How little do we know

[Prometheus|ANJ]

Don't scroll down below this post. That will spoil the fun.

1: We draw animals from our head without using reference. It's fun to pick one that we perhaps have never drawn and maybe it was months since we last saw one. The only thing we have to work with is our memory (perhaps an ancient one). I think it could be useful to draw two different views (See attached image). Personally I prefer doing something in color and at least some degree of detail, and pretty realistic. That illustrates my deficiencies better, and I'll be left with more little anecdotes of where I went completely wrong. Perhaps I'll remember these anecdotes, and that is useful. It creates an association memory or something.

(Edit: Any animal would be fine, it's up to you). In the test run of this thread we've worked with Crows, Ostriches and (male) Lions. Maybe you're more uncomfortable with Elephants, Giraffes, or Ants...

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When done, you can post it in the thread, or jump right to:


2: We search for reference images and do a Paint-Over of our own image. Where did we go wrong?


3: We take away the reference and draw the creature again. How much do we remember with a fresh memory of both the reference images as well as the drawing/painting process of our earlier image?


( 4: Optional. We can wait a week, then draw it again without reference. How much has the memory degraded? Or maybe we fall in love with the animal and do tons of useful studies. Who knows. )

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Poot.

[davi]

im a puss and i only did a side view of a crow for now

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[Prometheus|ANJ]

Ok, here I go! I'd better go and find some ref now... I'm really curious.

[Prometheus|ANJ]

Ok, studies are done. I seem to bulk (thick) things up a lot, maybe because I do so
much game art. These poses don't really cover all the poses and animations that you
need to know, but they're descriptive of the basic design of the animal. A good place
to start. Mostly it's just fun to see everything that I miss...

Some ref I found that might be useful.

Ostrich. Nice muscular system thing.
http://www.daylife.com/photo/08UWgcx5RD0DG

Ostrich. Front views are hard to find of birds. Maybe they're not photogenic enough in that angle.
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42555000/jpg/_42555341_ostrich.jpg

Didn't find any good crow ref from the front.
It's a bad angle, apparently. People want the beak profile!

It's getting late, I'll see if I can do them from head tomorrow.
I wonder how much sleeping will degrade the memory.

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---

I also did a Male Lion on IRC earlier. Pretty catastrophic first iteration.
I deliberately picked an animal that I didn't know. More fun that way.
I had to go back and fix my study.

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[Vorace]

Wow I just wanted to say that It is a really good idea, seems fun... I'll try it when I'm home :D

great job guys!

[Victor B]

Also just wanted to say thanks, I'll give this a try tomorrow

[armando]

The proportions of the nose and mouth are important to get it to look like a lion. I also couldn't remember if they had circular pupils or those slit type. Fixed the broken arm. Guessed at the muscles, couldn't find decent pictures of those.

[davi]

just woke up and took a shot at doing it again without ref

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[Prometheus|ANJ]

Back from the bed. It's a bit rough, but I guess the major features are there. Proportions are easy to mess up. I first drew the neck on the ostrich S curved, but thought I was doing an 'art thing', so I straightened it. Seems I seems I should have trusted my art sense this time. Although, I'm sure that their neck can be straight... it just doesn't look as good and the ostriches know it.

The Crow beak got too big it seems. Maybe because I'm not used to realistic scales, so I magnify key features. I tried to keep the ostrich head down though, but that was because I knew that I probably drawn it too big, so I scaled it down. Got paranoid.

[Hyver]

only nine posts in here so far, and already BEST of CA material.. without a doubt the best idea i've seen here since blob-oc :)

[HunterKiller_]

Wow, this looks fun. No doubt a great exercise to learn to draw stuff.

[HunterKiller_]

This is such a great way to learn to draw from memory. It's so obvious but I never really consider it before.
Ref, head, ref, head, ref, head. Keep doing this and we could learn to draw many, many animals (and other things).

It's such a laugh to see the first try after study from ref. :nohope:
Quadrupeds are difficult from the front angle.

[Frida Bergholtz]

Ok! this is embarassing. I am not impressed with myself :$
Anyway this was a very good exercise for me since I draw animals so rarely. And I have certainly never drawn a giraffe before.

[Rist]

im in! be back soon with an attempt!

back!

I am worse than I thought... Some thoughts on what could be wrong:

1: Face; too flat, colours wrong, need to visualise details better, where does the hairline start? How large are the nostrils?

2: Head; flat top or rounded? More split hair? How far back does the head go? How long it the head? How wide is the head? Colours are wrong. Need more details.

3: Arms; how muscular? How hairy? How long? Colours are wrong. Where does the hair stop and the paw begin? How does the paw rest on the ground? Colour of the paw?

4: Legs; this is all wrong and is an area that needs to be looked into.

[ikuru]

Nice thread! This one took like waaay to long!
But I'm gonne have good use of some monkey drawing skills in the near future, so its all good.
http://www.ikuru.se/2/monkey.jpg

[K-bot]

Up all night, I spent about an hour total. Great exercise, I'll do some more when I am not tired.

[Great Distance]

Hey, what a cool thread! I've actually thought about doing this sort of stuff, but never really got to it. I will now, though. :)

So I decided to do some frogs! I drew a few of them from reference about a year ago, so I wanted to test my skills. Looking at these, I guess I didn't learn that much that time, after all. I'm a bit disappointed to see that other people's first tries are so much better than mine, though. :bashful: But I guess the point of this is to learn, hehe.

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/hh107/GD_/Elaimet/frogsi.jpg
http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/hh107/GD_/Elaimet/frogs.jpg
http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/hh107/GD_/Elaimet/frogsi2.jpg

I did an extra one to see if I could apply the things I learned there somehow. So I don't have to rely on always drawing the exact same poses and such. ;)

[Rist]

Here is a gorilla with ref. I try to keep things simple as to not worry about details.

[MisterStrum]

This really shows me alot! Awesome, really need to study animals.

http://img253.imageshack.us/img253/2349/elephantrefcheckbp3.jpg

[Psychotime]

This is genius. Imma try soon.

[shou']

http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c103/shoukun/ca_ps_animalstudy_penguins_.png

[BlightedArt]

http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c103/shoukun/ca_ps_animalstudy_penguins_.png

Hmm, the two lines of highlights around the wing are are confusing me, not sure which strip of highlighting is meant to represent what... However your colours in general are astounding, such a big contrast of blues, yellows/oranges for different shading effects, I love it.

Still confused about those two highlighting strips though, do you happen to have the reference for us to see? :)

[shou']

BlightedArt: Thanks. I had similar sentiments regarding it's wing. Click here (http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/3531/capenguinrefmq5.png) for the reference.

One more:
http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c103/shoukun/ca_ps_animalstudy_pig_final.png

[ikuru]

that pig came out really really well.

[ALH]

VERY interesting task!

I picked a field mouse since its been years since i've done any rodent study, and i dont think I've ever focused on just a mouse Before. I know the basic structure of a rodent- sausage body shape, the hand like paws and the big head...but the minute it came to getting that down on paper i had so many little doubts! Mabes the nose should be pointier? Mabes the ears are further back? Is the head TOO big? It was weird how without the ref these things were suddenly incredibly stressful, to the point where even basic anatomical details were being questioned.

The side view was the worst, oh god.

I usually do a full sheet of studies to get to know a creature before i commit to a drawing. Doing this made me feel so naked ;_;!

I feel slightly ashamed that i didnt spend as much time on the second version without ref as i did sweating over the first, but i think without the ref in front of me i wasnt going to get it right anyways, you can gain some things from tracing, but not enough to make it count.

EDIT...and i just re-read the thread and realised you were meant to paintover your own image using the ref not paint over the ref itself. Oh god, im asleep today. No wonder it didnt help! :(

[Great Distance]

VERY interesting task!
EDIT...and i just re-read the thread and realised you were meant to paintover your own image using the ref not paint over the ref itself. Oh god, im asleep today. No wonder it didnt help! :(

Haha, yeah. I read it wrong, too. I didn't paint over my drawings and just made completely new drawings instead. But I guess I'll have to remember that the next time. ;)

[DeeLock]

Ug...I suck at digi painting...need to practice more.

I was inspired by my pug.

From memory:
http://i52.photobucket.com/albums/g22/deelock27/pugmem1copy.jpg
From ref:
http://i52.photobucket.com/albums/g22/deelock27/pugref1.jpg
From memory again...sucks...:
http://i52.photobucket.com/albums/g22/deelock27/pugmem2.jpg

[ALH]

I was inspired by my pug.

From memory:
http://i52.photobucket.com/albums/g22/deelock27/pugmem1copy.jpg

hehe, it looks like a little sheep with a mans face.Very surreal

[shou']

ikuru: Thank you.

http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c103/shoukun/ca_ps_animalstudy_barn_owl_.png

[shou']

Inspired by the posts above --

http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c103/shoukun/ca_ps_animalstudy_babysheep.png

[Hideyoshi]

this idea is genius and sounds like a lot of fun! Might give it a go sometime.

[shou']

http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c103/shoukun/ca_ps_animalstudy_hammerhea.png

[shou']

http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c103/shoukun/ca_ps_animalstudy_tropicalf.png

[meganite]

I think this is going to be one of my favorite challenges... I love drawing creatures, but I get them wrong so often!

[Black Sun]

I went with a black rhinoceros. This is a lot of fun, I already have a nice list of critters I'd like to do.

[shou']

http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c103/shoukun/ca_ps_animalstudy_greentree.png

[Great Distance]

Oh, thanks for reminding me of the frogs I did a while back. Let's see how much my memory has degraded in 3 months.

From memory 3 months after drawing from reference:
http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/hh107/GD_/Elaimet/frogsagain.jpg

Next time I think I'm going to try something simple, like... cats. I think it's more important to me to know how to draw cats than some exotic animals. ;)

[Great Distance]

Here's the cats I promised.

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/hh107/GD_/Elaimet/catsi-1.jpg
http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/hh107/GD_/Elaimet/cats.jpg
http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/hh107/GD_/Elaimet/catsnref-1.jpg

[pegasi]

it's interesting how almost all the without ref drawings have bigger forms then the refs. They could be smaller, like a tinier chest, or head...but they aren't. why? :wtf: lol