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Art post
I've been frustrated at my art abilities recently because, like many things I do, I've skimmed past a lot of boring fundamentals and picked and chosen what to focus on, so while some things I do look good, I struggle with other things. Much like I did with lots of academic subjects, really. Probably ADHD--if I'm not interested in something I find it VERY HARD to make myself do it. Math and other science homework was much like that for me. I was quick to pick a lot of things up that carried me until I hit a wall (which was calculus and chemistry in highschool).
So continuing to do basic gesture drawing, practicing things I'm deficient on (HANDS), etc. has shot me in the ass too many times. I finally realized that right at this moment, since I deliberately have not been soliciting clients* for book covers because of the house-buying and move, I have time that I could devote to remedial art education.
So I bought a course on cubebrush.com--I didn't want to join one that was live online because showing up at a certain time and sitting there for a specified amount of time isn't great with all the things that have to be done with the house--and have been poking at it for the past three-four weeks. Have I been steadily working at it for 3-4 hours a day like the creator suggests? Oh hell no. Have I at least been managing to sit down and either watch a video, do exercises, or both 4-5 days a week? Yup.
(Have I started to get a clue what the Curves adjustment layer in Photoshop actually does? YES.)
Anyway, I usually ask for no constructive critique on art I post because it's DONE and FINISHED and I won't go back to it, but these are all learning things, so feel free to crit (unless you're a "I tell the HONEST TRUTH and if it's painful SO WHAT" type of person, in which case you are kindly invited to go elsewhere because combative attitudes are not actually constructive.)
Here's a set of daily assignments. The first is three days' worth of gesture drawings. Gesture is to get down the movement and energy of the pose. It's not a finished picture, but a tool for capturing something. Years ago when I was first learning I was taught to scribble gestures, to basically make a sort of cloud to capture the pose, and I did that a lot but never really felt like I was getting better, and I screwed up proportions SO MUCH. I'm better with this class, because the teacher's method is to get the action line (mostly the spine, but sometimes limbs) down first, quickly hit the ribcage and pelvis, then get the limbs in with dots at the joints and a circle for the head. Basically a stick figure. If you've got time, start other things. (focusing on the bits closer to the viewer. which I tend to forget.) Ideally you'd be able to tell what pose the person is in and what direction they're facing :)
This vibes much better with me because I can get proportions of limbs in with lines and dots SO MUCH BETTER than scribbles. Does it mean I actually get the proportions correct? Not necessarily. Does it mean I'm better than I used to be? Yes.
Three days worth of gesture drawings, on each day the first is 20 30-second poses, followed by 10 one-minute poses. I've got a program called GestureDrawing (also from Cubebrush.com) that I can set to show random photos from a folder for a set length of time, so I'm using that. If you think you might want to get something from Cubebrush, I think I might have an affiliate code, so let me know and I'll check.
And after I do the gestures, then I do a longer figure drawing. These aren't timed, but it takes about 18-20 minutes to do each. The first one, I dropped the photo right into the file so I could check the proportions like that, but for the other three I just let the program show me the picture and I use my stylus to first get the proportions down (you know the thing with the artist holding a pencil out? Sort of like that), then eyeball it from there.
I'm also cheating a bit by using my eraser, but if I were doing this on paper with charcoal, I'd be brushing it away when I needed to refine or redo an area, so whatever.
I've been choosing long stretched-out poses because I'm way better at dramatic perspective poses than I am standing or long lying poses. Proportions have never been my strength. But I feel I'm actually getting better! :D
[*If you are an existing client, feel free to contact me and book something! If you are not one, contact me anyway but I may schedule you several months from now.]
So continuing to do basic gesture drawing, practicing things I'm deficient on (HANDS), etc. has shot me in the ass too many times. I finally realized that right at this moment, since I deliberately have not been soliciting clients* for book covers because of the house-buying and move, I have time that I could devote to remedial art education.
So I bought a course on cubebrush.com--I didn't want to join one that was live online because showing up at a certain time and sitting there for a specified amount of time isn't great with all the things that have to be done with the house--and have been poking at it for the past three-four weeks. Have I been steadily working at it for 3-4 hours a day like the creator suggests? Oh hell no. Have I at least been managing to sit down and either watch a video, do exercises, or both 4-5 days a week? Yup.
(Have I started to get a clue what the Curves adjustment layer in Photoshop actually does? YES.)
Anyway, I usually ask for no constructive critique on art I post because it's DONE and FINISHED and I won't go back to it, but these are all learning things, so feel free to crit (unless you're a "I tell the HONEST TRUTH and if it's painful SO WHAT" type of person, in which case you are kindly invited to go elsewhere because combative attitudes are not actually constructive.)
Here's a set of daily assignments. The first is three days' worth of gesture drawings. Gesture is to get down the movement and energy of the pose. It's not a finished picture, but a tool for capturing something. Years ago when I was first learning I was taught to scribble gestures, to basically make a sort of cloud to capture the pose, and I did that a lot but never really felt like I was getting better, and I screwed up proportions SO MUCH. I'm better with this class, because the teacher's method is to get the action line (mostly the spine, but sometimes limbs) down first, quickly hit the ribcage and pelvis, then get the limbs in with dots at the joints and a circle for the head. Basically a stick figure. If you've got time, start other things. (focusing on the bits closer to the viewer. which I tend to forget.) Ideally you'd be able to tell what pose the person is in and what direction they're facing :)
This vibes much better with me because I can get proportions of limbs in with lines and dots SO MUCH BETTER than scribbles. Does it mean I actually get the proportions correct? Not necessarily. Does it mean I'm better than I used to be? Yes.
Three days worth of gesture drawings, on each day the first is 20 30-second poses, followed by 10 one-minute poses. I've got a program called GestureDrawing (also from Cubebrush.com) that I can set to show random photos from a folder for a set length of time, so I'm using that. If you think you might want to get something from Cubebrush, I think I might have an affiliate code, so let me know and I'll check.
And after I do the gestures, then I do a longer figure drawing. These aren't timed, but it takes about 18-20 minutes to do each. The first one, I dropped the photo right into the file so I could check the proportions like that, but for the other three I just let the program show me the picture and I use my stylus to first get the proportions down (you know the thing with the artist holding a pencil out? Sort of like that), then eyeball it from there.
I'm also cheating a bit by using my eraser, but if I were doing this on paper with charcoal, I'd be brushing it away when I needed to refine or redo an area, so whatever.
I've been choosing long stretched-out poses because I'm way better at dramatic perspective poses than I am standing or long lying poses. Proportions have never been my strength. But I feel I'm actually getting better! :D
[*If you are an existing client, feel free to contact me and book something! If you are not one, contact me anyway but I may schedule you several months from now.]
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I am in zero position to offer feedback, just appreciation. XD
I have a janky strategy for proportions (with VERY mixed results, as you know, Telophase-Bob), but I suspect it will not work for your brain - basically for me, tempo (speed of drawing a line) is how I deal with proportion. If I'm drawing at a constant speed, THEN I can control for length by controlling the time, e.g. 10 cm/s * 3 s = 30 cm, vs. 10 cm/s * 0.5s s 5 cm.
Obviously in real life I don't draw at a constant speed, but because tempo/rhythm is something that's easier for me to process, this is somewhat helpful in dealing with length. I'm guessing there are proportion strategies that work better for visual brains but I have no clue what they are!
...it's completely useless, as you might imagine, for angles. XD To this day I keep hearing Erika Lancaster's voice in my head [1] reminding me to go check the angles vs. the horizontal and vertical and also to check relative positions against each other as I go, by drawing plumb lines if I have to. But angles are consistently what I struggle with because my janky ballpark proportion strategy can't account for them at all.
Interestingly, Patrick J. Jones' advice is to just not worry about proportion at all ("It will take care of itself with practice, observation, and comparing the drawing to the thing being drawn," to paraphrase) and focus on gesture/anatomy, which was WILDLY different from the advice I got from Rob Chang and Erika Lancaster. I suspect this may be a case of "different brains are different"???
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I'm not as much of a visual brain as people think. I'm a MOTION brain. I "feel" things. I really do NOT see visuals in any clarity beyond that of a dreamlike state, and I cannot picture something well enough to draw it from the visuals in my head.
But I can feel a physical rhythm--not like a timed piece of music, like you, but more like the feeling of dance, of moving through space and gathering a certain amount of tension and releasing it. It's like a roller coaster--the feeling of ratcheting up and gathering tension then releasing it at the top of the curve and zooming down a twisting track.