Ron Kempke
Somewhere under the rainbow
I am not a monkey. This is a caricature of my cousin but the engineer's cap is mine and I wish he'd return it to me.
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@josephl
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5d
added comment inProject - Facial Features
Asked for help
10 head drawings from scratch. I feel like I'm getting the 3D form down okay but I still struggle a lot with the eyes and some of the proportions. I also struggle with getting down the likeness too, I never feel like it looks anything close to the reference.
Ron Kempke
5d
Construction, construction, construction. I don't see any. Including it in your studies would help you improve.
Ron Kempke
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1mo
Marshall, is there a way to use this way of building for drawing the pose/gesture of a figure? Will you demo it for us when you think we're ready?
Ron Kempke
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1mo
Visualizing boxes is elementary compared to visualizing what's in the box. That's the real issue and it's usually glossed over by drawing instructors. What do you say, Marshall?
Ron Kempke
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2mo
Something that may help students "eyeball" are the cube face shapes that Ernest Watson illustrates in "Creative Perspective". Watson suggests copying them (in orthographic) and drawing their appearance freehand from different locations and distances. Doing this helps build "intelligent perception".
Asked for help
Crystal clear presentation! Great models too! It is my hope that Marshall will eventually show the relationship between figure drawing and this material. How about it, Marshall?
Very nice job. On the costume, try warming your lights a little more toward amber and cool your shadow color slightly more toward red. Using analogous hues on the color wheel when modeling light and shadow creates more visual interest. It depends on the effect your light source has on your local color too. Try using the most intense color for the halftone next to the core shadow, as you've nicely done on your cheek.
Ron Kempke
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3mo
As interesting as this approach is in itself, can you elaborate how it would be used for finishing an illustration?
If I may offer something, I take this as the "okay, what do we have here?" part of my process. It lets me make sense of what I'm looking at in terms of what the model or reference is maybe just hinting at, and allows me to build up my own intuition, and trust that my eyes are seeing what they are seeing. From there, I can push the hints in the direction of what I want to say. I've only been doing this for a few months now, and feel confident in what I've learned so that when I sit down to look at things I like, understand how to make those myself.
Now, if you're someone who already sees well or has an intuition already built up, it may not serve you to go to this level. Some folks can just get right to business in their own way and create something magical. What Michael is giving us, from my point of view, is a structured way to analyze what we see in terms of an idea which we eventually get to translate to the illustration once we are confident that we have what we're looking for to say what we want to say.
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3mo
This is an analytical approach aimed at understanding what's there. It's not as focused on creating an immediately rendered figure (if that's what you mean by illustration?).
However, I do have plenty of videos on my YouTube channel that might help show this complete process. Here's a couple links. One is sped up and another narrated. Hope this helps.
If I'm missing your question entirely here please just let me know.
https://youtu.be/pqHbUWmQODw?si=6leD9PvG2sw1kcVW
https://youtu.be/2H2NNpnN8a8?si=cGtaQcCgLVtdsjSx
Ron Kempke
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4mo
I'm hoping you're eventually going to take us through the entire drawing process, from the beginning gesture marks to the final drawing, so we can see how the final is created from the gesture. I've never been able to make that leap, so I'm hoping you can clear it up for me with a step-by-step demonstration.
He's got the Figure Construction course that starts with gesture and he builds up from that to rendering.
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4mo
Hey Ron, this course just goes through gesture and not my entire drawing process. I have a number of videos on you tube that would show that for you though.
Asked for help
I wish you'd put as much effort into explaining as you do entertaining, like equating the horizon with the viewer's eye level, how and why it can change and how that change affects the perspective. That's a very rudimentary observation that usually precedes any form building. I apologize if my criticism is premature but I think your chalk talks were much more informative.
Hi, Ron!
I come from formal Art Academy training where art is turned into a science, and at the end of the degree students become very radicalized; some despise it completely, others forget why the do art and lose their mojo. Marshal's approach to this course is to keep us engaging with the formal learning but in a creative, intuitive way. I notice that he would post a vague homework to get the students to do something, with no deep explanation (which makes me feel uncomfortable). Then he would post the actual explanation with a more in depth clarification of what is expected. As a student my first urge is to blame it on the teacher as 'sloppy teaching'. I vent it out, get over it, and just do it. I can see the self awareness value coming out of these: Get to work with almost no understanding. These uncomfortable exercises with open endings turned out the most valuable lessons on critical, self analysis thinking.
His approach to this course is challenging to the way all the other courses of Perspective are done, and this why is so valuable to go through it. He talks about it in the Draftsmen Podcast if you need that extra understanding on the logic to the madness. Anyway, I totally understand where you are coming from and wanted to give you a pat on the shoulder. At the same time I trust Marshal and his extensive knowledge on the subject of teaching and learning, and I am in for the ride regardless of how uncomfortable it makes me feel. That means I need to stretch myself and give it try. Sometimes I get nothing out of some homework, other demos are just brilliant and get me excited about tackling a particular approach. Regardless of my internal resistance, I vowed myself to play full in, even when it gets uncomfortable. I hope my sharing helps a little bit with how you are feeling right now.
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4mo
Hey, Ron! The course builds up your understanding of the concepts behind perspective and how those affect objects, and why. With those in your toolkit, you'll then dive into applying those on a larger scale with a full scene that has complex considerations like vanishing point being determined by the viewer's eye. Think of it as learning to rotate the box before placing it in an environment.
When we already have that knowledge as you do, it can be hard to rewind to a time before we knew that and sit through fundamentals. But revisiting those when we get the chance can unlock new understandings for us sometimes. Marshall planned this course to teach beginners in a way that sets them up for a deep understanding of perspective and this is the order he determined.
Here's an image that was previously shared on this course page that takes you through the lesson group plan. You can see Eye Level in lesson group 9, leading into the more complex Picture Plane in lesson group 10.
