Drawing in Perspective in Photoshop
polycounter lvl 8
Hey guys. I come from a traditional art background, I learned drawing at
college, about 3 years ago. This is my first character with a pen
tablet. I'm not too disappointed at it, but I'd like to know what would
you suggest in order to develop my own characters (this had photo ref),
mostly in other perspectives? I was thinking of keeping the rough,fast
style of that OC adventure with me. Any C&C are appreciated. I'm just sick of doing photobash, you know... I can draw from reference fine, but I don't want to depend on them...
Replies
I'm not so good at drawing so I can't give the you best advice but I'm personally recommend you to learn about the anatomy so you can develop your own character.
p/s: This maybe personal but could you show some of your traditional art?
i.e day to day I do digital 3D, but i keep traditional sketchbooks on me all day every day.
some things i do daily that improve my work:
1. draw people from life, not photos. drawing from photos requires some mental transformations and visualisations because they're 2D representing 3D. you need to be able to understand what the photo can't quite demonstrate and you wont know that until you've drawn enough people from life, mostly.
2. copy those who do it really, really well. this is something I do every single day. if there's a good piece, i'll replicate it, or a piece of it 1:1. Mostly every game that I enjoy, or find beautiful, I spend about as long recreating as I do playing. Whether it's doing a hex-tile worth of sunset overdrive with their ultimate trims etc, or whether its going to a museum and spending 4 hours paintstakingly replicating a drawing there, its up to you to learn from those that have researched before you. You've only got probably 50-70 years left, no point reinventing wheels when you can learn from all the masterworks available to you in the modern world
when you've drawn a thousand people's bald patches, double chins and bit-behind-the-ears, you'll have a better knowledge
3. find someone else who is as obsessive as you (hopefully) are, who is also working in this field. push each other hard. ideally you want to be at a point with them where there is no offense taken. whats said is said honestly for the good of the work. brutal critique. you call each other out for lazy work and procrastination, and push each other by topping each others work.
for drawing perspective in photoshop, you might want the crutch that Lazy Nezumi provides, which amongst other things, is perspective grid tools including fisheye and all sorts. these are geared toward environment drawing but there's 0 reason you cant apply them to people.
As a general piece of advice, on faces in general but especially womens faces you need to be careful about how much and where you put hatching. Keep it minimal and use it to round out important features. Women typically have soft features and more shading just hardens them. I'd also avoid drawing outlines around the lips like you did in the first image
I might try to get into live drawing classes, I'm also going to get Gnomon and other DVDs on drawing and that are focused/streamlined to what I want my career to be. Sort of like doing a custom course for myself.