Pretending to paint

I figured that I need to work on my painting a bit, see if I can loosen up and not worry too much about immediate details and flaws. Rather being on top and drawing through the mess on paper/screen, towards what I want regardless of what is currently there.

Anyway, these are obviously not paintings - yet. I noticed that, by focusing on the purpose of painting over them later, my sketches became more effortless and easier to work on. Since they are not the final result, it doesn't really matter how they turn out, as long as it's a useful base for painting. So it's not a drawing meant to be pretty, but rather visual notes for me to use at a later stage. As a side-effect though, they can in fact also be pretty. I need to make sure the character and expression shine through as strongly as possible, at the same time as pointing out all the important features and shaded regions/transitions/borders. Basically getting a framework onto which I can attach strokes of color later, but also having a simplified overview of what the end result should be. It's sometimes easier to visualize the key elements of a picture from a simplified drawing, compared to looking at a reference photo directly.

Hopefully following this post will be one with the finished paintings.

50 more faces

This time from reference. See previous post for further explanation.

For viewing reference images, I set up my iPod on a hacked-together stand made from cardboard and tape. It works quite well. Drawing from reference is fun, but I look forward to the next page of free sketches. Let's see if I learned something.

50 faces

I recently went through my whole collection of old sketches from the last four years, and noticed that I've deviated somewhat from my original goal of learning to draw good stuff without reference. Over the last two years I've increasingly drawn from photos, and it's been a long time since I really tried to do anything "free". As a result, I tend to still struggle with those things.

To remedy this, I've decided to do more of it. Starting with this page of 50 faces drawn without reference. I scribbled 50 circles over the paper and then drew an improvised face/head on each one. Most of them took 2-3 minutes.


The process and results were actually better than I had feared. It was kind of fun, and not too difficult. My plan is to do another page of 50 faces from reference grabbed out of a video clip, featuring the same person from different angles. After that I'll try another page of 50 from my head, attempting to get some of that person's character/look into the sketches.

As a fun comparison, here are a few similar head sketches that I found from almost exactly four years ago. While I still haven't mastered the human head, I think it's safe to say that I've at least improved considerably.

Hughes and photos

Dug up a few old Adam Hughes sketches and drew from some of them. Also worked through a couple of photos I found. Particularly fond of the bottom-right woman.

Force it

Animation

Random stuff today, of course. Was initially inspired by an image of some Mojo (not ppg) 3D model, but quickly detoured into very unrelated stuff. The bottom-left head was done most recently, and I added a little 2-step animation of that since it started out pretty bad, yet I was confident that I could salvage it. Click the link to see it. Line quality is terrible as usual, and the scale is really tiny.

Slow start

I haven't been completely out in the drawing department lately, but evidently the blog hasn't seen much action. The last two months have been busy with code, but I'm trying to ramp up sketching a little bit. Currently I'm mostly doing a few scribbles just before bed every night. At least it's something.

These are two from yesterday. Just the old random female head, side view. No reference, and some agony with non-erasable lines (a couple of which I've actually erased after digitizing the image, yay for computers).

One problem I have with this view is that I consistently mess up the size proportion between head and torso. Whenever I go down beyond the shoulders, I end up with a torso that's ludicrously small. Not sure why, but I don't really have any solid experience and "inner reference" there, so I will probably have to find and draw a bunch of photos.

Contrast

This is what tends to put me off from drawing. Depending on my mood, the time of day, and any number of obscure planetary alignments, I can draw either reasonably good stuff or completely crappy things, often right next to each other and in the same session (though crappy stuff tends to breed more crappy stuff out of frustration).
Greens are "good", red is bad. Actually the green ones have technical flaws in themselves, especially the top one, but they carry some kind of "life" which makes me happy with them, and I know there was a clear feeling while making them that I could see where I was going and knew what to do. By contrast, the red face was a struggle all the way, and it's evident that I pressed down hard on the pencil in frustration to try and correct mistakes without really thinking about where I went.
It's almost entirely a mental struggle with attitude, patience and temper. That's what makes it so difficult - I know that I already possess the skills to draw at a certain level (proven by results), but it's only accessible to me when I can relax and go about it in an inspired and loose manner.
Confidence is what I lack, premature self-criticism what I have in abundance.

Semirelatedly, one thing that I've noticed is the benefit of a quick glance at reference photography before starting to draw, even if the reference isn't referred back to during the rest of the drawing. Getting an initial "seed" of reality and direction can fuel the sketch even if most of the refinement is done from imagination alone, and it's almost certainly more focused and educational to spend all your time looking carefully at your drawing rather than to go back and forth between it and some pedestaled reference that reminds you of how inaccurate your copy is.

I need to draw more and think less. It is the truth.

newgrounds

Found the music section of newgrounds. Lots of cool stuff there. Listened to some while sketching this, again in cherrybrush. This is a crop, since it started out as a face and the rest turned out kind of random. I like her gaze. No reference.

Random big-eyed woman + wine glass

Arbitrary female face drawn in cherrybrush, grew into a half-figure (which obviously means the pose is stiff and boring). 100% cherrybrush means no selections or transformations, so I spent some time repainting stuff to fix proportions until I got bored/blind. Her whole head should probably be a bit smaller in relation to the body. Eyes are definitely too huge, but I didn't want to redraw them (again).
I'm actually sort of happy with how it looks if you zoom in to a crop just around the face. I had big problems with the mouth and nose though, and I don't feel like I could comfortably shade/paint those areas fully. Maybe I should attempt that next time.
No reference used, of course. Wouldn't have been such a struggle otherwise.

Mint space chick

I set aside most of today for drawing, but ended up outside running multiple errands and inside doing other stuff. Spent maybe two hours drawing, tops.
I think I'm having some trouble bringing myself to just draw random practice stuff right now. Feels like I ought to try doing something more sensible, like posing and finishing off a drawing or painting rather than just copying photos for no particular reason. When I'm working on a "piece", I can easily go on for hours without stopping, but when I do random meaningless stuff I lose focus after just 15 minutes and start looking for a way out. It's fun while actually drawing, but as soon as one sketch nears its rough completion I have no desire to start another.

This one here is the last I did today - it was a head loosely based on an image I found, which I drew quickly and lightly. Decided I wouldn't risk ruining it by going over it with darker lines and more definition. Made the "mistake" of trying to add a body which went all kinds of bad places. Eventually salvaged it (more or less) and added a gun and colors to distract the viewer from spotting bad anatomy. Actually tricking her out with a suit and accessories was fun. It reminded me of a short period I had a few years ago when I drew cheesy old-school sci-fi women. I might take that up again, make a little series.

White bodysuit

...with a curious black dot sewn into the stomach area.
I spent the longest time today not really wanting to start sketching for some reason... millions of reasons why I had to do this or that first, and wasn't feeling up to it. Then I forced myself to grab a pencil and hammer one out before I went to play some games, and it ended up being pretty enjoyable. Go figure - you have to actually try before you can tell if it'll be uncomfortable or not.

Sketch week

Drawing has been taking a back seat while I was working on my latest flash game. It is done now though, and I've decided to make sketching my main focus this week. We'll see how ambitious I end up being - so far it's going slow but I'm happy with the results.
These were drawn from various reference found online.

Reachess

Sketched for a couple of minutes in CherryBrush, just something random. I've been working on a game for the last week and haven't really had much drawing practice besides game graphics. Will hopefully finish the game in a couple of days and then get back to doing some painting.

Definitely not a sketch

Well, it started with a sketch, or several actually. The first image shows all the preliminary sketching that took place before I scanned and started painting.
Watch the digital process on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDkyqQ2uVHQ

Elvgren stuff 2

Some more from the book. Actually I'm still in the first section of it where his influences are presented, along with pictures drawn and painted by other artists. None of these images represent Elvgren's own work.
I'm particularly happy with the little boy in the bottom right pouring water. I was really in the zone while sketching out his chubby little arms and hands, making them very organic and believable, imho. I almost ruined them by trying to go over some parts one more time, but forced myself to leave most of it alone in the early rough state.

Elvgren stuff 1

As I mentioned before, I got a great book on the life and work of Gil Elvgren. A few days ago I set out on a crazy path to drawing every single picture from that book, including various historical photos and whatever else came up. Mainly though it's full of amazing women stylized and exaggerated just enough to make them look "super perfect" (in the words of K.R.)

I'm not trying to be 100% accurate with everything here, just using the images as inspiration and guide for what to draw. Sometimes I attempt to match the exact lines seen in the original, while at other times I draw something very different that's just based on the same angle or scene shown in the book, or a particular detail thereof (like a face or a piece of cloth).

So far I'm having a lot of fun with it. I'm not worrying about completing the whole book, I'll just keep going for as long as it feels worthwhile. The whole point of course is to learn, and to be influenced by some of the best art I've seen.

Bar

Photo reference, but used loosely. Just before this I had made another one of the same model (Bar Rafaeli) which turned out horrible and was a struggle. With this one I constructed the head on my own, just glancing at the picture from time to time. I didn't go crazy with getting angles and lines to match up on my version, I just tried to make it look good and natural. There are a few wonks (forehead, ear, near shoulder) but I'm very pleased with it. Critically, it was also fun and "easy" to draw. Listened to great music while making it, might have helped.

Hairy heads

Kind of boring, but I thought they turned out relatively nice.

All in one

Several quick efforts from different days all on the same page, and another inside shot of the same car. Both were done while I sat waiting for other people to buy food.

Various females

Most from reference, done over the last week or so.

I bought a neat book recently, containing sketches and preliminary roughs by Frank Frazetta. There's some inspiring material in there, but it's not really suitable for use as straight reference since it's all scribbly and stuff. However, I also ordered another art book today which has tons of old-school pinup paintings by Gil Elvgren. I expect to do a lot of studies from that one, some of which will undoubtedly end up here.