Critique - Blob to Box

954
Course In Progress

Critique - Blob to Box

954
Course In Progress
Stan Prokopenko
In this project, we took a more intuitive approach to constructing boxes by starting with sketchy blobs. Let’s take a look at the level 1 and level 2 Blob to Box project submissions!
Newest
Jack H
1mo
My last set of practice before moving on to the next project. As a "final test", I decided to draw an entire body from reference using blobs to boxes. I would say it turned out pretty well in my opinion, even if certain parts may be a little off. This was a fun project, and actually the first project that I actually lost track of time because I was enjoying the process.
@soulnaes
3mo
What is a box? Is everything a box?
@jbeannn
6mo
After seeing people made the top half of people, (head, torso, and pelvis) I decided to try it and I realized that I can use some of the “blob-like” shapes that I would sometimes make during the rhythms part of this course, and then make a box using those blobs. I’m not sure if this is really the “best” way to he doing this. So I have also been doing what Proko says and making normal blobs and also making “snakes” using the blobs.
Alexandra Mayorova
It's sooo powerful!!!! Stan, I've only heard about this method from the Chinese artist Teng Teng, but here it's more simplified for people. Thanks!!! My life is getting better. And I feel the psychological help from the course. People face the same problems and thoughts that I once did. It helps me to look back and realize that my suffering was not accidental. Drawing is difficult, and everyone will go through the same thing. Self-compassion and play are the keys to success. Play more, friends. Don’t get it seriously.
Gannon Beck
It looks like you definitely have a great feel for form. It's such a great tool to have in your tool belt. Looking forward to seeing your progress!
Johannes Schiehsl
Zach Pipher
Hey , I had a discussion point that has been in my mind extremely recently about the role fundamentals has in our art journey and some of my misconceptions that I had when starting the course and I thought the most recent video would be a better place for people to not miss it. When I first started I think I had the misconception that art fundamentals were some how separate tool and knowledge from using reference when creating art. It goes back to the whole problem that has existed forever where people say using reference is "cheating" and that some how its supposed to be the end game for all artists to eventually never use reference ever again. And since you don't normally or if ever see the thousands of references artists use to create comics, manga, paintings, gallery pieces you may get into the mind set that they're just so advanced that they don't use references when they probably had lots just sitting out their studio they look at for a few seconds to make sure what they're doing still looks correct. I also heard another new artist recently complaining that they were learning fundamentals but it didn't feel like they were any closer to drawing from imagination then when they started. So this brings me to my biggest misconception I have had when I started the course. I thought using reference removed the need for fundamentals, where as fundamentals removed the need for references, when actually fundamentals allows for an artist to use references better then an artist that doesn't have those same fundamentals. Conceptually it feels like a misconception that I had dealt with and I would love for someone who is seasoned or a professional to weigh in on their thoughts about it. Sort of, the small parts that make up the whole. Learning Line, Shape, perspective, on paper seems like it wouldn't be necessary when creating character art using a reference of a person in front of you that clearly as a picture is showing perspective and the shapes and possibly lines that could be extracted from it. Does the fundamentals just give you a more solid conceptual grasp of what you're looking for when using a reference to draw something entirely different, like just using a model to not draw them as they are, but to use them as a starting point to make character art? I know @Stan Prokopenko is very busy, but I would love to hear from anyone who is really seasoned and has gone through perhaps the same misunderstands as I have had and have till recently after a year and a half been slowly peeled back to understand the actual role fundamentals and reference has for an artist.
Scott
7mo
HI Zach. I'm not seasoned. So if you want me to delete this reply, I'll be glad to, no hard feelings. But the topic intrigued me because it fit me to a tee when I started this course many moons ago. I had read "Drawing on the Right Side of your Brain" a long time ago and I assumed that all I had to do, to make art from a reference, is to turn off the left side of my brain (the side that wants to draw an eye like the CBS symbol) and turn on the right side and draw what I see. I believe there is some value in that. But there is so many art concepts (a web or matrix as Stan puts it) that we draw upon and none of us puts down exactly what we see. We all make changes to it to make it more interesting, to make it tell a story, to give it more impact, to render it in our unique style. We add, we subtract, we modify. And all of the things we have been learning in this course give us the knowledge to do that and do it well. One of the simplest concepts I've learned is putting down a confident line (well I learned the concept anyway). This is just one of dozens of fundamentals that we've covered. But I notice that my painting has improved because I am consciously using my whole arm and putting down strokes with confidence (pretending to be good) These fundamentals have also opened my eyes to my own art and the art of others to see things I would have missed otherwise. Thanks for the great topic and discussion.
Rachel Dawn Owens
The way I think of it, if drawing is a tradesman skill like carpentry or plumbing, the fundamentals is the know-how and the reference is a tool. Art is a little different because the tools can be used in a variety of creative ways to get the job done. Artists use reference in a ton of different ways and some use no reference at all. I think that drawing from imagination is a muscle that takes a lot of time to develop and understanding the fundamentals is key. Drawing is a language and the fundamentals are the alphabet and grammar that must be understood in order to effectively communicate an idea. Part of learning how to draw is also learning how to study and it’s really impossible to study without material to work from. And that is where reference can help. Reference is a tool, use it however suits you best. Hope this helps. Good luck on your art journeys ⭐️
Lisanne
7mo
I'm always happy to see that there's another critique video. Thank you for critiquing my submission in this one @Stan Prokopenko! It is super helpful to see your approach to my references. After watching the video, I went in with a coloured pencil to draw new boxes over my initial drawings and will keep this practice going for a while. I'm still trying to reprogram my brain to be able to let go of what I see (a human body, the total form) and focus on the assignment (the shapes, the directions). That's what happened when I drew that weird non-boxy ribcage. There was no genius plan behind that decision I'm afraid ;) Actually now I'm typing this, I want to add that although it sounded so simple to 'draw blobs to boxes', I discovered that it's about so much more. For me, I'm really learning to see the flow and movement of a figure, to become aware of the separate body parts, and learning how they can point towards different directions but still work together. Through this project I feel like I became aware of a really important step in the proces. I'll stop rambling. This project teaches a valuable lesson that I can apply to my personal projects. Thanks again, I really appreciate your feedback!
Stan Prokopenko
I'm glad the critique was helpful. Keep up the great work with your drawings!
Ihori Kobayashi
As watching the demo and critique videos, I practiced more blobs. I am slowing improving in finding right box rotations, but it takes me several trial and errors before I got it right. So when finally I found the rotations and positions of the boxes, they are often shifted from original blobs.
Dermot
7mo
Hey I like your Bloboga. Namaste :)
@lieseldraws
Hi, Stan. This is super helpful. Watching you go through other students' works teaches me a ton!! I learn a lot by following your demo in these critiques. Also, thanks so much for answering my questions at the end there. Your answer really cleared things up :)
Brandon
7mo
Thx for the critique video. Actually, I haven't finished reading the whole fun with pencil coz I am stuck at the exaggerated pose page, haven't a hard time understanding why the exaggerated pose looks so much more fun. So far, I like the most for the easy-following guide on creating characters by attaching different blobs on the face. I copied some of the drawings then tried to create my own. @Stan Prokopenko You mentioned a few times on difference between intuitive people and logical people in drawing. As a logical person, i am too afraid to break rules, do you have any exercise to mitigate the anxiety? Or the question is a bit too early to think about as a beginner?
Stan Prokopenko
Pedro gave you a great answer! I agree that drawing from reference, copying, and master studies are extremely valuable. I focused about 95% of my efforts on that as a student. If I could redo it, I would balance it more with drawing from imagination.. maybe 70% reference and 30% imagination to start, and slowly increasing to 50/50 as I got more advanced. Learning fundamentals like construction and gesture will help you draw from imagination better. Stylization often breaks the rules, but the most effective way to do this comes from first really understanding the rules and then choosing which ones to break for the best effect. Your logical mind will help you learn and master these rules which will give you the control to do this intentionally. Incorporating drawing from imagination will help you learn to do this intuitively. Keep up the great work!
Pedro Branco
I've been coming back to this lesson a few times since I don't get the blob part and whenever I see your comment I'm hoping someone would just reply as I'm not in much of a position to do so. However obviously we're still here and you have no reply so let me illuminate a few things. So sorry if I come off as a jerk but that's the state that I'm in as I really can't come up with a better way to say this. I've taken one of your most recent submissions and I'd like to point out that you made this, along with with a whole host of other submissions entirely on your own without following any set rules bar the requirements of using blobs and turning them into boxes. You could have just made variations of what Stan showed us in the demos but you came up with your own original set of examples. You are always going to have a few basic rules that you must follow when drawing. If you want to draw a landscape you're not going to fill a page with a portrait and call it a landscape. So you're being anxious at something you're already doing, unless you have something much more specific in mind. That or I'm misunderstanding what you're trying to say.
Juice
7mo
I’m sculpting with clay now and when I do it it can feel a bit like cheating because I don’t need to think of perspective and make an illusion of depth. 🙃 If its not a diorama with flat background I want to create depth to.
Pedro Branco
I took Patrick's approach to this assignment and did a quick 10 pictures 1 minute practice. I'm still not clear on what I'm looking for here. The way I understood this assignment is that we're supposed to make circular shapes and fit a cube in perspective inside or roughly within the limits of our defined space. I'm still more comfortable just putting down the cubes especially with the time limit and a model. I can also make these from imagination if need be. I feel like I'm skipping something important and given my shortcomings I can't allow that.
Dermot
7mo
I think this blob to box would be wrong ( see image) as the end of the blob is sticking out of your box. I think the end edge of the box needs to move the the edge of the blob as the blob is I think again clunk clunk, the blob is supposed to help define the edges of the possible box. Your blob is escaping the box ! Hopefully it's not contagious ! :)
Martin M
7mo
If you feel like you can immediately draw the box and are happy with the result then there may not be a need to draw the blob first. But if you feel like your boxes are not perfect then the blob approach offers the advantage of going through the observation steps one at a time: 1) Drawing the blob gives you rough size and shape of the box 2) drawing the oval onto the blob makes you focus on one side of the box and the size of that side WITHOUT committing any final lines 3) Adding the first edge of the box. This single first line of the box will do many things: a) it establishes one of the vanishing points for the box b) it will establish the length of the box c) it sort of cuts the blob in half and thus you are making a decision about how much of other side planes are visible 4) Adding the following lines will now be a process of locking in the rest of the vanishing points and the size of the box and it's planes. So this blob to box process helps to split up the many decisions you have to make to draw a box. And if the end result is not good enough and you are able to distinguish what's wrong then you know which step of the process requires more focus or practise.
zan
7mo
haha, consider myself chastised. thanks Stan.
Dermot
7mo
Thanks for sharing the critiques. The intuitive blob approach has been helpful. I liked the figures to blobs to boxes demos. :)
Martin M
7mo
I really enjoyed the "monologue" about all the different art topics represented as a web of knowledge instead of a linear progression tree. Learning something and coming back to it months or years later seems to have value. At least I notice a lot of artists saying "I am brushing up on my fundamentals" or "Going back to the fundamentals". So it definitely seems like one can not master an entire topic like perspective in just one go. Better to learn the basics and get to start applying perspective in your drawings and projects in order to start training that muscle. This annoys the completionist in me as I realise that I can never say that I have completely finished learning perspective as I will have to come back to it in the future. BUT at the same time it is liberating because this tells me that I need to keep on learning different things and jump back into a topic later once my knowledge of other topics around it has improved enough. As in I am never blocked, there's always something else to learn or practise. Overall this removes some frustration around not seeing improvement or progress after practise sessions. If some topic stops improving then jump to another topic that is somehow connected and improve there instead. This drawing skill as a web of topics just feels very different to some other fields where the topics to learn are sets of very specific rules that you learn in the linear order (looking at you engineering, comp sci, med, etc). Sure there's intuition in those fields as well, but specifically the learning process in art requires you to loop back and forth A LOT MORE instead of considering a topic DONE. Thanks again for this monologue. Felt like a really insightful podcast episode.
Dermot
7mo
Great post, thanks for posting your observations I was thinking the same about the web. A great critique video all round.
Edo Moya
7mo
Gaddammit, I was so distracted by my masterful blobs that I didn't even bother to put the correct box, the perils of blobbing to much. I'll pay better attention now on 😌
Mireina
7mo
Thanks for the critique, Stan! Indeed, it was the first time I made this type of stuff from "imagination". As I suffer from aphantasia (a real condition! :D) I was never stepping out of my comfort zone and only drawing from observation, and unfortunately without a clue of what I was doing. I took this course exactly to learn how to draw freely and you gave me great approaches to start with, thanks again, can't wait for the next lessons!
Lenserd martell
Thank you for the compliment! I always work hard and study other tasks periodically. I'm always waiting for the next class! I'm always happy every time I come here because I can gain the knowledge I lack! thank you! I used a translator so the sentences may be a bit strange, but I hope you get the message across! thank you Stan!
Zach Pipher
Stan, I really like doing the practice assignments, They make me feel good because I feel successful when I do them. However I don't really spend time doing personal projects. Whenever I draw I just do the most recent lesson or a lesson from the past that I felt like I needed more time doing. However I am worried though if I am stunting my growth by not drawing something for me- or rather something original, either from a reference or from imagination. How important would you say it is to make sure I spend a few days a week drawing for me and not doing old projects over and over again?@@ For reference I love drawing characters but they never look as good as I like them to. So i default to doing drawing that makes me feel comfortable.
Peyton Angelle
Ive had the same issue where I feel im never "ready" to do my own projects that I want to do because I know I still have so much to learn and areas that I need to improve on. Lemme say after 3 years of doing nothing but exercises and mini studies, I still dont feel "ready" and ive seen pros talk about the same thing that youll never feel ready, you just have to jump in and do it anyway and dont be afraid of failure. The best way to learn is from your mistakes. One of the biggest things im noticing for me is that all the studies and exercises im doing are good and all but Ive never really put them into practice in a final piece. So even tho I understand the concepts of them, actually making it all work together in one piece is another skill that needs to be practiced. Making time to draw what you want and have fun is just as important as doing studies and exercises because speaking from personal experience, you can get burnt out pretty quick only doing rigid boring exercises. You can also try to find a way to implement those exercises into something you want to draw. Ive seen art work that wasnt like super crazy detailed or rendered but it got the idea across and thats what made it interesting.
Pedro Branco
Chief I feel you, I've been in the cycle of fundamentals practice > get fed up > try a personal project > fail miserably > repeat for 3 years now. I sincerely hope to finish this year being able to draw my own works. To this effect I embarked on a bit of a journey to completing a personal project this past month, big reason why you haven't seen much from me bar that very rushed picture during this past assignment. It's in your best interests to keep on studying what Stan has taught us so far and try and "see" these theoretical concepts in the works that you like. Art is very much a subject that requires a lot of "understanding" in many fields and while it's often times best to figure these things out on your own, feel free to ask around for advice or a few nudges here and there. For example try to see the VPs and the "boxes" in drawings. Ask yourself "where did this artist put weight on his lines", "what shapes did they use" etc. So you can start building knowledge to make the pieces that you want. A nudge that I can give you is to find mistakes in artwork that you like. I was very surprised when I put the piece that motivated me to draw under the lens and noticed that it wasn't at all anatomically correct. The artist had made a great piece out of a pose that shouldn't work, their understanding of the subject being so good that only people with a certain knowledge would see it from the get go. In my opinion that's being a great artist.
@wonderphantom
Something you can try is incorporating some of the lessons in designing/ drawing your characters. Using the lessons about shape and perspective to construct some cool poses for example.
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Founder of Proko, artist and teacher of drawing, painting, and anatomy. I try to make my lessons fun and ultra packed with information.
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