I CANT DRAW! Dwarf
polycounter lvl 10
Hey, I can't draw to save my life, so give me some HARSH crit please, as harsh crit is the crit which works from my experience.
This is just the head, need to do the body. He is basically a character from story called "The Water of Life", from the fairy tale book. THIS IS A UNIVERSITY ASSIGNMENT! Not my choice LMAO.
This is just the head, need to do the body. He is basically a character from story called "The Water of Life", from the fairy tale book. THIS IS A UNIVERSITY ASSIGNMENT! Not my choice LMAO.
Replies
http://alexhays.com/loomis/
All these amazing concept artists you see have MASTERED MANY WAYS OF THINKING, and transfering those thoughts onto paper, one after another in a way unique to them that allows them to pull ideas out of thier head.
It sounds complicated, but when you doing it you wont be thinking about all that.
You actually have the start of a really really good dwarf there. You have some reasonable proportions, a rough idea of what you want to go, but its falling short in a couple of departments that may be relevant to what your trying to create.
For one your your proportions are a little off. Now proportions are only important if they bug you or those you are trying to make your drawing for. So look at this thing, and ask your audience (those you want to enjoy your drawing) what they think of the relative size of the eyes, nose mouth beard all that.
If it doesn't meet your standards or your audiences standards go look at other drawings of dwarves and figure out some basic ways of quantifying the size of the nose eyes, mouth all that. These can be numbers but they dont have to be.
This is one way to sum up proportions and memorize them (or copy them which is fine to, its a good way to memorize them).
http://theartcenter.blogspot.com/2010/02/shapes-by-xav.html
You can also use numbers, grids, units of measurement (the space between the eyes nose and mouth is 3 noses usually.
Proportions are usualy the most important place to start with any living creature, especially humans, and ESPECIALLY FACES. Because people are very very sensative to basic geometric patterns and are SUPER sensative to faces and the human body. (its why most drawing instruction focuses on the human figure because it has the highest standards on all levels for looking right. If you can get humans looking cool you can get almost anything looking cool).
Now, that's just proportions, there are LOTS of other ways of thinking. Shapes, Lines, Value, Color, 3D shapes (commonly refered to as forms by 2D artists), mass (the ambigious sense of somthing chunking being there like a ball of fat or somthing), volume (the general size of somthing as it occupose 3D spacde) and much much much more.
Cool thing is, you don't need to master all this stuff, only the stuff that you think makes stuff look cool, or that your audience thinks looks cool.
So the first step is to look at other art and talk to people you want to like your art, or at the least get to know them. Then study up on ways to capture the things you like and your audience likes using some of those ways of thinking.
Take it slow, have fun, and dont be hard on yourself, your already half way there and NOBODY gets it right on the first try.
Most comic book artists and amazing illustrators spend HOURS AND HOURS reworking the same drawing to get it to where they want it, and people that can just wip out cool faces can only do so because that's ALL THEY DRAW over and over again they just memorize it step by step.
Over time you can get good enough to start creating worlds and people really quickly that look really amazing but very few people can actually do this and it can takes a lifetime to get to that point.
I know that's a lot, but I hope it helps. Read lots of books from lots of teachers and dont EVER assume that there is a right or wrong way to do this. The only thing that matters is if you like the end result and if those you want to like it enjoy it as well.
If you can pull that off you have won at the game of art!
Just remember the first step is always fiddling around, testing, observing and analyzing, the subjects you want to create and figure what makes them COOL. Its up to you as an artist to figure this out and it can be a lot harder than it sounds sometimes. So always start there.
There are many many parallels.
I relied on photos a lot and in my current job, I have to do a lot of handpainted stuff. Luckily I work with some incredible artists that have really tutored me and helped me along, and now I can paint things using no photos as overlays or using 'blend if'. Sure it helps with some textures, but you have to keep it subtle.
Don't underestimate the power of a good diffuse texture!
Here is a quick 1hr and a half drawing I did. I know its not perfect but note I don't really have a drawing background as of yet and I only picked up techniques that I found from the videos. Let me know if you want the specific videos I watched.