I want to learn

[FiftyFortunes]

Hello!

Just turned 18 and am heading off to Oregon State to study Graphic Design and what not next year (I might change my major to Spanish).

I have a crapton to learn and am open to all of your suggestions.

Below is all the stuff I have done today :P

[FiftyFortunes]

Here it goes....

[Hamms]

Thanks for the comment.

I like what I see so far. I like the mass of orange and red hands, and the shading on the other pieces seem pretty good as well. The only thing that bothers me is the chin in the first portrait. It seems to be off just a little bit, but I could be misinterpreting the angle or shading.

Good luck in college and I hope to see more!

[FiftyFortunes]

Hamms Thanks. Now that I look at it with a fresh eye I notice that the chin is a little off. I rushed through it and didn't pay close enough attention to the value. Thanks for pointing that out.

Anyway here is some more stuff.

[DKHutcheson]

Do I recognize the torso from posemaniac's hand viewer (and the head and the hands from the looks of it)? x ) Was using that just earlier. Right useful tool it is.

You have a nice way of shading, it's pen you use right?
Nice start to your sketchbook. Don't lose your motivation. ; ) Goodluck.

[Hamms]

Still looking good man, and the shading is pretty nice. Your images are pretty small though (which is better than being too large to see!) but I'd love to see all the little details too.

Keep goin' and keep postin'

[FiftyFortunes]

Hamms I'll try to get my images a little larger :). I use a Nikon D60 to shoot the pics so they always turn out to be too massive. I might start using my cheap canon though.

Haven't really spent too much time drawing the past couple days :(... But I did get a chance to develop some of my photography skills. I did some Posemaniacs stuff, but it's crap. I'll post it anyway to get feedback but I still need to photograph em'.

First is the Oregon Coast, second is me and my German friend in an elevator ( My face looks deformed and I took it after a rainstorm :P), last is just me playing around with photoshop.

[Hamms]

Oops, sorry. I had just assumed you we're using a scanner.

The photos are nice (I think. I know even less about photography than I do drawing), but I really like the first one. Wispy clouds, bright blue sky, darkened foreground and the technicolor houses. Really I think it's a good picture.
The second one is interesting, I assume the elevator had a mirrored ceiling? The photomanip confused me. At first I thought it was just a guy in water, but then the waves and angle made me wonder how big he really was...

Anyways, that's my attempt at being helpful and now I want to see those posemaniacs.

[FiftyFortunes]

Laziness is my worst enemy :P. It takes too much effort post these pictures up. not to sketch :)

[Spirit]

Hey there!
Great studies you have done here, it's interesting how you have captured the poses on the paper, I've never seen it done that way. Doing those is great, but make sure you are doing other studies along with them, such as anatomy etc, as the poses from posemaniacs should really just be a warm-up. Of course, if this is already the case, just ignore that :P Also, I wish I was only lazy with uploading pictures, I've been slacking with the sketching >.< bad me!
Nice sketchbook, keep up the good work :D

[Hamms]

Vroom!

Poses are looking solid, almost like negative space drawings. You seem to have a good handle on them. I prefer pencil over ink now, since that's the medium I usually use, and it's awkward to switch between them. I can't crit them if they work for you, though :)

The crying(?) face also looks good, especially the shading on the lip. The orange and yellow pages are making me hungry though...

Keep it up. And yeah, posting takes too long, but as long as your still sketching, posting isn't important.

[Giordan]

hey valve, i really admire your atittude man, its not easy getting home from a hard day´s work and start to draw and sketch, from what i can see you have a lot of talent, and you will get better with practice and time, so i really hope you continue drawing and evolving.

[FiftyFortunes]

Giordian Thanks for the kind words, I really need it. I don't work that hard as others, but it takes its toll. I'll whine less and practice more.

So I had no idea how hard painting was. Anyone have a good site that explains it in detail? I got a book on color theory so I'm working through that, it's just actually blending the colors is difficult.

[FiftyFortunes]

I got meself a new scanner. And it's pretty helpful. I'm still having trouble painting but it's getting slightly easier. I fudged up a self portrait painting so if anyone wants to set me straight do it.

[Pearscrow]

Ah no, I thought I was gonna post and be able to ask you about being scanner-less buddies :P I can't crit you as you're better but I would like to ask if you could finish up the painting of the face you scanned in and started on? It would be cool to see and good practice :)

[Leetmonkey]

Hah, awesome Oregon! I live there.

Interesting take on the landscape you did there. A great use of colors there. I too gotta study up on color theory.

[DeeStar]

really like the second photo, cool pencil work too, especially the car and crying woman

[That fat kid]

Hey Valve,

Painting is just an extension of drawing, all the principles of drawings plus a bunch of extra technical crap piled on top. The better you get at drawing, the easier painting will become.

The line work will pay off the biggest dividends the quickest. As lines are the basic tenet of drawing, the more you can express with a few lines the easier the other stuff gets. The observational drawings, such as the self portraits, or that car show an excellent start.

Try not to hurry into the shading and rendering, no amount of value can correct proportions or fix shapes. So take your time and map everything out with those lines you seem more than capable of laying down. Find all the interior shapes with line, find the important overlaps, and you'll be laying the foundation for all the shading while allowing yourself to more readily correct discrepancies in your work as you spend more time with it.

And ALWAYS draw what interests you, don't let yourself get bored by doing academic studies. Be engaged in the things you're drawing and you'll have a much easier time improving.

~Andrew

[Hamms]

Yo!

Are the clouds in traditional painting? It looks like a canvas texture beneath it.
And the self portrait is looking great! The only thing I can pick out for painting it is pay attention to your pencil shading on the original sketch. The colors you have laid down right now aren't quite defining the shape of the face. Also, a tidbit I picked up somewhere from someone: Try to stay away from pure black or pure white, because those colors hardly ever appear in nature. At least saturate them with another color.

I'm looking forward to seeing how it turns out ;)

PS. That second portrait, the person in the hood, looks great!

[dU5K]

good start.. and believe me. painting might be difficult right now, but patience is key. everything slowly comes to you. im sure i sound very generic right now but its true. you can't rush the learning process (sounds like you kinda are). its a good thing your a part of this site. you could learn a lot just by looking at other people's art. it exposes you to new styles, techniques. approaches, etc. well anyways. keep up the work and watch how you progress.

[armando]

Those posemaniacs silohuettes are a good excercise. Now do the same thing with objects from life, just get the outline. When you're finished look at the white space contained within the contour line, notice how sometimes the white space is compact and sometimes elongated, sometimes simple and sometimes complex.

[FiftyFortunes]

Hamms I started on canvas and then ran out of paint; so I took a photo and moved onto it digitally. I think I did over exaggerate the purple hues in my skin :?, I do like the pencil sketch that I did though. That makes a lot of sense thanks for the color advice.

Du5k & That fat kid You're both right, one on my biggest flaws is my lack of patience. I'm working on it but it still happens, I feel a supreme urgency to bring myself up to the next level for I feel I am not on par with my competition. But, thanks to you guys, I realized if I rush it too much I won't learn nearly as fast. I am going to focus on working on basic drawing skills then move onto painting. Thank you both for helping me understand that.

Armando Thank you for the advice on drawing exercises, I need all the help I can get.

Anyway i haven't updated but I've been drawing a lot. Here are some of my studies.

I tried to make my posemaniacs smaller and more fluid focusing on only basic lines, but my line confidence plummeted.

Sorry for scan quality of the first three, I ran out of paper so I had to use Napkins today :)

[p sage]

Hey Valve,

Thanks for the visit to my SB.

Looking over what you have so far, I'd say you're doing really well with values at this point. It's like you're running before walking :D I suck horribly at values, so you've got some mad skillz that produce envy ... in me :davi:

At any rate, I think posemaniacs is a good idea; maybe try to vary it up and just do pure gesture drawings (check out my reply to you in my thread for some ideas).

That, and just keep going. Your powers of observation will improve young skywalker ;)

[Hamms]

One thing I can suggest for the poses is trying to put down a contour line that defines the overall pose. It doesn't have to any actual contour from the figure, just something like a guide line to follow. Don't worry about line confidence too much on the poses - that'll come in time. Just work on getting the figure down. Of course, don't completely ignore line confidence, just don't let it worry you, 30 seconds can be pretty short sometimes :D.

And WOW, those hands are looking awesome. Even the ones on the napkin, but definitely that last page on them, the shading and rendering is awesome. The bird is looks great too. You really have skill with shading. For the portrait I'd say the eyes or bottom of the nose look a bit big.

Overall, looking great man, keep it up.

[Rolo]

That cloud painting I really enjoyed! I'm not a painter, but it's true what that fat kid said, as you get better at drawing, painting will become easier.

[FiftyFortunes]

Here's just a little quick update of a little landscape I'm painting. Also there's a photo of my neighborhood thrown in.

I've been drawing a crapton just have to scan it in.

[p sage]

Cool. Let's see those scans already :yum:

[FiftyFortunes]

So by the third image I finally took what y'all said to heart. I took my time and noticed improvement.

Also feeling the still-life before I draw it helps me a ton

I'm trying to work on understanding underlying structure, anyone wanna give me an example of some good exercises?

[Pixie Trick]

Last post looks like you had fun. :) Love the photography too. Very nice sb.

[p sage]

Wow... lots of stuff. You've been busy.

I like the attention to detail and the neatness of your lines.

As far as observation goes.. I know for me, what works best is "measuring" with my eyes. I try to get the overall shape of what it is I'm trying to draw in my mind, and then measure verticals against verticals, horizontals against horizontals, and angles against angles. I also try to use negative space, and kind of try to picture that all at once in my mind.

It's helping me get much faster at the gestures... and more accurate as well. Something I'm finding during the gesture is that I was tending to look at the paper and not really feel the line and keep my eye on the model as i was going. Doing a little of both is paying dividends.

I think this relates directly to what you're doing right now... trying to improve your observation. Hope it helps in some way.

[JoshMurr]

Yoo thanks for checking my sketchbook :)
Love your pencil stuff man, the rendering looks really nice.
Keep it coming!

Josh.

[armando]

A good exercise would be to clarify the ground plane. Make the lines of your rectangles straighter, make the ellipses cleaner(they sell templates and bendable rulers). Also on the bone studies, put a handerchief, magazine, or something rectangular underneath, and that'll help clarify it's spatial dimensions. That'll get you thinking of the location of the bone in relation to space.

[FiftyFortunes]

Whoa, I've been sort of having an artistic lag behind this week. My studies are suffering greatly. Anyway here's an unfinished skull piece....

[p sage]

Cool skull. I think the eye sockets and the top part look correct.. the nasal cavity seems to be facing front tho... it needs to be turned a bit more.

But looking really good so far.

[Sirkenneth]

Great sketchbook you have going. You have a very interesting and awesome use of line. Its pretty "indie" or something. Keep drawing, and keep posting. Its killer.

[DeeStar]

like those last figure studies, keep em coming

[FiftyFortunes]

It's been a while. I've recently been discussing artistic concepts, and realize I don't know jack-sheet :D. I think it's funny how little I used to know compared to what I know now. Now I need to put my knowledge into use. I need to not just copy the visual but copy reality. Let's see if I can do that.

Also I think I need to start following a schedule, I'm too scatter-brained. If anyone wants to help me develop one that would be tizzight.

Everyone Thanks for the encouraging comments :)

P-sage I need to work more on proportion, so it does help. It makes sense to gauge size relative to another object because proportion is the relationship between shapes throughout the whole picture plane.

[Pixie Trick]

Just here to do some cheering!!!!! Yaaaaaa!!!!!

Proportion is mainly not focusing on any one part, but the object as a whole. If you just look away every few seconds (seconds not minutes) especially as you get a rough outline, it really helps. Keep it up! :sungod:

[p sage]

Cool :D Doing ze cross-contours as well, eh? </Frenchie>

When doing those, try to "feel" the pencil moving over the form... as Vilppu says. It will help turn the form in space the right direction.

Good studies. But we need more updates :geekg:

[Rushlord]

Love your sketchbook but I liked the figures from July a bit more :D

[FiftyFortunes]

Realized that the my sketch book system wasn't working for me so I tossed it and just bought some bulk drawing paper.

Rushlord Thanks for the opinion :D, I'm still trying to capture the flow so I plan on em' getting better.

P-Sage I realized I was thinking too much again, I stopped and I enjoyed it way more. Keep pointing it out if I start usin' my noodle too much. I'll update more frequently now.

[p sage]

No no no. There's nothing wrong with thinking. Drawing is thinking. You do have to fully engage your eyes, though.

Mattesi says if your attention isn't 100 percent on what you're drawing, you're making stuff up (or lying!) ... which is a weird way to put it.

Good to see a daily update from you!

[p sage]

BTW LOL @ "Ima punch you" :P

[Hamms]

Yay! Lots of updates!
The hands are looking really dynamic, and the poses have improved. I really like the ones in post 37 with the contours all mapped out. What speed are you doing them at?

And your wallet looks like what mine is going to turn into. Oh noez future vision. :[

[FiftyFortunes]

Hamms Thanks, I do the small ones at 30 secs, and the larger ones at 60.

P-Sage I sort of disagree that drawing is about thinking. I believe drawing is about feeling, which is like thinking now that I think about it :D. We have interacted with reality since birth, and in order to replicate it I can't think in simplified concepts such as words. I wanna hear thy opinion though.

This started out as a self-portrait in front of a mirror and I sort of went to town. Maybe I'll post the other stuff later.

[p sage]

Well... Glen Vilppu might disagree :) But it's both, isn't it? You have to be able to "think" in 3D and work out problems to get your figures looking right. And you also have to be able to feel the action in the figure. So it's both... no?

It's a different type of thinking, though. It's not a critical thinking... but it's a type of analytical thinking without words... if that makes sense.

[jatherip]

youre on the right way! many different media ist always good :) mooore stuff from life anyway!
keep practicing!

[Mike D]

Great stuff you got going on here. Gesture drawings looking solid, something I need to start doing again.

Will keep tabs on your updates.

[p sage]

Less guitar, more pencil and paper! :lifedrawing:

[FiftyFortunes]

Mike D Thanks, the concept of gestures is simple but I find it hard to do em :D

P-Sage Getting ready for my first year at college so I've been a little busy :)

[p sage]

Mike D Thanks, the concept of gestures is simple but I find it hard to do em :D

P-Sage Getting ready for my first year at college so I've been a little busy :)

A moon in the clouds? Looks mystical

[armando]

M.C. Escher is a good example of a thinking artist. He really put in the effort to systematize what he was doing, and got his hands on any info that he thought would help him. All artists have to think anyway, otherwise we'd just sit at our desks drooling and staring off into space.

[p sage]

Erm... better not be two weeks between updates again

Tell Hamms his ass is on notice, too.

;)

[p sage]

Rise and shine!
Up and at 'em!

College ain't no excuse :)
I'm in college, and you don't see me getting Fs :)

(I'm getting to bed at 130AM... but never you mind ;))

Update! Update! Update!

(Trumpet plays)

[FiftyFortunes]

P Sage But I'm just a freshman!:D

You're right, I sort of shoved concept art in the closet for a bit, not drawing.

Armando I see now, feeling is thinking.

Anyway, here I am in college and I have no drawing classes. Just ones that focus on composition, llllaaammmeee but fun. Such is the life of a Graphic Design student.

[xinranliu]

hello
draw those hands bigger!
keep it up

[p sage]

Studies looking much better... rendering looking good, but there's not enough.

More more more!! :assspank:

[FiftyFortunes]

I need to get my ass in gear. I am going to start focusing on anatomy and how value defines form. Going to start attending some live nude figure sketchings on campus. I'M ON THE MOTIVATION TRAIN

[FiftyFortunes]

Hey, so college has been kicking my ass. But, on the bright side my foundations courses are starting to get fun....

Just realized I have a LOT of work to do. I need to sketch more. Winter term I started sketching on average 4 to 5 hours a day. I want to keep this up. Even though sketching isn't really required for Graphic Design I will learn it!

I read "Visual Intelligence" and learned how our brain interprets visual information.

I need help. Please give crits and comments and I'll do the same

[tylerfontes]

I like the face on top the contrast is really nice.
Feel free to critique me.
I'm not ashamed to say I need all the help i can get.
thanks
http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=181639&highlight=tylerfontes

[p sage]

That looks like a Bargue study. It's some nice work.

I would say that it's too contrasty to show the form too well, though. It's reading as flat. If this was from a photograph or from a Bargue book, try doing a similar study from the antique (a cast) and light it with Rembrandt lighting (above from 45 degrees). That gives the best view.

The most important thing to learn from studies like these (IMO) is structure, not visual accuracy. We're not trying to be meat cameras. Of course, the Bargue ideas differ from that. But as my instructor says, if it was good enough for Leo and Mike (elangelo), it's good enough for us.

In any case it's good to see you updating again.

[Metal Fingers]

Lovely sketchbook, keep up the studies. Send me a pm if you're ever coming up to portland and want to do some drinking and drawing.