mariabygrove
mariabygrove
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mariabygrove
Caution: drawing seals is addictive! ;) I started off doing the sketches in pencil but then changed to procreate - easier to quickly iterate on shapes and the image quality is better for uploading. The seals were lending themselves to "C" and "S" curves but I tried to use the "I" whenever possible too. I think I managed OK at getting the shapes interesting and asymmetrical. But are they dynamic?
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mariabygrove
Seals, seals, seals... Looking forward to Stan's feedback cause I keep doing these, having fun, but not sure what I should be improving on.
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mariabygrove
And a couple more... cause there's no such thing as too many seals ;)
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mariabygrove
Tried a couple more, this time not cleaning up the initial "thinking" sketch lines but instead doing the final shapes id different color. Not sure if this makes the drawing more gestural... or just more messy? Am I missing the idea of 'gesture drawing'?
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Thieum
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mariabygrove
Wow, these are brilliant! Fantastic shapes and line quality. I'm going to be looking at your drawings for inspiration and to try and figure out what exactly gives them this cool quality.
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Caroline
Thanks for this exercise. Lots of fun again and I feel I'm learning a lot. I will do more of these because it's so much fun. I deliberately chose seals that I thought were in interesting poses so I didn't feel much need to change the shapes so maybe I should find some more boring ones as well.
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mariabygrove
I like how much structure you have in your drawings. Mine are mostly "C" and "S" curves and I struggled to add the "I"s anywhere - should have looked at your images first ;)
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Ithel
I am so messy. These are some of my cleaner attempts.
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mariabygrove
That last one has so much personality! It looks very proud :)
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mariabygrove
I really got into this exercise, I think it does suit my nature the slow painstaking process of measurements and then getting a drawing I can be pleased with :) But I have to take Stan’s advice and try do these quicker because now it’s probably a 4h job with taking photo every step of the way to overlay it over the reference and check myself. Will try next one with only one feedback mid way.
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mariabygrove
And I couldn’t help myself and added some shading cause without it she lost all the gauntness of the reference photo.
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mariabygrove
Trying another one. I chose a reference where the head is tilted even more to practice the angles. After a couple of rounds of sketch-feedback-correction I feel like I got the proportions and angles fairly correct and yet the expression of the face it all wrong and I can't quite tell where the problem is... Did I get the eyes just a tad wrong, open too wide maybe? Or should I have emphasised the lips more than the eyes since they're more in focus? Or is it just a wrong reference for a line drawing cause it relies so heavily on shadows and blurriness? Any thoughts and feedback would be very welcome, thanks!
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Zach Pipher
I have a quick question. I'm following along with Proko, obviously i cant replicate it my self, so i'm pausing and executing the step , then watching him to it then executing it. Then I plan to after i'm finished with this to do a wholly originally protrait following the steps again. Is this a good way to learn the process? Its a lot of memorization.
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mariabygrove
I’d imagine you don’t have to do the exact steps every single time, as long as you go from big to small and measure proportions and look for angles and alignments along the way.
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maldestro
This is my third attempt at the assignment, the first two had really wonky eyes. It was fun looking for the various relationship between the measures. Done on an A3 sheet, it's the first time i've gone so big with a drawing. Now i will try with portraits of other people
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mariabygrove
Kudos for persevering and doing the drawing three times! I bet you learned a lot as each next drawing was based on the feedback from the previous one.
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Cheng-Yuan Wang
Hi everyone! I spent the whole evening to tackle this project. The mouth is the hardest part for me to draw and I still think it looks abit odd. I used mostly straight lines to practice my lines. The paper is a roughly twice as big as my a4 sized sketchbook. I kind of lost my patience after drawing the face so the clothes part looks a bit off. Any comments are welcome!
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mariabygrove
I know what you mean, the mouth was hard, I think cause it was a bunch of unexpected lines and shapes. I feel like the eye on the right (his left) is maybe too big compared to the other eye? But you got the tilt of the eyes that Stan was talking about!
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Maryse
Nice challenge !
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mariabygrove
Nice job on this on. I’m studying how you did the eye sockets cause that’s something I struggled with. They looked so out of place when I drew them and in your drawing they work and somehow even suggest volume to the face.
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mariabygrove
Thought I'd post all the steps of this project. I'm sorry about the quality of photos of my earlier drafts, I'm still struggling to figure out how to photograph drawings, especially bigger ones and in light pencil... any advice on that will be very welcome. And, of course, any feedback on the drawing itself :)
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mariabygrove
I was surprised how much I enjoyed drawing these. At first I thought, meh, too simple, just basically ovals. But then I took my time to get the details of the stems and to vary the line weight on the skin patterns and turns out there's a lot of beauty in a simple zucchini ;)
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Joshua Olson
Self-critique: I added the shell lines and wood detail as embellishments afterward. Pros: * I like my eyestalks * It looks like a snail. * The lines are confident and intentional. * I didn't let myself rework things over and over. * The proportions are in the right ballpark. Cons: * My line quality is low and wavy * The shell lines are bad in the main segment and don't match the shell. * The proportions of the soft body were less accurate than the shell. * Everything is squished horizontally. * I tried to add too much detail between the body and the shell. It's confusing to look at. I gladly welcome critiques.
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mariabygrove
I love your "self-critique", shows you not only took the time do to the assignment but also the time to analyze it afterwards. I bet will help you improve much more quickly! Stealing the idea :)
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katrinadurham
Hello everyone. Well here is another attempt at a pear (after watching the video).....I am struggling to see the changes in the values but loving it none the less would love your feedback
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mariabygrove
To me, it looks like you simplified the values spot on! The only thing I'd suggest is try shading more evenly, especially in the lighter parts of the pear and the background. But I agree, it's a very cool exercise :)
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spottcilgrim
Did a second attempt with the project. Since this was my second one (and I saw some other people doing digital), I thought I'd have fun and do an ink wash for the actual shading instead of graphite. I still am going too tall with my proportions--though this one was not nearly as badly tall as my first one :)
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mariabygrove
Aw, brilliant idea with the ink wash, all the values are clearly delineated.
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Julian Blake
My mushrooms so far. The page is huge. This exercise is way harder than it looks!
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mariabygrove
Your ovals look so even! Mine always end up much more wobbly ;)
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Julian Blake
Hi, this is my assignment. It is a fruit from my country. "Papayuela", or "little papaya" or "almost papaya". This was way more difficult than I thought. I used Staedler full graphite pencils hb, 2b, 4b and 6b. But I can't barely tell the difference. Any comments are more than welcome.
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mariabygrove
I realize this is a very old post and that it looks like you overcame the problem, judging by your next post, but I thought I'd suggest what works for me: I start by doing a little value swatch first with whatever pencils (or other tools) that I'm going to be using in the drawing - this way I have a template that I can refer to :)
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mariabygrove
Line drawing of things around me done in Procreate, trying out different brushes too.
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Maryse
Latest Praying mantis. My lines are getting better the more familiar i get with the subject.
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mariabygrove
I really like how the ink lines and pencil lines look together, somehow complementing each other. Very cool
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mariabygrove
Another go at simplifying a portrait to 5 values, straight lines, and hard edges. I love the posterized look these studies have. And it's a brilliant exercise.
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