December 22/23
Today is a day of questions.
I started the day off with drawing what I wanted to get myself in the zone and I did a few pose sketches and then moved onto practicing digitally again.
I focused on Eyes today because I tried doing a portrait drawing and the eyes were atrocious, amongst other things.
I also thought more about drawing from references and learning how to see.
So far I’m learning mainly about how to draw what I see in photo references. While I heard that a lot of artists use references, eventually it’ll be nice to be able to draw without relying so heavily on references. So that means I should learn how anatomy works (as right now my focus is on poses and such).
Sure I can study from reference and get a good idea, but until I understand say perspective or anatomy or how fabric falls. I’ll ALWAYS need to ref (which is fine to use, but to a certain point, otherwise I think things will be so unnatural). But right now training references is also difficult xD. Gotta build my visual and arm library. (I’m discussing about visual library I learned about from this video. I still draw houses with a box and triangles xD So I need to study from reference to evolve my box house to a better looking house. But I shouldn’t need to look at a picture to at least attempt drawing a prettier house from imagination, that’s the best explanation I have of my thought process right now). I should at least be able to know/attempt something better than the box house.
Even just drawing from reference is still and issue. I’m usually off the mark I bit. I think I should slow down and observe more deeply. I remember some tutorials I read the simply told taught to draw figures and shapes first like this:
I didn’t follow the exact tutorial above many years ago, but it’s the same concept. The proportions are divided by sizes of the head, and a tip that was given was to NOT draw the body outlines, focus only on getting the shape and lines down.
Before I even draw the actual body outlines. I never really followed this advice so I can’t say if it worked or not. I thought in my head is that if I don’t draw the outline, how will I know if it works? How will I see if the end result looks “right”? What I found is that when I draw sketches, and I draw the actual outlines on top, the sketch lines would not line up. Like if I had planned my leg to end at a certain point sometimes I’d extend past it in the actuall outline for example. And if I used a reference, it would even better help me know where the body was actually supposed to look like. In fear that I would draw hundreds of outlines that would not transfer well to actual outline drawing, I would draw the sketch and the draw the outline to see the end product.
Because in stick figure it would “look right”, but compared to the actual drawing it was WAY OFF. And I would sometime put an image in photoshop, draw and outline, layer it ontop of the picture and realize its really off even though I thought it looked right.
My proportions would be all over the place. Sometimes I realize I should have followed my outlines because a body party looked really elongated or something like that. Sometimes I’m glad I checked because my outline missed the mark on what it actually looked like.
Over time just drawing a lot I got a feel for things, so I can kind of say that at least for certain poses, my outline and sketch match each other. And my sketches are beginning to be more accurate.
As a result I can’t say if practicing lots of sketches helped me. It’s just that over time, the more poses I drew, the better sense of where things should be helped me draw sketches and outlines better.
A tutorial that did help me is Sycra’s video about capturing the form not accurately, but getting the feel of things. This tip didn’t really quite fully make sense to me until a few days later when I make the connection with another artist’s tip…
Summary:
-I think it’s useful to be able to reproduce what I see but…
-I also think I should deepen my understanding of anatomy so I don’t rely so heavily on reference. It’s one thing to copy/reference, it’s another to be able to “know”. At this point I’m a little muddled and confused about this observation, but in the coming days it becomes more clear (yes I am writing this a few days later so it’s hard to remember what I was thinking exactly at the moment. I kind of knew what I had to do but didn’t understand WHY just yet).
-Simply drawing a lot of poses helped me
December 23
I mainly drew noses today and messed around with how to use the brushes to get the effect I want. I am not sure if it is because I lack the brushes that is needed to create a certain effect, or my lack of understanding in creating a certain effect…
Quick Notes to myself that will probably make so sense to anyone else:
-just make it convincing
-overtime build into more and more detail
More understanding more practice more convincing