Sulphur on 20/6/2013 at 09:01
I can't draw for shit, as you know. But the best advice I've gotten and I can give is keep doing it and keep having fun doing it, even if the fun isn't immediately forthcoming. It's like when you're stopped solid at writing a story and don't feel like doing shit, but start writing anyway in spite of yourself
which you seem to have no issues doing.
Muzman on 20/6/2013 at 09:52
The story sounds very much like mine. Started arsing about in photoshop, got a certain distance with it and eventually got so propellorheaded about it that I was actually considering methods of collecting enough raw photographs that I could photoshop any image I liked.
Shortly after thinking that I suddenly noticed this is stupid and why not be able to 'make' any image myself, cos people actually do that and what the hell is wrong with my brain? So to drawing I went.
Never really got that great at it, but it was cool and can still pull something good out once in a while. It is definitely something you have to exercise fairly regularly if you want to get good at it, if only for getting your hand/pen to draw the damn line where you actually want it. It teaches you a lot about form and light that is always useful though.
I wouldn't worry too much about people telling you to shade and render. Sometimes that can lead you up the garden path (it did for me). Cartooning is very important for form, especially for people. As the book probably says (I don't remember it all that well) you are essentially just practicing drawing what you actually see, not what you mind 'conceives' or intuits. This requires breaking a lot of typical thought habits/brain structures which are normally pretty useful (and why you get those autistic kids who can do crazy accurate stuff from memory without even trying).
You'll have seen countless people who can shade and render really quite well, but their people actually look terrible or something is amiss (even though everyone tells them it looks great or its a style. Go visit the Thief fan art thread *cough*). I can shade and render/light like a motherfucker a lot of the time and its tempting to just do that and fudge the stuff that's hard. But you'll have a wider array of options open to you if you get that stuff. If you know where to put a line to indicate form, you'll know where to do a gradient too and you'll get the gradient right more easily.
The book might mention this or it might be old news, but it's also a good trick if you are doing perspective, incidentally or otherwise, to look at stuff in a mirror or horizontal flip it now and then. You can sort of get it into your head that a picture is working after doing it for a while. But looking at it backwards can show up where it's going wrong pretty nicely. (whether or not you can fix it is the thing. but all in good time)
Jason Moyer on 20/6/2013 at 12:23
3/10. Was hoping for an acid post, still somewhat entertained. Would like to subscribe to your newsletter and/or hear your thoughts on the future of erotica.
Kolya on 20/6/2013 at 12:51
I still don't get how all of this relates to the boobs you played with in highschool.
Wait...Are these really ALL THE PICTURES?
Eshaktaar on 20/6/2013 at 12:59
If you haven't already I recommend looking at Andrew Loomis' books, specially "Figure Drawing for All It's Worth": (
http://www.alexhays.com/loomis/)
The author has a similar approach to what demagogue mentioned, i.e. always thinking of the subject as a three-dimensional object. It's not only helpful for traditional drawing, but also for modeling/sculpting 3D characters.
Nicker on 20/6/2013 at 17:31
Like nickie said, this sounds like the exercises from Drawing On The Right Side Of The Brain. An excellent method.
I had the benefit of a tremendous high school art teacher who had us doing similar stuff, especially getting us immediately into drawing expressive lines. He could do portraits (or still life) with one continuous line which might go from near invisible to as much real estate as the conte could deliver.
He was especially insistent about not altering results. First and second year students were not allowed to use plain pencils and erasers were forbidden. He felt that pencils left a uniform line and were so associated with writing that they stifled expression. Erasers fed the desire to be correct and to produce results rather than explore the process.
I don't think I ever got "modeling negative space" though. The form and texture of objects, that I understood, but the idea that the space around them could be given the same qualities escaped my literal teenage mind.
Mr.Duck on 20/6/2013 at 18:09
NEEDS MOAR TITS, NAO!
:mad:
demagogue on 20/6/2013 at 18:38
The coolest drawing book I looked at was on perspective drawing. I really liked that kind of thinking... figuring parallel & perpendicular & curved lines in perspective, and shadows and reflections. I forgot the name of it though.
The basic lesson you've probably seen... Have a virtual horizon, pick a point on it to be the perspective point, and draw lines from the ends of your object to that point, and that defines all the parallel lines going back in space, and how objects going back should get relatively smaller. But there's more to it for different situations.
Some rules I remember for figure drawing was that bodies can be divided into 8 "head height" parts, and you just remember what fits into each part. There's a similar thing you can do for faces. Figuring things into parts is how you remember proportions. And limbs & muscles generally follow rough S-curves.
Renzatic on 21/6/2013 at 06:02
Quote Posted by Nicker
Like nickie said, this sounds like the exercises from Drawing On The Right Side Of The Brain. An excellent method.
I had the benefit of a tremendous high school art teacher who had us doing similar stuff, especially getting us immediately into drawing expressive lines. He could do portraits (or still life) with one continuous line which might go from near invisible to as much real estate as the conte could deliver.
He was especially insistent about not altering results. First and second year students were not allowed to use plain pencils and erasers were forbidden. He felt that pencils left a uniform line and were so associated with writing that they stifled expression. Erasers fed the desire to be correct and to produce results rather than explore the process.
I don't think I ever got "modeling negative space" though. The form and texture of objects, that I understood, but the idea that the space around them could be given the same qualities escaped my literal teenage mind.
You know, this is what I think I need to do. If I were to name my one biggest problem, it'd be that I can't seem to draw a curve or contour the way I see it. I tried copying a picture I liked last night, and I just couldn't seem to get the curves and lines drawn or spaced properly. It's that skill of being able to follow something with my eyes while tracing it out on paper that I lack.
Like my upside down line drawing back in my first post. This is the image I copied it from...
Inline Image:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/Examples/Line_Portrait.jpg...and it took me for freaking ever to get everything right. I constantly had to draw, judge, erase, draw judge, erase to get it even halfway right. I could see the line, look at the directions, the bumps, the curves, and its relation to other lines, but copying it on paper smoothly and easily seems to be impossible for me.
I think just practicing contour without worrying about it being 100% exact will probably help me out here. And I think once I'm able to draw what I see as I see it, I'll take my first biggest step towards making something that actually looks decent.
...but I think that's easier said than done. It's gonna take a lot of practice.
