Official OT-Creativity Thread 2

[0xDB]

Hm, todays stuff looks strangely distorted(more than previous stuff). I should probably reconsider what I said earlier and hit the books about construction again, as EyeCraft suggested.
Week 2, Day 1:

Nevertheless you've inspired me to take a sketch pad with me on the bus ride down the coast!

Forgot to mention in my previous post: Please share your results and your experience(peoples reactions, etc.)!


append: (tuesday)
This day was a bit slow. I tried a more constructive approach in the morning (the two rightmost heads) but they still seem distorted (need to study that Loomis book some more). Also still my old problem that the pretty girls always end up looking old and kind of weird (the third one from the left was actually very beautiful with a tender face but I failed to capture that (nose is too wide and the foreshortening needs to be reworked)).
In the evening disaster struck as the train was so crowded that I couldn't find a seat and I even waited for another train which was just as crowded as the first one. So I had to limit myself to observation and then later tried to draw the two heads on the left from imagination (nope, again failed to capture their likeness, the only thing the guy in my head has in common with the one on the paper is the glasses and the woman, well the woman I saw had an ear pin too but that's about it)...

Week 2, Day 2:


append 2: (wednesday)
Today was the exact opposite of yesterday, train was almost completely empty.
Week 2, Day 3:


append 3: (thursday)
Did not draw anything this morning as I was too tired but by the time I was on my way home again my brain was swimming in caffeine.
The man on right was drawn on the subway but I think he noticed me drawing him (and made an angry face at me and then left... doh).
The woman in the middle and the man on the left were constructed at home from imagination. The woman sat very far away from me and I couldn't finish her while still on the train, because she left too early just after I had put in the base shapes for her head.
The man on the left was sitting on a bench outside of the subway and I only had a very short glimpse at him as I walked by but he turned out looking pretty close to what I think I saw (80% beard and hair).
Week 2, Day 4:


append 4 (fridays output)
Half imagination/construction, half from life. People keep leaving too often/soon.

[Jad]

append 4, guy looking down to the right is a step in a very right direction. The way you've rendered his hair as a mass rather than individual strands, the way his face forms a very believable 3D shape when you view the silhouette, I'm impressed!

You should think about the way you draw generally. Almost all graphical information is carried by outlines, and sharply drawn outlines at that, as though you sorta go for a kinda risky approach where you have to get the line down on your first try somehow.

You really need to not only draw what you see, but also omit some things that you do see to create visual priority. Even if someone has wrinkles or strands in their hair, if you draw them out they steal visual priority - and paper space, thus making it hard to fit all the picture elements you want to draw on the paper.

It's been repeated time and time again, but for example when drawing people, I'd advise you to try and draw the negative space around the shapes you want to draw, rather than drawing the outline of the shape. As an excercise. That, and to try to shaped of filled colour(or pencil lead in this case, heh) and concentrate on large silhouettes and shadows in the image. It might come out very sketchy and it might be hard to use new techniques at first, but, well, that's the point of it all, isn't it?

Also damnnn I'm inspired to do some actual studies now rararararargh

[0xDB]

Those are nice suggestions Jad but I'm afraid difficult to apply while drawing someone on the subway, because those people never keep still, they keep moving, rotating and tilting their heads, so the negative space constantly changes, same with the shadows and lights, which is why I think the outline approach combined with some basic construction is going to be more effective at capturing their features. I will try to apply what you said when I'll soon start to make studies from photos though and who knows maybe if I feel confident about it, I'll try it on life studies too, despite all doubts.

Also, share your studies please!

And now for something completely different... well not really but in other news, I was at my parents house this weekend and shortly after my last post above my old computer there died on me(PSU connector made some hot fiery love to the mainboard connector and something burned out), so I was stuck without internet access until now(back at my place). Unfortunately that also meant I couldn't do my daily posemaniacs studies and as if that wasn't enough bad luck already I also have a sore throat and a headache so I spent the majority of the weekend sleeping in bed.
Still managed to do a little bit of drawing though(it was a real good idea to get that sketchbook and take it everywhere), tried a few head constructions from scratch (the bottom one turned out really ugly and wrong, neck should be much shorter in that perspective and more behind his head/ears) and today I drew my jacket on an old chair:

[Helm]

can I suggest something? Move to a sharper, harder pencil, like a well trimmed 2H. At the size you do some of these studies, your fubbing the forms that your lines form on the face just by how large they are and occassionally blurry. Using a precision instrument will urge you to be more precise.

[0xDB]

I'll have to get one of those pencils from my local art supplier then as currently all I've got is a 0.5mm HB mechanical pencil. (As for the actual size these are made in: In the last drawing, the head in the middle is just a little bit larger than a one (Euro)cent piece.)
I blame much of the blurry-ness to my shaky hands when I try to capture these with a digital camera without flash(because the flash reflects on the lead and makes everything look weird) but it's very true that the lines often blur into each other, because they're too thick.

[..].At the size you do some of these studies, your fubbing the forms that your lines form on the face just by how large they are and occassionally blurry.[..]

Please clarify. I can't make sense of that sentence. This is what I read from it: You are fucking/messing up the forms that your lines form on the face(the face of the person or the surface of the paper?)...and the rest does not compute, except it implies something is blurry (yes, I agree).

[Helm]

I meant when you're making portraits at thumbnail size, with such a soft and unsharpened pencil, you don't have to worry about the quality of your lines. Look here:

http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=14035

Do you see what he does in step 2: construction? Searching for parallels, putting curves against straight lines, creating contraposto, tightening the forms together? That's what you can't do until you sharpen your pencil and work somewhat larger. I suggest you do your thumbnails as they're comfortable to you (like you do them now) and then you take the most promising ones and rework them in bigger sizes with sharper tools. The chair you drew has so much more info in the lines than the minuscule faces you do right now, give them the same treatment. Also, sorry for writing vaguely before.

[0xDB]

That makes more sense, thank you for explaining. I still bought a sharper (mechanical again) pencil today after work with 0.35mm HB mines (they didn't have 2H for mechanical pencils, so I thought I'd make up by taking the one with the smallest diameter available). Also grabbed a bottle of fixative because I keep smearing over the previous pages in my sketchbook with my big sweaty hand.

Looking forward to the weekend where I'll try to rework/reconstruct some of my earlier heads with what I've learned so far. Now I need to get back to studying full figures from posemaniacs again (have neglected that for far too many days already).

Here's todays (Week 3, Day 1) very few results:
The woman on the right was drawn on the subway this morning, still with the old pencil but half of her was from imagination again (yeah, she left...).
The other two heads were drawn in the evening with the new pencil, the woman(turned out way too masculine) on the train, the old man(turned out too feminine) was drawn entirely at home from imagination (and without all the annoying shaking that kept breaking the lead mine on the train ).
I need to work more on various perpectives, especially my noses and lips turn out weird from the unusual angles, also the ears... well need more practice.

[xhunterko]

Some non pixel art doodles from me.



And yes, I really would like to start a webcomic. Sort of.

[JJ Naas]

And yes, I really would like to start a webcomic. Sort of.

The flow breaks a little when on panel 5 the cat seems to answer answer "No" before the mouse asks "Are you sick?" and same deal on the last panel as well.

[0xDB]

Week 3, Day 2 (even less than yesterday):
Didn't draw anything in the morning (unresolved thoughts blocked my mind) and almost didn't draw anything in the evening as well, because the rumbling and shaking on the subway really got to my nerves today when I was desperately trying to put down a clean line (so I found myself planning ahead, waited for the stops and then quickly tried to put down as many lines as possible while the train wasn't moving).

The woman on the right was drawn entirely on the train and I had the rare opportunity to keep looking at her the whole way, because she, unlike so many other passengers in the past two weeks, didn't just stay for one or two stops.
Then I had to leave the train and drew that guy back at home from memory but he looked very different in real life (and not as distorted). For a long time I stared at him after I had finished the drawing and kept thinking that he reminded me of someone. Something seemed very familiar about him. A few minutes ago I then finally came to the conclusion that he reminds me a bit of Lee Van Cleef (but then I googled a few images and found that the similarity really is not that big).

I'm thinking of going back to using the bigger, less precise pencil on the subway, because it breaks less often and doesn't destroy the paper as much (plus, the fine pencil makes me kind of obsessed about precision, which more often then not seems to block me mentally so that the lines don't just come out as easily as before. Or maybe not, maybe I just need to correct my expectations of how many peoples faces I can draw in the relatively short amount of time available on each ride.

Anyway, here's the image: