Ralph
Ralph
Germany
Ralph
Just wanted to point out that I feel these things were sorely missing in the portrait course. Facial expressions too, although those could be a course of their own. Loomis only gets you so far. Do you ever intend to update the portrait course with newer videos or make a new/advanced one that goes into facial plains, expressions, maybe the asaro head, etc? (Sorry for posting this here. Feels like there is a way better chance that somebody from the team will read it in a newer class)
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Gannon Beck
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Ralph
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Ralph
may I ask why you use moving along the y axis but rotating around the X axis as examples in the first minute? I know they are just examples, but given how much confusion exists around perspective and how much I struggled with it myself, wouldn't it be better to first show movement along the three axis to indicate how the foreshortening changes and THEN show that you can also rotate things around any axis? Otherwise that can already start out the video with some confusion on why the "change" on the Y axis is so different from the X axis. Maybe I am overthinking it, but given that it is the very fist example for the subject, maybe that would be helpful? Just my 2 cents. I doubt it will derail someones art career to leave it as it is.
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@trrahul
This was hard but fun. Struggled a lot with 6, 8 and 9. I was drawing lines parallel to the 'eyebrow line' and the 'lip line' to find the box edges.
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Ralph
I don't really have much to add. You are not drawing rectangular boxes but rather planes wrapped around the head. This often leads to wedge or pyramid-like shapes. (e.g. image 4, 5 and 7). In other images, you may have figured out how one set of lines through visible landmarks is supposed to look (e.g. image 9) but you made all lines going in the "same" direction pretty much parallel to that rather than actually converging them. It is more of a parallelogram than a box around the head. (same with picture 8). Rather than just moving the lines up and down, try to find some obvious easy to find lines (top of the ear to eyebrow, eyebrow to eyebrow, center of the forehead to middle of the mouth/chin) and then use what you know about perspective and how lines should converge in 3D space to construct the other lines, rather than "finding" them in the image. If that is hard, try drawing a lot of randomly rotated boxes floating in space. Also draw the lines you normally would not see as if the box was made from wires. When you have about 4-6 boxes on the page, elongate the edges and see if "parallel" edges actually converge to one point to check yourself (essentially the drawabox 250 boxes challenge). it is tedious but will give you an intuitive understanding of boxes in 3D space over time. Then you don't have to rely on just the image to find a box but you can rather use what you see in the image to construct the box with what you know about perspective. In picture 9 you also have the edge of the box that faces the viewer go through the corner of the left eye. Yet the outer edge of the box goes through her hair rather the the outside corner of the other eye. This the box is not centered on the face.
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julien Gaumet
Hi everyone ! After few attempts on paper, it felt so difficult I chose trying tracing over pictures first. Even like this it was quite a challenge. I did all the picture this way but posted only a few. As the picture number grew, I felt a little more confident. Please let me know if it feels right to you. On most picture, it was really difficult to find convergence between the lines because I was really influenced by parts on the face. When I switched my mind into “cross contour” mode, it helped in my opinion. Waiting for your opinion on these and I’ll try again on paper without pictures underneath ! Thank you guys for your help !
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Ralph
I'll try to put into words what I see, but I often struggle to explain what I mean in a foreign language, so please bear with me if my thoughts on your work seem tedious or messy. In general, you seem to have a rough grasp on how perspective should work, However when putting the boxes over a photo or a head, you seem to struggle between following the rules of perspective and what you see in the photo. Also you are using parts of the face as reference for where your lines should go, that would protrude past the box, like the tip of the nose. What do I mean by that? If the eyebrows represent a part of your box and the forehead represents a part of your box, then the ROOT of the nose or the chin would be on the same plane for the front face of that box. The TIP of the nose however is not on the same plane as the eyebrows, forehead and chin. In your picture number two you start the line in the center of the front face at the forehead, but then you go through the tip of the nose and therefor miss the tip of the chin. You can try that in real life. If you put your pencil on your face in a way that the tip touches your forehead and the other end touches the tip of the nose, you will see that you are holding that you are holding your pencil at an angle that does not follow an imaginary box around your head but rather points in a "diagonal" direction compared to that imaginary box. (I attached an image in a profile view of a head to illustrate what i mean. The blue lines show how a box would roughly wrap around a head and the red line shows how a line going through the tip of the nose deviates from that.) The other thing that sticks out to me is that once you established a correct line, the other lines that should follow the rules of two or three point perspective ignore the foundation you put down. Again in picture two, the line going from the top right of his fore head (top left from our perspective) to ho the bottom right seems correct to me. That we can see the top of the box indicates, that the person is looking down a bit (which he does), but then the line from the center of the forehead through the nose leans AWAY from the first line. The rules of perspective would dictate, that these lines should converge towards the bottom somewhere. Yours spread apart. Again that is probably because you drew the center line through the tip of the nose and the next line was oriented towards that already wrong center line. So rather than sticking to what you know about perspective, you let what you see in the image deceive you and broke the rules of perspective to follow that second line you put down. Another smaller thing is, that most boxes seem to ignore the upper portion of the head. In image 18 we clearly see how the box does not include the rounding of the top of the head. Also the Box is skewed because you stick more to how you interpret the image. Try to use some easy to find refrence points (line trhough the eyebrows, line from the middle of the forehead through the middle of the chin, line from the top of the ears to the eyebrows) and then try to use what you know about perspective to construct the box around the ehad, rather than letting what you see in the image confuse you. This basically keeps on going. In image 19 you correctly drew a line form the top of the ear to the eyebrow. it is angled slightly upwards, therefor indicating that the man is looking slightly up. However the line above that is angled down. This likely happened, because it is very hard to tell what a box around a rounded surface would look like or what direction it should go. The top of our head is pretty spherical so it is hard to find a box around it that matches the rest of the face. That is why you should rely on the points that are easy to tell (in this case top of the ear to the eyebrow) and then use what you know about perspective to understand how the line above should be angled. In this case the line from the ear to the eyebrows is angled upwards. The line above is angled downwards. So much in fact that the top plane suggests the box was angled downwards rather than upwards. So bottom line: Try to find lines that are easy where you can tell for sure, in what direction a line would have to go. Then construct the other lines with what you know about converging lines in perspective rather than letting the rest of the image distract you.
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@cjtolanmask
Pre-demo & Critique attempts. The laces on the boots were definitely a struggle. If I were to do it again, I would break them up into more curves and strokes, as well as making them lighter.
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Ralph
I believe the main focus of the exercise was doing exactly that. Also using CSI lines and doing them in one motion. From what I see in your line quality for the boots, you seem to join a lot of very small strokes together which is exactly what the exercise is meant to teach you to avoid. Don't try to copy every detail exactly how you see it. Nobody will be able to tell if the laces of the shoes were a few millimeters further to the left or the right. People will be able to tell if you used clean confident strokes or insecure short strokes. In my experience these short strokes are the result of two things 1. Insecurity where the line should go so we do a lot of short strokes and correct the direction with every stroke 2. Being afraid of making mistakes. If drawabox was good for one thing for me, then it was helping me with getting rid of those habits to a degree. Essentially the exercises there, while often tedious, teach you to not value every practice drawing you make as if it was something you wanted to put on display. They essentially make you draw things so often (e.g. 250 boxes in perspective) that at some point you stop caring about how one individual box turns out. Ironically your lines look better once you stop caring that much, because you stop overthinking it and don't worry about every little stroke anymore. Later lessons in this course will also focus on how to measure and construct things, going from big shapes to smaller ones. That may help with the "avoid errors" mentality as well because you will learn how to build a lightly drawn rough orientation construct for where to place your lines before you actually put down your final darker lines. It removes some of the uncertainty. In the end my recommendation would be to just draw a lot while trying to focus on doing confident long CSI lines. If you sit down and do a lot of animal drawings or a few every day, eventually you will stop worrying about placing every line perfectly and use longer strokes without thinking about it (maybe even to just save time, given that this approach is a lot faster than doing all these small strokes) hope there is something in there that helps you a little.
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Miguel Camilo Téllez
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Ralph
Place what exactly? The jaw/chin? from what I can tell with my own limited experience, the jaw in the left one is a bit off center. Drawing a middle axis onto your sphere might help you better understand where the middle of the face would be. Also drawing the parts of the form that you do not see might help with that, especially when you are starting out. The lines that halve the sphere ends in a 90° angle to the outline of the sphere on the left for example. That however implies to the viewer, that there is actually a 90 degree angle there, rather than the round form continuing. If you look at the sphere here: https://study.com/cimages/multimages/16/sphere_cross_section7245140437775505592.jpg you can see how the cross contour lines wrap around the sphere and do not just end in a T shape when they hit the outline of the sphere. You also seem to skip the rough sketch/underdrawing for these heads. The line quality is a bit restless, because it consists of many short lines being joined together. To be perfectly honest, a lot of this implies that your grasp on 3D shapes, representing them on a 2D piece of paper and other basics is not that firm yet and I would suggest you practice that first alongside more interesting topics like drawing heads and portraits. I am not saying this to discourage you, but to save you a lot of the headache I cause myself by taking a similar approach to yours. A few years ago, I jumped in at the deeper end of the pool and basically tried to learn how to draw by taking the figure drawing class here on Proko, because it was way more interesting than the basics like drawing straight lines and geometric shapes. I had to find out the hard way however, that I lacked the basic concepts to really learn from the figure course. I learned something, sure, but certainly not as much as I could have and I did not understand why. What really helped me to get a better grasp on 3D shapes in the end, was doing the first lesson(s) on www.drawabox.com as well as their 250 Boxes challenge. (just be vary of the texture exercises in lesson 2) Maybe taking the drawing basics course here on Proko might be an even better alternative as it begins with a better understanding of 2D shapes, line quality and other basics rather than jumping directly into the more complex 3D shapes. So in summary: I would suggest that you get more practice on the basics like line quality, loose sketches/underdrawings and 3D shapes, while also practicing the more interesting topics that actually interest you (because doing only basics is boring.) Try to keep a 50:50 ration between drawings that are fun and practicing the fundamental skills. Otherwise you risk losing the joy in drawing.
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Ralph
So for the earlier lessons we got warmup exercises for every concept. While I get that it is difficult to keep calling it "warm up" the more these basic exercises are combined to arrive at more complex concepts like gesture, I was wondering if there still were good warm up exercises focused on gesture? Or is that too advanced already and we should just stick to the simpler line and circle exercises for warm-ups?
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Ralph
This is about the best explanation of the subject I have ever seen/heard. Everybody else is just like "Draw gesture" and every demonstration from every artist is different which makes it that esoteric concept you have to "feel" rather than understand (Including your other gesture video to be honest.). Putting it in perspective with the explanation at the beginning that there are tons of ways to capture the same concept and then giving examples of what that concept actually is, really demystified this for me a lot. I have some catching up to do on the course since life (or rather work) has been pretty stressful lately, but I am looking very much forward to trying this myself. Thank you for sharing this.
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Lynn Fang
Try to learn the style of Jamie Hewlett, but failed. 😅 So...this is only a line practice.
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Ralph
10mo
So you studied from Jamie Hewlett by using… a photo? And you managed to produce that drawing as a result? Anatomy, changed clothing, good line weight,… and you have the nerve to call this a failure? Dude, you need some advanced class, not a beginner class…
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Ralph
@Stan Prokopenko You mention that you try to understand how strokes were made, in what direction, how the drawing tool was held and such. How do we do studies of images where that is no longer clearly apparent? For example if I want to study from someone who works digitally, is that less suited to copying in an analogue medium because the techniques used might not be replicapble? So in other words: At what point does a reference become less suitable for an exercise like this? Or is there no such thing? Is it just about taking what we like and trying to replicate it in our chosen medium and then move on?
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Ralph
Are there any charakteristics you would recommend for reference pictures? In this exercise we were supposed to study line quality and you chose a picture with very expressive lines that still had some sketchlines, mistakes, construction, etc. intact and even required different grips, pencil and so on. Most more "finished" drawings don't have that many clues about how they were made anymore (especially when they were done digitally). I feel like that makes them harder to study? Or maybe I just focused too much on the wrong thing during the exercise like copy everything 1:1 bit by bit rather than looking at the bigger picture to understand what does what in the image and why? I mean I did analyze what the lines did for the image and where they drew attention, became thicker and thinner and so on, but that was more of a process before and after the drawing. While I was at it it felt more like I focused on copying the final lines line for line 1:1 without thinking about the "why". Is there a remedy for this? Do certain images just lend themselves better to studying specific things? Or is it more about me and constantly reminding myself that my goal is to analyze, rather than to create a copy. For me the two won't really mix at the moment. Either I stop and think about what does what (then I could just stare at the image instead of drawing it) or I become a human copy machine. Is it just quantity and repeating such studies? Do I need to simplify the reference like you did with the shoe thumbnails? I probably miss the obvious solution at the moment so if anybody has an idea I'd appreciate a bit of help with that =/ Edit: And then the next line in the video was about using the right tool and how a regular pencil could be used to create the same look, but it wouldn't teach me about the technique used. Maybe that was a big part of the issue since I did everything with a 0.5mm marker and basically drew small shapes that I filled to vary line width… 🤔
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@ray1
Horse running by Heinrich Kley
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Ralph
11mo
Am I the only one who sees a centaur leaning forward during a spring rather than a horse in both of these? The tip is the head, shoulders, arms going back, hands forming fists? I see that in both the reference and the study. Either way, good job capturing the energy of the lines. I like the darker areas in yours better actually.
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Shawn Lewis
Chose John R. Neill & Bernie Wrightson. Proportions are kind of wrong on both :/
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Ralph
11mo
Only slightly. You did a great job!
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Meander Around
Last one is digital, critique is welcome, especially on my knives. I want to know if you guys think I executed my goals there properly or not, thanks!
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Ralph
11mo
I would suggest that you consider varying the width of your lines regardless whether they overall are thick or thin. This goes a little into what I understand about form and it is just one approach of course: almost everything we see as „lines“ are actually cast shadows caused by creases, overlaps etc. A crease on the skin is a form change on the surface of the object. Without going into too much detail, those creases are not suddenly sticking out of the skin at a 90 degree angle but rather they start small, get deeper/higher and then fade back into a surface. The shadows they cast do the same. So by drawing a line thinner on one side, thicker in the middle and the thinner at the end again, we indicate that behaviour. This gets way more complicated the more you think about it and the more you consider (like the form the shadow is cast upon is actually distorting it. In the case of the rhino, the rounded body, the position of the light, the size of the wrinkles/creases/forms we see all affect the line width and when any of these parameter changes, like a bent surface that changes the direction it faces, the line weight changes as well, etc.). Honestly it drove me insane when I got to the exercise covering this topic over at drawabox (lesson 2, texture exercise) and I have certainly not mastered it, so I won‘t go into details here. Bottom line: having your lines always be one consistent width can look constructed and mathematical. Changing the line width often looks more natural especially on organic things. (And as I said: just the way I think about it). Depending on what you are going for I am sure there are also styles that can pull of line weights that are consistent throughout
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Ralph
So this is a portrait of Ellie from the Last of us 2 by Iliya Kuvshinov. I was long fascinated by his style so I thought this was a nice opportunity to take a closer look. I thought it was a good idea to trace the proportions and placement of the elements by putting a paper against my screen since I wanted to focus on the linework, which I did and it worked out alright. However, I feel like I focused too much on just 1:1 copying their line weight bit by bit after that rather than seeing a logic. Sure, where the light hits there are hardly any lines (the picture mainly uses differences in value rather than lines in these areas), where there is shadow there are more visible lines. A ton of lost lines in the light areas and in the hair too. Other than that, there is more black around the eyes (where the attention is supposed to go I guess). What is interesting is, that the rest of the face and pretty much the rest of the picture hardly has any prominent lines. There are a few but mostly in the shadow on the left side or towards the the shirt, away from the actual subject. I assume he inverted the logic and put some heavier strokes in less important areas so that the face where the light hits has hardly any heavy lines (except for the eyes) which then creates a lot of contrast around the eyes to draw the viewers focus there. Does that sound about right? I will probably do another few though since tracing the proportions from the original image felt a bit like cheating and I may have focused less on the actual studying part as a result.
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Ralph
11mo
Really starting to think I am going about this wrong… Maybe I should do thumbnails like Stan did. with the shoes rather than copying 1:1 pictures. That would take away some pressure to get proportions right and also force me to understand the logic of the lines rather than focussing on getting them as identical to the original as possible. Also just using .5mm markers might be detrimental here 🤔
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Ralph
Bit late to the party. Work took up a lot of time recently. First is importance, second is light. I moved the light source to the top left in the second image (and also made a mistake with the dark line on the back)
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Ralph
Did a few from level 1, penguin got too big and didn't fit on the page anymore. Then moved on to level 2. Ignored some anatomy in the last two and mixed in human bits. Also all sorts of things are skewed throughout all of them.
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Ron Kempke
After hearing Stan, I'm not sure this is the right course for me because I had hoped this course would provide exercises to help improve my observational accuracy. That doesn't seem to be Stan's objective and I suspect that AI is the motivating factor for his choice of topics.
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Ralph
Well, everybody has different goals. As I learn more and more, I find that both, drawing from observation and imagination have a quite a big overlap in what you need to be able to do. As an example, I'd claim it is benefitial to both approaches to understand how to draw and rotate shapes in 3D space. It is hard to put into words why, but when I took a drawing class back in university they basically taught us only observational drawing. We used our pencils to measure out proportions, angles and so on to replicate what we saw on the page. The problem with that approach was however, that you could ONLY draw what you see in front of you and if even one of these measurements was slightly off your whole image got skewed because we lacked the understanding of how drawing shape in perspective works. As a result we were essentially slaves to our reference, unable to adjust anything we did not see in front of us. By understanding how to draw shapes in perspectives, mistakes like slightly wrong measurements can be corrected more easily and the whole image will look way more plastic and real than it would without this understanding. While drawing from imagination may not be everybody's goal, the techniques involved also help with improving observational drawing and will ultimately give you more freedom, even if you chose to draw from observation. I doubt that AI played that much a role in it given that the best observational drawing device is a camera and that existed for over a hundred years by now. Replicating something with 100% accuracy in a drawing may be impressive, but there are easier ways to achieve that nowadays. Of course that doesn't make it wrong to do it anyways, but you may find that it is not as impressive as it initially feels halfway through learning how to get there., What I did argue in the previous lesson was, that it is too soon for most people to start drawing from imagination at this point, because I had bad experiences with drawing classes that made such leaps in the past, but as Stan pointed out, that is what the level 1&2 system is for.
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@polinaagame
I had so much fun, thank you so much for this task! The yellow drawing is from imagination
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Ralph
Very nice job on the simplification.
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