General Progress When I decided to get serious about re-learning to draw in early October, I made a couple of sketches which I figured would provide interesting contrast after some instruction. See understatement. To me, the hand from November 19 shows how far I've come in terms of local perception, enabling me to draw with much greater fidelity to the real world subject. I think I am still developing my global perception, which the series of drawings that follow will illustrate. Life Drawing I've been taking a life drawing class for three weeks now, and I've seen significant improvement in my work, to the point where I'm experimenting with materials and technique. My first ten sketches in the life drawing class, over two sessions (the class is once a week) show me struggling with the quick, four-minute poses that we use to warm up, and with composition. I tended to make the short-duration drawings too detailed, focusing on shading various parts of the body and not completing the overall image. I also tended to leave plenty of blank space around my figures. The images speak for themselves: I decided to try charcoal for the quick sketches, and it let me draw fuller, less detailed poses much more quickly. I'm still mastering it (plus I'm using a simple charcoal stick, not a charcoal pencil), but I've pretty much decided on it for the four-minute poses, switching to pencil starting at 10-minute duration. The next challenge was fixing my composition, as my figures tended to "shrink" from my original estimation as I added details and refined lines.. The instructor showed me a technique of visualizing the primitive shapes that enclose the model and prop - typically some variant on the triangle or rhombus - and encouraged me to size the enclosing primitive first, then use it as a guide when drawing my figure. The following are the sketches from Monday, November 20, 2006. There's one pretty bad misfire in there, but otherwise they're pretty decent. I'm particularly proud of the last image, which represents my first step into a new approach to light and shade: rather than hatching alone, as I have done so far (ignoring tragic experiments with using charcoal to shade pencil drawings), I fill the entire area with a mid-tone and then darken strong shadows and use a kneaded eraser to create areas of highlight. As you can see, in many places I have subtle problems of proportion. I find that this is a result of my "narrowing in" on the part of the body that I am drawing and failing to see the whole. Some of yesterday's drawings did point that out to me such that I became quite conscious of it, and I expect that next week's drawings will be much better. I will probably look for key points in the pose, such as checking the relationship of the feet in img30 early in the drawing. In any case, I'm posting this for comment and crit, as usual. I'm also linking to it from my participation thread in the Freehand Drawing Workshop forum as encouragement to other participants to just continue drawing. I've found near-daily practice (with a growing awareness of errors both in my finished product and in my cognitive/creative process) to have been the most important factor in my improvement. Bombs away! [smile]

Not a single comment? Wow.

You're definately improving, but there are still a number of glaring problems. I'm going to highlight/circle some key areas of some drawings, and rather than overly describe what's wrong, I'll use this as chance for you to understand your mistakes.





See the odd skew you've got going here? You're starting at points of your head and losing your balance and form as you traverse it. Right now it looks like a reflection in a funhouse mirror. Look at how your muscles look. Keep in mind that those muscles aren't just floating around in your face. They're structured and bound. How would a skull fit inside those illustrations? You need to always consciously draw from the inside out. Don't sketch a skeleton then draw a body around it, then erase the skeleton! Just try to visualize what's going on underneath and how to maintain the impression that there's a realistic foundation beneath those shiny cheeks. :]

I made up sort of a good practice technique that I often use, and I'm sure that it will help you. Buy a stack of paper stock that is fairly translucent. Now, draw yourself. Keep it light, nothing too dark or harsh. Now lay another sheet on top of that paper. Using your original drawing as a guideline, draw your head completely over, this time trying to avoid the mistakes on the paper beneath it. When you're finished, lay another sheet down. Base the 3rd drawing off the second one, avoiding its mistakes and trying to improve yet again. Do this over and over again.

This also will help tremendously with your life drawings. A great character to try and practice illustrating is Spiderman, contourting his body in all manners of crazyness. It's really challenging. I'll often sketch Spiderman in a "landing pose", as though he just jumped off a building and landed on the ground. It's very tough to really show the weight of his fall properly in his body. I'll usually get it wrong. Then I'll just flip a page (notebook paper is very thin) and draw basic circles and lines (plotting out his joints and curves) over the original; the original drawing serves as a starting point to get the ball rolling. Stick a third page on there, and suddenly you've got a well balanced Spiderman landing on hands and feet in a total badass shock-absorbing pose.



The lower half of the body is looking great. You seem to lose it around the shoulders and arms. Like you said, you're definately losing sight of the overall proportion of your persons. Lets say you started drawing the lower half of his body and worked your way up. Every single detail that you add further up his body needs to be checked against the details beneath it. Before you draw any single thing (like an arm), lightly run your pencil from the legs, up the torso, and into the shoulder girdle. Keep note of the proportion as your pencil moves along the figure. By the time you get to your arm, you'll have a much better grasp of its appropriate size. I sort of compare this constant process of going back to your starting point, and traversing back to your newer details to guitar players: often, you'll see a guy slide his hands back to the bridge after a chord, then sliding back quickly into a new one. It's a bizarre thing, but it works.



Same problems, only you've also neglected the orientation of the bones in the leg. Think of where the knee is, and the rotation of the leg from the knee. Right now it looks like it's been run over a car! Keep those limbs moving in the logical direction - you might be ignoring the Z axis here (depth). If you had kept in mind the leg should hanging back into the distance, I think your anatomy would have been preserved.

Thanks for the critiques.

Anatomy is my next area of focus, and a concentration on building figures up by focusing on forms (and using knowledge of those forms to improve my light/shade rendering, too).

Quote: Original post by Salsa
I made up sort of a good practice technique that I often use, and I'm sure that it will help you. Buy a stack of paper stock that is fairly translucent. Now, draw yourself. Keep it light, nothing too dark or harsh. Now lay another sheet on top of that paper. Using your original drawing as a guideline, draw your head completely over, this time trying to avoid the mistakes on the paper beneath it. When you're finished, lay another sheet down. Base the 3rd drawing off the second one, avoiding its mistakes and trying to improve yet again. Do this over and over again.

This also will help tremendously with your life drawings. A great character to try and practice illustrating is Spiderman, contourting his body in all manners of crazyness. It's really challenging. I'll often sketch Spiderman in a "landing pose", as though he just jumped off a building and landed on the ground. It's very tough to really show the weight of his fall properly in his body. I'll usually get it wrong. Then I'll just flip a page (notebook paper is very thin) and draw basic circles and lines (plotting out his joints and curves) over the original; the original drawing serves as a starting point to get the ball rolling. Stick a third page on there, and suddenly you've got a well balanced Spiderman landing on hands and feet in a total badass shock-absorbing pose.

That's a really interesting technique. I'll give it a shot.

New self-portrait. Just a few minutes ago.



It's still a work in progress, though I may start over and set myself up with better facial illumination. Making out details with the light near-squarely behind me is... challenging. I also think the cheeks are too large, though my scanner does slightly elongate images.

@Salsa:
I didn't want to argue that I was better than the faces I posted earlier, but the later one is about a month old. On a whim I did this, partly to show you more of where I'm at, though I still tremendously value your critique. Thanks!

Oh, and next time I think I'll smile. I've gotten a few comments that this looks like a police wanted sketch!

December 4, 2006:

December 5:




The eyes are off. I'll fix that later.

December 9