Jompen gets mentored!

[jompen]

Hello everybody !!

In this thread I will post my stuffs and assignments by my mentors Matsign,D.Labruyere.

I´m a beginner but now with this great teachers I hope I will grow.

I know my english is bad but i hope u still understand.


Cheers!

[chaosrocks]

Please take only one Mentor
there are many many people who want them.
plus for the kind of focus that you need for a mentorship. More than one mentor would be difficult to time manage.
Thanks

would it be possible to share the wealth? you seem to have three mentors. there are so many people looking for them. perhaps you could make this a one on one relationship? or take another 2 mentees into the mix? there are so many people who want mentors....share the love? please?

[Matsign]

Your English is good enough. We'll talk more about where we will start. Since we're focusing in on digital painting here, a good starting point is the Peer Project V2 (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=76955) All three of us can work through the exercises and move on when we can. Other mentors can embellish on this if they want. Speed painting is a good exercise, too.

Does everyone have access to a version of Photoshop?

[jompen]

Ok, alright. I´ve asked my friend Georgi and he also wanna join here :)
Then all spots are taken i think?

Good idea with that Peer Project V2 Matsign, and yes i´ve Photoshop.

[D.Labruyere]

right, how are we going to do this with the 3 mentors. Anyone suggestions?

[jompen]

Ok, I think its better if only you and matsign is my mentors. Others can come with critique , but more than 2 mentors is too much i think.

I can start this thing with posting something i drew yesterday.
Some faces i seen in the paper.

http://img120.imageshack.us/img120/1616/mickdo5.th.jpg (http://img120.imageshack.us/my.php?image=mickdo5.jpg)

http://img144.imageshack.us/img144/5563/kl001qf9.th.jpg (http://img144.imageshack.us/my.php?image=kl001qf9.jpg)

[D.Labruyere]

hey jompen, I will give you some critics and links later tonight. There are quite some things you can improve etc. Well you will hear from me later tonight.

[jompen]

Sounds great Labruyere! :}

Here are some more sketches i did today:

http://img70.imageshack.us/img70/3540/persqq6.th.jpg (http://img70.imageshack.us/my.php?image=persqq6.jpg)

http://img70.imageshack.us/img70/4752/hmmvs5.th.jpg (http://img70.imageshack.us/my.php?image=hmmvs5.jpg)

[D.Labruyere]

ok, critic time. I am sorry if I tell something you already know.

Anatomy of the head. There are quite a few things wrong with your heads. As you can see with your head it looks rather flat, the proportions are all but correct, the facial gestures are way to big and overall the underlying structure doesn't show any knowledge of the human skull.

This is a problem that can easily be solved, atleast it takes a lot of work, but it is all "technique" thus can be learned.

My old art teacher explained it like this: What if you wanted to draw a an engine? You will never be able to draw it in a realistic way, simply because you don't know what it looks like. You know probably it is a big black thing with some pipes, a cable here and there, but that is about it. If you want to draw it you should or get a reference of the engine, have the engine right in front of you or learn every part of the engine out of your head, to draw it.

This is the same with the human body. You will have to learn every part of the human, to know how to draw a human. But with that you aren't done yet. Now you know how the engine looks like, maybe how it works, but somehow you still aren't able to draw it?

This is the harder part. It is easy to learn all the bones, muscles, and whatever of the human body. It is a totally different aspect to put down what you have learned on paper. You may know how a muscle curves, but you don't know how to confey that curve on paper. To make something 3d on a 2-dimensional paper. How to create the illusion? You basicaly have to learn to see all over again. When something goes to the distance, does the line go up or down, or to the left or right side of the paper. Is that spot darker or is it actually lighter?

But this harder part isn't where we will start. We start at the very basics right now, and that is since you are already busy with the head, simply the anatomy of the head.

A good way to get how things work, is by simplifying it. Start with the whole, and end with the details. Our brains can simply understand things like cubes, sqaures and other basic shapes.

To show you a basic shape I've got for you a picture from Andrew Loomis :

http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a131/haldor/naamloos.jpg

Since he is far better then me at explaining what he has drawn I will copy-paste the text from him also:

The cranium is more like a ball then anything else. To represent the ball as a solid sphere, we must establish an axis, like the nail through the ball at the top. Through the centers established by the axis, we can divide the ball into quarters and again at the equator. Now if we were to slice off a fairly thin slice on each side, we will have produced a basic shape that very closely matches the cranium. The "equator" becomes the brow line. One of the lines through the axis becomes the middle line of the face. About halfway up from the brow line to the axis we establish the hairline, or the top of the face. We drop the middle line straight down off the ball. On this we mark off two points about equal to the space of the forehead or from brow line to hairline. This gives us the length of the nose, and below that the bottom of the chin. We can now draw the plane of the face by drawing in the jaw line, which connects about halfway around the ball on each side. The ears attach along the halfway line (up and down) at a distance about equal to the space of from the brows to the bottom of the nose. The ball can be tipped in any direction

Now I want you to do 2 things this week:

- Draw atleast 10 of these faces every day, using the steps loomis did:

http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a131/haldor/naamloos1.jpg


- Draw a self portrait of you every day. Look very good to what you are seeing. Which lines make your face look like your face. How curves your nose? How big are your eyes, how does the line of your cheeck bone go. Make sure you don't spend more then 30 minutes on each of them. I will critic these.

This will take 45-60 minutes of your day, which I think should be able to be managed easily.

Well I hope this helps you and I hope to hear from you soon,

Daniel

edit: I totally forget, if you want to see more of this book, I haven't been able to find a downloadable book for you but here is a link with all the pages anyhow:

http://fineart.sk/index.php?cat=14

Only thing is you have to click picture for picture every time. So even if you want to have it on your computer, you are going to have to save the whole book page for page..

[Matsign]

D.Lab went to some great length to bring you information on the head. I will address line quality. Line quality is relative to confidence of the mark of your pencil. I often get caught up in an drawing and limit the length of my line, say, when drawing the curve of a flexed bicep. The idea is you know what a bicep looks like flexed. You've seen it hundred times no doubt. Have a good, mental picture of what you're drawing. If there are blank spots if you really think about, you should study that part of the anatomy.

Getting back to line quality, don't use your wrists so much. Much like a painter laying strokes of the brush, you have to teach your whole arm to do so. Give yourself enough space to draw with good support, you'll retain what you learn pretty well that way. You want to avoid returning to a line if it doesn't look right. Make it what you imagine the first time. Keep your pencil sharp, as well as your mind.

This is good that your drawing from reference. Do the heads, they're easy man. Study your face. I stare at the structure of my face everyday and think about why the padding above my eye (the brow) is thin and not fatty. Shit like that.

[jompen]

I´ve read all what you have said and i must say i like you two guys for your effort to make me better. I will begin to do those heads now, my mother will print out some pages from Loomis (great tip-off there D.lab) tonight.

You will hear from me soon when i post my heads.

//Johan

[jompen]

Hi !

I´ve done this faces 2 days now and here is the result.
Need more training I think. But with your and Andrew Loomis help all this week I hope it´s going better and better =)

Day 1
http://img141.imageshack.us/img141/5412/facesf0.th.jpg (http://img141.imageshack.us/my.php?image=facesf0.jpg)

Day2
http://img141.imageshack.us/img141/9031/face2es0.th.jpg (http://img141.imageshack.us/my.php?image=face2es0.jpg)

[Matsign]

Cool, there is some improvement going on. When doing any kind of study of something new, figuring out its form is high priority. The heads are going to get boring after a while, keep at them! We'll move on to Bridgman for the features of the face.

[jompen]

ty Matsign. I´ve been busy a few days but i´ve managed to do some heads:

http://img141.imageshack.us/img141/4098/face3fc2.th.jpg (http://img141.imageshack.us/my.php?image=face3fc2.jpg)

Bonus, post one more image :D

http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/3351/blcknu5.th.jpg (http://img231.imageshack.us/my.php?image=blcknu5.jpg)

[D.Labruyere]

Good to see you're busy on it. Keep out the facial characters like eyes and noses for now. This excersise more about the structure of the head, then placing the eyes, mouth, ears or nose correct.

[Matsign]

Waiting for an update!

[jompen]

Sorry teachers, much in school this week. Will be better after tomorrow when i have done my big history test.
Here is a speed digital painting i did yesterday. Heads, yeah, heads I will draw some tomorrow and post here.

http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/6536/coca5.th.jpg (http://img80.imageshack.us/my.php?image=coca5.jpg)

[jompen]

Hello everybody. I have paint to rarely. Will be better i promise. Need to post something every day i think :)

Here´s 10 heads. I did paint the features yet, was to boring without them.

http://img251.imageshack.us/img251/9553/headsnk4.th.jpg (http://img251.imageshack.us/my.php?image=headsnk4.jpg)

i dont now, do you think i shall continue with the heads or shall i go on to anything else? Focus on the features for example?

Cheers!

Edit :
I tested out Pose maniacs tonight so i did a few 45 seconds drawings. It was difficult to reach in time . Its not looking so nice i know, but i still post it ;)

http://img159.imageshack.us/img159/747/poseiw9.th.jpg (http://img159.imageshack.us/my.php?image=poseiw9.jpg)

http://img159.imageshack.us/img159/1950/pose2qc9.th.jpg (http://img159.imageshack.us/my.php?image=pose2qc9.jpg)

[jompen]

bumpilibump

Random sketches
http://img150.imageshack.us/img150/1840/sketchnr9.th.jpg (http://img150.imageshack.us/my.php?image=sketchnr9.jpg)

[D.Labruyere]

hey jompen, I will critic you tonight :) been quite busy last week so didn't had much time to give you a good reply.

[jompen]

Hello guys, Dr.lab. i´m also busy sometimes so its okey but i´m excited to hear what you had to say and what I shall do next. More heads?

One more imagination sketch, now i did so you dont need to click on the image to see it.
Shall do some more heads later.

http://img249.imageshack.us/img249/4492/hmmmyd2.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

[jompen]

Hi again ;)
I tested out the grid-technique from rumpus thread.
I have problem to "blend" colors, dont really understand the best technique to do it yet.

http://img61.imageshack.us/img61/7311/greenapplegk6.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

[jompen]

bump, didnt u have any critique?
Or any new assigntments?

Btw, i created a sb yesterday, so i shall begin to post my drawings there (also.)

Cheers!

[Matsign]

Jompen, whats the link to your sketchbook?