Mechanical Dragon

[aefx]

This is my first post on this forum. There's a vast amount of artwork on this site that I have a huge amount of respect for.

Lately I've been using my dad's scanner to get my drawings online but things aren't so good. 1. my drawings are often times too big for the scanner and 2. I have yet to fiddle with the settings to get the pencil work to show clearly... any light pencil work doesn't show up at all!

But at any rate I thought I'd post a piece here and see what others thought.

As always any honest criticism is GREATLY appreciated :)

http://www.protean-carrier.com/images/dragonsmall.jpg

[johanson]

Hey aefx,

First off: if this is mechanical dragon built inside the skeleton of a dead dragon... that's rad. Super rad. I already want to see more drawings.

To tackle your scanning trounble:

If you have photoshop, then you're all set. It's kind of a pain, but you can scan your drawing in two pieces, and then just put them together in the computer.

To help your line show up better (if you have photoshop), go to, Image: Adjustments: Levels. With levels, you can pump up the darks of an image by sliding the black triangle towards the right. On the other hand, if you're drawing is just to light for the scanner to pick up... then you might want to look into drawing darker.

That brings me to my last point. Drawing darker is not a bad thing. Your drawing has a good idea behind it, but the execution is kind of bland. You might want to play a little with your line weight and tonal value. They can help make a more interesting image.

hope this helps, hope to see more soon,

-andrew

[aefx]

Johanson,

Thanks for comments, I appreciate you taking the time to help me out. With the scanner situation I think I can mess with the settings of the scanner to pick up the image a bit better. But I also think you're 100% correct in that I need to draw darker. I'm still learning a lot and that's one of the issues I need to tackle. I think part of that problem is that I only use one pencil to draw... a mechanical pencil with .5 graphite. Should I use pencils that vary in rating? If so, do you recommend anything?

thanks again!

[johanson]

Hello again,

I would suggest mixing it up a little. I find mechanical pencils are good for making tiny little details... but not much else. You might want to try getting a range of pencils. My graphite range is pretty limited. I might start a drawing with a 2H, or an H, and finish it off with a B.

Compressed charcoal can be heaven, once you get used to it. You can get a nice sharp line with the edge, and lay in huge planes with the side. But it's messy.

At this point, I'm rambling. I guess I'm not really sure what to tell you about which drawing tools to use, and how to use it. There are probably as many uses for using any given tool as there are artist using them. If you want some more specifics, you can check out the thread in the LIFE DRAWING, LEARNING, TECHNIQUES, & TUTORIALS section called: "how do you guys hold your drawing tool" (I found it through the search option).

Sorry, I don't know if this was very helpful,

later,

-andrew

[aefx]

Andrew,

That definately helps a lot. I know that in any artform it's more about the artist than the tools but I'd like to see what works for other people. What you said definately makes sense and so I'm going to try to switch it up a bit and give that a shot. Again, thanks for the help and I'll see if I can look up that thread as well.

[Banimator]

tad offtopic:

This way to hold your drawing tool differently really is annoying with a wacom tbh, ill stick to paper with it but digital its a plain pain.

Its a strange drawing. Happy dragon thats dead and mechanical. Quite the odd combination. Try to make your drawing not only technically better but keep your mind on the thing being drawn as well.

[aefx]

Thanks for the comments. I've decided to trace parts of it and redraw it with more of a unified theme. Also gonna look into using reference material to give it a bit more realism.