@kemon
@kemon
Earth
@kemon
Asked for help
Critique not needed but welcomed if you feel like critiquing
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@kemon
Asked for help
It's been a while. I guess the comment section is gone now? I don't want a critique even though I'm posting using the "request critique" button. I'm posting because I want to share my progress. I will ask for critiques eventually, once I get to the later, more advanced level modules. But critiques for these beginner level modules aren't helpful. If you really want to give me feed back on them that's up to you. drawing 20 twisty boxes with no repeating designs required pushing the twists past 45 degrees. there's only so many ways you can draw a cube with a slight twist after that you're just drawing the same thing. only variety comes by including rectangle instead of box and perspective but even then you'll be repeating or very close to repeating the same shapes. It might seem like some of them are different until you rotate one (which essentially shifts perspective) and see that its exactly like a different twisty box. I added my own variety of twists. I understand twisty boxes are used in drawing imaginative characters so its good thing to be able to do,. But as an assignment the number of boxes that can be created (without repeating shapes. Mirrored or rotated its still repeating) If the assignment did not require only unique twisty boxes and repeating boxes then I misunderstood the assignment. I thought the assignment was about drawing the twisty boxes well, which I can do, so I went for variety instead. In Imaginative drawing variety is a good skill to have and so that's the goal I set for myself.
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@kemon
Me: The Terminator couldn't stick around but said "I'll be back" Everyone: Boooooooo. We have read better jokes in those free news papers.
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@kemon
These are soo coool!!!!! really nice work
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@kemon
Well nice use of shapes, especially on the squirrel. Your shading is blocked out which for a sketch and practice is exactly the approach you want. Most of what I'm going to say is just me trying to show you how you did very well and only a slight shift of perspective will help you see where you need to focus on improving. I hope to show you that. There are many approaches to drawing, you have to figure out what works best for you. Hair should be approached the same way. get the whole figure worked out made out of big shapes then proceed to smaller shapes, like shadow shapes and then other landmarks within the figure. If you're drawing long hair on a persons head you'll want to draw hair in "clumps" the Head of hair will be divided into chunks and those chunks will be "worked" to look more like the style you're going for. A stumbling block for people learning to draw in pencil is we think we're drawing objects. Look up Observational drawing, it teaches the artist the difference between perceptual drawing vs drawing "things" or "objects". drawing what you perceive instead of objects will help you out a lot. 1) there's not much fur to draw here. even though you know the animals have fur. 2) remember you're not drawing animals with fur your drawing shapes and tone (light and dark) and utilize the direction of your pencil stroke as well as the thickness. Some shapes you wont want any visible pencil strokes just a flat tone, other times you'll want clearly to see pencil lines going in a direction, sometimes uniform sometimes not, it depends on the texture you want to create. 3) what you drew gives a sense of fur, you did well.
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@kemon
James Gurney is a legend. His works is an excellent choice to study. I'm not going to offer a critique though. I'm hoping you would critique this for yourself - but to me. (psss I do think you did a good job but don't let that go to your head) You're doing this for study, so what did you learn? You wanted a to try and get a full range of colors with your triad, Do you feel you accomplished that task? What could be done to make your painting look more like his? What areas do you feel confident in your ability? What is it about his work that you like and would help you develop your own style? Did you choose Gurney because he's a master or because of something in his style?
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Dwight
Hello gunter, you're question is a little vague, but I'll answer my interpretation. First off, I don't understand what "no practice" means. My assumption is means you've drawn nothing, and have only been taking notes. If this is the case, I'd recommend doing timed gesture practice such as line-of-action.com. Gesture is so so so important, and will make or break your figure drawings. These timed drawings should ignore anatomy, and only focus on what the body is doing. Your mental hierarchy should be gesture, proportion, then smaller gesture. Allow me to explain. Gesture means 1D/2D shapes to describe the motion. At this point, your drawing should be only a handful of lines. Next, proportion refers to the relative size of one body part compared to another. This is not as important at first, especially if this exercise is your starting point. Still, it's something to be aware of. Lastly, as you hone the first two skills, you should be able to start putting smaller gestures into your larger gesture forms, such as the Traps or Lats. These still 2D shapes can cut into or bulge out of your larger whole body gestures, but when viewed from afar, still keep the silhouette of your gesture the same. I'd only use anatomy if you're 1. Practicing to remember the form of the anatomy. 2. Making a finished piece. 3. Are satisfied with your gesture practice for now. I'm curious to see you're drawings, and to figure out where you are right now. None of what I put above is really my idea, just my personal summary of Stan's figure drawing course. He, of course, adds mannequinization and shading, but I think 2D is where to start. If I underestimated your skills or would like to know more of my opinion, feel free to ask some questions. - Dwight
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@kemon
I also don't quite get what you're talking about but I understand a little but I've had to assume a lot. I recognize that a lot of what I said may not apply to you. To put it another way most of this are shots in the dark with the intention of helping you. essentially only you can help you. And the gist is just keep drawing, reading, and trying. Even if you give up for months always try again. If you're learning by your own drive to learn, this can be a blessing but it sure doesn't make it easier, if anything it's going to be harder for more reasons then I care to list. This was already long enough to write but I wanted to try to cover everything. 1)Most important message here is take Dwight's suggestion and work on gestures. 2)Some artists have high expectations from themselves. If you're one of these people just keep that in mind and remind yourself to be easy on yourself. Not just because you should be kind to yourself. Don't believe being easy on yourself will make you lazy. If you hold high expectations for yourself then you're being unrealistic and going easy on yourself is a way to bring you back to accepting limitations. You wont loose your drive, especially when you see progress. But it will take time and you're better off accepting that now. As a beginner it will seem like it's taking for ever, but 2 years from now if you keep it up you'll be amazed at your progress. Just be realistic about where you're at and that a slow steady pace will foster real lasting progress. 3) Whatever you learned is not a waste of time. People starting out don't really understand how complex art is. How much is involved. People just look at art without realizing what's involved. Master artists can be appreciated by all but only artists with some first hand knowledge of what it takes to create that level of work can truly understand the craftsmanship involved. 4) you're going through what all artists go through. Its a struggle you just gotta go through it. Skilled art is not finger painting. it's work, but consistent work and practice will provide you with the skills to have fun with what you learned. Learning itself can be fun but it's mostly work. 5)The books you're using should have exercises, Do them. and do them again and again until it becomes second nature. If you're bored of that book or video, try a different one. There are mountains of books for beginners, and few books for advanced artists. 6)There is no one single type of artists or style, Don't forget to find yours. But get the fundamentals down to a science first. 7)Drawing a figure will be overwhelming if your mindset is that the figure is made up of details. Art has an order of operations. It generally starts out from big shapes and works down to small shapes (details) Anatomy is not something you need to learn if you don't know the fundamentals of drawing. 8) Art should not be approached like what you would find in a "how to draw a horse" book. If you want to be an artist you need to understand what it means to draw, not how to draw a thing but how to draw anything. You may be drawing something but what your focus should be is how to draw, not what you're drawing. The object doesn't matter. it could be an arm it could be a head or the whole body or a landscape. If you get the drawing fundamentals down you'll be prepared to tackle any of them. But if your focus is trying to draw a person from the very beginning without knowing what drawing actually means, you're just going to be fighting yourself. 9)You'll do fine if you start with Gesture because that's working on the big, the whole, before you get to to anything else. But Details will always be the last part of the drawing. Never start with details, you'll just be left with a mess. 10)You may want to consider ditching figure drawing for now and focus on drawing shapes in 3d and lighting and values. Then learning how shapes are what all art is built out of. When you're drawing something you want to see the thing as abstract shapes that your mind interprets as objects. There's still so much you have to learn if you want to see real progress. 11) you need better books. I do hope this helps. I wish you the best in your journey.
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@kemon
I can't. hahaha. I'm just here to admire your good work. Hope you don't mind. When it comes to improving my guesture drawing. THIS is what I want to see in my own work.
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@kemon
Hey Tuna, what you have is nice with plenty of room for growth. The image you here is a sketch that's colored. The sketch is well done proportions and it looks 3d. It's like you've been practicing sketching this front facing head for a while and got really good at it. But it's still just a sketch with color. Your painting color is actually decent. You haven't made any mistakes unless you count not trying things you haven't mastered yet. You some how mastered your skill level. That's actually impressive. You have made something unfinished look really well done. My only advice is to start doing art that pushes you in directions that are new for you. There are lots of directions. start making mistakes and struggle at improving. Then people can give you helpful critiques. This sketch you have looks like it could have been done by someone whos actually very good at art but wanted to be super lazy and leave it unfinished hahah. take care Tuna, keep on painting.
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@kemon
Hi Ziwei, I wont be able to help that much but I have something to share. Image #1 you ask how to continue. You absolutely could continue. But is that the best use of your time and ability? I don't know. I would think not. You tried 4 different styles of the same painting. That's exactly the thing you want to try. I would say the picture works in all 4. it's been a few years right? why not just draw something else? Maybe you're really attached to Image #1. I would say paint her again from scratch. You get to draw it again differently and with a bit more experience in rendering and all things art. A few things that prevent smooth flow in image #1 Starting from the background. Those dark window dividers are too dark. If you want to keep the atmosphere light then you would want to lighten those window dividers. If you're starting over from scratch you have the chance to maybe do some more variations on lighting in the background give the light and dark a chance to dance. Just keep in mind the background will have less contrast then the foreground. Something about the hair hanging down on the right side of her face. it looks like its closer to us then her face is. I think it might be to much detail and contrast, it overwhelms her face. Someone else might have a better idea what to do there. Her right arm is to much like her left and looks painted on. Its almost like the problem a tangent would give you. her left arm grows into her right. like fixing a tangent you would want to change the positions of one or both arms. If you start from scratch you'll be have more options. Her right arm is fantastic though. Great job. Oh well except that its floating on the table. I think if her hands rested on the table it would work better. I don't know there's a few things that could use adjustment but common you did a great job. I love that metallic lamp. Image #4 Theres a huge improvement in your abilities. just amazing work. you should feel good about this one. There's a lot to like about it. You even have the green light from the plants bouncing on to her dress ever so slightly. the fabric looks fantastic. I literally could go on complementing you that's how good this is. But I really miss critiquing. However there's not much I can say. 2 things that stand out to me are her right arm and her clean feet and the pristine dirt. That arm could be a little smaller. The angle of this shot would make her arm shorter. If we were looking at her at eye level and she had the same pose you would have the proportions spot on, but at this angle and that hand being the farthest part of her body...the foreshortening would make everything from her hand to her elbow ever so slightly smaller. I don't think I would be able to get it right the first time. I would have to try different lengths before it looked right. while your at it give some attention to the spot were it looks like her chin is touching her right arm. I think it would be fixed by adjust the saturation and contrast values in that area. I might be wrong but to me that arm looks bigger than it should be. It would be because of the angle, you're proportions are spot on but the angle distorts things a bit. It looks like you took that into consideration when you painted her left forward leg. That thing is massive but it looks right because of the angle. Because of foreshortening The ground should have scuff marks or foot prints, tire tracks, puddles? I dont know how you should do it, but it needs some evidence that its ground, I mean other then the color and sunflowers are growing out it. Something else that might be neat. Spots of lights peaking through the sunflower leaves and hitting the ground. don't make them too bright though. I think it would open things up under there. That might be nice. And her foot is too clean. Probably don't need to say anymore about that. Lastly, isn't a big deal, It falls into the category of composition. Ill tell ya my idea but it's not hurting your image by ignoring this suggestion. along the line created by the sunflower garden, in front of her the plants are sharpened and the plants behind her have been blurred. My guess is you wanted to push back farther the area behind her and bring the area in front of her closer without changing the angle of that flower line. I would say that's an excellent thought. I think you can push that blur even more. She frolicking through the garden, hopping and skipping. Shes moving fast. you can use that blur more to push that back in a compositional way Making that area more blurry would make it less interesting to the viewer and that makes it to fall back . Just make sure you're using the blur as motion blur, not distance blur. If I were you Id consider doing the same thing to her back foot/ lower leg area.
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Matt COUDERT
here are my assignements for this chapter
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@kemon
Thanks for posting your work. I find your simple shapes here helpful in my own studies. Just by looking at them helps me. I mean as long as I can apply what I pick up from it. All your shapes seem so fluid and confidently drawn. Is this because of years and years of practice or have you done some quick geometric sketches as an under drawing and then draw over that with more confidence in how the object is structured. All your shapes are well done but I particularly enjoy the contoured shapes. I've put off the designing dragons lessons so I could focus on color studies elsewhere. But I've been feeling like its time to take a break on the color lessons and complete another module with the dragons. I get the feeling that the lessons from the designing dragons course will be helpful in more then just designing dragons. Good stuff mate. Cheers!
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Real Jr
I loved the art as a whole, I can visualize emotions in it, even though it is very good, as your request was for criticism, the only thing that caught my attention was the face, looking at the region of the nose, because according to the angle of the head I believe you could have projected it slightly more out of the edge of the face, if only a little, because as in the part of the body the fabric of the clothes brings a lot of movement, I get this feeling of a straighter face when I look exclusively at him, but this may have been on purpose. I hope I had the ability to help in some way, your drawing was amazing 🙂
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@kemon
I still see this as a quick sketch and sketches always need refinement. You mentioned the nose so a took a second look and I agree with you. I also noticed something off about the ear. When I first saw the picture I thought it looked like an earring but now I'm not sure, So I want to compliment you on your good eye @Real Jr I didn't notice these at first. I edited the photo to show what I mean by it being a lighting/shading thing. My apologies @RItesh Dhande. When I edited your drawing I darkened the part of her hair like it was a hood...woops. I was only trying to adjust the shading on the nose and ear or earring. I thought keeping it dark behind the face would help but completely forgot it was supposed to be a few strands of hair hanging rather than the outline of a hood hahah oh well. Real Jr, you mention projecting the nose out more. I think you're on to something but instead of moving the tip of the nose I brought the bridge of the nose in more. Then adjusted the way the shade and light form the tip of the nose. I did have to drop the side of the nostril down. Also brightened the light side of the face over all and darkened the dark side of the face. Then adjusted the way the light hit that plane where the cheek meets the nose. If what I thought of as an earring is actually the ear then yeah the ear is way too low. Same with the nose being slanted up. I think what's happening is the wonky shading making it look like the nose is tilted up. And that's actually an earring. When I look at RItesh's picture I see someone who has a good grasp of anatomy and proportion over all. I mean, just look at those hands. The way the clothes drape. RItesh has skills.
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@ishegeek
Asked for help
the wings were very challenging. i struggled with the bat wings mostly. I will keep practicing them with other bat pictures.
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@kemon
Awesome wings Geek!!!
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@kemon
looks beautiful. What do you think is wrong? If I wanted to nit pick, which I don't really, I would say the lighting is a bit inconsistent but its a quick sketch if I were you I wouldn't worry about that at all.
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@kemon
A bit more about perspective lines. Supposing you want to make the rail road ties look evenly spaced or have fence posts evenly spaced or anything that repeats while receding into the distance. How to do that is explained in the black and white image. (BTW I just copied these off the internet. Its just quicker) (edit) I just realized the black and white image didn't explain the first step very well. So I edited it with colored lines. I'll tell ya whats going on. The 2 green lines are the receding lines. The 2 lines with red arrows help establish distance. Draw the first vertical line and find the center, the yellow line that goes from that center to the VP will help scale distance. Draw the next vertical line with the red arrow. This vertical line can be anywhere you choose. you're creating distance here. The rest of the "posts" will keep that distance in scale as your recede into the distance. Now you're on track, no pun intended. Like it shows in the picture, if you were to take a straight edge or ruler to connect the top of the first line to the center of the second line, and project that straight edge to the bottom receding line, that would give you the next spot for your telephone pole or whatever you're drawing. This works for 3 point perspective too, The only important thing is that the lines that represent the vertical all appear perpendicular. Take a look at the drawing with the colored steps. look at the side of the steps and on the bottom you should see reference lines that look exactly like the tutorial for the evenly spaced objects tutorial in the first photo. it's the same technique. You have to learn the first one before you can do the stairs. Mostly I wanted to show this because of the rail road ties. Keep in mind in real life nothing is this perfect. This stuff is important because it helps create a feeling of space and getting scaling proportions more "correct". Getting the proportions more "correct" gives you more "room". When painting in perspective objects get smaller when approaching the horizon but the danger is making things get too small - too soon. You'll be able to create more space by getting those rail road ties correctly spaced to begin with. just keep in mind this technical form of perspective is for scaling and creating space and not for making thing's "perfect". Well actually it's helpful when painting any man made structures but only as an aid. Following this stuff to the letter will make your paintings too rigid and the painting will suffer because of it.
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@kemon
Everyone gave you some wonderful advice. Keeping what they said In mind I have a few things to say. your rail road gives you a fantastic base for scale, as mentioned by others. You want to use that opportunity by adding more cacti scattered throughout the scene between the front cactus and the beginning of the mountain range. Doing this preps the viewers eye to get a sense of scale. You're drawing the mountains small but you want them to appear big. The only way to do that is in reference to something. The first cactus next to the rail road sets the average size. Both TK and Nicolas are very helpful in understanding this better. It might sound like I'm just repeating what others said and I am to the degree i'm emphasizing you should use more iterations of cacti. The farther back in "space" the more "room" or "area" you have to add lots and lots and lots of tiny (because of scaling) Cacti. The trick is to make the grouping of cacti look like it would in nature. My main take away for you here is to use lots more cacti, here is where you help the viewer get an idea of scale. But it only works if you use what Steve, Nicolas and TK. These tiny cacti are tiny, I mean They'll look like little blobs or lines. You wouldn't even know they were cacti if the foreground didn't already have objects that could easily be read as cacti. The point in space your mountain range begins you should keep in mind the base of your cacti and the base of your mountains will be very close, your cacti blobs will overlap your mountains, but the shape of your mountains will be much larger then your cacti blob, just the base will be almost lined up, not the tops. Like Steve said objects like the different species of trees and rock formations will come in different sizes. So when you make iterations of the same type of cacti people intuitively conclude that all those cacti are going to be roughly the same height. If you feel ambitious you could include different species of cacti to help with scaling, but just make sure you have many iterations at different placements in perspective. Using Steves extremely helpful drawing as a reference. . . He has large rocks in there, take note of how they exist in relation to the cacti. The same species of cactus will generally be the same size but rocks are unpredictable in this way. I'm not saying you cant use rocks, it might be handy to have a large rock next to a cactus which could make it the mountains seem even bigger, but the key here is in how the cactus, the large rock, and the mountains overlap in space....see what I mean? If one of your pictures uses something that doesn't scale well, like rock formations for example, then you would be relying on texture. Referencing back to what he said about atmospheric perspective.
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@njones
Hello, I'm looking for some feedback. There are a couple things I see. My drawing represents this man to be a bit shorter. mostly happening in the limbs. But what I'm really wondering about is the mannequinization. What are your thoughts? As you can see I wrote myself a note to simplify. I was struggling with that. I've been practicing this for a week and I'm wondering if I should move on. I've heard Stan say on the podcast to spend a week or 2 max on each lesson because the next lesson may help you. Should I move on and come back later?
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@kemon
you've done a great job with creating a the feeling that this figure has mass and form. Think of my suggestions as minor tweaks. Balance of the figure seems off. Like he could fall over frontwards. Draw a vertical line over your reference figure starting from the back heal of his lead foot strieght up and you'll see it goes straight through the center of his head. This is where his center of gravity is, most of his weight is on the lead foot, but some of it is on the back. But you can almost see him shifting= his weight like he's about to stand on one foot. About his back leg, When I talk about this we're using his Knee as a landmark. Ideally you want to learn to take measurements visually but I'm sure its fine for now if you find other ways to measure distance. Measure the distance from his pelvic area to his knee and from his elbow to his knee. You'll start to see that in the reference picture his knee is facing the camera more than its being portrayed in your drawing. Also the area from this knee to foot needs some adjustment after fixing the top half of the leg/knee When figuring out proportions there are different ways to measure things, one way is to look at the negative space as shapes and try to capture those shapes in your figure drawing. If you do this you'll notice that in the reference photo the guy's lead arm is closer to his head then your drawing. Same with his back or "left" arm, it's also closer to his head in the reference photo. To match these adjustments you should notice that the left pectoral muscle a bit smaller in the reference photo as well. You did really well with the shape of the head and the arms, particularly the lead arm. Your figure has a life to it. You have grasped the nature of mannequinization over all you have a lot to be proud of. A bit of refinement in the area of proportion(measuring) and foreshortening would be helpful. So id say don't quit mannequinization just yet, I mean unless you feel like you want to move on. If you do just plan on coming back to it at some point. There are other ways to work on proportion and foreshortening but doing that during mannequinization will give you satisfying results. Simplifying during mannequinization would be to not draw eyes nose mouth hair fingers toes clothes shading muscles. you don't do any of that. so you're good. What you want right now is as many reference lines, contour lines, and measurement lines. anything that aids you in learning your proportions and foreshortening so well it becomes intuitive. Once you've gotten that down to you're satisfaction then simplifying would be to not have those reference lines for measurement and contours , i mean unless they happen to be part of your finished image.
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@kemon
you want black hair to look like hair instead of just flat black shapes? The red areas should be white. You have the right idea of separating chuncks of black hair with a lighter outline but it should be white it just doesn't read well as red. Red is already a dark color. I get it red and black are cool but with a fully conceptualized character it could work but right now when you're studying anime hair, it doesn't look cool. Use white for highlights to help give it the feel of form and give you a chance to display hair texture. Oh and use big chunks of hair. Try to convey the chunks overlap to create a feeling of hair on someones head. It's easier said then done for someone just beginning their journey but until you get that part working id suggest not using small strands/chunks of hair. Study (copy) anime hair you'll see this done.
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Fatima Almoumen
Asked for help
Hi, I attempted the exercise with a moderate success
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@kemon
Id say your attempt was extra moderate success
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@njones
Beautiful character work. What's the story of the image? How can you use the story to inform the environment? What are you trying to say?
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@kemon
I hope this painting is of her hunting for food to feed her, her clan and their pet dinosaurs
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