Dementist's Sketches of the Week- UPDATED! Figure Sketch

[Dementist]

Taking the advice of Promethius to heart, I will attempt to make AT LEAST one of these per week. Hopefully, this will become a nice little scrap book of my progression.

Week #1

I started out sketching stuff at school, but as the holidays came along, I had to use stuff arround my room. Yes, I have a lot of worthless crap arround my room, don't I?

http://mbnet.fi/zenbie/uploaded/week1a.jpg
http://mbnet.fi/zenbie/uploaded/week1b.jpg

At first I had no focus, but once I got to the Weird Al pic, I tried to work on my Value.

Week #2

http://mbnet.fi/zenbie/uploaded/nude1.jpg

My apologies for the lack of content this week. I was aiming for four nudes, but only got arround to this one.

Aside from the obvious work I need on figures, I have two questions for this one.

1.) How do I make my shading smoother? Granted the actual picture is tiny, but I want the shading to be silky-smooth to match her skin.

2.) Negative Space? Bad scan or no, the negative space obviously has imperfections. Is there a better technique for filling up large areas of black?

[Dementist]

(although its probably not worthy)

*bump*

Anyone? Any crits? Please? :(

[Invisible Soul]

Good work man,,,,,is that Mao next to Weird Al?? Keep up the good work.

[Carnifex]

you can see the improvement from the first pictures to the last ones.the second page is way better than the first one.i esp. like the cat:D more in that way.

[Dementist]

Updated! Now with figurey goodness!

[Phuzion]

If you want the shading to be silky smooth, you either need to smudge very lightly (I'd suggest doing this with a smudging stick) or you need to draw large, so that when you shrink it down the lines disappear... I'd reccomend a smudging stick. Really nice work over all. I dig the nude. Beautiful mood, keep it up. Peace

[Dementist]

Phuz: Yeah, I tried smudging with my fingers, but that didn't quite cut it. I've honestly never even heard of a smudging stick, but it seems like its worth a try.

[MooingCow]

They are cheap, and are all over art stores. They help a lot with what you want to capture, but I never liked them personally. But if you want silky smooth, that's what you want.
As for the negative space, try drawing on black board with white charcol, conte, or pencil. Awesome for negative space studies.

[Turbosity]

the smudging stick definitely will help you with smoothing things out, or a small piece of suede cloth. You can actually make your own smudging stick by taking a small sheet of paper and rolling it up very very very tight, but at an angle so you end up with a sharp point on it.

Very nice value on the figure, it looks amazing. I would suggest lowering the intensity of the curve of her left hip; black outlines like that are notorious for eliminating depth in an image (like when you get those giant black shadow outlines from crappy flash photography). Instead, i think the shadows in the cloth under her will be enough to distinguish her body from the sheets. The sheets one her right side are also not nearly as defined as the sheets on her left

As for the blacks, it doesnt look like you crosshatched as much as everywhere else. The only way to build black is to crosshatch many layers on top of each other....then blending it in with paper towel will even it out.

Very beautiful drawings, keep it up

[Cake]

I like the first cartoony one best. You should make a large version of it and sell it as pop art.

[Dementist]

Moo: Oh YEAH! Now I remember them! I use done in my art 101 class! I'll have to pick one up. Alas, I have no charcoal availible at my house. Also, this was more of a figure study than a negative space study, but I'll keep your advice in mind if I do one.

Turbosity: Thanks for the compliment! I kind of messed up the hip the first few times I tried drawing it, and obviously failed to erase the resulting line. My bad. As for the bottom half of the cloth, I'll admit that that was the last thing I did. I was kind of tired at the time, so I just skimmed over it. I must really stop doing that...

Cake: Pop art, eh? I think I'll doodle on all of my bad drawings from now on. Make some money on the side ;)

Thanks for all the comments! I'll have another one up next weekend.