Deniall's First Attempts Sketchbook

[Deniall]

Hi All,

This is my first attempt at this so I don't know if any of the images will uploaded properly or anything else but ill give it a go.

Also please note all images have been taken using a camera and then scaled down so sorry for the bad imagery. (I'll steal my mums scanner for future :P)

The Flower and the Eye were my first pieces drawn about a year ago, both have been copied from photo's I found through google.

I've recently decided to start drawing again and here is my first attempts all done today; the post it drawings were drawn today in pen while at work :P and then the SeaElephant (as I call it) enlargement in pencil with attempted shading

im not too happy with my full drawn SeaElephant thing loll

however i'm going to take a life drawing class to hopefully learn more about shading and drawing to scale and the such.

In the mean time any critism would be greatly appreciated!! :)

Thanks!

p.s ill update as I draw :)

[Dozeren]

Well, you need to practise. I like the idee of the sea elephant. Collect referance pictures of elephants and seahorses, and work from those. Using ref pics is allways a good ide with fantasywork. Either from web or if youre taking them yourself. And get your self a big sketchbook. A3 a good size. Than you can draw things bigger, and it will be easier to draw details as well. Otherwise as said in your other thread, the only way to become a good drawer is to practise. So keep it up:) Let's see more.

[Serpian]

It's a good thing you started a sketchbook here! That way both we and you can follow your progress easily.

When you do go to life drawing class, forget about faces. It's figure drawing, not portrait drawing. You'll probably have very short poses as well, depending on what kind of place it is, so you can't waste time on the face, just a general shape. The most important thing is to get proportions right. In this post (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showpost.php?p=1955560&postcount=26) in my thread are some of my copies of simple figure drawings. We did these to learn how simple we should draw. You'll see that most of them just have a few lines, the ear and hairline for the head.

When drawing from life, whether it is life drawing or still life or portrait, you should always draw what you see. This sounds simple, but it isn't. It's very hard. If you draw a study of your own hand, for example, you can't just draw a hand. You have to draw the shapes and forms that you see, so that in the end, it looks like your hand. An this takes a lot of practice.

To give crits to the pictures you posted: I like the flower. There you have a nice control over line quality that is not there in your post-it sketches. Sketchy lines are no problem if you can control them. Look at the post-its and that flower side by side. You'll notice the difference! And I'm sorry if I start to sound like a broken record here, but the road to consistent line quality is, as with everything else, practice.

As Dozeren said, reference is good for working from your imagination. You might do a quick sketch straight from your imagination, but if you want to make it into a more detailed and finished piece, reference is for the better. However, you should always use photographic reference as guides to what you want to draw, and not just copy blindly. It takes a pro to draw a portrait from a photo and make it look like it isn't. Here (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=123346) is a good thread on reference.

Looking forward to more updates, and good luck!

ps. the best way to get more replies to your sketchbook is to browse the sketchbook section and comment in other people's sketchbooks...