try and make the mark. Your goal should be a smooth, straight line that goes through both points and ideally does not extend beyond them.
Uncomfortable in the post "OPTIONAL CHALLENGE: 250 Boxes"
2014-09-10 16:44
Looking pretty good. I see a few that are off perspective-wise, but they're in the minority. Also it looks like you have a pretty good hang of using the 1mm pen, because your lines aren't looking too thick.
Two things that could be improved, and since I'm quite pleased with the way they turned out, these are nitpicky:
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Work towards removing the little gaps between the lines. Aesthetically it's not too bad, but it does compromise the solidity of the object a little bit.
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Your line weights are pretty consistent - try to vary them as covered in the original post for this challenge.
Uncomfortable in the post "EXTRA CURRICULAR: Interior Environment Cutout"
2014-09-08 16:54
Hope it helps.
Uncomfortable in the post "So you've decided to go back to the basics. We're here to help."
2014-09-08 15:34
Haha, I'm glad to hear that! Welcome!
Uncomfortable in the post "EXTRA CURRICULAR: Interior Environment Cutout"
2014-09-07 21:55
This sort of thing personally baffled me when I would see environment cutout drawings in the past few years. This is my attempt at hammering out a process for doing it myself. You can definitely use tools like sketchup or other 3D packages to speed up the process, but as always, I feel shortcuts are most effective once you understand how to work without them.
Uncomfortable in the post "OPTIONAL CHALLENGE: 250 Boxes"
2014-09-06 22:32
Hmmm... So you are showing improvement - your boxes are better and your lines are more confident, though you still need to make sure that you're locking your wrist and drawing from your shoulder.
That said, I am still concerned about the shape of your boxes (things like this). So, I've come up with another exercise for you to do! Basically, I want you to do two pages of boxes in perspective, except this time, we're not going to use rough/estimated perspective - instead, I want you to actually plot the perspective out.
For each page, draw a single horizon line and two vanishing points. Then draw at least 25 boxes per page, and for each box, draw out the lines from the vanishing points. You can use a ruler or another straight edge for those perspective lines, but not for the boxes. This is also a good opportunity to practice your line weights.
Here's what I mean. Since I'm looking for at least 25 boxes per page, try not to make them too big, so they can all fit.
Uncomfortable in the post "LESSON 4: Drawing Insects, Arachnids and Other Creepy Crawlies"
2014-09-06 18:37
If you haven't completed the previous lessons in this set, please do so before moving onto this one.
Notes
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Strongly recommended that this lesson be done traditionally with a 0.5mm felt tip marker. Your results will likely not be as helpful if it's done digitally. Of course, it's up to you.
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This approach relies on first completely ignoring all of the overwhelming detail. It may look silly and juvenile, but it is important to do the simple lay-ins first for every drawing. Not only does it help produce a successful drawing, but it also trains your brain to consciously ignore detail that is irrelevant.
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Usually I'd say that this should be done from life, but drawing insects from life is pretty difficult. If you happen to have access to accurate models of insects, or preserved insects (like what collectors have), draw from those. Otherwise draw from photo reference.
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If you feel that you are starting to screw up one of the drawings, I urge you to persevere through it. Don't scrap it and start a new sheet - see what happens if you keep going at it. Of course, that doesn't mean just throwing ink everywhere and hoping it'll go better. But try and recognize what you feel you did wrong and analyze how to fix the image. This is a major skill to develop when it comes to drawing, especially with ink.
Bonus Content
Homework
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Minimum of 8 pages of insects, at least 2-3 insects per page. You can choose to draw any sort of insects, arachnids or crustaceans. If you can find other subject matter that fits the bill, then go ahead and draw that. We're focusing on exoskeletal creatures with the head-thorax-abdomen architecture, as well as with segmentation on their bodies.
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Remember, we aren't just replicating reference photos - we are analyzing and studying the construction, texture and form language of these creatures. Focus on rebuilding the insect, not the photo.
Uncomfortable in the post "OPTIONAL CHALLENGE: 250 Boxes"
2014-09-05 21:52
After around 150, I started to see a marked improvement, and an increased level of confidence. Congratulations! :D
Continuing to do exercises 1 and 2 from lesson 1 (the lines and ellipses) is something everyone should be doing as warmups - especially me. Continuing to do the lines exercise especially should help you slowly reduce the waviness of your lines.
Still, I'm really pleased with the progress I see in your boxes. You should be fine to move onto Lesson 2!
Uncomfortable in the post "So you've decided to go back to the basics. We're here to help."
2014-09-03 18:26
Hah, it's a pretty common issue among self-taught artists. You are not alone!
Uncomfortable in the post "LESSON 3: Drawing Plants"
2014-09-01 22:34
Yes, that's the one - and if you ever get a chance to take it, you definitely should, be it online or in person.
Uncomfortable in the post "LESSON 3: Drawing Plants"
2014-09-01 19:43
They're not bad, but the bigger issue that I see is the way you're trying to add detail. In the plant on the right, I can see some scribbly lines on the upper petal. By their nature, scribbles are random and messy - they don't show intent, and you always want your marks on the page to be intentional. Sometimes that means your hand is going to cramp up and hate you, but that's what it takes.
Another thing to consider is focusing detail in some areas only. The entire plant does not have to be covered in surface detail, often indicating it on some areas is enough to imply it for others. One thing my instructor would do is, he would finish his lay in and break down the forms - basically get to the stage before he'd start adding texture information. Then he'd draw a circle around his focal point, and only put detail within that circle. Here's some examples of his sketches where he does that.
It's a good idea to look at how he draws his plants - focus on how he simplifies the image using large areas of black shadow, and the different ways he goes about indicating detail (without necessarily filling everything with texture information).
Uncomfortable in the post "LESSON 3: Drawing Plants"
2014-08-30 17:06
This lesson is the beginning in a series of lessons that cover drawing actual objects. It's important to do each lesson in order, because they build up to more complex subjects.
As with all lesson sets, be sure to complete the basics lessons before moving onto this one.
Notes
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Strongly recommended that this lesson be done traditionally with a 0.5mm felt tip marker. Your results will likely not be as helpful if it's done digitally. Of course, it's up to you.
-
This approach relies on first completely ignoring all of the overwhelming detail. It may look silly and juvenile, but it is important to do the simple lay-ins first for every drawing. Not only does it help produce a successful drawing, but it also trains your brain to consciously ignore detail that is irrelevant.
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I strongly recommend doing these exercises from life. Drawing from life is always better, but not always possible. Future subjects will be more difficult to find, but it's not that hard to find plants in daily life.
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If you feel that you are starting to screw up one of the drawings, I urge you to persevere through it. Don't scrap it and start a new sheet - see what happens if you keep going at it. Of course, that doesn't mean just throwing ink everywhere and hoping it'll go better. But try and recognize what you feel you did wrong and analyze how to fix the image. This is a major skill to develop when it comes to drawing, especially with ink.
Bonus Content
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November 21st 2014: Here's another example, since the one in the lesson isn't the greatest.
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Here's a higher-res album of the examples I included in the lesson sheet. My digital example was kind of meh (largely because it was digital), but the control of texture and line weight is much clearer in these traditional examples. Aim for this, or better. Concentrate on the separation of shapes by the heavy shadows and line weight. Usually it pays off to be bold, even though it means putting down more ink and risking making mistakes. Also, be sure NOT to use the same line weights all around the image. It often creates a nice effect to have a heavier line on one side of a shape, and a lighter one opposite.
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When I did this homework in my own class, we had gone on a field trip to the Los Angeles County Arboretum in Arcadia, CA. One of my classmates took a massive collection of fantastic reference photos. Check it out over here.
Homework
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Minimum of 2 pages of lay ins - fill the pages, and don't go beyond the lay-ins. I want to see lots of different kinds of plants, and I don't want to see detail. Show me that you can focus on the general shape.
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Minimum of 6 pages of plants, 2-3 drawings per page. Start with the lay-ins, then build up the complexity on top. As you increase complexity, be sure to play with your line weight and shadow shapes - if done correctly, this will make your initial lay-in lines (which you hopefully did lightly, carefully controlling your pen pressure and ink flow) seem to disappear, and the proper drawing will come forward.
Submit your homework here; photos and scanned images are both accepted, as long as the image is clear. Submit it even if it's bad - I may send you back to do the homework again, but I will try and tell you what you're doing wrong, and you will grow from the experience.
Also, sorry for the messy and inconsistent handwriting. It will happen often, and I will apologize every time!
PLEASE POST ALL HOMEWORK AND QUESTIONS RELATED TO THIS LESSON AS COMMENTS
Uncomfortable in the post "So you've decided to go back to the basics. We're here to help."
2014-08-17 19:17
I think I should be able to keep up with it for a good while. Since I'm more or less following the curriculum that I was taught, it's just a matter of flipping through my own sketchbook and writing notes on what exactly I was doing. If anything, revisiting those exercises myself will also help me along, since I've probably slacked off on my fundamentals in the past few months.
Uncomfortable in the post "So you've decided to go back to the basics. We're here to help."
2014-08-17 17:35
I'm glad to have you with us.
Uncomfortable in the post "So you've decided to go back to the basics. We're here to help."
2014-08-17 17:02
Thank you for joining us!
Uncomfortable in the post "So you've decided to go back to the basics. We're here to help."
2014-08-17 17:02
Since I imagine others will stumble upon this subreddit a while from now, there isn't going to be any deadline for homework acceptance of any one lesson. Ultimately, it's best to give yourself one week to complete the work, but that is up to the student. I'll critique any homework that is submitted at any time.
As for the lessons, I'll be adding a new one every week until I run out of material, so whoever does keep up with the recommended pace should receive regular material to work on.
Uncomfortable in the post "So you've decided to go back to the basics. We're here to help."
2014-08-16 22:37
That's.. probably a good idea. I'll make that change.
Uncomfortable in the post "Who Are You? Introduce Yourselves!"
2014-09-15 21:43
Your work from reference definitely shows a strengthening in your observational skills, and you look to be ready and willing to put in the time required. You just have to find the path that fits you best (and is hopefully time-effective). Hopefully you'll find that path with us!