Wendy relearns how to draw
interpolator
This week, I decided that I'm going to relearn how to draw from scratch. I haven't drawn anything seriously for a little over a decade, and I was never very good to begin with. I realize now though that my old drawings suffered from a lack of construction, so I will be studying various sources of constructive drawing.
I'm currently studying "Drawing the head & hands" by Andrew Loomis. I intend to draw at least one head a day, and post the results no matter how crappy or embarrassing. I also try to analyze where I went wrong and write down my observations as I go.
Anyways, here are my noodlings from this week. I was shocked with how terrible the first ones came out, but at least I started to make some progress over the weekend.
I'm currently studying "Drawing the head & hands" by Andrew Loomis. I intend to draw at least one head a day, and post the results no matter how crappy or embarrassing. I also try to analyze where I went wrong and write down my observations as I go.
Anyways, here are my noodlings from this week. I was shocked with how terrible the first ones came out, but at least I started to make some progress over the weekend.
Replies
Here are today's doodles. I'm trying to get comfortable constructing these generic heads from different angles.
I purposely picked an easy to hit target of one sketch a day, so that I have no excuse for not doing it, no matter how busy I might be. So now it's a game of "don't break the chain"!
Some quick googling
http://reiq.deviantart.com/art/Nose-time-389645426
http://www.pinterest.com/pin/572801646328185690
But of course in your own style. Just an idea though!
As for style, I'm trying to be style-agnostic at this point. So if there are repeated stylistic elements, it's probably a bad habit I'm unaware of! So feel free to point those out.
Here are the last few sketches before the weekend. When I drew the larger head, the misplacement of features really became glaringly obvious.
This Saturday, I looked for additional resources on the structure of facial features and decided to follow along with Proko's series on constructing heads.
So the following sheets are my notes on how I understand lecture 1 through 4. Bear with me as I bore everyone to tears with a bunch of circles.
And then today was nose day! I'm studying Proko and various other sources.
And ofcourse the obligatory head shots!
If you can't get to a live model session, there are always public spaces to sit and draw people. Especially since you're doing heads. Trains, buses, airports, cafes, anywhere people are waiting for something is a great chance to draw faces.
Here are the last few drawings before I leave on a three week holiday. I will be drawing every day for sure, but I won't have access to a scanner. Instead, I'll pop by every now and then to mention what I'm studying. Then after the holiday, I can update those posts with the actual scans.
https://www.anatomynext.com/anatomy.php?menu=194&sub=199
They also have a 3D viewer for an adult male head, you can spin it around.
One head a day seems too little though, unless it's a head with a lot of hours of work in it.
I'm on my holiday now. So far, I've done additional studies of noses, and now I started doing studies of eyes.
As for the amount of time I spend studying, I set it at a minimum of one head a day, because it's a relatively easy target to hit. I often do it as a lunch crunch. On the weekends I have more time, so I do longer studies. All in all, I have extremely little free time, so I have to make those small sessions count. That means no mindless doodling, only hardcore deliberate practice.
I'm purposely posting every single drawing I make, on one hand to reveal my entire process, but also to show what kind of progress you can make when you focus purely on the fundamentals. So far, I made more progress over the course of a couple of drawings than I have had in the many years when I was drawing throughout my teens and early twenties. This to me is both encouraging and depressing. Encouraging, because now I feel I will be able to make good progress in a fairly short amount of time. Depressing, because it seems like the possibility of improving my artwork was right under my nose all these years. I just never bothered to actually work on those "boring" fundamentals, because I was convinced I already knew them.
It was only recently when I took Scott Eaton's anatomy courses that I realized I really didn't know the fundamentals, at all! Those courses made me understand the depth of knowledge that goes behind a really great figure sculpt. It also made me realize that the same thing must apply to every other area of art. So with that realization, I vowed to go through every drawing book I own, this time in earnest, and actually do the work.
Anyway, I hope to have some interesting things to show after my holiday, so stay tuned!
On a serious note though, I like the introspection you have here. I find it so true as well, just when I thought I knew something, nope, I don't really. It's a continual life-long process, this learning thing. And I'm convinced that's what makes people happy. If you have something to strive for, then you're happy in the journey to get there. Once you achieve it, you're not as happy as when you were working to achieve it. If that makes any sense, haha.
Looking forward to seeing your scans.
On a side note, I have left the hair out of my studies so far. I plan on doing specific studies of hair next weekend when I have more time. I also realize I've gotten into a comfort zone of sorts with the minimal hatching. I will explore additional pencil rendering techniques after I'm comfortable drawing heads with hair, although I'm not necessarily ready to go full value. I want to remain focused mainly on line for the time being.
I definitely do plan on working on the full body as well, although not straight away. I have given myself three months to really focus on heads exclusively, as they have always been my weakest area. After that, I will start on Proko's figure drawing course, which I have already bought. My goal is to be drawing full figures with drapery by the end of this year. The year after that, I plan on going through Scott Robertson's "How to draw" book. And after that, I plan on going full value. So I got my work cut out for me, hehe!
Just be cafeful that you don't learn all you know about faces from construction, it's important to relate this stuff back to real world observation, especially if you want to avoid same face.
My number one tip would be to pay attention to the skull and to notice the HUGE differences between skulls.
Here is a massive reference sheet i put together. They are grouped together as children, women and men. And one african dude.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-qJDC2a45e8d3Z0SzVZNmRwNHc/view?usp=sharing
Here are the drawings from the past week! First off, a couple more baldies that I drew during the work week. After that, some hair studies that I did over the weekend.
For the first two sheets of male hairstyles, I tried to draw the examples from this tutorial:
http://sharenoesis.com/article/draw-hair-male/1350
The rest of the hairstyles were drawn from reference.
One thing i am noticing with your shading is that it is arbitrary right now. As you know 3d i'll explain it this way.
Pick a plane and decide that that plane is perpendicular to the light soure. That plane is now as bright as it can get, now when you are shading your thought process is, "what angle is this plane from the light direction normal" If two surfaces are two different angles they need different values.
Hope that helps!
That said, I wasn't necessarily going for a full value range, or at least not at this stage. I meant to put in only the darkest darks, and some hints of modeling here and there to help show form. Is my shading nonsensical from that perspective, as well?
Either way, if it doesn't look good then it doesn't look good. I'm going to have to experiment with this more.
For example on the latest drawing, the core shadows on his left side of his face look good, but you over emphasized the cheek on his right, making that form look way more defined than it should be,
But keep up the good work. You are making strides!
Here's some more studies from the weekend. I'm not happy with how the curly hair came out, so I'm going to have to experiment with that more.
As for the art itself, I feel like I hit a bit of a plateau right now, so I decided to mix things up a bit. I bought a new book; "Draw faces in 15 minutes" by Jake Spicer. I mainly bought it because I liked the rendering style.
So far, I've done some studies from the book, although they weren't particularly successful. Hopefully, that will get better with additional studies.
At the book's recommendation, I also stopped drawing on printer paper, LOL. I tried two different types of sketch paper, and settled on a smooth heavyweight paper over a more grainy one. I like it a lot, because it gives me better blacks than the printer paper, but still a clean line without too much smudgy mess.
I also did a study from http://www.howtodrawcomics.net/, again mainly to explore the rendering style. My main goal for this coming month is to improve my pencil technique, to hopefully bring my head drawings to a slicker finish. If you have any additional recommendations on what I might study for that purpose, I'd love to hear it!
Maybe draw more heads but lower then count and dive into another body part?
My plan is to continue doing the head studies until the end of this month, hopefully improving my pencil technique on them. After that, I plan on taking Proko's figure drawing course.