Cora's art dumps - I'M BACK kind of... ; - ;

[Rubisko]

Perhaps it would help to look at wings of real butterflies. The thing about insects is that they don't get their colors from pigmentation like so many things in our world, but from the structure of the material. Because of this the wings of a butterfly won't reflect light quite the way you expect, but your eye still recognise the difference and that's why you're unhappy with the result. I did some studies of butterflies and other insects last summer; references that may work with the pattern you've chose to use is Monarch, and for the colors I would suggest Morpho, cause interferencial colors are the best :P

[corastaur]

Thanks Blue and Rubes! I'm definitely interested in what you know about insect/butterfly wings... I know preeetty much nothing about wings lol... its interesting what you said about the way light reflects off of butterfly wings because you're definitely right. Ugh but how to draw/color that is still confusing for me. More practice I guess...

Right so I'm going to post a sketchdump basically of all the shizz i've managed to get done during the past like... 3? weeks. I've been pretty apathetic towards art in the past couple of weeks and this is what i've managed to squeeze out:

Warning... there are naked chicks from a figure drawing practice session!

SPOILER! :

... messed up hand/didn't finish it. Was focused on trying to portray the emotion and couldn't satisfactory draw her freaking body so I decided to just leave it and come back and finish it later.



This one deserves an explanation 'cause I haven't really ever drawn humanoid animals...

SPOILER! :

Not sure i've said this anywhere on the forums but i'm a pastor's kid... my dad finished seminary my senior year of high school so I was already in college when he started at his church. Anyway his intern has been doing the "children's sermon" for the past couple of months apparently. I came home for break and heard his stories for the first time. They're basically along the lines of any other children's tale with talking animals trying to teach you a lesson. My dad saw that I was art blocked and asked me to draw up some ideas for the characters. So this is supposedly this chick "felicity fox" ... If I ever keep doing anything with them I'm going to make her have less humanoid proportions. Make her shorter, maybe closer to the size/proportions of like rabbit in winnie the pooh. The main characters are this fox chick, big boss badger... and some porcupine girl. I forgot her name...

Figuring drawing practice ^



First attempts pretty much ever at realistic portraits. The first one is me and the second is my best friend. I made the eyes on both pictures too big >.< also I seem to have an issue with shading things dark enough. Its like I'm afraid of making things dark... Since you don't know what we look like these are the refs I used: moi, her 1, numero 2

Oi... lots of photos.


^Rage sketch dump. I was pissed and stressed today and so I just kept drawing sketches trying to get all the jitteriness out of my system. The anatomy is wrong in most if not all of the poses. also the angry dude has no forehead.

That's pretty much it. Aside from the other night when I sat down and tried doing some portraits (which btdubs I messed up the eyes on majorly) and did a figure drawing session online I haven't been able to sit down and draw anything. Ugh so frustrating >.< Also thanks for all the support, I really appreciate it! Like seriously it helps especially since I'm pretty critical of anything I do, so other's crits let me know what I need to focus on.

[toast]

awesome figure drawings =D Just keep doodling and eventually you'll get over the art block.

[nextweek]

Just an idea.

To help yourself get better at using shadow, since you said your "sort of afraid of it", try doing shades to put features of the face in instead of just drawing them in. Like, build up your lights and shadows in the face to eventually create the desired feature of the face.

Or, try starting by making a completely black paper...make it the darkest shade... and go from dark to lights...a subtractive drawing.

Subtractive drawings are super super helpful in learning shades.

But your artwork is really nice! Keep up the good work!

[Sylux]

Hey that's pretty cool that you're doing art for sermons

[Shadowsfade]

Amazing stuff as always great job on the portraits, you really captured the likeness of yourself and your friend i really like the fox girl too. If you do continue with her and try to make her more animal like, i found 2 ref pictures for the face forwards view - you cant tell very much that it has a protruding nose / muzzle like foxes do. from what i can see from the 2 pics, just make the chin bit come further forwards lengthwise, so the cheeks join about half way (seen best in the second pic i'll link). Anyway, i'll stop trying to rubbishly explain and show you the pics to see! Hopefully it helps http://www.nj.gov/dep/fgw/images/wildlife/fox_gl.jpg
http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/u.../red_fox_1.jpg

[Joosh]

I really like the way you draw teeth in --

SPOILER! :

Though IMO the eyes look a little cartoony/big.

[corastaur]

@Toast Thanks man yeah I think how it's gonna go haha
@nextweek oh my goodness! The subtractive drawing suggestion is brilliant - I was going to wait to reply until I had actually drawn something but I wanted to reply. I'm definitely going to try that out.
@Sylux Thanks yeah it's definitely interesting/different. It's pretty fun
@Shadows yeah I think I see what you mean... I'll work some more on it in the next week and post an update.
@Josh Phew I'm glad you like it. I had a hard time figuring out how to draw the teeth -__- and yes you are definitely right about the eyes being too big. I taped the pics up on my wall so I could look at them from far away and the eyes definitely need fixing...

Hopefully I'll get some more stuff done in the next week or two

[Rubisko]

... its interesting what you said about the way light reflects off of butterfly wings because you're definitely right. Ugh but how to draw/color that is still confusing for me. More practice I guess...

Yep, some reference should do it.

I sent this link to someone a few weeks ago, I don't remember if it was to you, but it's a really good thing about art block so I might as well put it here too: http://artsammich.blogspot.se/2010/0...n-and-dip.html
Based on that it seem you already do what you can to push through the block, so keep it up

[corastaur]

First let me say that I love you all for the encouragement and the comments/critiques And thank you Rubisko that article helped cheer me up a bit! I've been drawing, or at least trying to draw, a lot in the past weekish. I did some subtractive drawings like you suggested nextweek and it was definitely helpful! (I'm not gonna post them 'cause they're kind of a mess, but it lessened my fear of shadows a bit) Before I post ima digress real quick (psych major moment): basically I think I've just been afraid to mess up or afraid I wouldn't be able to draw something so when I tried I just straight up couldn't do it. SO I pushed through and I think I'm finally getting back into the swing of things and enjoying it again.

Alright so today I kind of just ignored all of the readings I had to do and drew fan art.... of harry potter.

SPOILER! :

or rather harry potter's kids... I wasn't really big on drawing people when the books came out and I missed out on drawing any fan art at the time. :/ Man it was fun to draw though The main problem that I see is I think I struggle to make the eyes the proper size in 3/4 views. I feel like in James and a bit in Lily the far away eye is too small. I was also trying out a slightly different coloring style so let me know what you think.