Learning to draw

BigL

Hey there, polycounters.

The truth is, I SUCK AT DRAWING, yet im moderately capable on the 3d side of things. I really want to change this so im going to start drawing lots more.

This first one is a concept of something I want to create in 3d. It's going to be called, train of thought (inspired by the dream theater album, though not in imagery). I know it's very crude, and not even in real perspective - but I'm trying and you'll see me getting better soon enough. I can already see that the main aspect of it (the brain tube) isn't emphasized enough, but hey - i had my head buried in the picture too much, and only when I took a step back did i realise this.

bigl

ironbearxl

Hey man, that's a great concept to work from, the perspective on the back wheel is off, otherwise it looks correct. What's gonna be your poly limit for this?

BigL

Well, first of all I'm going to go high poly, ie - no limit.

Then afterwards I will try to make a low poly one too, although thats only after I finish the texturing and animation on the high poly.

I may normal map the low poly version, but I'm not too experienced with that. May even use it to learn

rooster

well, doing it is the best way of learning- and there are heaps of knowledable helpful people around. good luck with it man!

BigL

Thanks

by the by, I may aswell use this thread as a kind of portfolio/sketch pad thing. If anyone has things they would like me to draw i will try as much as possible

XepptizZ

Draw a metallic sphere, learn how metal has highlights. I find metal important :P

Zergxes

When I first started getting serious about art, I drew coffee mugs and jars to help with perspective.

Now I have fun posing and drawing the action figures I have around my desk.

Hope that helps.

Corry Frydlewicz

I used to draw characters all the time when I was in grade school (my start in the industry =P) After doing that for awhile, I started looking at other people's art and copying it.

I still do it today. I just bought a book by Yoshitaka Amano, character designer for the original Final Fantasy games and a bunch of anime series. All I do is find a bunch of drawings I like (Sketches not finals) and copy them. Then I use his style I was copying to draw something from the top of my head.

I do that for like 4-6 hours each time I get an Amazon.com package and my drawing is noticeably better each time ^^

Cthogua

Ellipses in perspective are tough cookies. One thing that I read that really opened my eyes was this: You should be able to fold the ellipse in half across its minor axis. Basically the ellipse should be symmetrical across the minor axis. This simple rule will get you through most of the time. If you look at alot of Doug Chiangs concept drawings for Star Wars, whenever theres an ellipse theres almost always also a line drawn through it for the minor axis to check perspective.

Scott Robertson and Neville Page have a nice tutorial on drawing ellipses in perspective (where I gleaned that little bit o wisdom) on their page here

BigL

wow, thanks guys.

I pretty much want to be able to draw most inorganic things I can before going on to either compound curved objcts and then finally characters, although I can draw *some* characters pretty well. I'l put up some more drawings tonight, probably of elipses

BigL

Hey,

So I went out and bought some decent pencils, A few books and a new ruler and started to draw elipses. I've learnt alot about perspective now, like 2 point, 3 point etc, and used the link you gave me for some more practice.

Anyhoo, I'm restarting the image I drew up there, and thus far has taken me a good hour trying to get things to look right, even though there's nothing really there yet



Sorry I'f it's a bit faint.

bigl

nitzmoff

In my experience the best thing you can do if you're learning to draw is to loosen up as soon as you understand 3d space. It will really help with your making more confident and fluid lines in the future.

Perspective drawings are only one aspect of the learning process and it would be to your benefit to not get to hung up on making sure a wheel or something looks just right and instead making 15 drawings of the same cart, train or whatever from different angles, spending small amounts of time on each one. It will force you to cpature the form of the object quickly.

The biggest mistake any budding illustrator, modeler, etc can make is spending too much time on one thing. Anything you can't let go of, whether it be your first really great drawing, modeled human head, etc. is going to hold you back from doing something better.

Think I went on a bit o' a tangent there.

BigL

Hey there, I get where your coming from. I used to do that whilst learning to model. However, I'm enjoying drawing this so much now I've conquered the first perspective hurdle that Im probably going to finish it. Of course then I will model it as soon as I get my new hardware (athlon x2 3800+, geforce 7900 GTX ) in as much detail as need be.

The Image: