You Guys Should Totally Critique Adam's Work, Since You All Rock at Art

[Rubisko]

I've checked out the 'Let's Exercise!' thread and more than once I felt like simultaneously crying and breaking my tablet when I compared myself to what those guys had done.

Don't worry, we all feel that way. The cool thing about being part of a community like this is that there are always fellow artists we can admire and envy, that way we find the motivation to push ourselves farther than we would have been able to do on our own.

Working digital in itself doesn't help you create better artwork, though if you learn it you'll eventually be able to create stuff faster than you would be able to if you stick to traditional. The general principles are the same though, and I encourage you to continue traditional drawing. I was actually talking to a friend about this just yesterday, and I encouraged him to draw more and to draw with a pen instead of a pencil. The pen has the great advantage of not being easy to erase, which will force you to draw with your mind instead of just with your hands.

If you want to learn digital you should check out the blog www.ctrlpaint.com

[Sanc7us]

...draw more and to draw with a pen instead of a pencil. The pen has the great advantage of not being easy to erase, which will force you to draw with your mind instead of just with your hands.

If you want to learn digital you should check out the blog www.ctrlpaint.com

I'll do more regular drawing! I've actually been thinking about it during the last, ooh, hour or so, honestly. I have a sketchbook in my bag - the only thing stopping me is that it's 11pm where I am now, and the maximum amount of energy I can exert is being completely spent on switching between tabs in Waterfox.

However, went on Ctrl+Paint and checked out the intro video. Wow. I like this guy already. Thanks heaps for showing me this, man!

[toast]

I think what you really need to do right now is go back to the basics. Try to understand form, shading, lines, basic art elements, use of color, etc.

One of the best books for beginners is Fun with a Pencil by Andrew Loomis. You may find the style a little outdated, but it's extremely helpful and really teaches you extremely valuable advice. When you read this book, you MUST draw alongside and jot notes and you must actually pay attention to what you're reading. That means flipping through the book/pdf file then trying to remember shit later will not help you.

http://www.alexhays.com/loomis/Andre...a%20Pencil.pdf

look through the links in this for more help with the basics:

https://sites.google.com/site/4chani...ning-tutorials


stop relying so much on fan art as well, come up with your own character concepts.

[ClockHand]

[QUOTE=Sanc7us;114081]I've checked out the 'Let's Exercise!' thread and more than once I felt like simultaneously crying and breaking my tablet when I compared myself to what those guys had done./QUOTE]

Don't compare to others, compare only to yourself. You must remember that people have different skills, talents, views, styles and time practicing.

And follow most people indications, if I say anything here it would be repeating the same as most people have said.

[Sanc7us]

Woo, pen-and-paper sketches. Kind of. The first two I did at TAFE back in first semester, because drawing somehow factors into computers, coding and web design. I took photos of these since a) I had good light and b) it looks better from the photo than it does when I scan it.



I'm a lot happier with the second one. I think it's not too bad, I suppose.

As VoidBunny said, I did three random sketches timed at 15 minutes each (well, the third was 12 and a half). I did these at like 1am, in between talking to Seddy and Demonfyre on Groupboard.





Next one is a quick thing from that linked book 'Alex Loomis - Fun with a Pencil'. Just the first thing it says to try out and go along with.


And two random things going from the DeviantArt Perspective Tutorial I was linked to earlier.



That's all for now. Hmn.

[BunnyVoid]

now this is good. At least we can now see how you work out your drawings.

- Good. You're exploring pose and gesture. You even tried shading. That's good. You're courageous enough to see what you can already do. It also helps us better analyze your way of making art and therefore can recommend certain knowledge.

- In this drawing it is evident you need to review proportions. It is best if you read on drawing human anatomy (search Loomis, imo he's easiest to understand when beginning to draw). I don't recommend copying from stylized tutorials. It is more appropriate to study the ideal human form.

- Another major issue would be your strokes. I think i have mentioned this before. Try making long lines with a single stroke. Use your wrists and even your arms to draw. It would be good practice. Do only this for 15 minutes. Then try making huge curves with a single stroke. Do only this for 15 minutes. Then try making circles with a single stroke. Don't make it perfect, the important thing is that you only use a single stroke.

- Next would be correcting pose. When you make a pose that has a bit of foreshortening (kneeling, running, kicking towards the camera. just something with a camera angle) Try to define the horizon (eye level) and the ground plane (where he is standing on) so you know the angle which the camera looks into. This can be better visualized with 3d CLICK BELOW :3

SPOILER! :

(you don't have to mess with sketchup. I'm just trying to explain. LOL)

-In short, keep the principle of the relationship between the ground plane and horizon in mind when doing pose. This thing can be corrected easily since we can actually compute perspective drawings. As long as you remember the principle behind it, it can work.

- Next would be finding the balance in your poses. We all know that gravity is the one to blame why we stick to this ground plane i just talked about hehee... lol. In physics, especially in engineering, it is important to determine the center of gravity. I can go on and on about this topic but instead i will just show you a pic, since I'm lazy lol. CLICK BELOW :3
from http://www.elfwood.com/farp/figure/w...struction.html NOT MINE

SPOILER! :

- so keep this in mind as well. Its good that you posted quickies so that we truly know what to critique :3 I applaud you for that.

- Now unto details and composition. I'm also guilty of over detailing stuff here and there cause I enjoy it. Sometimes it becomes eclectic. Drawing loses focus and looks unbalanced. The first drawing you made have good focus. The quick sketches also have good focus. The second drawing not so much because of the swords.

- When illustrating this type of scene try to use depth of field and camera angles to boost creativity of composition. To illustrate this imma show you one of my favorite scenes in Final Fantasy Advent children because it has a similar scene of showing multiple weapons on the floor at the same time. CLICK BELOW

SPOILER! :

- this pic has almost all the elements that i've discussed now. Its a good example (well except for the lighting) in terms of pose balance, horizon groundplane relationship, depth of field and composition.

- i don't recommend trying the 3 point perspective YET. Try to understand the principle behind the 1 point perspective first.

that's all for now :3 You're going to get good when you draw more of those sketches while applying some drawing knowledge. Good job! post some more! I'll see them.

[Rubisko]

Good too see that you have actually spent some time with Fun with a Pencil, I have the feeling that most people disregard it entirely after just looking at the cover. Learning to draw is not easy, and drawing the human body require much study of anatomy, and that is hard even if you already know how to draw. Fun with a pencil simplifies stuff so that it's possible to learn to draw in a fun way, making cartoon characters are pretty entertaining after all. So all I can say is stick to it, when you manage to draw funny little dudes that look 3d from imagination you can move on to study something else, like anatomy. That's pretty much what I did, but I didn't know of "Fun with a pencil" so I spent years doing small drawings in the margin of my school notes instead

The problem with your perspective drawings is that you place the vanishing points to close to each other. This is a bit hard to explain, but if you want to have every pair of lines that intersects between the vanishing points to form 90 degree angles then you must space the vanishing points so that two lines drawn from the stationary point to the vanishing points form a 90 degree angle to each other at the stationary point.
So yeah, I think this would be very hard to explain any other way than face to face. However, a crude rule of thumbs based on this could be that all angles in the picture plane that represent 90 degree angles must be greater than 90 degrees. But you know, I have a very mathematical approach to perspective, many people manage to pull this off with just the basic knowledge of the mechanics and a good deal of gut feeling. If it looks right then people will assume that it is right, even if you are a few degrees off here or there.

[BunnyVoid]

i think i can help with explaining perspective.
This is how we can manually compute and draw almost accurate perspective... you don't have to do this but it can help you understand rubiskos' point.

SPOILER! :

rightclick, then open image in new window to see full view.

in architecture everything is scaled and etc. We try to project those scaled measurements on a angled ground plane to achieve a perspective. notice that the points are far off because it wants to stretch the horizon as far as possible to copy the way the horizon in real life. the horizon in real life stretches across our line of sight. our line of sight is 180 degrees.

sorry can't explain it but hope you get the point.

[Sanc7us]

Replies and updates.

Thanks guys. Reading through the crits (and taking a squiz at BunnyVoid's pictures) helped a little, and I kinda understand a little of what you guys are talking about. I don't think I'll ever reach the levels you guys are at, but that's mostly due to me getting distracted by other things.

Anyway. Update. Kind of. After downloading some cool brushes for Photoshop, I found the Brush Preset button, as well as the '2B Pencil' preset. So I messed around with that for a little. This is the result.



This is also with no sort of underlying sketches - no proportions, no skeletons, not mannequins, nothing. There are two layers, the white background and the pencil sketch. Dunno why I did that - I think it was because I was just messing about and it kind of slowly took form. Anyway, as always, crits and experience is welcome.

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[BunnyVoid]

hi there! nice progress you got here. i see your lines are improving.
For now all i can say is that you should just keep on the sketches.
Digital artwork and brushes are nice but it is in traditional art that we can learn the most.

Hopefully see some more arts soon. Don't lose your enthusiasm.
I also have slight ADHD so I always lose focus. To counter it i always time my drawing time so it thrills me. If you can, try drawing everyday, at least about 20 minutes. It helps a lot.