life drawings [large image warning]

technodookie

Hi all! I've been here for about a year, but haven't really properly introduced myself yet (I don't think). My name is Bear Trickey. I am 25 years old, and like many people I've seen here, I decided to quit screwing around and start taking my art seriously. I enrolled in a computer art school and am taking life drawing lessons every week. I've come to realize how fundamentally basic and important good anatomy knowlege is, and would like to start a thread dedicated to life drawings. I'm sure I will benefit from receiving feedback from you all, and strongly encourage anyone else who is, or has taken life drawing classes to post their stuff as well! Anyone who has not taken a life drawing class (or is not drawing themselves in a mirror, or copying an anatomy textbook), you need to start.

My first post is some sketches I did last week. Made on an F6 sketchbook, each pose about 10 minutes or under. I apologize for the ghost lines in the background. The sheets are thin and I draw on both sides to conserve paper. Thanks and I look forward to seeing everyone's work!







EDIT: Hehe, hi nice people of polycount. Sorry about the huge pics...I'm working on an enormous monitor. Resized them

gauss

hello techno, welcome to polycount.
glad to see you've already come to some basic awareness of how incredibly important firm fundamentals will be in progressing forward from this point. taking classes is definitely a good idea; figure drawing classes can be hard, or tedious, or frustrating, and often the improvement isn't immediate but much later--yet it will come.

some basic presentation tips: i don't know how big the images were before, but now they're actually a bit too small to give you any helpful crits on
not sure what's happening with that shadowing, but if you're scanning these images an easy way to cut down on ghost lines showing through is to put a couple pieces of white copy paper behind it when you scan, so less shows through. no shame in drawing on both sides--you need to think of these sketchbooks as the process, not the end product. the product is you, your ability--so don't feel like the sketches themselves contain the improvements (though on good days they will show glimmers of your progress).

you're still early on but there's a lot of promise here; personally i suggest experimenting with different media. try charcoal, conte crayon, watercolor, pen, different pencils, colored pencils, india ink, you name it--you'll never know what you love until you try it, and getting used to the ones you hate will help you out with other media.
your forms are coming along but you'll want to continue working on line fidelity/confidence, such that your mark-making on the page is more sure, less chicken-scratchy for lack of a better term. not that you're all that poor in that respect honestly, in college i had a lot of people who had practiced for several semesters and had life drawing pages considerably worse than what you've got here.
in addition to line quality you'll want to get a better range of values and better contrasts. look at your drawings and squint--do the major shapes hold up as a person, or does the drawing fall apart? most well-contrasting pieces tend to pass the squint test well.

and overall... if you're looking for a more hands-on and peer-oriented critique and development, i highly suggest opening up a sketchbook over in the sketchbook forum on CA.org ( www.conceptart.org/forums/ ).
it's certainly a struggle to differentiate yourself from the dramatically higher forum population over there, but ally up with some other beginners, form sketch groups, etc. and you'll find the kind of feedback you're looking for.
by the same token i certainly entreat you to remain active here at polycount, just know that since the emphasis here is so much more squarely on game art, you'd do well to supplement your presence here with a forum a bit more targeted to your needs.

nice work, glad to see you posting... and keep us updated

technodookie

Gauss, thanks a lot for your post! Unfortunately, I didn't read your comments until after my latest class, so hopefully next week I can implement your advice! I especially would like to try new some new media! My teacher also commented on my scratchy lines, saying they were a bit too vague. I think thats something I need to conciously unlearn from my years of random doodling. Finally, I'm going to make a sister thread in conceptart.org when I get the chance. BTW, I actually typed in CA.org first, which yielded interesting results

As for the presentation of the images, hopefully this round is more an apropriate size. The volume of pictures is large, so I want to find a good balance. The sketchbook itself is too big for my scanner, so I'm taking pictures of them with my rinky-dink camera, which is why you see my shadow in the bottom corner :-P

Anyway, on with the drawings!

technodookie

Yo. Last weeks life drawings. I used a hard felt tip pen and tried to cut down on the scratchy repeating lines. It felt a little weird not being able to erase. For the last two poses, I focused on only the shadows, which had an interesting result.

Spacey

Wow techno, that felt tip pen has already made an improvement. Clean lines make such a difference (something I need to work on). These two really do it for me. Good job using lines to show form (especially #006) instead of shading and stray lines all over.
http://www.technodookie.com/art_projects/life_drawings/june8_001.jpg
http://www.technodookie.com/art_projects/life_drawings/june8_006.jpg


Some of them like this one fall apart (although you may have had a short time limit). The torso looks like you drew what you thought you saw instead of what you actually saw. I'm sure there were more shapes and curves within that "c" curve on the right. Don't be afraid to draw some basic underlying structure and work into the smaller forms after the proportions are correct. Check out these figure drawing images by Kevin Chen (click the drop down menu for more). Very informative.
http://www.characterdesigns.com/index.php?sitepage=tutorials

technodookie

Spacey, Thanks for the feedback. Using the pen was very educational. It forced me to concentrate on getting the lines correct the first time around. Although, some of the proportions are still out of whack.

I'm checking out Chen's work, and it's pretty sick so far. I'd like to get to shading like he's doing, but maybe I should just stick to getting solid forms first.

I agree with you on the "c" curve, there should be many more curves inside the overall arch. I also agree on starting with the underlying structure and then getting into the details, although I'm wondering with the pen (where I can't erase old structural lines), it might get a little messy. Of course I'll never know until I try I'm debating whether to give the pen more time, or move on to another media...

Also, Its mostly the same stuff I'm posting on Polycount, but I started a sketchbook on conceptart.org here: http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=98486

Panupat

May I recommend you my favourite book
http://www.amazon.com/Drawing-People-Por...1051&sr=8-1

Drawing People, by Barbara Bradley.
It's not a step-by-step how to draw kind of book.
But it points you to the right direction - important things to look for when you draw.
What you learn from this book will improve your own drawing, in your own way.

And lots of beautiful example. Barbara's line art is just awesome.

rube

Don't worry about being 'messy' when adding construction lines when you're using a pen. What you don't want is a drawing that looks too busy or overworked. There's nothing wrong with fixing a line if you don't get it right the first (or fifth) time, and really there's nothing wrong with overworking a drawing until it's a complete mess since then you'll have a better idea of how far you can go with it(just don't show those ones to anyone). I've been doing my life drawing almost exclusively with a felt tip pen or brush pen now for a few years and I think it's helped me enormously. I used to be very timid when I draw but when every line you make is black you have to just accept it and go on. If you think you're getting too messy take a little more time to measure. Here are a couple recent life drawings, there are some messy parts for sure, but overall they don't look too busy or overworked(I think. You can also see that I have drawn in some construction lines before heading into the fun parts of the drawings. What I do first though is look at the pose for a minute or so to make sure I really understand what I'm looking at before drawing anything and then 'mime' a bit of the drawing on my sketchbook without actually putting my pen down. That way by the time I do put a line down I'm pretty sure it'll be what I want, though it doesn't always work that like that. I don't remember but they're probably 15minutes-ish, they're also probably a good bit smaller than you're drawing.

http://littleoddity.com/wpimages/eztar.jpg
http://littleoddity.com/wpimages/girl7.jpg

Also, while you're trying different media you might want to try a brush pen, they're no hiding anything with that.

rube