Adien's Sketchbook (small update Sept.20) - (nudity)

[adien]

My first post! I've been lurking for a few weeks. I'm stunned by alot of the artwork here. MindCandyMan! You're an inspiration! Never stop drawing. :)
I have a long way to go before I'm as good as most of the artists here, but I'm working on it. Here's a couple sketch's to get things started. :)

a cartoon i drew from a "how to draw cartoons book" :)
http://members.shaw.ca/ohms123/d-ohms_doggy.jpg


some doodles. basically just line and shading practice.
http://members.shaw.ca/ohms123/d-ohms_doodle1.jpg

a skull WIP. used an image from the book "Anatomy for the Artist by Tom Flint" as a reference.
http://members.shaw.ca/ohms123/d-ohms_skullwip.jpg

finished skull (maybe :p ) not really happy with how it turned out.
http://members.shaw.ca/ohms123/d-ohms_skull.jpg

well, let me know what you think. hopefully tomorrow night i'll have a head or 2 to post. maybe some more skulls from different angles. i'd really like to have a good understanding of the structure of the human head before i go on to the body. :) :bash:

crits and comments always welcome. every artist needs them to improve. :)

[adien]

bleh. bad drawing day. couldn't get anything right with this pic. scanner had trouble picking it up, so i increased the levels a bit in photoshop so people can at least see it. :p
more tomorrow! :)

http://members.shaw.ca/ohms123/d-ohms_head1.jpg

[BluePencilArtist]

Neat drawings you have here. I like dog and I have that book too:D Skull is really cool drawing. You did shading pretty good job bettter than me:)

Keep it up and never stop drawing:chug:

[adien]

<bleh what was here before was too long. :p>

So. about a month and a half ago, I found Conceptart.org, and I'd surf it for a few minutes whenever I found a bit of time. Inspiring! Amazing artists here. Now the semester is over (it's been a week), I've been trying to draw something everyday. The one anatomy book I have is terrible, but I've found links to a few anatomy sites that will help me until I can afford some good books. :)

Also, I read somewhere that there is a life drawing studio here in Vancouver that you can drop in on any night of the week, for a small fee. I think I will do that when I have the money.

anyways, I thought I'd share a few of my old old drawings, a couple from 5+ years ago. :)

These first 3 are from 5-6 years ago
http://members.shaw.ca/ohms123/old-drawing1.jpg http://members.shaw.ca/ohms123/old-drawing2.jpg
http://members.shaw.ca/ohms123/old-drawing3.jpg

These last 3 are within the last 3 years I suppose
http://members.shaw.ca/ohms123/old-drawing4.jpg (drawn from a book)

http://members.shaw.ca/ohms123/old-drawing5.jpg http://members.shaw.ca/ohms123/old-drawing6.jpg

ok! off to grab something to eat and then do some drawing! :)

[chudzta]

Hey...

truthfully i only have the patience to read half that info, i'll get to it bit by bit.. hehhee... well ok i went back and finished reading

ummm.. well hopefully even u can see theres a large improvement

the trees are good... i think the white background kinda .. obvious contrast.. sorta takes away, but hey they are skecthes. who cares. keep at it, do it when u can, we all love to see em, and if we dont, we wouldnt be here. so yea, i'll shut up now peace - ry

[adien]

lol, yea, it was a bit long. i expected alot of people to skip over it really. :)

as for white backgrounds, i've started trying to avoid leaving it white, at least right around the drawing, even if it's just some basic grey behind the sketch. thanks for looking! :)

[metaphysiks]

im glad to see the willingness to learn, believe it or not that is half the battle, without the drive you will get nowhere. as a student of art myself all i can say is that there is no substitute for practice, learn by doing and by that i mean DRAWING FROM LIFE. plain and simple nothing is better.
keep drawing man ill check in on you, and i would like your comments in my sketchbook.
chris

[adien]

hmm.. don't know if i'll work on this anymore. 2.5 hours to get this far. :(

the shape of the mouth isn't quite what i wanted, and i've discovered that filling a mouth full of a good set of attractive teeth is really hard. :)

i've also decided that i a) need to learn to shade with hatching and cross-hatching, or b) need to get a much better scanner. mine just doesn't seem to pick up pencil that well.

i want to learn hatching/crosshatching anyways though. :)

http://members.shaw.ca/ohms123/d-ohms_big-grin.jpg

anyways, i'll try to post something tomorrow, but i think i'm losing access to my webspace for a couple weeks due to moving etc. will still have internet access though. when i get access to webspace again, will hopefully have a bunch of things to post. (i better! no reason why not besides laziness)

hmm... her nose looks funny

[adien]

well here's a new one. i'm working on an exercise where each of the circles on the page becomes a face of a man or a woman from a different angle. unless of course the circle has to be erased to make room for a body as in this case. :) will hopefully post more scans of this page as i work on it more. :)

as you can see, i still have alot to learn, and sometimes it can be frustrating. ;)
hmm... really need to work on noses. I haven't started studying the anatomy of the body yet, I know there are problems there. :)
feel free to post your thoughts.

http://members.shaw.ca/ohms123/girl.jpg

Oh yea, and this is from reference of course. It will be awhile before I am confident enough with proportions to draw faces without reference I think

[adien]

well, i found the #eatpoo IRC channel today, and got some of the guys there to give me some advice after seeing some sketches. the main thing they had to say was to loosen up my lines, and told me some ways to attempt that. also, they told me to start trying to draw people in motion, with that loose linework, to learn a feel for the shapes in the human body. going to try to follow their advice.

going to set aside the page of circles that are meant to become heads. may or may not come back to it, if i do it will hopefully be with much looser lines. :)

only problem with drawing people in motion is i have to draw in public, and people are curious and will want to see my drawings. that's going to kinda suck, since my work isn't that good yet, and will be especially bad when i try to draw loose. :)

ahh well, i will try to find a discrete place. any suggestions are welcome. :)

[adien]

ok, well, i started drawing with a Cretacolor 430 02 pencil with very dull 4B lead (this one (http://image.misterart.com/grouppix/528x352/7000/g7955.jpg)), in an attempt to force me to loosen my lines. the lead on this pencil is huge! also just trying to loosen lines in general. i don't like either of these pictures, but i'll post them anyways. i'll try again tomorrow. both from ref

still not loosening my linework. :cry:

http://members.shaw.ca/ohms123/crap.jpg


http://members.shaw.ca/ohms123/dude.jpg

oh yea, a kind soul PMed me saying that i could try sketching from TV if i was uncomfortable going out in public to draw. tried that today. that's freakin hard! don't think anyone stays on the screen for more than 2-5 seconds i swear. i think i might bite the bullet and go out in public with my little (discrete) hardcover sketchbook. then i'll at least get 15-30 secs per sketch maybe. :D

[MindCandyMan]

keep it up adien! I can see improvement even from the first sketches you posted. Keep up your momentum and draw from life as much as you can. Great job.

[jester]

Adien, use your VCR. Just hit the pause button and you've got a few minutes to draw. I like to practise like this myself. Don't use a DVD because this will give you too much time.

Jester

[golgari]

those last sketches of the face look quite good...you're improving! :)
i'd like to try to draw people in motion, too, since getting a feel for the shapes of a human body sounds really good, but i'm totally stuck there, too...i don't get at all how to sketch someone who's in motion down so fast...
how do you try to manage it? are you spending all your time on memorizing a pose and then sketching it down afterwards, or are you noting the general pose and proportions really fast on a sketch and try to add details...or are you drawing like you normally do (...or at least, like i normally do ;) ) and try to draw down shape by shape, only more roughly and faster?
my problem is that i get some shapes down pretty fast, but then i can't remember how the rest looked like AT ALL, and since they already moved...or do you try to "move them back in mind", adjusting the shapes you see from them now?
duh. probably too much questions for someone who just started doing this, like me...anyhow, any experience you made might help me, too =)

jester: hmm, if i pause my vcr, it just shuts down to a black screen. i've got a "freeze"-option, but then again, that leaves the picture "frozen" for hours, until i hit the "play"-button again...

[adien]

thanks MCM. i can see the improvement as well, but it feels like just an improvement in my knowledge of proportion, and no real improvement in technique. i want to be able to loosen my lines, feel the shapes of the subject, to be able to use just a couple lines instead of having to resort to shading to make a feature look like it belongs as part of the whole. i'm in a pretty frustrating stage right now i think. not that i have plans on quitting, now or ever! :)

Hey Jester, thanks for the suggestion, i'd thought of that, but it kind of felt like cheating. :) alos i live in dorms atm, and my VCR is being used in the common area.. can't really just usurp it for my own purposes right now. :)

hey golgari, i really have no clue what i'm doing lol, but i just ran a search through the forums on gesture drawing, and this one of the things i found, hope it will help? i know it clarified some things for me.. click me (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?threadid=683)

i'm going to do some searches online i think, see if i can find some examples and explanations from differing view points as well, might help. i'll post anything i find :)

[adien]

ok, at first glance these sites on gesture drawing looked interesting:

http://www2.evansville.edu/drawinglab/gesture.html
http://www.awn.com/mag/issue3.3/3.3pages/3.3vilppudrawing.html
http://www.art.net/~rebecca/LifeDrawing1.html
http://www.ndoylefineart.com/gesture3.html
http://www.linfield.edu/~rmills/lectures_folder/lect_gesture_drawing.html

i'll read through them more in a bit.

[golgari]

thanks for looking that up...
i wouldn't have been able to figure out that "gesture drawing" is the keyword i was looking for...
and yep, that thread did indeed help me a bit to understand... i'll definately take a look at some of those links later, too.

[adien]

picked up "Bridgman's Complete Guide to Drawing from Life" the other day. I love this book! some of the text is a little difficult to follow, but just doing a few of the studies has taught me alot already. here's a couple pages of Bridgman studies, more to come. :) I also got a pretty good deal on some new sketchbooks, 50 page ring bound for about $9 CND each (110lb acid free, recycled paper, 8.5/11). grabbed 3, one for life drawings, one for bridgman studies, and one for anything and everything else. i always have at least one of them with me now. :)


http://members.shaw.ca/ohms123/bridgman1.jpg

http://members.shaw.ca/ohms123/bridgman2.jpg

[metaphysiks]

bridgman is the man. one thing you have to look out for is that his style doesnt become dominate in you own drawings. with his books this is a hard thing to avoid because he has such an appealing style that it is hard not to want to draw everything like him.
meta

[golgari]

those studies look good. i especially dig the second page...
the hand of the lower guy on that page is a little bit strange, but i think it's not what you were mainly trying to draw anyway
actually, i thought about buying a bridgman book, too. wasn't sure about which one... bridgman's guide to drawing from life was directly in my scope, though ;)
it's a collection of other books of him, isn't it? what are the basic topics in it?

[sic1]

Hey adien, keep up the work ethic and progress :)

When drawing from ref, try to look at it and make comparisons between each body part. If you find yourself drawing one particular area of the body too large, or too small, try and draw the negative space around the subject, thinking about it in simple shapes, squares, triangles, circles.

Also try to visualize the subject in 3D, ask yourself why it looks that way in the reference. Your drawing from reference seems pretty accurate, but perhaps this will help avoid problems in the future.

I know what you mean when you say it's frustrating, I'm experiencing that now, too :)

[adien]

hey thanks for the posts guys! :)

metaphysiks: yea, i like his style alot, i can see me copying him if i'm not careful. I want to pick up another book on anatomy and drawing from life, by a different artist with a different style, but one that is just as good as this book. any suggestions? if i learn anatomy from more than one artist, i'll be less inclined to copy bridgman. :)

golgari: the book does have a bunch of his older books compiled in one volume. it includes a bunch of introductory sections, giving a little info on things like balance, rythm, light and shadow, distribution of the masses etc, then starts to go through each part of the body in detail, starting with the head, then the torso, the arm, the hand, the pelvis, the lower limbs, and the foot. it finished with a fairly extensive section on draping, how cloth drapes over the human body, and different types of folds. great book. "Bridgman's Complete Guide to Drawing from Life"

Sic1: yea, when i draw from reference sometimes my proportions are a little off, usually when i don't measure. i didn't measure with any of my bridgman studies, just approximated by eye. something i'm trying to get better at, i don't like measuring that much, unless i'm drawing from life. :)

[StephenC]

dont think i've replied to your book before, I'm always glad to see new daily sketchbooks, i think they have truth and honesty in them. and to watch an artist worlk their way up is an inspiring phenomenon.

If you're using the web for resources, there are all kinds of online tutorials and sites to help get your skillz moving...
example....
opti-res links (http://opti.res.protodepot.com/ikonboard.cgi?s=3f03ddc326cbffff;act=ST;f=21;t=24)

[adien]

that's a great link StephenC, thanks. i have a folder in my favorites that has tons of links to art and drawing resources, that one got added. :)

I went up to visit my parents last weekend (july4-6), took the bus up. while i was there i was rummaging around in their little library, and what do i find? "Creative Illustration" by Andrew Loomis! hard-bound, published in 1959. apparently it belonged to my grandmother. so that one went in my back-pack. :) My mom also had a few books showing drawings by william blake, michelangelo and botticelli. grabbed those too. she wouldn't let me take any books on painting though, as she's starting to get back into painting after quite a few years of pursuing other artistic avenues. :)

anyways, here's a few more crappy drawings. only page i'm semi-happy with is the last page with the 5 bridgman arm studies (but i only just finished them, gimme a day and i'll hate them too. :D )


http://members.shaw.ca/ohms123/arm1.jpg

http://members.shaw.ca/ohms123/michelangelo-study.jpg

http://members.shaw.ca/ohms123/arm2.jpg

[golgari]

hey adien...
that's great stuff, i'd say. i wish my parents would share such an interest in painting and / or drawing...
your bridgman studies look very good. the arm on that michelangelo study looks a little flat, but the torso itself isn't bad, either...

[adien]

hey thanks golgari

i kinda glossed over the arm on the michelangelo study, because it's out of proportion in his drawing, and i didn't want to fight with it. :)

now i'm thinking i should have reworked it, trying to bring the proportions in line with the torso. would have been good practice. but then, i hadn't done the arm studies yet, so didn't really have any idea how. :)

[behemot5]

a good tips someone given me on conceptart for shading..
teint your shape with an homogen gray then draw heavier gray for darker shadow..then erase highlights zones

[adien]

that is a good tip behemot5, thanks. that is exactly what i try to do when i shade, but i have to admit i've pretty much ignored shading since my first post in this thread. i'm much more concerned right now with working on shape and form. yea, i need alot of practice with shading as well, but it's difficult to understand where exactly to shade, and what my values should be, when i don't properly understand the 3 dimensional form and shape of what i'm drawing yet. :)

once i'm more comfortable and competent at drawing, i will go back to practicing the exercises and techniques of shading i learned too early. :) when i start attempting to shade properly again (doing "finished" drawings), i hope my shading will look better than now, because i will be much more comfortable with a pencil, and will know more about what it can do. :)


on a side-note, i don't think i'll be able to post much in the next few weeks, as i've just started a new job, and most of my time for the next 3 weeks will be training. at the end of the 3 weeks, i switch to graveyard shift 11pm - 7am, so it will be a few days to get used to that. once i'm used to that though, i'm looking forward to grabbing my sketchbook and heading to Stanley Park, or maybe downtown, in the morning after work. one of the few(!) bonuses about graveyard shifts, i'll be able to take classes in the mornings as well. :)

bleh, as it is i'm posting here instead of doing homework, which still needs to be finished, and i have to be up in 6 hours to go to work. :p

[behemot5]

shading is a good exercise to increase your pencil technic.
Try to draw homogen gray of different values and gradients to .

[PencilPunx]

I have the same problem with shading. When I see something someone else did, the shades/highlights always seem to make perfect sense and I can easily distinguish the light source. When I do it myself, I am at a complete and total loss. That's something I really want to get better at, as I've found it really adds life and weight to an otherwise flat image. Should you discover some great secret or technique that unlocks the key to mastering shading, please let me know. In the meantime, I will continue searching for a genie in a magic lamp that can grant me this power.

[adien]

well, was a bit tired of the studies, especially since they are all studies of male musculature, so today i drew something else. amazing how i subconsciously chose a reference photo that hid her hands... well, was thinking of attempting to "finish" this one, do some proper shading etc, but all the problems with it so far are a little discouraging. think i'll put it aside and do some more studies instead.


PencilPunx, if you find that magic Genie, let me know. :)
until then, you might want to check out this book, (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0891348689/qid=1058765641/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-0491043-7098321?v=glance&s=books) I found it useful. I would still be studying it, and possibly understanding it alot better now, but i lent it out a few months ago, and haven't gotten it back yet. :D

oh yea, here's the pic

http://members.shaw.ca/ohms123/DonOgirl2.jpg

[adien]

:iws: gah this last sketch sucks.

[golgari]

hm, actually i think it's not that bad. her face is a little flat, though. (especially the nose is a little strange)

[sone_one]

well.... at first.... her head is too small.... alot! :) the arms are too small too.

besides that the drawing lacks volume.... i dont know if you used any reference but it looks like drawing from a photo.

keep practising

*sidenote to myself: get that bridgman book ^^*

[adien]

thanks for the crits guys!

yea, i suppose it's not that bad. i think if i worked on it some more i could fix most of the problems, like her right arm is a little skinny, and could be a little more shapely, her left arm needs some work too, especially the elbow area, to show that the forearm is turned and you are seeing it from the side.

sone_one is right, the head is too small. i noticed that early on but forgot to go back and address that.

ooooohh... the face. :bash: that's really the only thing that is stopping me from trying to finish this. working on her face just intimidates the hell outta me. i think i spent as much time trying to get the face right as the rest of the sketch put together.

specifically, the nose and mouth. i have trouble drawing a mouth that looks like it belongs on that face. and i just have so much trouble drawing a nose that won't transform an otherwise beautiful, shapely woman into "nice looking girl, shame about that nose. they have surgical procedures for that these days"

yea, i used a photo ref ( see above post :) ).

[adien]

woo! been awhile since I've posted here. didn't have internet for just over a month, getting everything hooked back up in a week. I didn't even have a computer until a few days ago! all of my stuff was in storage until I found a more permanent place to live than where I was. My webspace should be reactivated in about a week as well, so hopefully all the red Xs will disappear.

I only have a few new pictures to post, as I've been really busy with a new job, but now that the mad rush of training is over, and i'm getting settled into a new house, I'm getting some spare time again, so you should see more.

So! I'll post some pictures as soon as my internet is reconnected and my webspace is reactivated. Man, the only thing i've really missed about not having internet is not being able to visit this site whenever I want to. :) (I'm supposed to be working right now ;) )

[adien]

Ok been awhile since I last posted. Will post a couple things tonight, maybe a few more tomorrow if I have time. I been doing more reading from art books that drawing. I've been working from Hogarths books lately, and I think all of my reading has given me a new perspective. I've tried a few drawings of people out of my head, but I don't have the human form firmly enough in my head yet. I start an anatomy/life drawing course on Oct. 9th, really looking forward to that. :)

http://members.shaw.ca/ohms123/Hogarth-study1.jpg http://members.shaw.ca/ohms123/Hogarth-study2.jpg

Hey check out some of my mom's work:
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=11746