Spartan Camp #168 - 50 gestures + Optional "Hair Study"

[Anthis]

Spartan Camp #168 - 50 gestures + Optional "Hair Study"

The aim is to produce 50 gestures by Sunday the 30nd of January.

- The gestures can be of anything, human, animal, cavorting capybaras.... You can draw full figures, but you can also go for heads, arms, eyes, or anything specific. All media can be used, both digital or traditional. Coloured or black/white. Quick scribbles or long studies. Imagination or referenced. Clothed or nude. Specifics are up to you!

- In addition to this, participants can choose to do an Optional "Hair Study", in any medium.
Additional notes on this weeks’ Optional Study:

I have noticed we tend to 'skip' features like the face and hair and are rather focused on the anatomy. So for this optional study, we'll fill one of these gaps and focus on hair. If you want, you can also study some hair styles or perform this study in any other way as long as it relates to hair (head/facial)
Hair can prove a problem as it is composed of many strands. It can be tempting to draw each strand, but this approach is laborious and may not be very fruitful. A different approach may be to look at the bigger shapes and masses of hair.
As always- reference advised, not obligatory. Colour, medium, time frame, any specifics are up to you! Have fun! And feel free to ask questions!


50 poses is a challenge, but don't hurry or stress yourself reaching it! Focus on drawing, as practising is the main goal of this exercise.

Criticizing each other is highly encouraged!! Share constructive criticism, reference images and resources!! Let's help each other get better!

Come on soldiers! Flex those muscles!!

HALL OF FAME - SPARTAN CAMP #167

Joe777k7
Vertical:star:
Anthis:star:
Iarchist:star:
J@n!t:star:
Sharon J:star:
zy.:star:

[CrookedHorn]

baller im in on this :rocker:
i need to work on hair as it is!

[shiNIN]

I'm sorry I disappeared last week, I couldn't focus on drawing.
But I SWEAR I will be in this week.

Very good optional, though I don't skip faces and hair. I usually skip the whole body except the face. I love portraits but you know, they look very odd with a messy effortless few minutes hair (if I spend more time on it, it just got worse). I need to larn to draw hair even if that's so free, without the nice rules of the face and body.

I drew this on Monday. I'm unpleased with everything of course. I tried to draw hair, FYI. Usually I just throw some strokes while feeling uncertain and wonder how hair looks like, I so totally have no idea... And light blue hair is even worse but I had to draw that :(
IT'S NOT MY OPTIONAL OF COURSE. Looks like plastic or smooth porcelain to me by the way. Definitely not hair :(
http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh287/shiNIN666/gfx/aliceblue2.jpg

I think a monkey head is okay in Spartan Camp :) I don't want to upload a single head pic, it's the one I put in my SB (and after I finished it and a few minutes passed I saw the third is the best, after all):
http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh287/shiNIN666/gfx/monkey_baby.jpg

[Vertical]

Nice work shiNIN! She's painted realistically, what's with the anime hair?
So here's some figures, some blind 30 sec gestures (I looked a little, they shouldn't look that good), some random stuff in the room, and hair studies.

[surus]

I also have to practice hair. Don't know, if I'll finish her hair till sunday:

[Ceinwen Fang]

Sorry gotta post and run.
45 x 30 second lizards
4 x 10 minute lizards
1 x horse anatomy study
1 x hair from behind study

[shiNIN]

Vertical: Thanks! I like the monkey but not the girl (I always studied faces but it doesn't help enough)... And anime hair is an improvement, I usually do some messy strokes and feel being lost. I BADLY need hair studies...
That curly haired woman is very impressive :D

surus: Mmmm, nice studies! I don't mean the faces... I wonder why everyone is better at bodies than faces except me...

Well. Very few and unfinished stuff, I'm so slow.
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=1157905&d=1296435261

I started to redraw the cropped one but I'm tired and had no time, lazy skin coloring of mine is horrible. I deleted the face because it's even worse, somehow I can't draw faces when I draw bodies. When I draw a portrait, it's totally different.
http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh287/shiNIN666/gfx/sc168hair_wip.jpg

Not my best I can say... (people, don't draw faces like this... some symbols pasted on a skin colored shape... :D as if I know NOTHING about face drawing)
http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh287/shiNIN666/gfx/archergirl_fail.jpg

[zy.]

Slow this week, both in progress and uploading. Sorry.

BUT I tried something new that worked well, so I wanted to share in case someone else found it useful. When working on math etc. I remember first doing an example, studying it, then trying my own, then referring back the the example, trying again etc etc until I got it. So this week I sketched shoulder muscles as a guide, then found pictures of people doing interesting shoulder things, I first looked at the reference pic for a long time, and then put it away and tried to draw what I remember. When I was done with my try I'd pull out the reference, copy it into my sketchbook, compare that to my interpretation, think about it and repeat. I didn't draw much, but for the amount I drew I really feel like I learned a lot.

[zy.]

shiNIN-- I don't think the blue hair looks bad, maybe the frayed edges are a bit too stiff? As for your comment that "faces aren't symbols pasted on to a skin colored shape"-- man! You just hit the nail on the head for me! I'm working with the same thing right now. But as for the pic that you made that comment on- well I think her face is really beautiful, and I love recurve bows, so I'm partial :)
Vertical- Nice loose gestures, good emotion being captured. And props for the curly hair! It's challenging but you did a great job with it!
surus- I love your literal attention to proportions. I need to work on this!
larchist- Your lizard study is really fantastic. I particularly appreciate your study of light, as scales are something that have always given me trouble, and looking at your study is helpful.

[shiNIN]

zy.: I thought about this before, well, maybe in different order, copy -> from memory, but I'm usually don't like to do something twice (it's stupid, I totally should), I thought about looking at my ref just occassionally. (These two were on my todo list. I rarely did anything on my todo list.) I always felt copying figures don't help me much. No matter how much I try to understand it, it's just copy, it doesn't enter my memory at all. I notice, analyze, sometimes understand things, that part is okay - but I can't remember it.

When I was a child, I couldn't learn without wrtiting down things. Now it seems I can't learn if I just look and try to memorize but don't draw...
I draw little, it's the source of my problems I now. I wish it would come easier. But a hedonist can't use force... it wouldn't work anyway, drawing should be a playful, somewhat spontaneous thing.

The girl with the bow is miraculously doesn't have a bad face - but it's still not proper, just lines and little shapes on a big shape, instead of values...

[Anthis]

I have yet to look trough this one - bit low on time! Great work though, comments to be added. For now, the new thread is posted.

[Ceinwen Fang]

shiNIN - The colours in your study are really nice, unfortunately I'm not keen on the hair shape, it feels unrealistic and clashes with the much better textured face. Study hair from life to get it more convincing! The third monkey is the best for sure, you obviously are good at evaluating and improving. The figures are very heavy on the page at the sketch stage I find working lightly easier and building up dark shapes more gradually, but it does look like its working for you. I guess blocking in lights over darks so easily digitally does make things lots easier and more effective, not sure you'd get away with it wth a pencil though!

Vertical - Lovely deft lines, they look fast and haphazard but I can make out the gestures and your shapes look very accurate.

Surus - Try sketching in the rough shapes loosely before making tighter lines, its something I'm prone to so I know, you are focusing too much on getting the individual lines to look right, and missing out on overall proportionality.

zy - Find myself examining every drawing individually and repeatedly comparing the pairs with each other, fascinating approach. I like your hair because it looks like it has weight, a lot of people me included often seem to draw some kind of anti-gravity hair. The face proportions are fantastic in the first of the last three. Then they slip a little, the features are far too spread out and not in line. Still better than anything I've done, but keep referring to the first kind, it looks a lot better and you are definitely capable of making your faces always that good!

[zy.]

Thanks larchist for the cc! Esp the "spreading-ness" and alignment of facial features. I'll make a point this round to give more attention to faces.

[shiNIN]

larchist: You are right, my pencil sketches can't evolve due to the fact they become a messy black shape in no time, I can't help but use too much force but hard pencils irritate me :( I simply stopped drawing with pencils lately but I try to go back to that.
My faces are different, I can be subtle with them :)

[Ceinwen Fang]

shiNIN - I read a book where the author explained how to sketch using just dots spread out over the page, until imagination fills in the blanks and you can rough in the actual lines. He called it 'Searching' I think. Helps me sometimes if I'm in a heavy handed mood. Working light to dark helped me a lot, though I'm also a soft pencil addict so the tiny-dots-and-lines-to-begin-with technique is very useful!
You won't learn how to get past that if you carry on sketching all digital, so get out those pencils =D

[Anthis]

Apology for the lateness, right in the middle of moving..

shiNIN; Think that's a very smart remark on painting faces. It's a good thing to notice these pitfalls in your own drawings. Lately I've noticed that I keep drawin the same, familiar shapes over and over. On me to change that.
Strong face. Using saturation well. I think you could saturate the nostrils and corners of the mouth a little. Places that are less "out in the open" often have light scattering between areas of skin. In general, it's striking how much more you are focusing on value/form rather than lines. Nice going, and don't lose the fun in drawing. Can be healthy to let go of drawing for the purpose of posting and just draw for yourself.

Vertical - love those last sketches, very playful. Especially the top-right head in your last post. Perhaps you are trying to 'cram in' too much in those 30sec ones. I could be wrong, but I think the benefit of those short studies is that they force you to find the core of a gesture and reproduce it in a few lines. Nice job exploring the forms in those legs though. Pen too!

surus - Always love the mixture of studies! Here's (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhF4fBetN4Y) an interesting video on line quality, you may have already seen it though. Some of your sketches have the same straight, quick lines as his first sketch. That's what I was thinking, at least. His approach seems more conscious about all the irregularities that happen 'along the way' of drawing an organic outline.

Iarchist - Really captured the gesture (and character) in some of these. Nice analysis of the scales in that last lizard. These look like Zoo drawings, or did you use the pixelovely tool? This may seem funny, but the closeup of that one lizard head has some very strong areas. Very 3d nostril. Eye seems to be going the same way -nice approach. Loved your comment on the anti-gravity hair. That's spot on.

Zy. - Yea that's a great approach. I often work semi-reference too. Like keeping some elements, changing others. Or looking at a referenced pose, and draw a version from a different angle. I think having some nice reference around keeps you sharp and also works for inspiration. allows you to compare back and forth, just like you did. You can see improvement along the way. Good stuff.