Pencil work - progress thread

[sweijenberg]

I am not sure what I should do at this point.

I like drawing, and still I think I can bring up the discipline needed to improve. Currently I am drawing daily from photo's, after other paintings, and from life. Examples are below.

I feel that drawing from photos allows me to draw things, mainly portraits, from different people then myself, which is usefull. Copying old masters seems good because I pick up forms and lines that I can use elsewhere. And drawing from life, of course, is the real thing, what it's all about.

Now, should I continue like I am at the moment, or should I, say, stop copying the masters and start doing ... (insert usefull action here)

Anyway, here are some examples.

Portraits from photo

http://img41.photobucket.com/albums/v125/sweijenberg/portrait5.jpg

http://img41.photobucket.com/albums/v125/sweijenberg/portrait6.jpg

Portraits from mirror

http://img41.photobucket.com/albums/v125/sweijenberg/Life4.jpg

http://img41.photobucket.com/albums/v125/sweijenberg/Life2.jpg

My left hand

http://img41.photobucket.com/albums/v125/sweijenberg/Life1.jpg

Rafael copies ('studies')

http://img41.photobucket.com/albums/v125/sweijenberg/Rafael2.jpg

http://img41.photobucket.com/albums/v125/sweijenberg/Rafael1.jpg

Thank you for viewing, and thanks even more for any possible comment!

Sietse-Jan

[jadedchron]

Hey, I like the angel one the best I think.

[danteort]

Perhaps try aiming for something more refined? For example, try working on a self portrait that takes you the next month to draw. Make it as accurate as possible, and really take your time building up the drawing.

Your drawings from life are pretty quick sketches, and they only include two or three values. Simplifying everything into three values is great, but try going beyond that.

[sweijenberg]

Thanks for the replies.

You are of course right that the life drawings are quick scetches, but isn't something like a month, or even more then 2 days a bit too much? I'm afraid that I will get lost in details, while I still need to learn basics like drawing proper hands, poper faces, proper...stuff. Maybe I don't have enough patience for that...I already felt in a hurry while finishing below last night, which took me maybe a bit over 2 hours.

http://img41.photobucket.com/albums/v125/sweijenberg/sleutelbos.jpg

Drawn from life, comments: metal shading is not convincing, except maybe on the thing that's not a key. The ring isn't round, the shadows are not correct (didnt look too closely, stupid!) the plastic on the big key is also not convincing.

Result, I should work materials, not draw dark lines where should be highlights and plan the shadows a bit better. Anything else?

Thanks,

Sietse-Jan

[sweijenberg]

Hmm, I'm lucky noone replied, because I skipped drawing for 2 days. So far for discipline...

But yesterday I visited the Louvre collection of paintings, and that was very resourcefull. There was an exhibition of drawings by Ingres...perfection!

Anyway, here is my homework, after a photo.

http://img41.photobucket.com/albums/v125/sweijenberg/portrait7.jpg

Comments are always appreciated!

-Jan

edit: those representations of my work get worse and worse, the lightest value in this picture is still clean white paper, while the darkest (outline etc) is un-erasably pressed dark.

[arghmisfit]

wow i can already see an improvement! great job, never stop drawing even if your gunna starve to death! :rolleyes:

i think the keys are the best youve done yet

[Wilson]

I think that it is obvious to anyone that you have a developed capacity for visualizing.

Your strong points are:

You have an understanding of plane changes.

You seem observant and patient when drawing.

Your drawings seem fairly clean and not over worked in most cases.

That being said, and this is just my oppinion, to be really good at drawing you need to first have the ability to visualize (to imagine visual information wether from memory or from in vention in space) then understand how to capture graphic and dementional objects both intuitively and anylitically. I would assume that you have been working mostly on drawing intuitively. You may have read some books or taken a class, but judging from your work I'd say you don't understand enough of the principles of drawing and design. I think you need to spend some time studying these principles. The best thing for you to work on at this time is form and gesture. I would suggest that you no longer shade any of your drawings. Draw only in line. Impropper shading hides and deforms form. The best books for you to look at are the Complete Bridgeman book (George Bridgeman), the Vilpu Drawing Manual by Glen Vilpu, Die Gestalt Das Menchen by Gottfried Baumes, and Basic Perspective Drawing by John Montague.

If you want to draw as any of the great masters-Michaelangelo, Raphael, Ingres, Rubens, Titian, etc.-then you must first understand form and gesture intuitively and analytically. Robert Beverly Hale said in a lecture at the Art Students League of New York on Artistic Anatomy and Life Drawing that all drawing was was drawing lines on conceived forms. He said that we have to have form conceptions that we hang our lines upon. Therefore a draughtsman draws an arm he does not think of the outline of an arm, he thinks of an arm in its completeness and then chooses the fewest lines to show it's form and gesture and composition in space. He thinks of the bones and their directions and how they are joined, the humerus, radius, and ulna. He thinks of the muscles, how they buldge in the position the arm is taking and where the mass of them is positioned around the bones of the arm in this pose. He thinks what basic form best represents that arm in that pose. He thinks what are the rythmic ellements of the arm in that pose. The artist has all of these ideas of the arm floating around in his head already and all he need do is adjust those ideas to fit the model or imagined figure he is trying to draw. With these ideas in his mind he has unlimitted lines he can use to represent an arm. He just hangs those lines on his mental image of the arm. What you have to do now is beef up your mental image of the figure, something Hale calls your secret figure, or as my instructor Dallas Good has put it your mental manican. This is your idealized figure that intails all you know about the human figure and you use this mental image to have a measuring point when you look at the figure. You say to yourself, I know the human head is about this size and this shape and then compare that to what you see in a photograph or a master drawing, then you adjust the shape and size of your head to that of the drawing or photo, taking note of the differences you noticed. This is not idealized drawing, it is just comparative drawing. You change your drawing from the idealized to what is in front of you or what you imagine. This is how artist are able to draw quickly and accurately. They have a fully memorized image of a generic person that can become any person.

So, I say work on form. Form is the building blocks of drawing. The basic forms are the box, the sphere, and the cylinder. You can make countless forms by modifying and combining these forms. All the parts of the body can be assembled of small boxes. Bridgeman does this very successfully. When bridgeman drew he did not draw with line, he drew with form. He didn't draw with shade either, he shaded the forms he drew with. You can only show as much as bridgman did by first drawing the body of a human with as few forms as possible; one per part. One form for the head, one for the neck, one for the chest, one for the hips, one for the upper leg, one for the lower leg, one for the foot, one for the upper arm, one for the lower arm, and one for the hand. Group your forms eagerly and sepperate them reluctantly. Drawing anything more beyond this simple manican is useless when drawing the full figure. You should keep drawing this simple way until you can't get anything more out of it. You should draw this way until you've taken it as far as it can go. You can do a lot with a cylinder to make it appear as if it is more than one form when it isn't. Likewise with a box. I recomend that you foccus on only one pose, that is contropasto. But draw this pose form several angles and viewpoints. Most problems in drawing can be solved by this one pose. It's very efficient. Once you have the basics of this pose down, you should start varying it.

It will be hard to draw this way and it will seem unnatural at first, but it's crucial to to advance your drawing. i could go in to all of the things about gesture and structure that I know, but that would take pages and pages of text and diagrams and I'm confident that you can discover it for yourself and learn more than I could ever give you.

I would suggest that you draw from master coppies when you do long studdies and from life or photo when you do short studdies. The more master copy the beter. Start with the basi forms and then refine if you wish, however, the details are not as important as the basic overal forms. In doing head studdies I would draw all the forms of the head and not just one overall form of the head, and I would make sure also to draw the neck and shoulders and chest as well. I would spend tim shading cylinders and boxes form life and from your mind. You can easily find books on simple form rendering. The thing you want to do is develope your visualized figure to the point where you know where shadows will be when light is shined on it in different ways and how to eliminate cast shadows that obscure your drawing. The shadow side of a figure is just a plane that is darker than the other planes. That is why I say shading is not important, but knowing where planes are is. So, it is better to draw a line where planes meet than it is to shade where you see shadows. If you study KChen's drawings I think you will start to see what I'm talking about, because he draws in this way.

Well, I hope that helps. In the end you have to analyze what you draw and how you draw, but you also have to draw from your heart and soul. You have to be able to draw intuitively. The best way to learn to draw anylitically is by talking to yourself and describing what you are doing when you draw and what you are thinking of before you do what it is you are doing. Then ask yourself questions. What's the shap of that head? Is it round? Is it boxy? Is it round and boxy? Then look at your drawing when you're done and see if you made good choices and ask yourself what you would change if you could.

If you want me to clarify anything you don't understand simply ask and I will try to clarify myself.

Keep drawing! I can't wait to see how good you'll become!

[sweijenberg]

I appreciate very, very much your help, Wilson. It is a great stimulation to get so much information. I hope I can bring it into practice, but surely I am going to try! Thank you!

Thanks Arghmisfit, you make me smile :)

[sweijenberg]

Okay, it was about time for an update. I had a humiliating go at the human figure, I picked a pose, built it out of blocks and did not shade them. I continued to to so for 4 pages, and I'm showing the second and fourth page here. Used pen on the first 3, so I wouldnt have to resist the erasor. Pencil on the fourth, because I grew kind of desperate.

http://img41.photobucket.com/albums/v125/sweijenberg/Fig1.jpg

http://img41.photobucket.com/albums/v125/sweijenberg/Fig2.jpg

They were basically done from memory, allthough I did look at an image to define the initial pose.

Furthermore I sinned, by doing another shaded/polished long time study from photo and life (had the object next to me to look at also while working). This one was really tough, I had no idea the scroll was such a complicated thing - even a side view took me ages and lots of pages...I did this as a present for my teacher (cellist) who invited me for dinner tonight.

http://img41.photobucket.com/albums/v125/sweijenberg/Krul.jpg

So, what I need to do is get books on atonomy and figure drawing, or any of the books Wilson suggested above, if I want to progress in the direction of the upper two images here. I will continue working without shade. Plus I read danteorts reply to another post in this forum, which is also extremely useful to me.

Funny detail - since I'm on school computers I cannot access the different regular reference sources such as fineart.sk - they are blocked!

Cheers everyone, I'm off to work some more!

Sietse-Jan

[sweijenberg]

Okay, I think the pose-drawing business was probably a bridge too far for me, I feel much more comfortable with the gesture drawing - I understand better the use of lines without shade now, too.

http://img41.photobucket.com/albums/v125/sweijenberg/Gesture1.jpg

Above is a compilation of what I did yesterday, the worst ones did not have enough structure to describe form properly. They all have way too much unnessecary lines, alot of lines are drawn 4 or 5 times even, either to get them right or to make them darker...I should do that at once.

Is it allowed to do a light form scetch first, defining the basic shape, before moving on to the real lines with gestures? Not that there is much time for that, but just very simply - or should all the lines be there and right at once?

Greetings,

Sietse-Jan

[Darkstrider]

Hey sweijenberg,
First I want to say I love the cello!
You draw objects beautifully. I'm not qualified to help nearly as much as Wlson, but there are just a few things I'd like to say.

You mentioned in your drawing of the keys that the metal is not convincing. There are 2 things you should think about.... texture and reflection. If you want a metallic surface to be convincing, the texture of your paper can be a hindrance. I notice that you tend to let the texture really show, which is sometimes good, but if you want believable metallic texture, you might want to either use a smoother paper, or maybe do some blending with your fingertip or a stump or something. Of course, this is mainly a matter of personal preference, possibly you don't want to do it. But regardless, I agree with one thing someone said.... that you should start to develop degrees of shading in between the main three values. I find blending very helpful in this regard. You're wise to initially use 3 values, but then you should begin to form gradients between them. Also pay very close attention to the edges of shadows and to how tone flows within them. I like to say 'look for shadows within shadows and lights within lights'. Some shadows will appear even while others fade smoothly, or fade rapidly, or possibly seem to ripple.

I didn't mean to write so much about that, really this is the main thing I wanted to say. Robert Beverly Hale, the instructor Wilson mentioned from the New York Art Students' League, wrote an excellent series of books. As I recall, there are Drawing lessons from the Great Masters, Anatomy Lessons from the Great Masters, and Master Class in Figure Drawing, which deal with a lot of the things Wilson discussed. These are some of the finest books of drawing instruction I have ever seen. I highly recommend them to anyone interested in going the distance, and it seems you are.

IMO I wouldn't fear the eraser. I would celebrate it. Personally I didn't make much progress until I started using an eraser freely. Sometimes if you think that the lines you put down are etched in stone, it makes you uptight. Just knowing that they can easily be changed, a little or a lot, can free you up.

I would say when you do the figure drawings you should be looking at reference.


Mental Mannikin huh? And I thought that was my own invention!

[Wilson]

~sweijenberg~

I to started out drawing figures in shade/gesture, it's a very common starting point for most artists. But later as we progress we come to a point where we realize that what really holds us back is our ability to concieve of forms and design in space. The question is "how can I draw something with boxes and make it look organic"? And the answer is two or three years of practice. It's very frustrating to try to draw this way when you never have before. In about four months I did about 2000 studies of the figure in this way in my first semester at art school. My drawings looked much like yours do when I first started. Your drawings really aren't half bad. What you need is to do is draw from master copy. Don't draw out of your head yet. Your time will be better spent on the master copy. Copy rembrant if you can or any of the works of the illustrators J. C. Lyendecker, Norman Rockwell, or Dean Cornwell. Also copy KChen's quick sketch and demo posts. Like I said before, Kevin is a good example because many times he leaves the cylinders and boxes visible in his sketches.

A couple of things that are important to keep in mind is:

-It takes many repeated drawings to get any deep understanding of an object in space. You'll need to draw about 10000 ribcages before you thuroughly understand its shape.

-When you draw build up your figure from 1D to 2D to 3D. The 1D is the skeleton (this is where an anatomy book is going to come in helpful). THe 1D sets up the composition of the figure. The 2d is the shape; this is the way that you are currently most comfortable with. The 2D sets up the large gesture of the parts of the figure and gives your figure a likeness. The 3D is the perspective, the overlaping conturs of the form that give us a feeling of top, bottom, and side planes.

-Composition is the single most important aspect of the figure. The way that bone and muscle interact to create lines, shapes, and 3D forms is paramount. So, the first part of anatomy to study is the skeleton. It dictates the composition. It is the rigid part of the body that is very similar person to person. The flesh can change but the bones stay the same person to person (for the most part). You need to learn the angle of the bones in relation to each other and draw them at first in a stick figure type of drawing. use a cube for the head rib cage and pelvis. Connect them with a center line. The center line is the gesture line. The center line is the action line. Draw a line form shoulder to shoulder, where the clavical and scapula meet. Then draw a line through the horizontal center of the pelvis where the femur or thigh bone attatches. Draw a line for both the thigh bones and lower leg bones (just the tibia, not the fibia). Draw lines representing the feet. Draw lines to represent the upper and lower arm bones and hands. This simple wire frame should be drawn over and over as a simplified copy of a master's work. Whenever you wish to do a fleshed out drawing draw this first and then draw on top of it. In this way you are starting with a plan and then fiting your shapes acording to it. Draw the width of the whole arm the whole ribcage the whole pelvis the whole head the whole leg-then find there lengths-then end your forms.

I'll try to show you what I mean vissually, if I can, some time today.

Keep at it! I know it's tough, but just remember if it were easy everyone would do it.

[sweijenberg]

Fantastic, once again, I really appreciate the input! Before I read this, I did the ones below - in order of creation

http://img41.photobucket.com/albums/v125/sweijenberg/Gesture2.jpg

http://img41.photobucket.com/albums/v125/sweijenberg/Gesture3.jpg

http://img41.photobucket.com/albums/v125/sweijenberg/Gesture4.jpg

Darkstrider - those were very usefull wisdoms, I think about them when I draw and look.

Wilson - just to summarize, and to make sure I got it right: so it's best now to go back to skeleton with only boxes for the head, ribcage and pelvis, and use poses by other artists as reference? In that one angle, or in all angles?

In general, is it a good idea to keep doing the 'gestures', like those above in this post next to that?

Finally, can you explain this a bit more? "Draw the width of the whole arm the whole ribcage the whole pelvis the whole head the whole leg-then find there lengths-then end your forms."

I think that it's fantastic that you take the time to explain to me. Thank you!

Sietse-Jan

[Wilson]

Let me see if I can explain this idea a little bit better. When you draw say an armtry to draw just two lines at the outer edge that represent the width of the arm and have the curved gesture of the arm. When you've established that, close off the forms at the ends with curved lines that follow the contours of the form.

ABC

Action lines
Both sides
Close off forms


click here for KChen's pics + tuts (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?threadid=1432&perpage=30&pagenumber=2)

Kevin can illustrate this better than me. Plus, my scanner's been acting up.

[Darkstrider]

Wow, you can't do any better than that Kchen tut!!

I bow down before it!