The "Re-learning how to draw" Sketchbook while I'm stuck in Iraq

[Visigothan]

A couple months ago, I accepted a job as a civilian contractor in Iraq. I'm a network administrator, which means that back in the states I had almost no free time. The fact that this job offered a dedicated day off with dedicated hours (no overtime) and nothing to do but draw, hit the gym and take college courses online made it perfect for me.

I haven't drawn regularly in years - at least five years...more like seven. I used to draw constantly - you'd never see me without a sketchbook and pencils. Because of the work schedule at my old job, I burned out - I had no energy or creativity left, and no free time to draw.

That's changed, and now I have all the time in the world (minus running to bunkers when mortars and rockets start flying into my base) to hone my skills and seek the critique of the vast ConceptArt.org hive mind.

So, without further adieu, here's a few!

I don't have a scanner, so I have to take pics with my Nikon D70 and upload them to Flickr. They are attached as per the sketchbook guidelines.

The two sketches of my friend Jenner were done from photo reference about 25 - 30 minutes apiece. The third is a concept from a series of semi-futuristic military fetish pinup posters I want to do - I'm looking for critiques on the facial structure, perspective, etc. Any and all critiques are greatly appreciated!

[Cwn Annwn]

Good start Visi, maybe some more life drawing. Other things I'd love to see are looser lines and more work with values. :)

She looks like she's interesting to know!


;)

[hedwordup]

i like the second in particular. its rare to see such a well rendered tounge. something doesnt sit right with me on the first one i think probably just cause its unfinished, is she leaning her face on something? the third is coming on, very good expression

[Cookiedough]

I already critted the second Jenner piece on Irc. What i do noticed then was that you did get a similarity with the original photo, but that wasn't cos your lines are 'right'. Her browline was a li'l more different, jaw/chin was longer, same for the neck etc etc. So watch out for the similarity/correctness. Maybe look out for a grid or something. I think you can push these drawings more, render it more, make it more finished.

These are cool, so keep drawing and watch your butt there!

[Stark]

Like cwn said, good start. I know you're under fire day in and day out, but there's gotta be someone there with about 1-5 minutes of spare time for you to quickly sketch..or even use 30 seconds.

The pin up girl needs more to it...right now it's a hovering face and that's not working for me. Maybe upload again in higher res so I can check out the rest. Lines are crisp and hard, though I'd like to see some scribbles and general looseness that comes with the creative process...don't worry about doing finished pieces right off the back, start small and get some of the old stuff out by doing quick scribbles/sketches of anything around...

Keep at it an DUCK BITCH DUCK!

[Robz]

Very nice. ^.^ I think their pretty good!
be careful over there, and good luck man.

[Visigothan]

I could use some help with this one.

I've drawn, redrawn and drawn again over her face and I can't figure out why she looks "weird".

I mean, her face looks weird, and I can't place why. Any and all advice is welcome. Thanks!

Updated version attached.

EDIT:

Updated again. I think I fixed many of the problems with the face, but I still need input!

Some notes:
Tank driver girl is sitting in the cockpit of a futuristic tank. The photographer is standing almost directly over her with a somewhat wide-angle lens. She is looking almost directly at the photographer. I am trying to emulate the perspective and distortion such a lens would make. Finding photo reference for this pose/angle is pretty much impossible. :p

[deadred]

heya, you pinged out from irc and didnt come back, so i thought i'd post here :P the paintover's not perfect, but just a suggestion for some of the perspective issues with her face, tho the collarbone i'm not sure about.

image: http://img184.imageshack.us/img184/3535/tankgirlpinuppoqa0.jpg

[kovah]

Its a good re-start. As people have said some anatomy studies would help with your facial structure and foreshortening.

[Senira]

Of the two portraits of your friend, I like the one where she's looking over the back of the chair. You've captured her expression well; you can almost tell her personality just by the look in her eyes.

Anything else I can think to say has already been mentioned by the posters above, so just take their advice to heart, and keep practicing!

[Visigothan]

Thanks for the feedback, everyone!

Since I'm stuck out here with no opportunity to take life drawing classes, I'm just going to do my best to re-train my eyes/hands/brain by going through my books - I brought Loomis, Hogarth and Hamm's books in PDF form. Here's a quick 20-minute anatomical study done while reading "Drawing the Head and Hands" by Andrew Loomis.

[aracanid]

your obviously a very good artist and it shows. I like the detail that your putting into the furturistic tank driver, its very good. I guess I cant give many tips, im still learning so sorry. Really all I can say is keep up the good work, and keep it coming... The bit about running to the bunkers is funny also.

P.S. How do you get a picture beside your sketchbook?

[Visigothan]

A quick flat-shaded toon, inspired by a line from my friend Kathy's journal:

"I'm like a wind-up toy: Give me a Starbuck's Iced Latte and I can power-walk anywhere."

[Visigothan]

10 minute anatomical study. Source: Pose Maniacs

[StarbonesCoffin]

Visigoth, more of gothic drawings !

[Visigothan]

Another 10 minute quickie. Source: Pose Maniacs

[Visigothan]

A quickie. Punk girl. No photo ref. Mostly practice on head-on facial structure which I have a real hard time with.

[Visigothan]

Quick pinup doodle. 20 minutes. No photo reference.

I think I need to get a scanner.

[Cookiedough]

You're very much like me in your approach. You draw with solid lineart. However, this can come out to be really flatlooking, if you're not careful. Try to build up your characters in values and form and shape, rather than with lines. Think of things as 3-d objects.

When are you gonna do some war oriented-art, btw? You're in the ideal location now with plenty of refs near. :P

[Visigothan]

Thanks! Stay tuned for the military girl pinups. They'll be older style pinups (think Vargas) but in futuristic military settings.

Re: Solid line-art - yeah, I don't know why I do that. I went for a more cartoony look with this particular piece. I guess I'll try doing a more realistic looking one in a bit.

[MattGamer]

Good work! Yes, what Cookie said. The line values give much depth to the eye than one would think. I myself sketch all over and make a mess of things. It is nice to see some discipline. :]

[Visigothan]

Some quick (gesture?) drawings.

I really suck at these. X_x

~3 minutes apiece, no photo ref.

[Visigothan]

I decided to try Bridgeman's approach rather than Loomis'.

I'm liking this one better.

I took Bridgeman's advice about holding the pencil by the end instead of by the foregrip and making as loose strokes as possible. I've always had a real problem trying to loosen up. I can never "sketch" - I've always felt the need to fuss over my lines until they're precise and perfect (see the previous drawings, like the one of Kathy).

I think loosening up like this will be good for me.

[bbassir]

Hey man! Great job! Nothing happens over night so keep at it- you're doing all thet right things. I'll reiterate: keep your lines loose. Right now you're doing that broken line "sketchy" thing and breaks the flow of your images. Making good marks is all about confidence and decisiveness. Make one line and if once you draw it its not the correct line redraw using only one line. Again, it takes time. Patience is what its all about.

STAY SAFE! And keep up the sketchbook!

[Visigothan]

A few more.

EDIT:

Thanks bbassir, I will try that next and see how it goes!

[NightMare28]

Hey good stuff you got going on here. You have strong line work in your pinups. Your gestures need to be more fluid. That is, for gestures you are trying to "capture" the movement and fluidity of the figure, so you should place your "gesture line" down first and build up on that, especially with gestures that are under 5 mins. A good way to stop the "sketchy" line, or furry line as my teacher would call it, is to use a pen instead of pencils. Making sketches with a pen helps build your line confidence, and forces you to accept your line decisions. Also making strokes with your entire arm as opposed to using your wrist will help as well.

Be safe out there.

[Visigothan]

Thanks for the tips! I will grab some cheap pens from the PX here on base tomorrow and start trying it with pen. I think maybe I need to get a larger pad of paper, but it's going to be very difficult to try and get that here. Big packages are almost impossible to receive. :(

[throtailer]

I'd say there's very clean drawings. I like that

[devbot]

nice line work. definately something i need to take into consideration. keep posting though id love to see your progress

[Visigothan]

I took the above advice and tried doing these with single, direct strokes.

60 seconds apiece, no photo or other reference. Imagination only. Ballpoint pen.

[Visigothan]

Some more quickies. 60 seconds apiece, no photo ref.

[Viking Raider]

Great stuff man---I think the anatomy and figures are coming along nicely. I especially like your tank girl. The only thing I'm stuck on his her lower torso/waist. To me, the head, shoulders and upper torso feel "right" with the perspective but it seems that her lower torso and waist should be slid further back and "under" her more. Does that make sense? Love the musculature of the head drawings...keep up the good word and keep your head down and your powder dry!

[Visigothan]

A quickie thumbnail for a cyborg pinup girl.

[Visigothan]

I can't figure out what part of the proportions are off. Everything seems to measure up, but I'm missing something. :\

Quickie - 30 minutes

[Visigothan]

Work in progress - Portrait of my friend Jennifer. Photo reference/grid technique - Total time so far is about ~8 hours.

[Visigothan]

Portrait of my friend Monika - 8 hours, pencil - grid technique - photo reference.

Any crits would be appreciated.

I finally feel like I'm "back in the saddle" after not drawing for so long! :D

[Yacob]

The sketchbook looks great. Great job on the anatomy studies and I really like the last two portraits.

[Sleepy_Head]

Hi Visigothan, nice work going on here.

Little crits, but not much.

#34 (Quicky) There seems to be a bit of bulk missing in the waist which is making it look a bit "off". Also the triangle between eye / ear / mouth is out slightly for the angle of the head.

#35 (Jennifer) The teeth look a little off angle to the face.

#36 (Monika) The mouth is at the wrong angle again. (But only just).

The tone and depth on #35/36 is great and the forms are spot on. Nice!

S

[Visigothan]

I'm a douche. I should've posted the photo reference for the last piece:

[Visigothan]

I decided to do again one of the ones from the original post, now that I've re-learned most of what I'd forgotten. Enjoy.

[throtailer]

Wow very nice shading and figures. Keep it up

[Visigothan]

Thanks!

I just got some new art supplies in the mail so I'm going to try my hand at some perspective studies, vehicles and mechanical objects. I have virtually no experience drawing those, so I figure now is the perfect time to start.

[Visigothan]

Trying to get the hang of digital painting...

Proportions are totally screwed.

[funfetus]

You complain about your proportions a lot, but they look pretty solid to me. You seem to have a good grasp of the basics. One thing I'd suggest is to do some life-drawing to compliment all the photo-referenced stuff you seem to do. And don't rely too much on that grid method -- it'll hold you back.

Also, I like your taste in women. :)

[Visigothan]

Thank you, FunFetus.

I am trying to do as much "life drawing" as I can, but because of my location (working as a civilian contractor in Iraq) I do not have a way to do real life drawing. I have to make due with photos I can find on-line.

I agree about the grid technique definitely limiting me. I try to only use the grid technique for portraits of friends that I'm attempting to stay as true-to-life with.

Thanks for your input - do you have any suggestions regarding techniques with Photoshop brushes that I should be trying? I've currently been using the following brushes:

Hard round brush, %10/%35/%65 opacity, %50 flow, sizes 3/5/9/19
Smudge tool (grainy brush), %50 strength, sizes 5/9/19

I made a series of color swatches based off of several photographs of models with various skin complexions and hair colors, and combined them into a big collection for drawing people.

[funfetus]

Life-drawing doesn't have to be a naked model, you can just draw the people around you. Or, failing that, get to a mirror and draw yourself. What you need is the experience of translating a your 3-dimensional perception to 2D, rather than a 2D image to 2D, which is really just copying rather than interpreting. Not that it isn't useful. But life-drawing will take you so much farther.

As for Photoshop brushes, when I use Photoshop I like a hard brush, pressure-controlled opacity, 100% flow, and I vary the size constantly with the [ and ] keys. Custom brushes are also extremely useful for putting texture into your images, but there are much better people to teach you about that. Do a search in the forum, and you'll find tons of stuff.

Remember that the colors on any people you're painting are going to be VERY strongly influenced by the environment, including the light color/temperature, the type of light, and the colors surrounding the subject. Learning about how light works is probably more useful than building up a library of swatches.

Good luck!

[Visigothan]

Thanks for the input, funfetus! Your insight is much appreciated! :)

Here's another quickie that I did during my lunchbreak today. Total time: 20 minutes (give or take). I know her skull is too small. I have to work on that. I am still working on making sure that I light the forms of the face correctly.

Learning to paint digitally is like learning to draw all over again. It's weird. I find myself thinking in hue, saturation and value now instead of just value. :lens:

EDIT: Oops, forgot attachment!

[Visigothan]

Fixed the skull.

I think I'm getting the hang of this.

[AnthonyFoti]

I think it all looks fantastic. If I HAD o critique something, it would be the lack of depth in the hair, but for such a fast (and polished) drawing, it's incredible.

[Visigothan]

Something doesn't look right with this one.

Anyone have any thoughts?

[Viking Raider]

Great stuff man, nice updates since the last time I was here. About your latest pic, what gets me right off the bat is the ear is a bit too low, seems to me. Other than that, I can't see much "wrong" with it per se, but one of the better artists here might be fo more help...for what it's worth I really like the direction it's going!

[Visigothan]

Work in progress - blocking in color...Trying to get the hang of color on faces properly. This isn't as easy as I thought it might be. :S

[Visigothan]

More practice...

[bloodbrush]

hot sketchbook, your shading technique is neat :)
keep drawing

[Visigothan]

Quickie...

[Visigothan]

I decided to get back to basics.

Any thoughts on these basic exercises I did would be appreciated.

Obviously, I fucked up on the shadow on cube #1 and realized it as I was doing it. I decided to leave it as-is without correcting it and move on to the next one.

[Visigothan]

A quickie.

[Visigothan]

Playing around with my color swatches.

I took about 30 different images: Paintings by various artists, photographs of people (with and without makeup) and used the Index Color feature of Photoshop to make myself a really giant swatch set. I found that I had hardly any warmer tones in my fleshtone swatches and I decided to fix that. This is the result. I think I'm making progress...little by little. :\

[Visigothan]

Work has been murderously busy.

Here's a quick random thing I did today, mostly playing around with color and forms.

[Hellbeard]

Enjoying the progress here, good work.

[Visigothan]

Thanks!

I began work on another one today - I'll post it later.

Any suggestions regarding brush technique or anything regarding the above piece? It was a quickie and mostly just for playing around with form/color/etc.

Any thoughts?

[Diphallia]

subscribed, very nice sketchbook! :)

[Visigothan]

Just for fun.

[Visigothan]

I am relatively happy with this one. Not totally, but, relatively. I think it is a good step towards painting better. I still need to work on a greater range of values, but I think my understanding of color (with regards to fleshtones) is beginning to come together.

[Christian223]

This last one is really nice, all look nice actually, keep it up. Im not sure if you know the concept of bounce light?, light bounces everywhere and when it does it adopts the color of the object in wich it rebounds, thus a lighted object recieves light from many directions, otherwise the shadow area would be pitch black because no light would be entering our eyes from that area.

In your last one, the shadow areas recieve much bounce light, and because of this there isnt much contrast or lower values in the value scale, you just have to thing "how much bounced light is lighting this shadowed area?" and then you can decide the value of that area. Heres a nice pictures that illustrates this concept: http://fineart.sk/show.php?w=211 there is bounce light in the sphere, small and big box, and cylinder, also notice that bounce light affects not only areas in shadow but also areas in the light, and also, notice the smooth gradients that it makes.

I propose you an excersize, draw a face in outer space, so that there is no bounce light on any area, and then draw another facein outer space but this time near the earth, so that there is blue light bouncing in it, i think this little excersize will help you think about value range in a better way, i hope that helps, keep it up! :)

[Visigothan]

A couple today.

The second is a work in progress - I'll see if i like it once the preliminary is done and maybe finish it.

[Visigothan]

Fixed some anatomical problems with this one.

Having trouble with hands. :(

[JPC]

Hi! You have a very nice sketchbook, remarkable that you can find the discipline to draw while in such a dangerous place. Hope you and your friends stay safe while you're there!

Some advice on that last girl drawing though, you seem to have squished her shoulders, maybe need to widen them just a bit..( I have the same problem when drawing girls)

[Ebony-chan]

Nice sketchbook here. I really enjoyed looking at your process. =) More work please. =)

[Visigothan]

A tattoo/painting I'm working on for a friend.

[Visigothan]

I experimented with a pretty wild departure from "drawing" last night, and painted this.

Total working time approx. 1h15m. Mostly for experimentation purposes, really, and to see if I could "paint" without drawing first. I did this one by blocking in forms of color with no construction lines. I think it turned out "ok" all things considered. I have a long way to go, though.

[Visigothan]

I decided to play around with more brushes and crap. Here's the result (work in progress).

Also below is the photo reference used, since *cough*some individuals*cough* have insisted that this is a paintover. It's not. I worked on it from scratch with the reference image on my second monitor to the right of my main display.

Any thoughts/suggestions/tips are appreciated!

[Visigothan]

Here's a portrait study I did of a friend of mine. Total working time about ~4 hours. I learned a lot with this one. Slowly getting better.

[Visigothan]

Re-did this one. Didn't like it the other way.