Taking a step. Then another. Keep going... 03/21/08

[donohms]

Hey all,

I used to post here under the lame name adien, which was a handle I used in a number of places, but over the years I've used it less and less. I figured now was a good a time as any to start using my real name for my meager art. :)

My previous, and long idle sketchbook is here. (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?p=343398#post343398)

I keep much of my stuff online at http://members.shaw.ca/ohms123/

I'll mostly show 2008 stuff, and try to maintain or increase the pace I've set for myself in the past month or two. but I figured I'd start off with a couple unreferenced drawings from 2007.

[donohms]

Here's a couple more from 2007. Most people don't like the sea elf, but nobody ever tells me why...

[donohms]

So almost everything else I'm going to post here was done at or after the Revelations workshop. I realized there it's not just the number of studies you do, and the amount of knowledge you gain, but it's much more about the muscle memory you build around drawing. After awhile, you want to draw something, your hand already knows how to do it without you needing to think too much about it.

So with that, I started making a real effort to draw nearly every day. Shout outs to Tarrzan (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=98054), Uglyographer (http://www.uglyographer.com/home/), skilduff (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=115566), and Johnathan (don't remember his CA name). They were a cool group to hang with at the workshop and helped me realize some things about what I needed to do next. Thanks guys. :)

Here's something I drew while in Seattle just before the workshop. There are a few things wrong with him that I'll finish up once I get a tablet or a cintiq:

[donohms]

These two pages were done at Revelations. I didn't actually get much drawing done at the workshop. Combination of being overwhelmed and totally intimidated I guess.

http://members.shaw.ca/ohms123/2008/Doodles%20from%20Life/morelifedoodles.jpghttp://members.shaw.ca/ohms123/2008/Doodles%20from%20Life/morelifedoodles2.jpg

Everything else is from after Revelations. I started drawing in pen sometimes, blue pencil sometimes, and a combination of blue pencil / normal pencil a lot. on some pages there's all three. I started drawing in pen because I thought it would teach me to consider my lines more, but it just made me scribble alot. but that turned out to be great fun! :)

The drawing on yellow lined paper was done in a meeting at work... :bashful:

http://members.shaw.ca/ohms123/2008/Unreferenced/office_pen_doodle.jpg http://members.shaw.ca/ohms123/2008/Unreferenced/pendoodles.jpg

I tried drawing people on the bus. I still do it sometimes, but get bored, since everyone is nearly always facing away from me. but here's a few shaky bus doodles:

http://members.shaw.ca/ohms123/2008/Doodles%20from%20Life/shakybusPendoodles.jpg

Trying to draw people in the coffee shop without them noticing, after I got bored with hogarth studies:

http://members.shaw.ca/ohms123/2008/Doodles%20from%20Life/coffeeshopdoodles1.jpg

Next post I'll start going through the studies I've been doing the past few weeks.

[donohms]

I really want to get to a point where I can draw at least the basic proportioned human head fairly accurately from most angles without reference. I feel from there I'll be able to come up with endless variations after that, but I'm really trying to get this first part down. So for the past few weeks, as much as possible I've been doing studies, and trying to draw the people around me (some of which are seen in the previous post :nohope: ). Oh, I also swear at my drawings sometimes haha...

Hogarth:

http://members.shaw.ca/ohms123/2008/Studies/Hogarth-heads.jpg http://members.shaw.ca/ohms123/2008/Studies/Hogarth-heads2.jpg


http://members.shaw.ca/ohms123/2008/Studies/Hogarth-studies1.jpg

http://members.shaw.ca/ohms123/2008/Studies/Feb_4and5_2008.jpg

http://members.shaw.ca/ohms123/2008/Studies/Hogarth-studies2.jpg

http://members.shaw.ca/ohms123/2008/Studies/HogarthEyes_and_randomBluehead.jpg


Next post, I've moved onto Loomis...

[donohms]

I was sick with bronchitis for nearly 2 weeks, which was a bit of a shock, first time I've been sick in over 2 years. I mostly spent the time feeling sorry for myself, and not drawing.

After that, I realized that I was having some trouble defining the shapes of the face with just line, and remembers that Loomis teaches just line to start with, so with a bit of dread went back to his book on drawing heads and hands. If you look through my old sketchbook, you'll see some early painful attempts at loomis studies. I think I'm doing better this time around.

Feb 22-23
http://members.shaw.ca/ohms123/2008/Studies/Loomis-studies-Feb22-23_2008.jpg

Feb 23-24
http://members.shaw.ca/ohms123/2008/Studies/Loomis-studies-Feb23-24_2008.jpg

Feb 26
http://members.shaw.ca/ohms123/2008/Studies/Loomis-studies-Feb26_2008.jpg


Hey thanks for checking out my stuff. Any comments or suggestions to help me along are greatly appreciated. :)

[nikia]

He's back! Yep it did take over an hour to upload this thread to my puter on dial up.............but worth it! I see some I haven't seen before......cool. I like the sea elf........perhaps if you added scales or finished it more fully peeps would like it? I'm seeing a lot of improvement over your old drawings........my fav would be the drawing on the yellow lined paper........but I also like and admire the Hogarth work. Keep it up and don't get discouraged this time. Practice makes perfect and patience is the key.

Yep you did say how awesome Luscious was. Thanks! You'd think after doing a year and a half on that drawing I would go to something fun and simple.........but no.................I have to take up the huge challenge of drawing your great grandmother from your cousins' memory! Ack!

[donohms]

Hey nikia,

you're insane. I get bored after 8-10 hours of working on a single drawing. how many hours did you put into that drawing, Luscious? 200? more? and you're going to do another one? you're insane. :-P

If anyone wants to take a look at the drawing in question, nikia has a thread on artpapa (she goes by Katherine there) here (http://www.artpapa.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16601&page=5) with that drawing. you have to be a member to see the pictures attached to the thread though. She's also using a thumbnail of it as her avatar above. :)

[donohms]

A couple really quick doodles from "Fun with a Pencil" as a warm up, then the next step in trying to learn planes of the head.

http://members.shaw.ca/ohms123/2008/Studies/Loomis-Feb29_2008.jpg

[kidult]

Nice studies here - any complete stuff to show?

[Scotteh]

Haha Andrew Loomis, I'm working through some of his studies right now myself. Keep up the good work.

[Slechtvalk]

donohms,

You got some good sketches here and with the Loomis studies your on your way to even better ones!

Here is another head approach I like to use:
http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=84105

Keep it going.

:scribble:

[donohms]

Hey thanks for the comments guys! I really appreciate any and all input!

kidult I have a drawing or two on my webspace that I marginally consider finished... I'm really struggling with foundations right now, so have committed to putting serious time into that for now. I meant to do some personal stuff this past weekend, but my pesky snowboard got in the way (oh man, I was knee deep in POWDER this weekend! So awesome)

Scotteh Hey man, yea, Loomis is great! Sometimes he gets the better of me though, as you can see in the page below... :nohope:

Slechtvalk Oh man I love that thread! I actually forgot about it, I'm so glad you linked it! :) I'm gonna try some of that out.

---------------------------------

Here's the studies I did last night and tonight. fumbled the bottom one, and not for the first time.It's beaten me before but I'll tackle it again tomorrow night. I'll figure it out yet. I'm going to try breaking it down into planes since that's what I've been learning, see if I can see what's happening with it then. Be a good exercise to try to apply what I've learned instead of just copying. :)

I struggled with the top two as well for that matter, but I'll let you guys judge how well I did with those.

http://members.shaw.ca/ohms123/2008/Studies/Loomis-studies-March4-5_2008.jpg

[MeTaL-Mike]

great studies man. keep them up they pay up!!!

[donohms]

MeTaL-Mike Thanks man, I'm already noticing a difference. :)


------------------------------

So I tackled that same drawing again tonight. after 2 hours of trying to get it to look right, I gave up. By then I was pretty burnt out from trying to work out form and structure so I needed to just do some mindless doodling, completely unstructured. The little guy at the top of the page is what my pencil vomited out in about 10 minutes (compared to the 2 hours spent on the loomis study below it). :)

http://members.shaw.ca/ohms123/2008/Studies/March6-08.jpg

[Weazle]

Hey man. It's Johnathan. Good to see you keeping up the studies. I can see some progression here. Really it just takes many of these drawings and carefully observing faces with light sources to get better. You really need to sit back and analyse how the shapes fit together and it will eventually click. And don't forget man professionals use reference all the time.

[thesadpencil]

hey man your definitely on the right track w/ all these studies. just keep at it, keep doing what your doing and you'll constantly see improvement.

[donohms]

Hey Johnathan! Yea, I know, just gotta keep up the studies. I'm trying to apply what I learn now though too, sortof, drawing without ref, trying to remember what I studied and apply it. Some things have definitely improved, other things are still eluding me. I'll get it eventually. :)

Thanks for the encouragement thesadpencil, I know eventually I'll wake up and be like "hot damn I can draw!" and I'll look back on these studies with fondness. I'm sure. really. :)


-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Well, I've not had a terrible amount of time to draw... who am I kidding. ok what really happened is I started playing this game called The Witcher. Luckily for me, the crazy load times kept me from really getting immersed, and I was able to pull away from it after a few days. :-D

These few pages are mostly unreferenced, although a couple at the bottom were loosely based on loomis drawings I was looking at. I started trying to mess around with the base proportions that loomis teaches. I was trying to get a dwarf.. didn't really turn out that well (upper left corner with blue).

The I kept trying to mess with proportion in pen while on a bus (that I swear has no suspension at all)... I suppose some good came of it because the next page shows some improvement. :)

http://members.shaw.ca/ohms123/2008/Unreferenced/march_doodles1.jpg

--------------------
The dwarf in the upper left corner of this one came as a result of the pen doodle in the upper right corner of the previous page. the rest are experimenting with the "types" that loomis descibes. basically instead of creating three parts of the face of nearly equal height, making them of all unequal height and seeing what you can come up with. that was fun. :)

http://members.shaw.ca/ohms123/2008/Unreferenced/march_doodles2.jpg

hmm...

[nikia]

Very good! I'm liking what I see. I think that if you consider where you started from and where you are now.....you'll find that you've amassed a huge amount of information over the last few years. And now you are beginning to see how to apply that information. I see quite a difference even between the first drawings on this page and the last ones! Sometimes things just suddenly click!

[donohms]

ok, so it's definitely been awhile since I've posted.

Couple things have changed. I've recently bought a laptop, and a tablet to go with it. here's a couple doodles from today, my first day with the tablet (i've had the laptop for exactly a week).

gonna take some getting used to. I'm having serious trouble with precise linework with the tablet. painting is easier because I can block out shapes and cut back into them, refining over time. both of these are unreferenced (you could probably tell ;) )

[nikia]

Not bad! Especially for your first day with the tablet. The only thing that really stands out to me is (lol lack of hands and feet on the first drawing) and on the second drawing.......the screen right eye is a bit larger than the other, but otherwise pretty good.

Take a look through your help files on your tablet......there should be a way to set your pen up to fall precisely where you want it to. You should be able to also adjust the tilt of it.