Blind contours and other stuff people hate [Archive]

arttorney

October 22nd, 2007, 11:37 AM

Instructional post:

The blind contour exercise is not only useful in helping you squelch that part of your brain that wants to supply crappy clip art instead of letting you draw what you see, it also prepares you for drawing with a graphics tablet. If it doesn't give you too much of a headache, do blind contours of the lines in the palm of your free hand for about 5 min. before you begin real drawings. It is kind of like a warm up or stretching. Neither of us will be launched into the spotlight of international stardom because of a particular blind contour drawing, I predict.

But speaking of spotlights, look at this statue of George Washington.
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You may ask: Arttorney! You were such an incredible poser in that photo above (the figure in the blind contour exercise), how come the George Washington sculpture looks more dramatic?

First, I am not an incredible poser. I prefer the term "photonically challenged."

The statue is lit in such a way as to show the three dimensional form better. Always think about where the light is coming from when you draw. Below are examples of the three main kinds of lighting that can fall on a figure. The first is front lighting. Note how there are hardly any shadows and how flat the figure looks. The second is "form lighting" in which the light is to one side and between you and the figure. The third is called "rim lighting" in which the light is to one side and farther away from you than the figure.
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arttorney

October 22nd, 2007, 11:47 AM

Assignment post:

You are going to do about one hour of gestures and then spend up to 5 hours drawing that statue of George Washington this week. The gestures will be of all the figures you can manage to do out of the reference photos in the following four posts. In case you don't know what I mean by gesture, I am talking about a drawing of between 30 seconds and two minutes in which you concentrate on capturing the essence of the pose and demonstrate the essential flow of a human figure. Examples:
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In the first one, the upper left two drawings are 30 sec. and the others are 1 minute each. In the second page the figures were made in two minutes.
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arttorney

October 22nd, 2007, 11:52 AM

Examples for gestures:

arttorney

October 22nd, 2007, 11:55 AM

More gesture references:

arttorney

October 22nd, 2007, 12:05 PM

More gesture examples.

arttorney

October 22nd, 2007, 12:11 PM

Final post of gesture references:

Dutchdevil

October 23rd, 2007, 10:30 AM

Woaaaah 5 hour drawing of George Washington :xpld:
ah well :D well see how it ends:D

arttorney

October 23rd, 2007, 01:50 PM

I said "up to 5 hours" basically in case you can't stand to look at it that long. Just try to do a good job and I will put a series of process pictures up about how I go about doing it. (I'm going to draw him this week too.) There was a time I couldn't stand to concentrate on a drawing for a long time and I understand that.

Partly, I am just trying to keep you busy for a little while as I figure out what to do next.

arttorney

October 24th, 2007, 11:18 AM

George appears to me to be about eight heads tall. In the first three to five minutes I would use a measuring stick held along the red line to figure out how many heads tall the figure is. The average person is about seven. I can draw an axis line about where the red line is and make marks along it to show where all the heads are. I can make a gesture drawing of George (yellow) but unlike this example I would draw some sort of oval for the head. Having measured and drawn the foundation for George I can go about working my way toward firming up his lines. That usually takes me 20 to 40 minutes as I go about constantly checking how many heads wide his shoulders are, how many heads wide his hips are, how many heads are between his two hands, how many heads from his shoulders to his waist, how many heads from his waist to his knees, etc. etc.
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arttorney

October 24th, 2007, 11:28 AM

Oops! Wrong button.>:|

Dutchdevil

October 25th, 2007, 10:46 AM

hi,
i'm really sorry i wanted to finish m drawing today and tomorrow.
due to school problems i am unable to.

i lost my presentation map which contains EVRY drawing i have made for school.
now i all lsot them and all have to redraw them. i have a presentation tuesday so i need all the time i have.

im really sorry!

Dutchdevil

October 25th, 2007, 10:46 AM

arttorney

October 25th, 2007, 01:32 PM

Life is full of ups and downs. I'll keep working on mine. With any luck you will see some things that will help you do a better drawing next time.

Here is what I have after the 20 to 40 minutes of making lines that are as proportional as I can get them. I can see some more work is necessary on the neck.
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Then I lay a 4B to 6B pencil on its side and fill in some gray. I gently use a blending stump (tortillon) to smooth it out as evenly as I can get it.
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I then draw in George's highlights using a pink pearl eraser. In pencils you can draw with light (eraser) and draw with shadow (pencils). In pen and ink you can only draw with shadow.
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Dutchdevil

October 25th, 2007, 04:08 PM

You just opened a Whole new way of drawing for me!
i never was able to see that way of drawing, its genius!

arttorney

October 26th, 2007, 12:23 PM

I wouldn't ask you to do something if I didn't know it could be done. Get a load of this. I add in the detail with a 7B pencil. I spent about 3 hours 45 minutes overall in actual drawing and another hour looking back and forth at the drawing and the reference (while I had supper at about the three hour mark). Thus I spent just under 5 hours obsessing over this drawing. I may go back and see if there are any details I want to fix. I think the highlight on his left cheekbone may be too light, for example. With soft pencils and charcoal I tend to work from upper left to lower right because I am right handed.

arttorney

October 26th, 2007, 04:43 PM

I am going to do a pen and ink George while I wait for you to catch up, DutchDevil. I don't think I want to let you off the hook about drawing George.

That's not because I give a damn about drawings of George, per se. When you are a professional, though, your boss will pop in one day and say "Draw a snow princess in a white parka riding a dinosaur." The next day he/she will say "Draw a homeless guy in a subway station who looks like he just peed himself."

I want to give you the basic skills you will need to be able to draw anyone, anything, anytime, anywhere. One of those skills is getting the proportions right. One of those skills is drawing light and shadow.

One of those skills is the mental ability to just go ahead and draw the darned thing, even though it is not the thing you would have drawn had you any choice in the matter.:wink: I am one of your biggest fans. Please get your school work done so you can come back and draw some more.

arttorney

October 27th, 2007, 11:23 AM

First I draw the gesture George and develop up his lines into a proportional figure, just like before. Instead of making him gray, though, I make some outlines with pencil to show where his highlights are. I cannot draw inside those places with ink because you can only draw shadow with ink. I'll erase these pencil lines later when all the ink is dry.

Probably now it is becoming more clear why I said to even follow the lines of the shadows when you do blind contour drawings.

Dutchdevil

October 29th, 2007, 04:47 AM

Yes,!
i finally finished my school stuff, what a relieve...
today and tomorrow ill be continuing the George drawing!

thanks for being to patient!

arttorney

October 29th, 2007, 02:01 PM

Here is Pen George. I like to use a c clamp to hold my t square down so it doesn't move while I draw in pencil lines to guide my hatching.
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I then make a gray George, but leaving the white places blank.
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Eventually I put in the dark details. I like to use a little sharp pen for hatching but I use a B-2 speedball pen for the heavy black marks.
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Usually I try to hide my mistakes inside the drawing. I could hide this black blob by drawing trees behind George or something. If you are drawing on heavy enough paper you can scrape a bad mark off the drawing by scraping across with an exacto knife. It seems to work best when you go away from the edge. It's probably best not to make mistakes, but I just can't help myself sometimes.
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Dutchdevil

October 30th, 2007, 11:17 AM

hey!
I restarted the george drawing, atm i have a stick figure i used your drawings as a reff, i'm going to be embarrassed showing mine.. yours is so detailed!

Dutchdevil

October 30th, 2007, 11:51 AM

I have finished it!
It is not as good as yours, tho i am here to learn;)
I am looking forward to your critics and offcourse the next assignment.

here it is :
http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k192/dutchdevil_2006/george-w100_0358.jpg

arttorney

October 30th, 2007, 01:32 PM

Dutchdevil

October 30th, 2007, 02:17 PM

It looks like there is more detail and a more realistic sense of proportions than in the drawing you posted in the "seeking a mentor" thread. We are going to talk about the shape of the head and how to place everything on there. I wanted to wait for a head shot or a bust as the reference before then. Later today I will look more closely at the angles and lengths of the limbs and stuff, but it looks like you are pretty close to matching the proportions. Good job.

Thanks!!!
i noticed problems in the limbs especially in the legs! tho, i was kinda surprised about this drawing it is not like i think its a 'great' drawing however the outcome was better then i expected myself. i also tried to ''draw what i see''.

We will get away from the photo references as soon as possible, but I wanted to see some work from you based on something I can also see, so I could see where I can help you best. As far as practicing gestures from one week to the next, do that from people out in the park or something, or at least TV. Catching the poses or movements of people in real life is great practice. Those gestures can then be used as the foundation for figures that you draw out of your imagination.
ill try to, I think i will be using my television a lot for this because its kinda rainy out here in the Netherlands :(

Keep practicing on the blind contours if you can. You have a tendency to saw back and forth with the pencil when you are outlining something like the outside of a leg. That part of blind contours about "not lifting the pen from the paper" will help you to make one strong confident mark instead of five less confident marks.

I will try to keep my pencil as much as possible on the paper in future, i do realize and see what you mean and i noticed just now that it looks sloppy the way i draw it, thanks !

arttorney

October 30th, 2007, 05:00 PM

Detailed analysis:
The angle of the line between the hands and the center line looks good.
The angle of the pillar compared to the center line looks good.
The shoulders about 2 heads wide looks good.
The hands approximately 4 heads apart looks good (possibly 1/4 head too far).
The hips about 1 1/2 heads wide, pretty good.

The feet about 1 head long, not so good. I think his feet are bigger than you drew them. (I know feet are hard. So are hands.)

Look at the giant arm you gave the guy you drew in the seeking a mentor thread. It seems distorted it is so large. I can tell that now you know to measure the various parts compared to a specific measure mark in your drawing (in the case of a figure, the height of the head). This is how to get the relative proportions right. It takes time, but it is not mysterious or abstract. With experience, you will learn even how to do this for figures you are making up with no photo reference. The hand comes down to about the mid-thigh for example.

I will try to come up with another assignment by tomorrow. Thanks for your effort.

Grief

October 30th, 2007, 05:09 PM

blind contours are really awesome, it's a shame people tend to dislike them.
(i know a lot of you know this but i'll speak as if its all new and profound)

blind contours are a great way to coordinate what your eye sees with how your hand reacts. it also leaves you to focus on seeing every nuance of contour accurately and translating it to your hand's movements.

people hate doing them because more-often-than-not the finished product is distorted and looks 'childish', but man, theres hardly any way of getting your hand to subconsciously adapt for spacial reasoning than to be left to its own devices of solely using the information your eyes feed it.

besides its a quick exercise thats easy to produce with nearly any subject matter (you dont need tricky lighting or fancy equipment)

arttorney

October 30th, 2007, 05:25 PM

Thank you Grief. I think maybe some of the psychological stuff annoys people because they think every single drawing has to be a masterpiece. We all have to make a few weird looking drawings, though, on our way to a level of unconscious mastery. It's just part of the process of paying those dues.

Welcome new mentee XiaYu!

arttorney

October 31st, 2007, 12:12 PM

Alright. By research I can give credit where credit is due. The George Washington statue is one of the 22 cast by the Gorham Company from an original by Jean-Antoine Houdon. The copy I photographed is in the Civic Center Plaza of Los Angeles.

We will begin our study of heads (and shading as requested by XiaYu) by examining this statue of Jessie and Mack Robinson by Ralph Helmick, John Outterbridge, and Stuart Schecter. (This is in a civic center park of Pasadena, CA) The difference between light and shadow is how we go about putting in more realistic details in a black and white drawing. You do not have to draw these heads. I am going to post some tutorial information on Saturday before we really begin drawing heads. I just want you to pick a measure unit (such as the distance from the bottom of the nose to the tip of the chin and go around the faces seeing how all the features are placed in relation to one another. Is one of the heads in rim lighting? Is one of the heads in form lighting? Is one of the heads in front lighting? Why are the shadows on the right one in the specific places they are in? Why are the shadows on the left one in the specific places they are in? Are there places inside the shadows that are darker than other places in the shadows? What about the places that are in the light? Are there light places that are lighter than other light places?

arttorney

November 3rd, 2007, 02:26 PM

Here are some drawings about the shape of the head. In the third scanned image there is a head that has some lines on it with numbers. Basically, you first draw a line for where is the center of the face. Second you draw a horizontal line for where the eyes are. In a face that is looking straight at you that line is about in the middle of the head. if the person is looking up or down "head foreshortening" will cause the parts of the face to be concentrated in the top of the head (when person is looking up) or the bottom of the head (when person is looking down). 3 is the eyebrow ridge line. 4 (about halfway between the eyes and the chin) is the bottom of the nose. 5 is the mouth (about halfway between the bottom of the nose and the chin). 6 is the line where the lower lip changes direction because it has met the bones of the chin. In a little bit I will come back and translate my cursive scribbling about how to draw eyes. Remember that the upper lid is dominant so when the eye is closed it is mostly covered by the upper lid going down over the eye. I know it is not beautiful calligraphy. It's just a copy of some notes from my life drawing class.

arttorney

November 3rd, 2007, 02:38 PM

This post is about how shadows work. In the reflected light the color can match the color of the reflecting surface. I mean that if there is a white cylinder and a green wall behind the cylinder, the reflected light on the cylinder would be greenish. It will be darker in a darker room. Never make the reflected light as bright as the light side. The reflected light is in the center of the shadow as the shadow rolls over a curved surface. In the area of front lighting called the lowlights is the area where colors would be most saturated. The half tone is the area that transitions between the light mass and the shadow mass. Cast shadows are usually darker than the shadow on the object that cast the shadow. Unless the light is coming from a very sharp point source, the cast shadow will have a darker area in the center called the umbra and a less dark surrounding area called the penumbra.

Xiayu

November 3rd, 2007, 02:47 PM

Hey, sorry for beeing abit absent, been very busy lately..I surely hope this makes it up ;D... did the drawing where I was supposed to look at the picture only, and hold the pencil on paper at all times... the scanner is sort of bugged, so I focused on the washington statue instead.

Heres the statue drawing, turned out very nice :) It's the first time I've
tried using shading, and it turned out to be extremely good, I think this one looks very realistic. took about 2hours +++...

arttorney

November 3rd, 2007, 02:49 PM

Now, armed with all this information, I would like you to draw a portrait of somebody involving either just a head or a head and shoulders. You may either draw one of the Robinson brothers in the statue above, or somebody from your friends or family, or if you are really daring you can draw somebody from your imagination. Take a week. Take your time. Do the best job that you can. During the week I will try to provide additional clarification about faces and eyes.

Thank you for working so hard to catch up Xiayu. During the coming week I will look at your George Washington and try to give a good detailed constructive criticism.

For Dutchdevil: Remember to draw a confident line! I'm watching you. Don't draw me a haystack of hesitant lines.

arttorney

November 3rd, 2007, 03:11 PM

Ask questions if you need to. Because of the way I work I will dump a ton of information here on Saturdays and then we will do question and answer and criticisms during the weekdays.

Dutchdevil

November 4th, 2007, 12:29 PM

Ill work on my lines :)

are we allowed to play with the light? or is it more like a redraw of the picture?

arttorney

November 5th, 2007, 05:38 PM

In this one go ahead and make your own drawing. wsp85 joins us as a mentee at November 5, 2007. Welcome wsp85!

arttorney

November 6th, 2007, 10:24 AM

Xiayu: When I look at your George Washington drawing I can see why you are happy about the shading you did. You have paid attention to showing the direction of light with your shadows and using them to show the rounded shape of George's limbs. We will build on that as you learn to make more complicated shadows including half tones and core shadows. Look at how black the inside of George's coat is between his legs in the reference photograph. Now compare that to how dark that same place is in your drawing.

If something is really really black, then don't be afraid to draw it really really black. If something is really white then don't be afraid to make it really white.

I will also talk a little bit about proportions in another post, but I can see that the width between his hands is good and the width of his shoulders is good. It looks like you made him about six and a half heads tall instead of eight.

Xiayu

November 6th, 2007, 03:37 PM

Hey, I was very much inspired by the shading on the George Washington pic, so not only did I make a portrait, a dragon too :D mhm.. after a while of drawing sketches I sort of changed shading into a depth effect, I dont know if thats good or bad ;S I think this one looks quite good, for me atleast :)

arttorney

November 6th, 2007, 05:54 PM

Which side is the light coming from? (I am asking the question as a sort of way to see what you are thinking as you draw this.)

Will you mind if I do a little paintover this weekend concerning core shadow, reflected light, half light, cast shadows etc.?

arttorney

November 7th, 2007, 12:08 PM

The other thing I wanted to discuss about Xiayu's drawing of George Washington is where things like the eyes have been placed on the head. I know this drawing was made in the time before I put up the information about faces, but now look back at that stuff and think about George's face. I think his eyes are a bit too close to the top of the head. The George Washington statue photo I put up for a body proportion exercise was not really a fair one for doing faces correctly because the whole top of his head is washed out in the bright part of the highlight and that makes it a deceptive photo reference.

That is one reason why I said people can do the face portrait of a friend or family member instead of a photo I give. (Another reason is because it is more fun, and yet a third reason is because I want to give you all a chance to show your friends and family the enjoyment you get from drawing and impress them a little bit as they see you getting better. Enjoyment of drawing is contagious and some of them can become your biggest fans besides me.)

When you are doing people's faces, the eyes really are about in the middle of the head. It just looks like they are higher because that part of your brain that likes to make assumptions and categorizations for you is ignoring that part of the upper head that is covered by hair. The head doesn't end just at the hairline though. There is some more head up there. (I realize hairline is a relative term for that George Washington photo since he kind of looks like a bald guy.) After you make a horizontal line about across the middle for the eyes, then make a line halfway from the eyes to the chin to be the bottom of the nose. Then make a line halfway from the bottom of the nose to the chin to show you where the mouth goes. Make these lines light so they can be erased or covered later. They are just maps for where to put everything so it will look realistic.

I'm looking forward to seeing the face portraits that you all make. Again, take your time and try to do a really good job.

Dutchdevil

November 8th, 2007, 09:47 AM

Hey!

This is my portray, I hope you like it!
i did my best on my lines.. its not perfect yet!

but i am pleased and also hope you are ( reffering to the mentor off course).
I only noticed the shape of the head, after i photographed my drawing i will change it, and i also know I'm going to edit the drawing a lot so i cant give a clear finished drawing since I'm changing it all the time.
the reason for not finishing the clothing is because I'm afraid to destroy the drawing if you think its better to draw the clothing I'll do it.

This is what i have for now. ;
http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k192/dutchdevil_2006/100_0483.jpg

Link to the actual person ( its my cousin ) ; http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k192/dutchdevil_2006/msnframe.jpg

Also, a warm welcome to the new member:} Have fun!

Greets
~Vincent

arttorney

November 8th, 2007, 11:28 AM

For Dutchdevil: The focal point of a drawing like this is the face itself. It is fine, and even a good idea, merely to suggest the clothing. You don't want to draw everybody's attention away from the face of your model. The two main things people look at on the face of other people are the eyes and the mouth, in that order. That is where to spend the most effort in a portrait. The farther you get away from those places, the looser you can be in your drawing and still get away with it.

I am seeing good improvement and good effort. I like this drawing. Don't worry if you don't start cranking out superstar pieces in a week or two. If I was that good at giving out this kind of information I'd be charging a fortune. If you were that good at learning it, then you would have probably gotten it out of a book or something before you even heard of me.

On Saturday I will go through this drawing with a fine toothed comb and give what help I can for future improvements. In the meantime rest assured that I can see progress with each drawing you post. I am proud of you.

Xiayu

November 8th, 2007, 01:00 PM

Heres two portraits, the first one is from my extra-ordinary imagination xD and the other one is a very strange version of me.

And arttorney, I dont really know what direction the light came from, tried to give it a round / realistic look.. but I guess it came right at it, in front. and just feel free to paintover it :)

arttorney

November 8th, 2007, 01:10 PM

I think you are right. I thought it was front lighting as well. I will also look at your drawings and give some detailed comments on Saturday. Thank you both for hanging in there. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. (And you are both taking those steps).

wsp85 won't be joining us after all.

Dutchdevil

November 8th, 2007, 03:58 PM

I am proud of you.

This really made me happy :D:bashful:

arttorney

November 8th, 2007, 05:27 PM

You should be. I don't give praise away for free, I assure you. I see a drawing in which you incorporated ideas from my lecture posts to make a well proportioned face. The eyes are where they belong horizontally. The bottom of the nose is where it belongs horizontally. The mouth is where it belongs horizontally. The face in general looks very much like your reference photo.

Just as I did when I asked you to compare your George Washington drawing to your drawing in the seeking a mentor thread, I now say to look at the drawing of your cousin's head and compare it to the George Washington head you did.

Your cousin looks like a person. Your George Washington head is a little bit more like a melon with eyes and a mouth. Each drawing improves! Keep at it.

On Saturday I aim to tell you tricks to make it even better.

arttorney

November 10th, 2007, 02:04 PM

LECTURE POST:

There are three ways we can create interest in black and white lines.

1. Varying line width
2. Varying line value
3. Varying line edge

LINE WIDTH
Varying line width is fairly self explanatory. See the diagram. Not every line has to be exactly the same width. Think about how wide each finished line should be before you put it on the drawing. If you are thinking about your lines and putting them on in a purposeful manner, it will show. People will be able to see that you, and you alone, are in charge of your drawing. The drawing is not in charge of you.

LINE VALUE
Line value is how dark or light a line is. This is why you have hard and soft pencils. It is why I spend as much time talking about shadows as I do talking about lines. Are lines and shadows the same thing? Not really. Remember, you can draw a line of light with your eraser, if you want to. You are in charge after all. Always draw the line exactly the width and darkness/lightness you want in order to express what you intend to express. Lines are sort of a shorthand way our brain interprets what we see. In many cases what we interpret as a line while we are doing blind contours is not really there at all. If that model we are drawing moves to a different kind of light, the lines around the shadows are no longer in the same place. Maybe they aren’t there at all. Since we are all just a collection of atoms whirling around in space, maybe the line we all think is around the outside of each of us is also not there. I think of drawing as a sort of magic trick. When we draw a person, that person cannot step up out of the page and come alive. We definitely want to make them look like they could, though. Lines are the hidden wires we can use to fake out our viewer into believing our drawing is real. Light and shadow are the secret we have hidden inside our sleeve. We are in charge of making an illusion of reality and we purposefully use our bag of tricks to make people believe the illusion. It’s kind of fun.

LINE EDGE
Line edge can also be varied. Some lines can have a hard edge and some can be soft. What is the thing that we are drawing? Is it chrome steel or is it black velvet? The edge on steel can be kind of hard while black velvet is soft. Shouldn’t we use one of our tricks to help us magically turn a piece of paper into steel or velvet? Line edge is a trick that can come in very handy here. (So can line value).

CONCLUSION
As you become more and more good at using your magic tricks, people will be more and more impressed with the quality of your drawings. They might not think about it this way, but all you are really doing is skillfully putting marks on a paper in a sort of code form that fakes the viewer’s brain into thinking they are looking at a real thing. You are getting into people’s heads. You are like an alchemist who can transmute paper into steel, or at least that is what you seemed to do. Never put a trick permanently into the dust bin. Even if something I teach on here is not something you want to use in your day to day drawing style, years from now you may have a drawing problem you want to solve, and one of these tricks can pop forward into your brain. You perhaps will then have a sudden clarity of perception of what that particular trick is good for, and you will reach a new level in your drawing. I am not making any of this stuff up. I am just sharing tricks with you that other people figured out hundreds of years ago. Thus, we are all members of a big community of illusionists who have each dedicated our time to mastering the code of mark making.

arttorney

November 10th, 2007, 02:13 PM

ASSIGNMENT POST

This week you are going to do something the incorporates drawing from life, drawing with line, and drawing with light and shadow. You will also get some experience at drawing hands, which is hard for many people. The reason it is hard, though, is because they didn't practice drawing hands. When the day comes that they need to draw a hand, they have no idea where to begin.

Take a piece of cheap paper like typing paper and crumple it into a sort of ball. Hold it in your free hand and make a drawing of your hand holding the paper ball. Don't draw my hand, and don't take a picture of a hand and draw it. This assignment is not to draw a photo. You are drawing a real thing and you are drawing it so it looks as real as possible.

I want you to make at least one good one, but you can make more of them. I will make two or three of them this week myself (to show different strategies of how to draw such a scene).
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This picture is an example of what I am talking about. I will be back in a couple of hours with my comments about your drawings from last week.

Dutchdevil

November 10th, 2007, 03:48 PM

I have got a question ( it's not considering the assignment ).

As i recently want to draw more then i actually do, and knowing my anatomy is just wrong. I thought about looking up Pictures, and then hold my paper against the screen and then stick-figure it to get a good anatomy and after that, redraw it, and fleshing it out.

However i was wondering, if i would do that is that like Cheating? or can i use that way to gain a better anatomy?

arttorney

November 10th, 2007, 04:23 PM

Well, in the long run you will want to be able to do things the hard way as well as the easy. If you practice forming stick figures by making a lot of gesture drawings it will help you to reach "the zone" some day (where you just draw figures and you don't need any reference because you already automatically know how they are shaped).

Artists have been known to use tracing paper or a projector to cut corners when they are under time pressure. If you look in Glenn Ostrander's mentoring thread he has talked a little bit about that this week. If you use those things as a crutch, though, you will only be able to draw using those things. You will limit yourself to that. Thus, the person you are cheating is yourself.

If you want to make a number of drawings where you focus on shading in different ways then maybe you can trace the outline several times over and then practice the different ways of shading. I won't say you can never cut that corner if you are working for a good cause. I have done it.

Do not fall into the trap of doing nothing but capturing the outlines of things from reference photos, though. The next thing you know, you'll see something you want to draw right now, but you don't have your camera handy. You lost that image because you can't draw it fast enough from life.

Besides a strange looking head and possibly small feet, your George Washington had pretty good fundamental anatomy. Don't tell yourself you can't do it. Tell yourself that you can. Our brains are so complicated and powerful there is no end to the things positive mental attitude can do for you. Trust me on that. I've risen from a "no account" guy who was periodically homeless to a successful patent attorney by believing in myself and working hard to take the steps of my thousand mile journey.

arttorney

November 10th, 2007, 04:41 PM

Dutchdevil's drawing:
As I said earlier in the week I like the proportions of this face. Don't draw hair by outlining its clumps. Draw it as masses of light and dark tones and then add in a few accent lines to show some strands. As to lips, you have outlined them, but a better approach is to present them as darker values than the face. I am talking about shading. At least on caucasians, the lips are going to be a little darker than the surrounding skin so you can make them stand out by shading rather than outlining. If you outline a lot of things on a figure it flattens the figure and makes it seem more like a cartoon character than a real person. I can see that you already were understanding a little bit about Line Edges when I compare the line of the headphone cord to the nearby line of the jaw which has a soft edge. Perimeter lines in figures should be handled in a subtle manner. Maybe they are only implied rather than drawn.

You can use a vignette (darkness around the figure) to imply the perimeter line rather than actually drawing it.

arttorney

November 10th, 2007, 04:58 PM

Xiayu's drawing of the scary face:
This is very creative. I think that it is cool that your mind is so active. Don't lose that because it is a gift. The stylized eyelashes on the left side of the image are interesting. People who like strict realism will not like them because they are a little bit like canine teeth. As a fine art flourish designed to provoke emotions in your viewer, though, they are a nice flourish.

You are making dark places really dark now. Bravo![portal] A big difference between light and dark creates drama and interest. Do you think it would have been darker inside of his mouth on each side of his tongue? Inside of mouths is usually a shadow place.

Do you think there would be more chin under the mouth before reaching the area of dark shading?

The iris of that eye which has an iris is as white as the white part of the eye. Do you think the iris would be a darker gray than the white part of the eye?

I did not forget about your other two drawings. I am going to try to make paint-over drawings on your dragon tomorrow to show how it would look in form lighting and in rim lighting. You seem to be getting pretty good at front lighting, but I would like you to see how drawings look in the other styles. Then you will have more options when you are deciding how your drawing will look when it is done. I will also look at your self portrait and think of my comments. The dragon and self portrait I will discuss on Monday. I drive 400 miles home on Friday nights and then 400 miles back to work Monday morning, so I am a little exhausted at the moment. Sunday will be a relaxing time I can really get into those other two drawings.

Xiayu

November 11th, 2007, 05:41 AM

I would like to say that the self portait was done much much faster than the scary one...uhm I guess you can see that. just to clear things up..

arttorney

November 12th, 2007, 03:08 PM

Don't worry. I also saw the self portrait in the seeking a mentor thread, so I know you did not make it during the time we have been working together. For those reasons I turned to the scary one first. (Plus, the nose tentacles are cool.)

I needed Sunday to make an entry for the Environment of the Week. I promise I will get to the dragon this week.

Your self portrait is nice because the eyes are kind of in the middle of your head and the head is a nice oval shape. Some of the shading lines are kind of random. I think it is best if you do not be half way random. You want to be self assured in your drawing. The line around the top of the head seems to be made of a lot of scratchy lines instead of one confident line. make a confident line. Either make your shading lines be formal like my pen and ink George Washington or else totally random (like below)so people can see that you are doing it on purpose. I also think we can improve your ability to make eyes when I get around to really discussing eyes.

arttorney

November 13th, 2007, 08:02 PM

I had to image this with my camera instead of the scanner because I am away from home. I have tried to make shadows like you would see in form lighting with the light source out to the right. If I get a chance this week I will try to do one in rim lighting.

Do you see how the cast shadows of the wings and arms fall across the body? Do you see why it might be darker in the cupped underside of that wing that is on the side away from the light? I have made the line on the back of each of his little fins darker than the line on the front of the fin. Which of the three things that create line interest do you think I have done?

Look how the hollow in his cheek that is on the near side is in shadow. This relates to the idea of the planes of the face.

arttorney

November 14th, 2007, 12:06 PM

Here is my first attempt at a paperball hand. This one I made in a modified contour fashion. I tried to draw the contours but while looking at the paper was allowed rather than prohibited. Still, a lot of the drawing was going on while looking at my hand and the paperball. After I got the contours mostly drawn I laid pencils down on the side and drew in some shading. I had my hand on a table so there is a cast shadow below it.

The problem with this method of working from the outside inward is that you sacrifice strict proportions. When I got around the outside of the paper ball to have my contour meet up with the contour already drawn for my thumb, the paperball contour was not going to meet my thumb in the place where it did in real life. The drawing is recognizable but my proportions are a little out of balance.

Xiayu

November 16th, 2007, 03:19 PM

Ok here is some hands I've made...It's all sketches though, did em quite fast..this week has gone so so fast :(

arttorney

November 17th, 2007, 10:59 AM

These look pretty good. You always shade in the most basic fashion though (with a little gray around each side). Xiayu's assignment for the coming week is to shade the three bottom hands she drew, but with the shadow being heavier on one side. Are there bumps or ridges or lines on the top of your hands?

Xiayu

November 17th, 2007, 12:26 PM

Well this was sort of funny, and embarrassing.

The nick I have, Xiayu, is just random.. got it from tekken 3, old game...I dont know why but I started calling myself that in games n stuff years ago..

and eh... the self portrait. I guess I looked abit *GIRLIER* then I use to ;P

(yes yes yes i have cut my hair now)

ME BOY BOY BOY

NOT GIRL GIRL GIRL

Dutchdevil

November 17th, 2007, 12:35 PM

Hey!

Here is my drawing, im not very pleased with it tho..

here it is:
http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k192/dutchdevil_2006/100_0491.jpg

arttorney

November 17th, 2007, 05:28 PM

I am sorry about the mix up Xiayu. :S

Dutchdevil: I like that hand. The little finger looks as big as the thumb but I know how hard this is. I did one myself. For your next assignment draw another person. I leave the choice of person open to make it easier since the paperball hand was so hard. It looks like you shaded in the fold of the hand pretty good.

If either of you want to make a drawing for the community activity known as 3CH Random Topic of the Week then I will accept that as your assignment. "An articulated chameleon" would be a lizard jointed like my little wooden boy from the pictures above.

arttorney

November 20th, 2007, 12:29 PM

arttorney

November 23rd, 2007, 03:44 PM

I took a shot Wednesday night at giving Xiayu's dragon rim lighting.

Dutchdevil

November 24th, 2007, 07:07 PM

I am making my 3CH Random topic entry in the evenings this week, and I will try to do a paintover of Xiayu's dragon with rim lighting. I will be busy on Saturday making edits to some patent drawings to meet a deadline, and I won't be able to go on the internet on Sunday. Monday the 26th I will be reviving several trademark applications somebody else screwed up. Probably the next big posting activity by me of advice and criticisms will come about Tuesday the 27th of next week. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Actually, This comes at the perfect time for me tho..

hand't have much time to do the assignment this week, and time also seems to fly by so fast!
Tomorrow it's Sunday, finally a day free! :steph: will draw tomorrow!

Dutchdevil

November 25th, 2007, 12:30 PM

Here is my drawing, it looks kinda creepy, and i do not like it at all.
however, i am going to redraw it but then with a fineliner or some traditional ink :) , will be doing this one later on.

drawing:
http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k192/dutchdevil_2006/100_0562.jpg

reff:
http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k192/dutchdevil_2006/smallville-kristin-kreuk-lana-lang.jpg

arttorney

November 27th, 2007, 02:45 PM

I will get you a more detailed criticism in about 20 hours but I can see you are trying to use the tools we have discussed. The traces of the guidelines are still visible so I know you are trying hard to do the right thing about the proportions of her face. The thing that jumps out at me is that her right eye looks bigger than her left. I can also see that you are trying to show form by shading rather than with lines too. I found the shadow on her forehead right where I expected it, etc. Try to make darker shadows darker than the light ones and lighter shadows lighter than the dark ones. People often decide what is lighter and darker by squinting when they look at the reference. These lights and darks are referred to as the "values." If you make the drawing as a whole piece (constantly moving around it and referring the parts to each other) rather than working on one section until it is finished and then moving on to the next, it will help you make sure that the values are the correct lightness and darkness compared to one another.

In the reference the right side of her face looks smaller because it is partially hidden behind her hair. In your drawing the left side of her face looks a little smaller, possibly because you have made her right eye so big. It makes her face look asymmetrical.

I think we talk a little more about how to compare things to one another as you proceed with the drawing. This model has pretty eyes and that reminds me it is time for me to talk about eyes in detail.:sungod:

Xiayu

November 30th, 2007, 02:46 PM

Mhm.... time goes way to fast, so I have not gotten the time to this. Will try to catch up with you now though...

Xiayu

November 30th, 2007, 02:48 PM

Btw I really liked the rim lightening you did with my dragon, looks fantastic!

arttorney

November 30th, 2007, 08:46 PM

Dutchdevil

December 2nd, 2007, 06:50 AM

You're welcome about the dragon. I am trying to help give you ideas about how to put drama into your drawings because I don't want you to be average. I want you to be good. Give more work when you can. You get more out of this if you do more.

Do you guys think you would like to draw a figure and an environment together? I have a nice photo I took of a young Japanese woman standing at the south rim of the Grand Canyon. I'd have to email her to make sure she is OK with being our model, but I bet she is. (We're friends.) This way we could continue practicing figures and lighting, but we would begin using a perspective technique known as atmospheric perspective (that is why the grand canyon in the background looks like it is farther away than the figure is).

I have had a rough week, Dutchdevil but I haven't forgotten that I had promised some more detail. I swear I'll get to it.

I think i can draw a figure and environment, im not sure i always avoided it but i am wiling to try offcouse it could turn out interesting.

I know you'll give more detail whenever you have the time to, i noticed that i also have little time but thats more because i plan my school,work and personal time at times that its nearly impossible.. all of my drawings are done one day before the deadline. but i will try to do a better job at my drawings and give it some more time :) im looking forward to the next assignment!

arttorney

December 3rd, 2007, 12:39 PM

Assignment (hopefully by next Monday): Draw a person from your imagination. Show at least three quarters of that person, including the face.

Here is a bunch of general information about drawing and painting:
Drawing and painting are a series of corrections in which you gradually come closer to a realistic image. There are three main stages.

1. STRUCTURE/COMPOSITION
Here you make choices about the size, shape, and placement of elements within the frame of view. A lot of your personal style can be rooted in this very early stage and in my own case, after studying the things done by masters I admire, I always remind myself that the prominent lines and shapes should be placed on the page with an emphasis on movement or drama if at all possible. In any event, you are making your underdrawing at this stage and you are probably using pencils or charcoal.

2. MASSING
This is the process of laying in simplified tones (or areas of color) omitting all detail. This is the stage where I covered George in solid gray and erased out my highlights for example. You are working with one or two values here to make the grand shapes and planes start to stand out. Massing is a way to avoid the disharmonious look caused by working on one small area of a drawing until it is done and then moving on to another area. This way the values and colors are applied with continual cross-comparison. If you are working with color remember that cool colors will seem farther away than warm ones. Harmonious colors are gentle and easy on the eye while contrast (of hue, value, or saturation) are dramatic and emphasize the subject that is found at those contrasting spots. (Hue is analogous to what you think of as color. Value is lightness or darkness. Saturation is how intense or dull the color is. You probably started working on contrast of values with the strength of your lines in step one but you will continue that work in step two.)

3. NUANCE
Now you apply the details of your drawing or painting, making specifics where there had only been generality. Put the most attention to detail, and contrasts of edge quality, hue, value, and saturation at the point where you expect everybody to focus. Of course, we call that point the focal point. I always remind myself not to give up too soon. It's amazing the details your eye can see and your hand can add as you go around and around in the drawing. Often, if you let the drawing go for a day or two and then come back to it, you will see all the places where you should have done something but just forgot.

arttorney

December 3rd, 2007, 03:33 PM

OK. Here is some additional detail about Dutchdevil's last drawing.

On her shoulders especially, but also at the top of her head, I can see the tendency to go back and forth with those scratchy lines again. As pretty as she is, why were you looking at the paper instead of her while you drew? (j/k) While you work to draw light and shadow, don't forget to be confident in your lines. With pencil, if you blow it, just erase and start again.

Look at where her pectoral meets her right arm and you can see a little bit of what we call an overlapping plane. Her muscle goes across her ribcage and up to an attachment point on her shoulder. On its way it crosses a little bit in front of the inside of her arm and makes a place where her pectoral is light and yet there is a rather dark region of cast shadow in her underarm area. You didn't really get the shape of this overlap right. The way there is a bit of very light at the rim of her pectoral contrasts with the very dark that is behind in the cast shadow region and helps a lot to show three dimensional form. I think I will post some tutorial information about the three dimensional shapes in us this week (which will be borrowed from a Burne Hogarth book I have).

This eye discussion is for both of you.
252678
The upper part of the pupil is usually a little darker than the lower part. That is because the light going into the inside of the eye usually comes from a high place so there is a shadow inside the eye in the upper side of it. When a person looks in along the line A, they see darker shadows being cast on the upper part of the inside of the eye than are the shadows in the lower part. You can't really see that on Kristen because there is a highlight in the way on her eyes.
252679
There is a slight bulge (1 and 2) on the upper part of the eye because the eyeball is a sphere. Remember that she is not a piece of paper. She is a woman composed of three dimensional shapes. If her eyelid was not so bunched up, you could also see this roundness on the surface of her eyelid. Notice how the peak of the roundness is lighter and the skin shades darker as you go away from the bulge on either side. That's because the light source is kind of high and in the middle. The side of her iris (3) that is away from where the highlight is will usually be lighter than the side having the highlight (4). You can see on the other eye that I didn't cover with lines that the speck of bright light on it is a little to our left and high. The lightest portions of her iris color are in a patch that is to our right and lower. There is a bulge (5) at the lower eyelid which is also caused by the fact that her eyeball is a sphere.

(See how the upper part of her lower lip has that high gloss and yet it gradually darkens as you follow the roll of her lip downward? This is all about what I have been telling you concerning showing three dimensional shapes with light and dark values. See how the highlight on the tip of her nose also shows the light is high and a little bit to our left? The highlights on her eyes, lips, nose, and everywhere else match up and that tells us she is real and three dimensional. If each part of her were drawn as though the light came from a different direction she would be identifiable as a drawing of a human but nobody would believe she was real because something just doesn't look right. This is why you always decide where the light is coming from and stick with that decision as you draw in your lights and shadows. Look at the difference in the light between her left shoulder and her right shoulder. Look at the light place on her chin. Is it as light as the light place just above her eyebrows? Is it as bright as her shoulder that is to our left? Is it as dark as the skin of her throat under her chin? Dutchdevil- go back now and look at how you drew these various places. Many of them are about the same value in your drawing but they are quite different on her, aren't they?)

Dutchdevil

December 4th, 2007, 07:15 AM

hey, thanks for your post, and the eye discussion its really helpfully.
Im going to draw some figures from three dimensions right now.

I am looking forward to se what the result will be, as i know dimensions and perspective related drawings are one of the weakest things at my side, but i also understand these are one of the most important things.

I also have a request, if possible could you explain me(us) how to draw Hair thats just one nasty thing to draw, its so hard!

arttorney

December 4th, 2007, 12:56 PM

OK.

This evening I think I will try to put up some information about the three dimensional shapes in a human body and then tomorrow morning over coffee I will make a stepwise demo of how I would draw Kristen's hair.

arttorney

December 5th, 2007, 11:53 AM

The human body can be seen as a set of barrel shapes (1) (such as the chest region), wedges or boxes (2) (as in the pelvis), and cylinders (3) (as in the sections of the arms and legs). These shapes can help you see what is in front of or behind other things as you draw figures in complicated poses. I would recommend you stick with a simple pose for this week's assignment, and for that you can use the action line/stick figure method we started out with (featuring a couple of boxes and a head when you are making your stage 1 lines).
253538
Here is my hair series:
253539
253540
253541

Dutchdevil

December 9th, 2007, 01:13 PM

This weeks assignment :

Let me introduce you; Celine

http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k192/dutchdevil_2006/IMAGE0079.jpg

http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k192/dutchdevil_2006/IMAGE0080-1.jpg

http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k192/dutchdevil_2006/IMAGE0081.jpg

I dont like the poses, but i really like the drawing about her face

arttorney

December 10th, 2007, 08:19 PM

1. Thank you for getting something done in the time frame I mentioned. Meeting deadlines is extremely important if you want to have a job in this field some day. It also shows me you care.
2. I can see by the first two drawings that you are trying very hard to incorporate the things I am suggesting. You are fighting hard to stop scratching back and forth with your lines. You are working out your proportions according to previous lessons. (except drawing three which I will come to eventually) You are massing and adding in details on top of it.
3. Regarding Celine's face- I can actually see her, Vincent. She's got some personality and is a real character. Those three quarter views are hard for many people to do, but I think you've done a good job. Her eyes, the bottom of her nose, and her lips are in the right place. (I'll show you some things about ears soon. The top of her ear should line up with her eyebrows, or at least above her eyes. I'm looking at a couple of guys in my work right now, and I can see they follow this rule). Rather than drawing a smooth gray mass for her hair and using the eraser and dark pencil, you have massed by hatching and then going to the darker pencil. That is legitimate and is probably how you would have to do it if you draw her in ink. She is not really shaded, but I know proportions were your #1 concern in starting this thread with me, and your proportions are really good here compared to the way we started. Many people draw heads with about half of the back of the head missing. That's a rookie mistake and the fact that you didn't do that tells me you probably thought about the spherical shape of the top half of her head while you drew this. One of these days soon you will be able to draw circles around me in the area of characters.
4. Regarding the first figure. She is seven heads tall which is normal. The upper arm that is farther away from us looks just a wee bit too short, but this is a very hard pose because there is foreshortening. The breast that is closer to us would probably be pointing straight at us. Female breasts shoot away from each other at about a 45 degree angle. Her hands are very simplified. I bet now you can understand why I told you to practice a hand. You have drawn her feet too small, just as you did with George and in the third drawing here. I think that is a usual problem with you and so you should watch out for this in each drawing. Make the feet about a head long. Maybe they can be a little smaller in the case of a woman (so she looks a little more dainty) but they should not be only half a head long.
5. In the third pose she is only about 5 1/2 heads tall, her feet are too small, and the lines are a little bit scratchy on her arms. Her arms and legs are too short, basically. I can tell you were hurrying on this one.

Dutchdevil

December 11th, 2007, 01:58 PM

Ok the third time i am typing this because i keep on deleting my damn long message.

You mentioned how important it is how to make deadlines in this field of work.
This kinda gave my hope,because i had dream of becoming a Concept Artist, a dream i did not follow because, as far as i thought i was not good enough so i gave up.

Being your mentee, and signing up for it forced me to draw ( i Like it tho.. i usually think like ''it will come.. will do tomorrow'' and stuff like that but now i cant ) while u take precious time to teach me, a person you do not know i can not let you down so i will draw.

As you mentioned how important it is to make the deadlines it gave me hope to somehow be able to become a concept artist.

As i know people here are often far older then I ( 17 years ), I probably have a long way to go, since i am very very very novice in this kind of area.

so to make this long story short my question:
do You think I will be able to become a concept artist while I draw in my spare time since I also have school?

I really am happy with your comments and especially with #3 i really did my best here, and yes the others were a bit rushed mainly because i wanted to draw her face tho i have to admit i only was able to see that she was so short after i scanned the picture, seeing her on paper doesnt make me realise she is so small

By the way: What is the next assignment? :D

arttorney

December 11th, 2007, 02:37 PM

I think you can do it, but you have to work hard. I didn't want to act like a slave driver on here because I know you don't have to do this. I also don't have to do this. If you don't work hard it doesn't do anything bad to me, it only hurts you. You are working hard, though. I can see that. I think when we get you to the point that your lines are consistently crisp and clean, and your proportions are good, then you can start doing some respectable pieces for the community activities. Those are like simulated freelance jobs. You will then see that you are hanging in there, providing reasonable work (on time) among a bunch of professionals. At that point we would talk about how you can work up a portfolio and go out to get a job.

Don't worry about your age. Many people don't even know what they want to do in life until their middle or late twenties. I didn't have a college degree until I was 31. I didn't become a lawyer until I was 40. I didn't make my first painting until I was 42. You have a lot of years ahead of you. It is an advantage, not a drawback. On the other hand there are also a lot of people on here who are 17 and they are already scary good. If we get you to the point that you regularly draw a pretty good piece then maybe you can check into the "teen challenges" in the challenge arena and meet some people in your age group who can help drive you forward.

I can see you fixing the things I say you should fix. Next will come feet and hands and ears. When those are good, the lines are good, and the faces and bodies didn't slide backward into badness, I will ask you if you want transferred to a character specialist (because characters are about my weakest area, frankly). If you don't mind sticking with me, we can continue to develop characters together, go into colors, or digital, or creatures, tech or environments. Whatever you want. I want to see you succeed. That is why I am doing this. I am going to take this to PM for some even more serious discussion but I leave you with this by Henry David Thoreau:

"I learned this at least by my experiment, that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will leave some things behind. New universal, and more liberal laws will establish themselves around and within him and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings."

Frankly this quote is what I am usually thinking about when I tell you that you are in charge of your drawing and not vice versa, and to make confident lines. You can do it. Know in your heart you can do it. It is now only a matter of time and you have a lot of that ahead of you compared to me.

arttorney

December 11th, 2007, 03:28 PM

For those who are following along:

Besides a whole bunch of discussion, my PM assignment to Dutchdevil is basically to get a mirror and draw his foot (or feet) in two different poses, his free hand in two different poses, and his ear once. If those five drawings do not exhaust his time he is to take a sheet and drape it over a chair and light it from the side and do a cloth study drawing.

By the way to both mentees: the current teen challenge due Dec. 21st is to make a self portrait according to a theme. (Like yourself as an ancient Roman, yourself as a vampire, etc.) It is at http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=112830 This might be something you are interested in. You can meet some of the other people on here who are 19 or below and see what they do.

Dutchdevil

December 12th, 2007, 03:36 AM

Xiayu

December 13th, 2007, 09:21 AM

Couple of drawings comin' up, think I will finish them today.

New character design for some game I made up, wait and see ;D

Xiayu

December 13th, 2007, 11:51 AM

Here is two characters, the evilness and the goodness :) got 3 drawings of the goodguy and 2 of the bad girl. It's in the order first - last. All of these are quite fast made, could have made 1 of each I guess, but just didnt ;O

nvm the eye next to the last one.

arttorney

December 13th, 2007, 12:26 PM

This is a lot to look at. I'll have something detailed to say by Saturday though.

The Gunslinger will be joining us as a mentee today. He's going to start at the beginning, though, so everybody gets to see somebody else struggle through blind contours and George. If you are not a "he," tell me now Gunslinger, I am a little bit of a blockhead about that but I mean well.

Dutchdevil

December 13th, 2007, 04:08 PM

arttorney

December 13th, 2007, 05:13 PM

Dutchdevil- I was going to say that Celine's eyes seem to have either only pupil or only iris. I just now had a client meeting with two Chinese women whose eyes were so dark the iris and pupil were very close to the same value at least in the light of that conference room. I can see that there is an amazing amount of variety among people in this world, but I am sure everybody will read your image best if you can clearly see a difference between the pupil and the iris.

Welcome to CrazyfingerS who will be joining us today.

Dutchdevil

December 14th, 2007, 04:39 AM

Thanks, I will use it in the next Portrait drawing ( myself for the teen challenge).
I have one question, the deadline for teen challenge is Wednesday 21 December.

Wednesday it is the 19th and 21 is on Saturday, Ialready PM'ed the topic starter but i dont seem to get a message back.

Also, i give a warm welcome to CrazyfingerS, your name seems farmiliar are you a member of other boards?

btw, i got my self a sketchbook! :D

arttorney

December 14th, 2007, 10:32 AM

Our last two new mentees are deep_in_food and jtrodreigez. Maybe all of you folks can make mutual introductions. You can also help each other if you want to in here, but if anybody gets mean and hurtful rather than constructive I will kick that person back out (after fair warning). We are all in here to learn, including me. We can do that best by supporting one another.

CrazyfingerS

December 14th, 2007, 07:05 PM

hey guys.thanx for the welcome.yeah dutch,you may have seen me around.i post the occasional painting.i guess i should show you guys some of my stuff(being visual thinkers i guess this is only respectful).i look forward to working with and off of you guys!

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a309/seanvrabel/Untitled-1-1.jpg

CrazyfingerS

December 14th, 2007, 07:08 PM

i will have a few contour drawing for you guys tonight.

deep_in_food

December 15th, 2007, 05:37 AM

*ignores the last page at the moment*
Thanks for letting me join :)
I should be starting now after that long sleep because of playing games. Stupid me T.T.

deep_in_food

December 15th, 2007, 11:39 AM

upload spree ftw :D
I'll draw a better hand tomorrow

arttorney

December 15th, 2007, 01:13 PM

deep_in_food I'll go to work figuring out what to say about your George Washington tomorrow. On your gestures try to work from the inside out rather than the outside in. The next assignment is going to be the young woman at the grand canyon and I'll put a bunch of reminder information about the earlier concepts but I will also make a little tutorial about how to get from the stick figure to the good finished outline of the figure by building up your volume.

The blind contours probably made you look at the image in a way you are not used to looking. You were probably concentrating your butt off I suspect. It's funny how that exercise makes you feel like a child gripping a crayon in your fist and drawing on the wall. When you feel that way you are learning again. You are just learning how to look at what you are drawing while you are drawing. If you look away and start drawing what you thought you saw the Left part of your brain immediately jumps forward with the supposedly helpful clip art that got stashed in your brain when you were in 2nd grade. Right now you are trying to break past that stuff and really draw.

I'll look more closely at the hand too. You are a bundle of energy. I can see you will be a real handful. Working hard will pay off.

arttorney

December 15th, 2007, 01:28 PM

Xiayu-
The big detailed post of today is for you. In your first figure with the shield on the back the waist looks too low, like the legs are not long enough and the torso is too long. Try to make your characters have higher waists or they will look droopy. The second one who looks like a jester has the same problem. His face is very simple. Our next assignment will help you to see how the shadows on somebody's face can make it look like a real face and so it is good to draw them in.

The third figure shows that the points at the bottom of the legs of some of these figures are not necessarily supposed to be feet. That is because this character has three legs. It looks like theyt are tentacles. If these are tentacles and the character is standing on the ground then I think the tentacles would meet the ground farther apart (like a tripod). Do these characters hover in the air? I think the arms of this character are a little too short. People's arms come part way down the top half of the leg. If arms end at the waist they look too short.

On Zirac there is a very low waist again. Zirac has droopy shoulders and he will look more strong if he has a straight-across shoulder line that is approximately two heads wide. On the second drawing of Zirac I think you have made a very nice attention to detail on his outfit. All those diamonds and things in the lower part create a lot of interest in this character. Many people, including me, often forget to make details like this. Not everybody in the world dresses in clothes that are one color with no design. Those details help create realism.

About Avenaska- There is no shading here and you are making some of those shaky lines that go back and forth instead of being bold and confident. The hand of this character that is on our right is extremely tiny and only has three fingers. It looks kind of strange that way. Are you having trouble with hands and feet?

The last figure-
Wow! There is some three dimensionality showing here in the sleeve that is on our left. It has a complicated structure. When we get you shading well that kind of stuff is going to look really cool. I can see that you paid attention to the massing step in the hair and then added in some detail in a darker value. Good show! It is interesting how there appear to be several layers of teeth in this species.:steph:

deep_in_food

December 16th, 2007, 12:24 AM

deep_in_food

December 16th, 2007, 12:07 PM

Here's my left hand. This time I try working from inside to outside and see how it goes - the speed of the drawing seem to increase with this method

Hm.. an intro, I guess just call me deep in food. My real name is jess anyways xD
Online game's my worst habit

arttorney

December 16th, 2007, 02:44 PM

For everybody. Here is what I mean by working from the inside out to draw figures up from that fundamental stick figure. I've made these using no reference, photo or otherwise. I just made a stick figure with arms and legs about how long they should be based on the head oval I drew.

1. Within about 30 seconds you should be able to capture an essential flow of a figure. While I call these stick figures they can be much more like wet noodle figures. There is so much curvature and flow in the human figure.

2. The next step is to put in the major solids, the torso and the pelvis. I am showing this stuff as I was taught in life class. Hogarth goes about it in a slightly different way, using those three dimensional shapes I showed above.
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3. Now start to fill in the arms and legs with some tapers (that are narrower than the arms and legs will eventually be). You are still trying to retain the curvature and flow of this figure. We don't want him to be stiff.

4. Now you can begin to fill in the outer perimeter including stuff like where the hands and feet will be and the neck and waist. You need to decide about this time where the light will be coming from.

5. Mass in your intermediate tone. Those of you who use digital, or color stuff like pastels would probably do this in a fundamental undercoat color.

6. You then would draw in highlights with an eraser to show where the light will be striking the figure. You can think about how the light falls on a form by using those cylinders with shadows in my earlier example to help you decide where to do this. If you make your figure larger than I have and if you use a kneaded eraser that you twist into a point you can get pretty accurate about how you render these shadows. If you are painting (other than watercolor) or using pastel you may use a lighter color for this rather than the eraser.
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7. Now you can draw in some shadows using a darker value than the middle value you massed with.

8. Last you render in some details. If your guy is a foreground main character you will probably want to do a less slapdash job than I have done here. I made all eight of these within two hours and they are only about 3.5 inches tall (perhaps 9 cm).

The point of this is to show how to build up the figure from a gesture diagram and use light and shadow to give it a sense of solidity.

arttorney

December 16th, 2007, 05:06 PM

This is about the George Washington by deep-in-food. the measurements between the hands and also how long the feet are look good. Your George Washington only seems to be about 6 1/2 heads tall though. I think this is partly because of too short legs (but I think his head might be just a little bit too big also). When I measure 5 heads downward on the statue it comes to a shadow boundary about in the middle of his upper leg but when I measure the same thing on your drawing 5 heads comes down to the top of his boot. This is how come I think part of it might be because of the size of the head.

When I measure up from the bottom on the statue, the hem of his jacket is a little less than 3 1/2 heads up while on your drawing it is no more than three. This is why I think part of the problem is how long you drew his legs.

We'll see as you post more figures, but you might make heads a little bit too big. I tend to make heads too small. We each need to find out what our little tendencies are so we can learn to watch out for them in our drawing.

I noticed that you also have the tendency to scratch back and forth with your lines. It looks much better if you make a single confident line. If you cannot yet bring yourself to do this, then draw at first with a really light pencil, and when you can see that you finally got the line right, then you draw in that correct line with a dark pencil and erase all the wrong ones.

You paid a lot of attention to shadow details on the George Washington but there are not really any big shadows on either of your hands. Are you sure there were no shadows on your hands? Where was your light? Your second hand is a really good example of what I mean about scratching back and forth with the lines. It makes your hand look a little hairy, like a werewolf. ;-)

Dutchdevil

December 17th, 2007, 03:59 PM

Hey!
here are my this weeks assignments.
sorry for the low quality but i was unable to use the scanner so i had to photograph them.

Feet

http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k192/dutchdevil_2006/100_0593.jpg
http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k192/dutchdevil_2006/100_0594.jpg
Hands
http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k192/dutchdevil_2006/100_0595.jpg
http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k192/dutchdevil_2006/100_0600.jpg
http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k192/dutchdevil_2006/100_0601.jpg

Ears

http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k192/dutchdevil_2006/100_0590.jpg

http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k192/dutchdevil_2006/100_0605.jpg
I will be able to draw folds on wednesday, tomorrow i am away and am late home.

greetings,
Vincent

arttorney

December 17th, 2007, 04:11 PM

The only scratchy line place I can see here is on the top of the first foot. Good show! I especially like the second foot drawing and the ears. You are really starting to get good proportions on those and see the shadows that are there. It looks like your fingers are very long on the hands, but maybe your hands are like that. I knew a guy in high school with very long fingers.

I bet you saw things about feet and hands and ears you never noticed before. Practice makes perfect on these things and everybody has them. Your choice is to practice drawing them or else draw everybody with long hair standing with their hands behind their backs and clumps of grass hiding their feet. If you try it the second way, everybody will figure out real fast that you are just hiding things.

arttorney

December 17th, 2007, 04:20 PM

My friend Rumi has agreed to be our model for the next assignment (for everybody once they have caught up to this stage) concerning drawing a figure in an environment. Thank you Rumi! As you can see she is lit by rim lighting, which is an interesting coincidence since she is standing at the south rim of the Grand Canyon. Light is so fascinating! Look how the reflected light on her forehead to our upper right. Notice how it is not just a lighter version of the more shadowed parts of her face but actually appears to be bluer as well as lighter. When you work in colors you will always have to remember what is the color of the thing that the reflected light is bouncing from because it affects the color of the reflected light patch.
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Try to remember to map out her proportions as accurately as possible. Try to achieve accurate shading on her. Also notice how the Grand Canyon seems to have a much softer focus to it than Rumi and the railing have. There is not as much difference between the lights and the darks. When things are farther away they are bluer, more washed-out looking, and have softer edges. (Remember my discussion of line edges? Line edge variations can be used to good advantage to show that some things are farther away.) Look how dark are the shadows at Rumi's feet compared to the brightness of the chainlinks and railings of the fence. Notice also how the blue of the sky is darker at the higher part of the picture than it is down by the ground. This is generally the case. The sky is almost never the same color all over the place.

Environments should have a foreground, a middle ground and a background. Rumi and the railing are in the foreground, the lower left closer parts of the Grand Canyon serve as a middle ground here, and the far side of the Grand Canyon serves as the background.

Because this is a detailed picture and we are in a holiday season I don't expect anybody to finish their drawing of Rumi until January 7, 2008. If anybody finishes early I will think up another assignment. Take your time though, relax, and have some fun with the new challenges this image presents. People who can do color in digital or traditional media can go ahead and do this in color if they wish.

deep_in_food

December 17th, 2007, 10:17 PM

guess what, I suddenly feel as if I don't have confident to go on.... Anyways, I'm doing a christmas card too, which I'm trying to fix all the problems, and playing around with other stuff too.

Don't worry about commenting on them though if you guys don't have time ;)

Edit: opps the one with "Silver" is only a screenshot manipulation. I painted over it

arttorney

December 18th, 2007, 11:49 AM

I hope it wasn't something I said. I think you are doing fine. Each of us has the potential to be good, but the skills must be developed through practice. I can't do that part for you, but you were practicing hard already. If it is a matter of the new assignment, then just tell me what you would rather do. I am flexible.

deep_in_food

December 19th, 2007, 10:19 AM

Oh thanks :)
Nah it's not the things you said. Your stuff are looking great so far :)

arttorney

December 19th, 2007, 09:57 PM

When I get a chance I'll at least look at your christmas card and stuff. Work's been hectic.

arttorney

December 20th, 2007, 02:24 PM

The one that says silver looks OK to me. I haven't seen any recent anime or manga so I don't know what is in style right now for that type of art.

About the unicorn, what I see is that you are drawing in things like the hair on its legs and its mane with a small brush and making a lot of repeated strokes. That's not the fastest way, or the best looking way, to render a mass of stuff like hair. People will tell you to "start with bigger brushes." That is a digital way of saying the same thing as I am teaching on here when I talk about "massing." If you pick a middle value to draw the whole shape with a large brush, then you can quickly stroke in with high opacity smaller brushes some darks and lights on top of the mass and the hair will seem to have three dimensional depth to it.

deep_in_food

December 21st, 2007, 05:12 AM

Hm... right now I smudged the hair, and spents some days to fix the rest :P
The advice is useful :)

--------------------
From my deviantart account:

Lol refined... original link http://jsiu123.deviantart.com/art/Pony-pony-71941762

This is almost like drawing the whole pic again...

- Added highlight on the girl and the pony
- fixed the horse anatomy in some ways although not that perfect
- used :sheisprettystock's snow stock for the snow
- patterns on the sandy ground and the rocks
- redrew the mountain and the trees
- doorframe stand out ... a little
- smudged the pony's hair

Stock used: :iconsheisprettystock: http://sheisprettystock.deviantart.com/art/Snow-72530832

arttorney

December 31st, 2007, 09:47 AM

deep_in_food

Just spend some time looking at things around in the world, I think. You can get more realism when you understand where the shadows should be and why they look the way they do. The woman's leg that we can see is just massed in without detail. There is going to be shadow showing that her leg is a folded thing of multiple cylinders rather than one big shape. Those shadows will be gradated also because of the fact that the legs are cylinders rather than boxes. As the legs roll around, the light is bouncing in different directions and that creates the graduated shadow effect.

In case anyone is wondering why I have asked you to start looking at figures in environments, it is because the point of concept art is the concept. Otherwise it is just art. The environment provides the context within which the character or characters are doing things. The environment is the stage on which they are acting out your concept. This is how the great masters painted when they wanted to show a story from the Bible or mythology. I have included a master study of Bacchus and Ariadne by Titian. He shows Ariadne being met by her future husband, Bacchus and his entourage. That meeting occurs on the island of Naxos (the environment). It is part of the story. Ariadne (a princess) has just been dumped on Naxos by (Theseus if I remember correctly) who has sailed off in a ship full of men leaving her behind. (What's up with that? Insert raunchy joke about seamen.) Bacchus shows up and rescues her.

arttorney

January 1st, 2008, 12:47 PM

This thread http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=26636 will provide a lot of input if you get some spare time and want to know what some big time people have to say about making it in this industry.

The advice about drawing from life and not being satisfied brings up something I wanted to say about your drawings of Rumi at the Grand Canyon. If you were actually at the Grand Canyon with her, your eyes would clearly tell you what details are in that black void to the lower right. Cameras have this tendency to average things out in a way that can rob your image of interest. That area just becomes a black patch devoid of interesting detail. If you wish to use your imagination to draw in the flat black area as more of the canyon below, then by all means do so. I would. Your ability to see with your eyes can go hand in hand with your ability to see with your imagination. You can make drawings that are better than mere photographs. Never be satisfied with a drawing that is "as good as a photograph." Know in your heart that you are better than that.

Note also the advice of Jason Manley in that thread to make short drawings as well as long detailed drawings. I hope you all still find time to do some quick sketches sometimes like the gestures and even the blind contours. Just because we are doing longer material (to try to get into three dimensional forms with good proportions, light and shadow) does not mean that I am telling you to stop with that other stuff. The short stuff will give you that confidence in your drawing that I know you want. You'll see quickly and draw quickly if you practice seeing quickly and drawing quickly.

arttorney

January 1st, 2008, 12:48 PM

:medusachow: (Wow! Cool smiley.)

Don't ever use the back button of your browser to add a cool smiley into your post like I just did or you will double post and everybody will say "tsk, tsk. What a goofball!" Then you will have to go to edit mode, delete that stuff about the thread advice and the big black shadow, and then toss in some other advice to covertly pretend that you didn't just double post. Er, did I just say that out loud?

arttorney

January 2nd, 2008, 12:13 PM

"to covertly pretend" is a split infinitive. Don't do that either. And don't brain fart by hitting the post reply button when you meant to hit edit in order to correct a split infinitive.

Man I had a rough holiday season!

:dead: I should be back to normal in a day or two.

deep_in_food

January 4th, 2008, 06:44 AM

I went to flyff half of my time for a whole week already. I even remember the date I started playing on that silly online game again

Edit: forgot a question, looks like the exercises say something about drawing things, is we need to copy the objects around us more? :o

Dutchdevil

January 4th, 2008, 12:07 PM

Are you guys having trouble with this assignment? like i do...
could use some tips even its a little late..

I am at my third attempt of Rumi but it seems only a waste of time -.-

deep_in_food

January 5th, 2008, 10:18 AM

I haven't started yet, but when I try to do simular stuff playing with highlights I have no idea how to apply them :P

Dutchdevil

January 7th, 2008, 09:55 AM

http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k192/dutchdevil_2006/IMAGE0085.jpg

so.. that was what i came up with.
a HUGE dissapointment.. guess i am not ready for envo's in the background

arttorney

January 7th, 2008, 01:28 PM

I am trying to catch up with work today, because I spent since last Thursday working on my Last Man Standing entry. I should be able to show that off next week. I know the drawing of Rumi is really hard. This weekend I will do one of my own and take scans as I go along to show how to do it. During this week I will also comment on whatever Rumi drawings show up.

I will make an assignment later today and it will be much simpler this time (because it is time for us to do some quick drawing again).

Thanks for being patient and trying. I will try not to be so difficult again for a little while. If I only give easy assignments, though, you only learn how to do easy drawings. That is why I did this. It is similar to why we drew George Washington. As you try to do these hard ones, you find out what is hard to draw, and why it is hard. In the next couple of days try to tell me what seems hard about this. I already know that I should take special attention to talk about shading for deep_in_food. I hope to give you all some new tools you can use to tackle problems like this in the future.

Dutchdevil

January 7th, 2008, 02:34 PM

Well, what was hard for me.. was the pose..

but the hardest part was the shading, i had a hardtime making the diffrence between shading tones and it still didnt work out.

I even used Photoshop to show the image in Gray scale but I think it were to many details for me..

don't know how the other people are coming up with it.
Im looking forward to the drawings of the others hope i can learn from it

arttorney

January 7th, 2008, 03:11 PM

I'm going to measure etc. before full crit of your Rumi drawing but at first glance it looks like you got her proportions and size correct. It kind of sucks to learn from photos but I have to see what you are seeing in order to know if you are getting the proportions right. I am happy that it looks like we might be able to move beyond the photos because I think you are mapping things out better now.

The subtleties of shading are very hard, I know. I'll focus on that when I make my Rumi drawing, but I will also analyze her pose like I did with George.

Another thing I have been trying to do is give a full range of human types. Some people draw all their characters looking pretty much the same. The world is a big place with a lot of diversity. I would like the mentees to be able to draw a lot of different types of characters. George Washington is a statue of an older white male, while Jessie and Mack Robinson we looked at are African Americans. With Rumi we have tried to draw a young Asian woman. We may eventually explore drawing people with different body types too. Children, by the way, have really big heads compared to their bodies. The "seven or eight heads tall" rule does not apply to children. That is only adults.

arttorney

January 7th, 2008, 08:16 PM

OK. DutchDevil, the placement of Rumi compared to the horizon line and to the railing is good. What you have done is to add more distance above her head and below her feet and a little slice of extra room at our left. The extra room at our left is a good idea.:asspat: I framed the picture awkwardly when I took the photo. I really shouldn't have come so close to chopping off any of her elbow. The extra room at her feet is also good. It is good to have some foreground.

The extra room above her head is not so good. There is a big mass of sky (nothingness) up there that is not really adding any interest to the drawing. Thank you for making effort at what I know was a really busy image. I will try to show the ways to simplify all that information and make a drawing people can recognize without working yourself to death. I will do that in a few days. I need to put in a couple of days more on my Last Man Standing drawing so it will be respectable.:lifedrawing:

arttorney

January 7th, 2008, 08:21 PM

Assignment Post

For everybody: This week make ten gesture drawings (one minute each) of real people, or people you see on television (not still photographs). Also make ten gesture drawings (one minute each) of people you imagine. That is 20 minutes of hopefully easier work for you while I get together my series on how I would draw Rumi at the Grand Canyon. Post your gestures on here so I can discuss them with you. Don't just put one per page. Fill your paper, but try not to have them overlap each other.

deep_in_food: Well I hadn't meant to make an assignment about drawing things around you, until this new assignment about making gesture drawings of some people. In the grand scheme of things, though, everybody will tell you to just draw, draw, draw. If you carry a little sketchbook around with you and draw stuff whenever you are stuck with spare time it will help you a lot. Getting good at this is really a matter of a lot of practice. I haven't heard of very many prodigies who just pop into the world and draw perfectly the first time they try it. I was just saying you shouldn't draw only what I say. draw whatever interests you. Draw everything (except secret military installations). Draw all the time. Draw all your mistakes right out of the ends of your fingers until nothing more will come out except good drawings.

Dutchdevil

January 8th, 2008, 09:52 AM

deep_in_food

January 9th, 2008, 05:58 AM

I guess I really suck at drawing rocks lol, but anyways... I'm nto happy with the length of the body, but i guess i'll fix it laters.

I was in online games way too much for my own good again :S. Well, it doesn't take me too much time to realise that I'm stuck there for almost 8-10 days. Anyways, hopefully I'm back

arttorney

January 9th, 2008, 02:46 PM

Interesting. I have a desperate job deadline today, but I promise I will get to this (later in the week).

Dutchdevil

January 10th, 2008, 05:01 PM

arttorney

January 10th, 2008, 09:08 PM

Just think about how hard I will have to work to think up good helpful crits.

Looking at it at the moment, I think it is really cool how there is a real impression of light on the rim lit portions of Rumi and there is a very broad contrast between those lights and the darks in the lower right. The proportions on her have a realistic feel and I like the expression on her face.

I know why you hate the rocks, though. The differences in value are about all you have in this image to show the difference from one rock to the next, since the line edges are so softened out. Unfortunately the value differences are also weakened by the distance. It's tough. Congratulations, though! I know you weren't so sure you could do this, and it was a tough assignment designed to test people's commitment, but you have come through to the other side with a value study of Rumi that I think is remarkable. I will talk about the deep_in_food drawing some more, I suppose, when I do the one I will do. LMS is extended yet again, so I can relax a bit and produce some more art for this thread. Going back I can see that Dutchdevil used some shading and blending for the rocks rather than pure hatching and I think it did help portray the softening effect of the distance better than simply hatching for the values.

I won't push you guys to do environment stuff if you hate it, but the master study I showed above is a good example of how characters and environments do go hand in hand to tell a story. I know the current teen challenge calls for a "Post-apocalyptic" feel, which an environment in the background can be used to indicate as much as the character's clothes can.

You guys are cool.

.

deep_in_food

January 11th, 2008, 08:33 AM

So I guess you mean that rocks are all about the edges. Yeah when there's rocks on the ground it's always tough for me to draw them. I wonder, what side did I come through? Or.. ........... I have problem digesting the whole thing...

Anyways, that kind of drawing was my first try. Refining stuff is always my weakness so far as I know

arttorney

January 11th, 2008, 11:26 AM

You'll get there soon enough. Here is a lot of commentary about how edges and values work together to show unusual textures:
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=110546&page=2

deep_in_food

January 12th, 2008, 03:22 PM

When I finally got to read it, it's whole lot of stuff over there. :)

arttorney

January 12th, 2008, 05:39 PM

I will be throwing all kinds of stuff at you all the time. Use what you can use.

Here is Bumskee's tutorial on Photoshop. Bumskee is sort of a god.
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=47859&highlight=tutorial

I am doing my Rumi drawing in Photoshop 4, which came with my Wacom. I am really mostly a traditional media artist so I probably do a lot of Photoshop stuff the hard way. If you really want to know what you're doing in Photoshop I recommend the Bumskee thread.

First I draw in an underdrawing to show me where everything basically goes. I have drawn a line to show me where this thing is eventually going to be cropped. I am sure there is a way to make a big canvas that has the proper aspect ratio (height/width) but I haven't really done that for this tutorial.

arttorney

January 12th, 2008, 05:45 PM

Next I use a soft round brush (here 170 pixels at 58% opacity on a brand new layer) to draw the sky. I make a stroke across the middle of the sky and then a second stroke higher up to make the high part of the sky be darker.
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Now I make a new layer and use a soft round brush (30 pixels, 35 % opacity) to draw some clouds. I used a new layer in case I want to erase some around the edges without erasing any sky blue.
279652

arttorney

January 12th, 2008, 05:50 PM

Now I use a 453 pixel soft round brush at 96% opacity to make one good stroke across a new layer using the color that seems to be the light part of the canyon and foreground.
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I then took a 100% opacity eraser and went along the horizon line with a hard small round shape (somewhere about 30 pixels) followed by erasing the rest of the canyon color out of the sky with a 91 pixel size eraser.
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arttorney

January 12th, 2008, 05:56 PM

OK. In that same layer and using the same basic color, I put in about 5 or 6 strokes with a soft round at 96% opacity and 170 pixels. Then I erase whatever slopped into the sky. Don't worry about the figure guidelines. The obscuring layers can be hidden while the figure is being drawn.
279656
I use the eyedropper tool in the same layer 96% opacity, 10 pixels to draw a major outline and then a three or four pixel brush to draw a couple of small strokes. Out in the distance I clean up a bit using a 31 pixel brush. Because I am painting with a color that used to be there before, it kind of looks like I am erasing.
279657

arttorney

January 12th, 2008, 06:02 PM

I make a new layer. Using a 18 pixel 96% opacity brush I paint in the top rail. I did this rail five or six times before I got it right. Use edit=>undo to get rid of a bad stroke so you can try again. I've hidden the canyon layer so I can see the figure outline while I do this.

Various tints (lighter) and shades (darker) of the rail color are then applied as nuance in sizes between about 4 and 10 pixels, 96% opacity, soft round, same layer.

arttorney

January 12th, 2008, 06:08 PM

I go back to the canyon layer. I stroke across it with the light tint of the railing color I was just using at about 18% opacity using an 81 pixel soft round to create the bluish look of haze in the distance. I follow up with two or three strokes at 22 pixels up in the section near Rumi's head. I eyedropper the dark canyon and select an even darker shade of that in the color menu to draw in some dark areas. You will notice you can draw through the railings and it doesn't show (because the railings are in a higher layer).
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I create a new layer even higher than the railings. I mass in Rumi. I can see what I am doing by hiding all the other layers except the underdrawing and the rails.
279668

arttorney

January 12th, 2008, 06:15 PM

Now I show all the layers so I can see the result of what has basically all been massing (except the nuance on the rails). I can erase out the area I will crop and then I can see pretty much where I am heading with this drawing.
279669
I can flip the image or use grayscale to see if the drawing is holding together OK. These are other ways to look at the drawing because by now you are pretty used to seeing it in the usual way you have been looking at it. At this point I have been working about two hours, but over half of that time has been taking notes so I can type this tutorial.

arttorney

January 12th, 2008, 07:14 PM

Now I'm adding upper body rim lighting and other upper body nuances. This took me about another 42 minutes.

arttorney

January 12th, 2008, 07:41 PM

lower body rim lighting and nuance.

arttorney

January 12th, 2008, 08:54 PM

Notice how I simplify things. The mind can't handle all the information at once in these really busy images so you have to paint in stuff simply at first and then work from general to specific. I am using a small brush to scribble in these rocks because they have a rough texture and they are partly obscured by a lot of intervening air mass. I can't draw them all crisp like they were stainless steel. They will just plain look wrong.
279756
After I get the rocks drawn in, I put another layer of low opacity blue haze over the far away stuff. I have done this in another layer so I can erase all the haze that slops over onto my foreground things.
279757

Dutchdevil- Look at how I don't use a line to show where her nose is. Nose, jaw, all that stuff can be shown by light and shadow. Because of my simplifications, she still is not perfectly realistic, but she looks more three dimensional because I am not using lines to define her forms. Also the big value difference at those points of rim lighting help to give her a shape. Use lighting in your drawings. It is dramatic. Just outlining people makes them flat and less interesting. Out there in the rocks is where you guys can get away with making scratchy lines. That is not the focal point and if you want to show a lot of texture in a hurry then a "painterly" approach is one way to solve that problem.

deep_in_food- You can use the layers and the opacity setting on soft brushes to fool around with the soft textures of far away things. You can use scribbly marks rather than formal hatching to show a rough texture, such as a stone. The closer you get to the focal point, the less you want to use these cheats, but for mere background it is a way to crank out a reasonable 5 hour drawing. Save the 50 hour photo-realism pieces for major things such as Last Man Standing. Don't let details overwhelm you. Notice that I made an underpainting and then I basically scribbled dark shapes on top of it roughly approximating the various shapes of the shadows on those far rocks. The next thing you know I had drawn the Grand Canyon. Look at the little scribbles on the rocks down by Rumi's feet. I used more than one color on the 1 pixel scribble brush. For scribbling in things like nearby rocks and trees quickly, don't just use one color. Things out in nature are multicolored. Go out and look at a tree some day. It is not just green. It is at least ten different kinds of green.

arttorney

January 14th, 2008, 03:38 PM

I know Dutchdevil and deep_in_food are still hanging around. Who else is still here?

If I know I can try to make more individualized assignments that won't send everybody running off.

deep_in_food

January 15th, 2008, 12:50 AM

maybe put it this way, who else that signed up here is watching us :3
I'm here :P

deep_in_food

January 15th, 2008, 08:04 AM

arttorney

January 15th, 2008, 10:54 AM

The people don't have to be in motion. It's just that I want you to catch them in lifelike conditions. People never hang around out in the world for 20 minutes while you draw them. If you get where you can capture a gesture in 1 or two minutes you can capture them on paper. Surely people waiting in line at the coffee shop will give you that much time.

Then the special point of the second 10 figures is that if you can get the idea down fast enough to capture it in real life, you can also get the idea down fast enough to capture it out of your head. Think about it. The people you think about are not moving at super speed. They are going around doing stuff at normal speed, generally speaking. If you can capture those people out of your head you can create characters that look like they are doing real world stuff.

deep_in_food

January 15th, 2008, 12:41 PM

hm understand, then refine it when I get back home?

btw, another photoshop link in conceptart
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=107217

arttorney

January 15th, 2008, 06:19 PM

That is the theory in general. You do not need to refine it for this lesson because I am trying to reward you with an easier lesson this time. Rudimentary figures in their raw form are fine.

deep_in_food

January 16th, 2008, 03:29 AM

I got it now, I guess you are looking in some way for us to capture characters so later on we can draw without going through any reference. Hm just wonder, you did any animation related stuff before? Right now I'm probably too slow to draw stuff frame by frame anyways, but just wanna ask

arttorney

January 16th, 2008, 11:31 AM

No. There are other people who can help you with animation here.

The "gesture" is an artist way of taking notes about the human form that you can use later. Of course a camera could do that, but the camera cannot pluck the pictures out of your mind. The gesture is how to draw the people you can see in your mind. That is why there are ten gestures from your imagination in this assignment.

deep_in_food

January 16th, 2008, 12:39 PM

hm ok... I get it now...

Dutchdevil

January 16th, 2008, 08:28 PM

I am sorry to announce, but im dropping out

Not for ever.. just for a few weeks i am experiencing some problems..
Arttorney, ill pm you the details..

deep_in_food

January 17th, 2008, 01:49 AM

Oh ~
Whatever happened I wish you good luck :o

deep_in_food

January 17th, 2008, 12:32 PM

arg this is a reall hard pose and I had to use some references. I still haven't draw her arm yet, and the eyes, I'll correct them laters.
I know they seem to distract me from the rest of the drawing, but not sure if it's different for each person.

deep_in_food

January 18th, 2008, 03:43 AM

real pose

deep_in_food

January 18th, 2008, 03:44 AM

pose without reference

deep_in_food

January 18th, 2008, 03:49 AM

I got problem when capturing is that the figure moves too quick... hm
btw, you want me to ask my friends if they wanna join the thread?

arttorney

January 18th, 2008, 12:18 PM

I know. That is the very challenging thing about gesture drawing. How do I get a snapshot of that person because she walked out of here so quick all I have is what's left in my mind. I hope this is not too hard. As you practice it gets easier. Eventually you can get to the point where you simply draw without hesitation and to the people watching it is almost as though you are doing a magic trick.

arttorney

January 18th, 2008, 03:21 PM

qbertp is joining us in here. I'll give an assignment within a day or two. I will comment on deep-in-food's output this weekend.

deep_in_food

January 18th, 2008, 03:32 PM

It reminded me about how my dad was impressed how quick people can draw. He said like, look at this head *points to a really realistic drawing of a head in a comic book*, professionals draw this in under a minute.

Good thing about art is, that I can set myself how much I want to push myself, so I guess there's really nothing about too hard to easy. When it comes to programming however, when one can't find a solution, then nothing comes out at all. (and of course I'll fail the subject :P)

qbertp

January 19th, 2008, 10:34 AM

Hello, hello. Thanks for letting me join you guys. I look forward to learning.

deep_in_food

January 20th, 2008, 03:34 AM

what about an introduction? :D

my hobby is eat and sleep. I like flyff (http://flyff.gpotato.com) and msn. I hate headache.

arttorney

January 20th, 2008, 01:39 PM

I've looked at deep_in_food's gestures and here is what I have to say on them.

I think part of the difficulty is that you are worrying about the contours of the outside of the figure too much to be able to jot down the pose in shorthand. All I was really looking for is the spine, arms, legs, ribcage, pelvis version of a quickie gesture like you see in the lower left drawing of this image. The gesture is a structural shorthand that you can put together with other bodies of knowledge to make a complete figure. In elaborating, for example, you might next turn to drawing a face onto the head circle using information about how to plot the eyes, nose, mouth, ears. You might next turn to clothing the figure. Who knows? To jot down a pose quickly, just get the stick figure plus torso plus pelvis and some tapers to start filling out the arms and legs. It's like taking notes in class.
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After you have drawn it you can write some word notes with it like "This is how a guy looks opening a door" or "this is a young woman pushing a baby stroller" and they will be a library of shapes or poses that you can draw on later (like when you want to draw a young alien woman pushing her baby around or a cowboy opening a door, whatever).

deep_in_food

January 20th, 2008, 05:07 PM

hm if I would apply this theory (once again) to my sketches lol.
I'll give it another go laters

Somehow this looks like as if the main purpose is only to jog down the stickman thingy. How far can a 1 min sketch go in details?

arttorney

January 20th, 2008, 07:22 PM

Here's a quick something for qbertp-

Sometime in the next few days do a Google image search for Franz Marc, Natalia Goncharova, and Alexej Jawlensky (not all at the same time). See if you like any of them, and if so, tell me why. It doesn't take all that long so I'm tossing in Otto Dix and Ludwig Meidner.

qbertp

January 21st, 2008, 06:04 AM

I pasted some of each artists pictures into painter to help me explain what I was seeing.
Franz Marc-I liked the use of darker values but higher saturations for high lights, and the reversed for shadows. Some strong planes boundries but not often flat and lack of color mixing make each shape pop. I like it alot.
Natalia Goncharov- I was less viscerally drawn to her work. It was extremely varied but I noticed the warm dark shadows. I think I enjoyed her flatter pieces more as the brush work seemed overwhelming in some of the others. Her portraits reminded me of a friends work that i've always thought was beautiful. http://www.marydewitt.net/1980s/index.html
Alexej Jawlensky-I really liked his middle period stuff, the large brush strokes, and strong colors. The expressions on the faces of many of his subjects were fantastic. His earlier, more realistic, and his later, more art deco?/abstract, works were less interesting.
Otto Dix-His choice of subject and the distortions he makes along with sort of disturbing color choices and the cleaner renders of faces make him one of my favorites. Some of it kind of reminds me of R.Crumb or Mad Magazine and I enjoy the absurd feeling of it.
Ludwig Meidner-I liked his much cooler pallete for his apocalyptic landscape. Part of me really enjoyed them but i'm not sure if it's more of a philosophical enjoyment rather than an apreciation of the technique. I tend to prefer paintings that are easier to read and his tended to decontruct into conflicting angles at times and I'm not sure how I feel about it.

Those are my first impressions.

deep_in_food

January 21st, 2008, 08:04 AM

hm... ?

qbertp

January 21st, 2008, 09:23 AM

Hi, my names Dylan. I'm 26 and like to learn. While I may use what I learn on these boards in a proffesional manner at some point in my life its not really my goal. Practicing and learning more about art is something I enjoy and it is for that reason I'm here.

As for your "hm?" I was talking to art about things I was interested in, one of which was art history. That's the reason for the assignment.

arttorney

January 21st, 2008, 12:19 PM

I knew you would like Franz Marc. I wasn't so sure about Otto Dix. He writes text into his works sometimes as you do, but he can be very disturbing.

If I ever tell you to check out people you already know about, let me know. What we are doing is helping you build up an inspiration folder and not reinvent the wheel as you sharpen up.

I have gone through something like this myself which is coming to a culmination in the long awaited Last Man Standing piece.

I found that I was strongly affected by the works of Charles Sheeler, Vincent van Gogh, Wassily Kandinsky, and that Apocalyptic Landscape near Halense Railway Station by Meidner (which I stumbled across one day in the L.A. County Museum of Art). These guys are all radically different from one another, so I began to reason out what it was about each of them that got to me. It couldn't all be the same thing.

I was interested to hear your remarks about flat color, or lack thereof, because that is the thing about van Gogh. He loses precision in his ultimate exploitation of the texture of the medium itself, but it kind of works for him. It's the exact opposite of Sheeler though. WTF? I was interested when you said Meidner deconstructs weirdly. It shows you are already beginning to analyze what works, and doesn't work for you. Take what you can use out of other artists and discard the rest. Take notes about the stuff that works.

I set about the task of figuring out how to paint raw terror/urgency as Meidner could in 1913, but make it look precise as Sheeler could, while having lines shooting around in various dimensions as Kandinsky could, and no flat presentation. These kinds of little personal quests can motivate you to try out things that wouldn't have occurred to you otherwise. At the same time you are directing yourself to move closer to an ideal that you are carrying around inside.

If you are a United Statesian, then Charles Sheeler plus Albert P. Ryder plus the "Ash Can School" in general may be of interest to you.

qbertp

January 22nd, 2008, 04:27 AM

I've lost this reply three times now do to glitches so heres the quicky version.
Ash Can School - I love taking photos of urban blight and this reminded me of that.
Ryder- Gorgeous. One of the pictures reminds me of the monet painting I mentions in our pm conversation.
Scheeler- To clean and muted for my tastes.

I think the next thing I try to paint is going to be a very limited pallette.

Oh and it turns out I actually had a picture by franz marc in my newly formed inspiration folder even before you reccomended him;)

PS.
I was rereading your last post and had some thoughts. I enjoy van gogh and don't really mind a lack of preciscion. I guess I'm more comfortable with it when it comes from a bluring or blending. When i'm looking at clear shapes that are not clear in meaning I'm sort of turned off. For instance I think Pollack is great, but certain picassos just make me go blah.

arttorney

January 22nd, 2008, 12:08 PM

I'm not much of a Picasso fan myself. It sounds like it's about symbolism with you. That may be what is there when you can see the shape clearly, but it has no meaning. Ryder was chock full of symbolism, but it's a kind that works for you. As his works look today, the saturation is not high. Maybe none of it ever was.

I think you knew what you were talking about when you wanted to go through color theory and values. You will need to manipulate these things in order to have a full range of expression available to you. Then you can tell the stories from inside.

In the Big Oil Painting Thread in Fine Art Studies and Discovery, you can find limited palettes discussed. Since you are a digital painter you will have to go into your color menu and find analogous colors to the ones they mention and paint yourself a few swatches in the corner to use as a palette with your eyedropper. The palette I am most familiar with is the double primary set (a cool blue, warm blue, cool yellow, warm yellow, cool red, warm red, and white).

deep_in_food you can always follow along if you get interested in the colors and values thing. When there are not many mentees in here, I can tailor my discussion to you as individuals though. I think one of your concerns was about the textures of things like fur. If you prefer, we can discuss edges and techniques of application to get various effects like that.

GRATUITOUS YAMMERING ABOUT COLOR SCHEMES (tints and shades, and saturation will come later)
Maybe somebody back in first, second, or third grade said something to you about primary colors and secondary colors. Primary is, of course red, yellow, and blue. The other colors can all be created out of these in theory. That is how the double primary set works. The first most obvious next set of colors are purple, orange, and green; each of which can be made by mixing two of the primaries. These are the secondary colors. Tertiary colors are made by combining a primary and a secondary color adjacent on the color wheel (e.g. red and orange combined to create red-orange).

The red,yellow, orange region of the color wheel comprises the colors lumped under the term "warm colors" while the purple, blue, green region comprises the area lumped as "cool colors."

Color schemes:
Related schemes
Monochromatic- a single color (hue) is used. The whole picture might all be different values of blue, for example.
Analogous- hues adjacent on the color wheel are used such as a scheme having red, red-orange, and red-purple.
contrasting schemes
Complementary- Making a piece with a couple of complementaries (e.g. red and green) will cause the two of them seem brighter and more intense with respect to each other.
Split complementary- uses three colors as follows: Any hue and the two adjacent to its complementary (e.g. red plus blue-green and yellow green).
Triadic- This uses three hues equidistant from each other on the color wheel (e.g. the three primaries only, or the three secondaries only).
Discordant schemes
Double Complement- uses two pairs of complements (e.g. red and green, plus blue and orange)
Alternate complement- uses four colors as follows: a triad and a complement to one of the hues (e.g. red, yellow, blue, and green)
Tetrad- uses four colors evenly spaced on the color wheel. (e.g. red, green, yellow-orange, and blue violet).

I am fond of Alternate Complement and the set of colors I listed for alternate Complement above are the four basic colors used in my LMS piece.

deep_in_food

January 22nd, 2008, 02:07 PM

i'll ignore the colour stuff for the monent. been lazy recently after quitting my online games. Letting go is hard sometimes

Natalia - the colours of the drawings are feels more calm, even with bright coloured stuff. The colours go with harmony with each other.
http://www.aworldtowin.net/images/images570/GoncharovaTheForest.jpg

Franz - his style is so simular to natalia, but he uses colours that are, in my opinion, more disturbing than natalia.
http://www.tibs.at/faecher/be/b590.jpg

Alexej - first impression was what the hell my eyes are like @_@, but no doubt, the artworks has its own beauty.

Overall: No artist draw the same stuff the same way. I guess I like Natalia better maybe because it's more like me... >_> (bad reason )

arttorney

January 22nd, 2008, 02:22 PM

That example by Natalia shows the kind of her work that I like, which they were referring to as Rayonism. The Futurism stuff like the bicycle repeated is too busy for me, regardless of who is doing it. Her figurative work is just not my favorite.

I saw "The Blue Four" (Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger, Alexej Jawlensky) exhibited side by side in the Norton Simon Museum and Jawlensky frankly struck me as a bunch of finger paintings. Kandinsky's room almost moved me to tears it was so beautiful (to me). "Possibilities at Sea" was very cool by Paul Klee, and I never saw a Feininger woodcut I didn't like.

arttorney

January 23rd, 2008, 02:01 PM

Color has three main directions of variability. In post 169 I was talking about hue, which is another word for color in the sense of the generalized color of an object. The other two areas of variability are intensity (AKA chroma AKA saturation), and tone (AKA value).

Most people on CA seem to refer to intensity as saturation, so that is probably the term to use here if you want to make sure people know exactly what you mean. This concept is about how bright or strong a color is (as opposed to muted, dull, or greyed). One very common way to make a color less saturated is to mix it with its complementary color.

SUMMARY VALUES DISCUSSION
Tone is usually referred to on CA as value, so value is probably the term to use here if you want to make sure people know exactly what you are talking about. This refers to the relative lightness or darkness of a color. Tints are values of a hue which are lighter than the way it comes out of the tube (because white has been added or the watercolor was diluted with water). Shades are values of a hue that are darker than the way it comes out of the tube and are caused by adding black. Of course, in digital this whole tints and shades thing is usually done by re-picking up or down on the color menu.

Today I will give some summary information about value. In digital, you have the luxury of converting an image to grayscale in order to see the values of the colors you are using. Many people otherwise have trouble seeing just what value a particular color has when they are trying to compare reds to blues, for example. Why should one care? Well, the framework of lights and darks in a work is often the first thing to attract attention. It directs the brain of the viewer at once to begin understanding the mood of a picture. Compare El Greco's Toledo in a Storm or that St. John head on a platter painting by Caravaggio with pretty much anything by Renoir for examples of the effect value can have.

What kind of language can this value thing have? There is, of course, radical contrast such as the chiaroscuro of Rembrandt van Rijn that can cause drama. This kind of counterchange within the subjects or objects of the drawing is the direction I had when we discussed rim lighting versus form lighting etc. and why I talked of even following shadow edges when doing blind contours. Outside of the subject there is a place called negative space. (The subject is your positive space). The negative space and positive space can be rendered in different values to make one stand out from the other. You can position your subjects within the picture plane purposefully to make intriguing shapes with the positive and negative spaces. You can have repeating patterns in there that may or may not be readily apparent to the viewer. Since you know those shapes are there, it is up to you to make sure they look cool rather than lame. It is up to you to use value to make sure you can discern one shape from another.

qbertp

January 23rd, 2008, 04:41 PM

It's funny, I feel like alot of what your saying are things I have previously learnt and largely forgotten. I remember holding pictures upside down and sketching out the negative spaces in highschool.

qbertp

January 23rd, 2008, 04:50 PM

Quick monochrome (the blue was added later.) hand I'm also expermenting with artist oil brushes in painter. I think im going to try a number of hands with different color schemes.
http://i161.photobucket.com/albums/t203/qbertp/oilhand.jpg

arttorney

January 23rd, 2008, 05:34 PM

Oh Yeah! Good thinking. Hands and feet are only difficult until you draw a lot of them. After a while you become familiar with the shapes that are supposed to be there. Use different hand "poses." If several of your fingers shoot off of one or more edges of your "paper" you create several different patches of negative space instead of just one patch of negative space.

I am going through all this stuff I am talking about because it is so deceptively familiar. I know the teachers were talking about it while we were gazing out of the window and we all just couldn't wait for the final bell to ring. Unfortunately, there is no hiding place on CA. No recess in the playground. The people here will call you on it if you have bad values, bad perspective, bad colors, bad lighting... etc. etc. You have to go through a mental checklist of all this stuff before you post a piece if you expect to level up and cause a few jaws to drop.:steph:

SATURATION NOTES
You can pick a color and move around in the big square of color examples to affect color saturation. That is what I have done inside the twin black checkmark lines. Those reds were all picked off the corresponding section of the big red field in my Photoshop 4 color menu. The machine is essentially mixing gray in. Alternatively, by glazing low opacity colors over other colors, you can make some fascinating low saturation colors. (grays with an edge on them) You can start to wonder where red leaves off and green begins. If you have time on your hands make a bunch of experimental color swatches to see what you can make out of basic colors the old fashioned way. If you are painting a real painting and you are worried about creating precision edges, then make these two different colors be in different layers so you can erase corners of one color without disturbing the other.
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Xiayu

January 24th, 2008, 09:11 AM

Ahoy! I just wanted you to know that I'm still lurking around here. I don't post much but I draw quite a lot, So I might put up a torso and some other mediocre drawings. Maybe I'll start on that grand canyon picture you guys did a while ago....

Xiayu

January 24th, 2008, 10:27 AM

Ok - I drew the torso like this: I had a ref pic to make the shape only, and when that was done I turned off my screen and tried to remember where I was gonna shade and make lines. I did 1 fast one first, then I did exactly the same over again, this time it got reeeeeeaaally nice. I think this is a great way to learn how to draw things!:muscle:

The transformer was all new to me, I drew right lines on and on. It got pretty nice, dunno what you think? One exception, and thats the shoulders...They're a bit weird.

The farao is more of a fast drawing, 3 is always better than 2! :sungod:

deep_in_food

January 24th, 2008, 11:51 AM

Arttoney's satuation thing -

that looks like mixing colours in real painting, by altering the opacity, although I only ever use that technique recently since it's easier to add complementary colours that way, but the more mixing, the more dull the moxed colour looks. Maybe it is that point you want to point out?

Arttoney's colour scheme -

My colour theory is only up to the "related scheme" section, which is easier to understand anyways. I wonder if someone decide to use all colours... I'm guessing this (http://jsiu123.deviantart.com/art/pony-pony-refined-72614719) whatever I made is probably in the split complementary category but when I painted it, I was thinking of adjacent colours because they always fit no matter what. In the discordant scheme, I guess alternative complement is a tetrad but vice versa isn't true?

Xiayu -

omg welcome back man :D :heart:. Arttoney and I thought that you were gone. Your transformer is looking like flat at the moment, but if it's abstract drawing it may be quite interesting to me. Otherwise, put some more contrast on him via highlights (eraser) and shadows.

arttorney

January 24th, 2008, 12:22 PM

@ deep_in_food Yes! Yes! The more pure that color is, the higher is the saturation you can achieve. When you go around mixing colors you gradually make them duller.

For traditional media, this is the point of the double primary palette. Why have two blues when one would do? Why have two yellows when one would do? The reason is that those two yellows and two blues are already partially mixed in a way when they come out of the tube. One yellow is slanted toward the warm side and one is slanted toward the cool side. Same for the blues. If you mix the cool blue with the cool yellow you get the most beautiful lime candy green you ever saw. If you mix ultramarine (warm blue) with cadmium yellow (warm yellow) you get a green that looks like your swimming pool has been overrun by algae. The warm yellow and warm blue have other wavelengths they are reflecting out toward the reds that cause the green you made be profoundly unsaturated.

You are in charge of the colors of your drawing just as you are in charge of the shapes in it. Make your drawing decisions from a basis of maximum knowledge and you can begin to approach virtuosity. Randomly apply marks and colors, and you will never know why one painting works and the next one sucks. I would have to get out a color wheel and look close to be sure, but your pony picture is almost like a low saturation green/purple/orange triad. If you call the pony purple and the sky blue, you have alternate complement (the triad I mentioned, plus blue as the complement of orange).
Here is the difference between Tetrads and Alternate Complement:
288400
Xiayu- I will look at your drawings today or tomorrow before I drive back to Arizona. In the meantime, while you were away they have been working on the databases here to institute a big change they will make. The result is that when you upload an image you have to go back to the task bar menu above your text and find the icon that looks like a paperclip. That paperclip menu will allow you to make your attached image show on the screen wherever your cursor was at the time you used the paperclip thing. It's kind of cool because you can put words both above and below your picture with that thing. You can also go back and edit your post, but you will have to use the "go advanced" button at the bottom of the edit screen to get to the place where you can use the paperclip.

deep_in_food

January 24th, 2008, 02:29 PM

Hm... now I'll apply it and...
The colour table is where the arrow pointed it, and the rest is the applying the colours (?)... :wtf:

arttorney

January 24th, 2008, 03:16 PM

Don't stress out too much about how your digital color picking matches up to the color on these crummy scanned color wheels. This blabbing about color is theoretical and how you handle it in your paintings is your own choice. These theories are a jumping off point for you as you solve problems, such as how to make something stand out.

How to make something stand out: In Reference and Tutorials of the Classroom for All Ilaekae has given information about how to use compositional principles to make something stand out. Faces and figures tend to stand out. Put them at a logical focal point. Color principles can also be used and that is the focus of this discussion:
CONTRASTS IN COLORS CAN CAUSE PEOPLE TO LOOK OR SEE WHERE YOU WANT THEM TOO
1. Complementary hues placed next to each other will seem more lively or vibrant because they are playing off of each other. 2. Saturated colors seem more brilliant when placed next to neutral or dull colors. 3. Contrasts in value also draw the eye. You can place contrasts of each of the three types of color variation near your focal point to draw the viewer's eye there. 4. Temperature contrasts in general will also have this effect.

Therefore these forms of contrast are best used around your focal point and should be used less and less as you go away from the focal point. Keep the things that make people look close to the area where people are supposed to look.

deep_in_food

January 26th, 2008, 04:56 AM

Then I guess I just confused with the colour wheels lol, but I guess they are there for some reason. Maybe I just pick colours according to my feelings afterall, and check the colour wheels laters? Afterall I'm still confused on this.

When you said about the complementary hues, I guess you mean that they make each other stand out. For example blue and yellow both stand out if I put them in a drawing?

arttorney

January 26th, 2008, 12:11 PM

You got the idea. It would be blue and orange, though. They look rather shocking next to each other.

One of the points of a color wheel is that the complementaries are exactly across from each other and the analogous colors are next to each other. These ones I put up are scans of color photocopies that a guy handed out at a seminar I was once at, so I would try to find a nice example of a color wheel somewhere that is not all comtaminated with multi-generational noise.

If you want to put people on edge then select a discordant color scheme, and if you want to make them feel mellow then select an analogous color scheme.

Contrast at the focal point can also be done by contrasting edge quality or altering other aspects of line as I discussed way back when. It all depends on what kind of drawing you are making.

arttorney

January 28th, 2008, 12:19 PM

XiaYu- Wow! You have been busy. It looks to me like the neck is really big on that torso, which is not impossible. It all depends on what effect you are going for. Usually though, if a guy has been doing the kind of weight lifting to get that kind of a neck his deltoid muscles on the shoulders will also be giant sized.

The transformer guy reminds me of some works by Picasso or Georges Braque. It is not very realistic perhaps because of the flattening effect deep_in_food discussed, but those guys were not trying to be realistic. They were trying something different. Maybe google image search those guys to see if they did anything you like.

The Egyptian God like guy also has a very enormous neck. It goes clear out to his shoulders. In English we call guys with really huge necks "bull necked" and so I thought it would have been really cool if that guy had a bull head and some horns. You are always being very creative though, and if you keep practicing you can become very good indeed.

deep_in_food- I didn't see the drawing you had at post #180 last week. It was probably because of the system glitches. I think it looks really cool. You are not using extremely saturated colors and yet they play off each other well to make an interesting picture anyway. I think this one looks kind of double complement. There are a lot of green/red and purple/yellow combinations. I can see from your color table that you were shooting for a double complement of green/red and blue/yellow but you would have needed to shade the yellow over toward orange for that (or the blue toward purple). Red, yellow, blue are a triad and then green is the complement of red. Thus, by shifting one color a bit you have turned double complement into into alternate complement. It looks nice, so I wouldn't get too worked up over the names of these systems as long as you know they are out there. I would love to see you render out details on this one and make a finished piece. The point of view is interesting too.

qbertp

January 29th, 2008, 12:17 PM

Sorry I haven't posted lately, I've been having computer issues. I'll try and get them sorted out soon.

deep_in_food

January 29th, 2008, 02:12 PM

I need some practice before I can finish the drawing, but if I have any good progress i'll post it here. Lighting and shadows is always the hardest bit of all.

arttorney

January 30th, 2008, 11:38 AM

And, speaking of light and shadows, This tutorial is about how to show the texture of a thing using light and shadow and the effects on color of light and shadow. It is by Prometheus!ANJ who is one of the big dogs rarely seen around these parts any more.

http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/art_tut.htm
Numerous other bits of helpful information are in here about perspective and drawing figures.

arttorney

January 31st, 2008, 11:22 AM

Would you guys like specific assignments again? qbertp and XiaYu seem to know what things they would like to try, and so I try to give crits and guidance where possible but we have fallen away from specific assignments in the last week or so. I was just wondering. That link to a tutorial I put up last was largely in response to an earlier suggestion by deep_in_food that he would like to learn more about how to paint textures. In that link, the way light comes off metal, and plastic, and other things is explored.

qbertp

February 1st, 2008, 06:01 AM

I wouldn't mind specific assignments. I tend to get a little scattered and assignments help keep me on track. That said the information your giving is certainly useful.

arttorney

February 1st, 2008, 02:40 PM

OK. By February 9 make a three value drawing in whatever medium. If you use a color then just use one color so it is a monochromatic color scheme. The subject matter should be a still life having a piece of fruit such as an apple, a piece of hardware such as a bolt or nail, and three other objects of your choice. The still life should be arranged on a piece of cloth that is not smoothed out flat, but has wrinkles or folds showing. This one is about edges and values, though of course you can exercise creativity in arranging your still life into a composition. It would be best if the light is coming from only one side.
Here is an example of what I mean by 3 values made with a sharpie pen and a pencil:
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The look of your drawing is probably going to be a little stark and graphical, but limiting yourself to the three values will force you to concentrate on what you are seeing as you make your decisions about which value to lump a particular structure into. Maybe think about positive and negative space as you arrange your still life. If one of your objects is a loose coil of utility cord, for example, there will be a bunch of bounded chunks of negative space in the drawing that could add interest.

deep_in_food

February 2nd, 2008, 03:57 PM

so you mean it's only for example black, grey and white?

arttorney

February 2nd, 2008, 06:09 PM

Exactly.

deep_in_food

February 3rd, 2008, 03:56 AM

@_@
I can only see how it goes then

deep_in_food

February 3rd, 2008, 01:37 PM

After this on the 2nd one <3

I tried to draw a round thing before but it didn't turn out quite well, but this one I guess looks like a rat.
Just wonder if I should tidy up the edges or leave it like this

My drawing: http://jsiu123.deviantart.com/art/ratty2-from-xNickyxstockx-76379063
Original: http://xnickixstockx.deviantart.com/art/Ratty2-70191826

arttorney

February 3rd, 2008, 02:00 PM

That's interesting. The only clear edges I see on the rat itself are at the edges of its ears and its feet. The rest of it is hairy. Why would make it smooth around the hairy places?

deep_in_food

February 3rd, 2008, 02:16 PM

hm for hairy effect in 3 colours you mean?

arttorney

February 3rd, 2008, 03:17 PM

Actually, the only thing I thought you would draw is a still life with fruit and nuts (this is a play on words). I'm interested, though, now that you are drawing the rat. I really don't know how I would approach that hair in digital if I was going to try some kind of speedie approach. I'd just mass the areas as you've done and then take some time to draw a few hairs sticking out here and there plus some detail lines here and there inside the rat's mass. You frequently have to simplify in drawings. One of those simplifications could be to omit going around the outside with a hard brush and cleaning up that edge. I guess it kind of belongs fuzzy if the rat is fuzzy.

deep_in_food

February 3rd, 2008, 04:45 PM

I guess the traditional way will always be a good reference for digital stuff. And yeah, the rat's cute :P

Adding details is always the difficult part somehow, though

qbertp

February 9th, 2008, 09:07 PM

'ere we are.
http://i161.photobucket.com/albums/t203/qbertp/stilllife2.jpg

and without black
http://i161.photobucket.com/albums/t203/qbertp/stilllife3.jpg

deep_in_food

February 10th, 2008, 01:59 AM

wow is that oil painting?

arttorney

February 10th, 2008, 01:03 PM

Now we're talkin'!

Give me a day or two on these. There's a lot to analyze.

deep_in_food

February 10th, 2008, 04:37 PM

talking what? @_@ I don't understand

arttorney

February 11th, 2008, 12:07 PM

Oh I'm sorry. I'm just trying to say something encouraging. I can see that qbertp put in a lot of effort for those drawings and I want to make sure that I don't leave them hanging around without any kind of comment for too long. I'll get to them but I am working yesterday and today to finish up my Panels of the Week entry.

"Now we're talking!" Is an old expression for something like "Yes. You got it right."

qbertp

February 11th, 2008, 06:15 PM

arttorneyNo problem art. I've been very busy myself. Take your time.

deep in food They are digital paintings using the artist's oils brush set in painter ix. Actually I only used one of the brushes but the name escapes me atm.

deep_in_food

February 12th, 2008, 07:45 PM

gbertp - I guess I aint that familiar with programs to start with, but it's great that they have that option though. Is that program free? Or you paid for it?

You must mean Rumi. All I did was the steps I discussed of getting down the preliminary outlines and proportions, then massing, then adding the nuances. In the nuance stage is where you can use the contrasts of light and dark, complementary colors, saturated/unsaturated, line weight, edge quality, etc. to add in all those little details that make a picture come alive.

You drew the shapes of Rumi's face very much as she actually looks while I kind of turned her into a cartoon character. Each way has its own validity. I was just putting more focus into the whole of the picture and trying to nail the environment as well as the figure. The blues of her pants stand out against the orange red brown of the canyon walls. I probably was just seeing those well as I looked back and forth in my drawing trying to make the values come out right.

I wonder if you drew stuff without reference before and how it turns out when you do so. With reference it's much easier to know where the lights goes and reflects, but without it's guessing basically

arttorney

February 13th, 2008, 12:06 PM

Yes. I've drawn several landscapes without reference and a few people. Until lately I wasn't able to do people well at all. I still don't think I'm great but my life drawing class helped a lot. The Panels of the Week #2 challenge I just did is my first people in landscape drawing I remember doing without reference. I looked in the mirror to see how two hands pounding together looked but otherwise it is completely from my head. The "two hands" drawing is the worst in the strip I think.

The light is not guess work. You decide which direction the light is coming from in each environment and then you think about the things you already know about shadows. Noses cast shadows. The lips stick out a little bit and therefore are likely to create a little shadow. The jaw is like a wedge extending down. The head is a dome. There is core shadow, reflected light, and half light. The light is off to the left on this imaginary guy.
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I thought about having you draw a ball in the still life of last week because of this, but if you don't have a monochromatic ball you would have to go out and buy one. This issue is really why I asked people to study these heads. I know looking at reference in order to draw without looking at reference doesn't seem to make much sense, but heads are basically shaped the same and after you know about where the light is supposed to go you can then do it from your head.
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qbertp- It looks like you were using a flat or a bright because the beginnings of several marks is quite squared off. I love flats. There's a lot of stuff you can do in real life that I'm not sure if the program will let you do.

arttorney

February 13th, 2008, 12:53 PM

qbertp- In your first still life, I noticed that there are actually four values rather than three. Maybe I said four, though, I would have to go back and look. I bet when you were looking at that apple you saw all kind of subtleties of shadow you couldn't do according to the rules. You had to decide where to lump those shadows. This looking and concentrating on the light and shadow is a major point of this exercise. The cloth folds probably drove you bonkers also. They transition pretty smoothly.
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Another point of the exercise had to do with how you arrange things. I can see that you already know not to make an exact symmetrical composition and you worked to find things that would create some cool repeating patterns of positive and negative space.

In the other painting you basically stripped the work down to three basic values. I can see a few edges where lights and darks are barely visible to separate your brush stroke from the background, but I think your program might be doing that instead of you. Part of the mind job inherent in these stripped down value studies is that sometimes there is an edge you know about intellectually, but you have no way to present it since there is the same basic value on both sides of it. If you encounter this in free painting conditions you can use chroma or hue to show this edge without messing around with values. The program has probably been told to create a little boundary so it looks like a three dimensional streak of oil paint is on there.
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arttorney

February 13th, 2008, 09:47 PM

OK. I hope this will be a fun assignment. I am trying to provide opportunity to use colors, and also something that will involve textures and characterization. Still, I'm hoping it will also allow for looseness and interpretive drawing.

By February 20, 2008 draw five stylized fishes. They can be cute fish or scary fish, sad fish, frightened fish, or nerd fish etc. These are going to be fish characters in a hypothetical animated fish movie. I am going to my house this weekend (where my books are) and I will try to put up some scans from my ichthyology textbook on Monday for inspiration. (Although you could google image search Gar, tuna, trigger fish, cod, northern pike, bluegill, bowfin, garibaldi, and stingray to get an idea of the biodiversity in this area).

deep_in_food

February 14th, 2008, 06:43 AM

Oh torney now we're up to fish XD
It looks like that you are going to force us to create stuff now. *runs away* xD

Feb 20 is the day I'll be heading back, I'll see if I can make it on time...

arttorney

February 14th, 2008, 01:08 PM

If you need an extra day or two I will understand. Also, if you want to make crabs or clams or whatever that's fine. (octopus, shrimp, tube worm, snail, nudibranch etc.) They just keep making aquatic movies over and over again, so this is a genre of character development that I thought would allow people to bust out some of those coloring skills and start seeing what kind of stylized animation characters they can make.

deep_in_food

February 14th, 2008, 10:41 PM

that sounds really interesting torney. I'll see what I cam come up with

qbertp

February 16th, 2008, 07:26 AM

I ate a fish recently that was still living(blinking gasping head spine tail, the rest cut "hwe"(korean version of sashimi). It was a mildly frightening and rather disturbing experience. I had hoped to avoid fish for the near future but I see that I have no choice. Sounds like a fun assignment.

As for the dark lines on the edges I believe that was a representation of depth done by the program as the background was a fill(flat) layer verses the textured look of the oils.

Deep- Painter is not a free program though I believe there is a pretty decent trial version.

deep_in_food

February 18th, 2008, 04:38 AM

lols I guess if the program is famous enough it's usually not free. Anyways, 2 really mucked up fish from imagination. I was thinking of knifes on the first fish, and plates on the 2nd one.

Three more fishes to go. I'll do some better ones when I go back to the country where I take my uni course

http://jsiu123.deviantart.com/art/fish-for-my-mentor-77718074

qbertp

February 20th, 2008, 08:30 AM

http://i161.photobucket.com/albums/t203/qbertp/fishy5.jpg

These are just some quick fish. I think I'm going to work the smily one into a cat-fish I'll post it when there's something to critique. Oh and theres a whale.

arttorney

February 20th, 2008, 12:28 PM

I think it's great that you are both presenting the fish from different angles.

deep_in_food one of your fish is a little bit like a halibut, but it seems to have no eyes. Is it a blind fish? I can't wait to see your other ones.

qbertp- Ha Ha that blue fish is great! It cracks me up (in a good way). The shadows on his lower teeth are backwards from the shadows on his upper teeth. That seems inconsistent. I am cracking up about his eyes and the cheekbones and fins mostly. It looks like he's a scared fish. I'm not exactly sure why that's funny, but sidekick characters frequently have these scenes where they are in some hair raising comic danger so I think it's great that you can make a scared looking fish look so funny. Maybe you could make his eyes so big they are popping out beyond the contours of his head and body. Maybe you could save an exaggeration of that sort for the very moment he sees the bad guy, Baron von Mullet, approaching with his henchmen. (I personally wouldn't be able to resist giving a bad guy named Baron von Mullet a mullet hairdo. It's too obvious to pass up.)

The green-gray one is scary. They each have a personality, which is what I was going for here. How do you give something cold and distant from us a human like personality? I think you have done a good job because each of these fish is specific and identifiable from the others. I can see that they have different textures of brush strokes and you have manipulated their fins as well. That "spoiler" on the one on the upper right is interesting. Oh. I just read that it is a whale so that is probably breath coming up out of the blow hole. Cool.

deep_in_food

February 20th, 2008, 05:46 PM

Oh thanks ^_^
I'm currently without photoshop, tablet, camera nor my own computer until my parents got my junks off the storage

arttorney

February 20th, 2008, 05:49 PM

I know. You're moving. Go ahead and take care of that. School is important.

qbertp

February 21st, 2008, 08:28 PM

Have you ever heard kip addota's(sp?) wet dream? I think he also goes by the name dr. demento. You should check it out if you like fish puns.

As for the eyes popping out of the head. I often do that in my doodles. The eyes are usually the biggest features. The shadows on the teeth probly came form the fact that I couldn't figure out where I was lighting it from for a while. The catfish is turning out okay but i think im going to do it again in a textureless brush.

Goodluck with your move i will be moving soon myself.

deep_in_food

February 22nd, 2008, 10:10 AM

Hopefully I can get out of mspaint and mouse if lucky. Somehow fish always looks like fish. Bandwidth is really limited here. Anyways, I am lucky enough to have free wireless internet in the very near future. (a few days)

I did a quick search for the fish you are talking about. When I thought about it, it was some fish I used to like. They are flat in shape and lies on the sand as if it's dead.
http://www.dkimages.com/discover/previews/1545/11722137.JPG

qbertp - When are you moving here?

arttorney

February 25th, 2008, 09:35 AM

That's the halibut, all right. I'm just waiting now because qbertp is reworking a catfish and deep_in_food is moving. I can give more assignments or information when folks are ready.

I don't think qbertp is necessarily moving to Asia.

deep_in_food

February 26th, 2008, 02:34 AM

Now everything's settle although I'm getting much more busy, and here's the "fish":P
2 more. I'll scan it tomorrow

http://fc01.deviantart.com/fs30/f/2008/056/6/d/one_of_the_5_fish_2_by_jsiu123.png

deep_in_food

February 27th, 2008, 03:57 AM

Real fishes (without colour :S)
I did those without using an eraser so it's basically one off.

The first fish isn't quite what I wanted since it's too robotic. The third one was based on the second one because I'm not happy about the second one. The forth one is.. em.. cute ?!

http://fc05.deviantart.com/fs30/i/2008/057/1/8/two_more_fish_sketch_by_jsiu123.png

qbertp

February 28th, 2008, 08:44 AM

sorry i kind of dropped off. I'm actually moving from asia back to the US in 3 days. I've been packing/cleaning/sleeping and not much else.

This is what i've got of the fish. I havent had the time to do the flatter version I was hoping too. Also next week(2nd-10th at least) I will not have reliable internet access if any. Art I'm still very interested in this thread, current real life situations have just made it more difficult to participate atm.
http://i161.photobucket.com/albums/t203/qbertp/catfish1.jpg

qbertp

February 28th, 2008, 08:46 AM

Oh and deep, i like your second fish in the post above;)

arttorney

February 28th, 2008, 06:17 PM

All right. Thanks for pushing through on this assignment. I gather you both had a lot of challenges with the moving and computer issues. deep_in_food the eyeball fish is pretty abstract. I'm not sure I fully understand it. Are you purposefully using a very small brush and scribbling to do shading? Many people use large brushes at low opacity for that. In the pencil fishes I noticed the dorsal fin (on the back) of at least one of then has the spines going forward. Fish usually have the fin rays and spines swept toward the back so they are streamlined. It looks funny if they are pointed forward.

qbertp- the catfish looks like an anglerfish with its eyes set back and the jaw jutted forward like that. It's kind of cool in a way because of the whiskers and the way anglerfish will have those lights around their mouths. Maybe the whiskers double as anglerfish lights. This is a thought provoking design. Of course fish don't usually have external ears, but this is an anthropomorphized or hybrid sort of a fish. (I mean I know you are trying to give this fish human or catlike features so i know why the ears are on there.) I've noticed the texture you used and I think it is an interesting approach to making scales.

Thanks again for your effort. I think I will give this a week or so to let you both get settled in and have good computers that work on the internet again. I mean I am holding off on assignments for a little while so you can both get things worked out in your lives.

qbertp

February 29th, 2008, 06:03 AM

thanks alot.

deep_in_food

March 2nd, 2008, 08:25 AM

I was trying to make the basic shadows since I didn't have the time to do alot of colouring, but it looks so sketchy when it's done that way :(

arttorney

March 2nd, 2008, 04:00 PM

All right. I think I'll talk about edges a little bit in the coming week. It's one of the important things to remember if you have nothing but light and shadow to work with.

arttorney

March 7th, 2008, 12:46 PM

Edges help the painter convey the illusion of three dimensional form on a flat canvas. There are inside edges (where the plane or form changes direction) and outside edges (where the form begins or ends). Edges can also be classified as hard and soft. The eye automatically focuses toward the cleanest crispest edges it sees, so it is a good idea to put those hard edges near the focal point. This is a strategy you can use in combination with some of the other strategies already discussed to lead the viewer's eye around the painting and keep them interested.

Really thin sharp edges tell the eye that the thing is a thin sharp thing. Of course it is actually only a fake thing depicted on a flat canvas with a marking instrument, but this appearance of thin and sharp is one of those codes of mark making I discussed early on in this thread.

hard edges that meet a background (hard outside edges) will be an automatic region of focus. If this hard outside edge is not at the focal point area it is a good idea to soften this edge by blending so it does not lead the viewer's eye away from your focal point.

Soft edges show continuity while hard edges show ending. Edges also get harder as they get nearer to a viewer. Making edges harder as they get nearer to the viewer is a part of "atmospheric perspective" and is a way of showing some perspective in a painting even if you don't have some serious perspective lines incorporated into the structure of your painting.

Edges can convey the quality of the material. See the Speculars and Radiosity tutorial by Prometheus|ANJ in the Fine Arts and Discovery section ( http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=15745 ). this tutorial has powerful relevance to showing the nature of a material by the characteristics of the inside edges caused by the lighting on an object.

Edges can be used to tie in objects with their environment. If an outside edge where two different colors meet nevertheless has the same value on each side of that edge there is an enhanced continuity. Another way to go about this would be to have the same hue on each side of the edge, but two different values. The eye will interpret that there is an edge there but it will also see both sides of that boundary as being related.

Here is Elwell's tutorial on edges: http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=51913 Elwell starts out by giving "rule of thumb" tips on how to know if your edge should be hard or soft etc. this should help your shadows look more realistic and give your drawings a more realistic and more sophisticated look.

deep_in_food

March 16th, 2008, 09:00 PM

How's everyone going now?

arttorney

March 17th, 2008, 08:40 PM

I think qbertp is still busy. Dutchdevil is not back yet. I haven't talked to Xiayu for a little while.

I can think up an assignment if you would like. What sort of things interest you today? (I've personally been driving all over the western U.S., working like a dog at the law office, looking for a job with a more commensurate pay level and a health plan, and entering the occasional community activity. That won't stop me from making you work though.:wink: )

Dutchdevil

March 19th, 2008, 05:52 PM

Hi!

Things seem to go well lately being less depressed and less frustrated which is a good thing!
Tho, i think of quiting school.. its is so freaking boring, and I dont learn anything at all.. guess I am a little better then the freshman over there..
Considering I always have the highest grades when it comes to designing ( Web designing and XHTML/CSS )..

So.. well.. i wont take school serious for a while..
Which means that I am bored, can you give me something to draw?..

I'd love to draw a character wise thing, with perhaps a beautifully background or something.

Anyways, will you still accept me in he group? :)

greetz

Dutchdevil

arttorney

March 19th, 2008, 06:43 PM

All right. Give me a little time to think something up (like a day or less). You and deep_in_food are able to work right now. I think it will be about faces.

Dutchdevil

March 19th, 2008, 06:52 PM

All right. Give me a little time to think something up (like a day or less). You and deep_in_food are able to work right now. I think it will be about faces.

Awesome! my specialty.. well, as far as my skill goes xD

Also, I was thinking about buying a wacom, recently used one at school some dude was away and i thought i might try it out, Its alot of fun using one.

do you think a graphire will be enough for me? since the intuos are rather expensive and i dont think i will use a intuos for what it is designed for!

anyway thanks!

arttorney

March 19th, 2008, 07:17 PM

Lots of people use Graphires and seem to do OK. Don't spend too much money while you are still young and learning. In a few years the technology will be outdated anyway and you can blow the big money on something that is probably not even available today. Be sure to get the driver software from the prior owner so your computer will be able to recognize the Graphire. Well if, you buy it new, the driver software will be in the box.

deep_in_food

March 19th, 2008, 09:11 PM

Ah I remember you said about shading last time when I showed you the eyeball fish

arttorney

March 20th, 2008, 12:56 PM

Everything relates together. Go back sometimes and remember the other things we talked about. This thread is the archive of the things you should try to remember while you draw. The discussion about how the head is a sphere with a wedge, for example, leads to the special case where a head viewed from the side becomes a circle with a square.
328891
The eyes are placed about halfway between the top of the head and the bottom of the head. The bottom of the nose is about halfway between the eyes and the chin. The mouth is about halfway between the bottom of the nose and the chin. The distance from the eyes to the tip of the chin is the same as the distance from the eye to the back of the ear in this direct side view. The back of the neck meets the circle of the head at about the same level as the mouth.
328892
I'll have some more drawings, discussion, and an assignment later today after a client meeting I have to have.

arttorney

March 20th, 2008, 01:44 PM

By the way, you guys can earn major amounts of permanent respect from me if you go over and make a couple of pages of drawings for Panels of the Week #7 or Panels of the Week #8 by next Tuesday. You don't have to make grand artworks like The Last Supper. Cartooning is fine.

This is not mandatory because it is hard, but if you do it, you will be doing something most of the other people on CA are too chicken to do.

I can try to help with behind the scenes suggestions.

arttorney

March 20th, 2008, 06:09 PM

The marking lines (and the ear triangle) can be used to place the parts of the heads in their correct places when you are doing portraits. Of course, when you are drawing in this crappy looking initial drawing phase you are using a 4h pencil or drawing in a digital layer you will later hide.

See below how you begin with an oval for the head that will be bisected with a vertical line (see #2). This vertical line is the line of the nose, it passes exactly between the eyes. It cuts the lips in half exactly. If you cut the oval in half horizontally you have established the line of the eyes (3). If you then make another horizontal line that cuts halfway between the eyes and the chin (4), you have found the line that will probably be the bottom of the nose. If you make a third horizontal line halfway between the nose bottom line and the chin, you have found where the mouth should probably go (5).
329045
The head can tilt and turn. The lines that are horizontal will not be horizontal if the head tilts, they will be perpendicular to the tilted vertical line. As the head looks up, the amount of forehead gets less so the horizontal lines all travel upward on the head. As the head looks down, the amount of head above the line of the eyes gets (edited:MORE, not less. big forehead when looking down) and the facial features become more concentrated in the lower part of the face. This changing of where the horizontal lines are on the head oval is called head foreshortening.

Look at this page 10 of "Dynamic Figure Drawing" by Burne Hogarth (2002 Watson-Guptill Publications, New York).
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Now look at how I have drawn the lines that would plot where everything goes on tracings of those heads. (Well I didn't exactly put in the ear triangles (for which explanation I must credit Betty Edwards, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain))
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For the assignment this week (due midnight March 27, 2008 Pacific time) go ahead and make 20 ovals with the lines on them that plot where the facial features would go (but you don't actually have to draw the facial features). Make them looking every which way and up and down. Have some tilted ones. I would put about 4 or 5 of them on an A4 (9" x 12") paper. You'll probably find it easier if you don't overlap them the way Mr. Hogarth did. When you have made your 20 guideline heads, pick your favorite one or two of them and draw in facial features as well as you can by using shading or hatching to indicate value. I'm just trying to get you used to seeing how eyes and ears and noses etc. turn with the head as the head turns. If we turn our head sideways our eyes don't both end up on the same side of our head like a halibut. Because all of our features turn around in unison, we can use these geometric techniques I describe to plot out the correct position of everything before we draw it.

Dutchdevil

March 21st, 2008, 01:20 PM

Awesome! this will be a cool assignment:)

deep_in_food

March 22nd, 2008, 10:54 AM

Back on track... Finally I get onto some real stuff and have to burst my brain open for ideas and hard work.
Interesting head stuff thingy. Somehow when I restarted my vegie figure again, I found out how rusty I became
It reminded me that I really need to get my hobby going, as well as my subjects.

http://tn3-1.deviantart.com/fs25/300W/f/2008/082/2/9/Bleh_some_3ds_again_2_by_jsiu123.jpg

Dutchdevil

March 24th, 2008, 11:16 AM

Hey!

I have finisched my drawings,and I am doing a research about cubism for school.
I Do not understand a big issue.. Hoped one of you could explain me..

It seems cubism started arround 1907, and that Paul Cezanne was one who had a lot of influence in cubism.

the questoion: How can cubism start in 1907 when one of the founder died a ear before ? in 1906 Paul Cezanne died, but he did have the great influence..

Thats impossible right, since cubism did not excist when he was an artist it did, a year after he died ...

i have a presentation about it tomorrow and it really confuses me, can you help me out?

arttorney

March 24th, 2008, 12:36 PM

Cezanne wasn't actually a cubist, but is acknowledged as giving the cubists the seeds of the ideas for cubism. Here is something I ripped out of the Wikipedia on Cezanne:
"Cézanne's explorations of geometric simplification and optical phenomena inspired Picasso, Braque, Gris, and others to experiment with ever more complex multiple views of the same subject, and, eventually, to the fracturing of form. Cézanne thus sparked one of the most revolutionary areas of artistic enquiry of the 20th Century, one which was to affect profoundly the development of modern art."

Cezanne's paintings were still around after his death for people to look at.

Picasso and Bracque were the guys who are most famous for actually going out and doing cubism. They saw that Cezanne was finding squares and triangles in everything that he could see. Picasso and Bracque (and the others) decided that they could just go ahead and paint squares and triangles for everything and it would be a powerful yet simple representation of what is out there. When they actually took that next step they caused paintings to flatten out because there are subtleties of perspective that geometric flat fields of color are not well adapted to depict.