hykare's daily sketches

hykare

Hi everyone!

I've always wanted to be an illustrator but somewhere along the way figured I don't have enough talent. Which is obviously bullshit, I just half-assed practicing. So now I'm going to finally learn to paint properly. Wish me luck!

If you have any comments/critiques I'd be happy to hear them.

Here's some stuff I've done recently:






Sunday:


Monday:


Tuesday:


These are from today:

hykare

I have no idea how to paint vegetation.

hykare

hykare

hykare

TheWalkerGod

I like your outdoor landscapes the best, although I'd have to say my favorite among them is the painting with the jugs. You need to work on your people painting though. Anyway best of luck, and just curious what resources are you using to learn?

hykare

Thanks for commenting. I just signed up for 8 hr/week of studio drawing/painting classes, so I expect that will help with people. I actually find painting landscapes a lot harder, because I've never done them before and they have so much more details and depth. As for resources, I mostly just use what I remember from drawing classes - things like 'draw what you see, not what you think you see' and 'when in doubt, squint'. Other than that the book 'Color and Light' by James Gurney and watching youtube videos of people painting. Like this one from Noah Bradley: [ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DG3hPBMv_Sk[/ame]

hykare

TheWalkerGod

hykare wrote: »

Thanks for commenting. I just signed up for 8 hr/week of studio drawing/painting classes, so I expect that will help with people. I actually find painting landscapes a lot harder, because I've never done them before and they have so much more details and depth. As for resources, I mostly just use what I remember from drawing classes - things like 'draw what you see, not what you think you see' and 'when in doubt, squint'. Other than that the book 'Color and Light' by James Gurney and watching youtube videos of people painting. Like this one from Noah Bradley: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DG3hPBMv_Sk

thanks, info's useful. Also I'm wondering why your paintings lack smaller details. Is it because you're just trying to focus on bigger shapes for now?

hykare

It's because I'm still having problems with values and colors, so I would have to apply those details to areas that are wrong or too vague. Also I don't find details all that important as long as the image reads right, I actually like a messy style. Like these:




I'm struggling with vegetation, so today I did tree studies:

hykare

MykulJaxin

Hi! Have you tried painting without color-picking (not sure if you're already doing that)? It's ruthlessly hard but forces you to learn to see color properly. Give it a shot!

hykare

Thanks for the feedback. I'm not doing any color-picking from the reference image. I do pick from my own image though. Once I choose a few colors i just reuse and mix them, sometimes tweak the brightness or saturation. I'm not sure if it's a bad habit. I think it helps keep things cohesive but on the other hand makes it look kinda flat. 

By the way, do you guys think I'm heading in the right direction here? Should I fix something in particular? Or try a different kind of excersise?

TheWalkerGod

Maybe do some more greyscale drawings, to get a better idea of value and form, because yeah, your images are looking kinda flat.

hykare

I was feeling down about my art so I stopped doing anything for a week... Oh well. I did some sketches today.

        

RaggaPenguin

In the same boat as you man, tried painting ages ago, gave up after a while. But now i'm back to learning and practicing! Loving your art so far, but a similar thing with yours, as is with mine, is the values. One thing i'm finding helpful which I think someone's already posted is: Abandoning colour on a few and working purely in grey scale. It really helps and pushes you.

Also love those latest sketches!

hykare

Thank you for the advice and also reminding me this thread existed.

I've decided that trying to learn everything at once is not a good idea, so now I want to learn to draw faces from imagination. I've been doing studies from movie stills and some from life, but when I try to draw them myself, the faces are always very similar and/or distorted. I hoped I could just draw a ton of faces and it would sorta naturally become ingrained in my brain. Turns out that takes a really long time (who would've thought?).

My goals:
draw non-alien-looking faces from imagination consistently at all angles
learn to control proportions of features to draw various types of people (male/female, child/adult/old, ethnicities, thin/fat)

hykare

Straidy

Hey, nice studies here! I remember I used to draw them exactly the same way. So after I struggled with it myself, I can give you some tips to improve your art, I hope that helps.

First, don't be afraid of contrast. I know sometimes you are not sure about what you are doing with light, colors etc but you are only a beginner, you can't know all the stuff so don't be shy do mistakes, you will learn a lot from them. Go forward and make contrast shadows, then add light, then when you add reflecting light BAM! and you get a very natural looking painting. Of course you need to make sure if contrast is needed in a particular situation, but there is obviously lack of it. 
Hope that helps!
And for the head drawings, try to make everything as simple as possible at the beginning. It's better first to draw 10 quick sketches per day (I highly reccomend to draw body and poses too, at least 5 sketches per day every day) than to spend hours on a one drawing and get frustrated after a week.
Yes, you can learn everything at once, just keep it simple and have fun. 

hykare

Thank you, that's great advice! All my paintings, even the traditional ones, are always washed out and I figured I'm blind to values or something. If I understand what you're saying correctly, I may be starting the shadow with the reflected light value(what I'm seeing) and then probably adding lighter tones on top of that, so it ends up not dark at all? And of course you're right on too much detail in anatomy studies. It's frustrating, because I do a lot of them sometimes and then try to draw from my head and it turns out distorted. I think I was learning to copy little details and shapes instead of understanding the underlying structure.

first one is from reference:
 

hykare

Studies! I'm going to time myself next time, some of these still have more detail than I'd like.

Straidy

No one is blind to values, just try to remember where shadows and light should be, it's the matter of logic, I guess. When you put shadow and light at their places, your painting will be correct. When you add reflecting light, it becomes natural. It's no matter how you do this or how you start it, it's just need to be at the right place, with the right color and tone. Try to keep in mind everything you see on your reference while doing studies, eventually, this will help you a lot. 
And yes, big values instead of details. No one needs details on painting, and that a problem for mee too