The Daily Sketch

[Ambivorous]

Nice paints you've done.
The range of light is very pleasing.
Do the caustics too!

Today's sketch contains some NSFW:

Thanks! Not like I can take credit for anything since I just copy photos.
I really wish I could do the caustics (new word I learned, thanks), but g'damn I tried and it was bloody impossible. Might revisit it some time though.
JOEYY!!



I drew her eyes funny, then i tried to fix it and it ended up worse. GG

[wolfenoctis]

[Ambivorous]

I did the damn caustics! 

Wolfy, can you describe what each of the lines you've drawn on the girls represents? I get that there are like hip ones and a top of the skull one and stuff, so how do you use them to draw?

[wolfenoctis]

@Ambivorous: Don't really use them to draw, the main lines of importance are highlighted in green, it should look familiar to you, it's the gesture. I will use some horisontal lines sometimes to align things but they are not consistently the same and don't serve any constructive purpose:

The rest is just anatomical knowledge 

[Ambivorous]

The rest is just anatomical knowledge 

Heeyyy, heeeeeeyyyyy.



I trek on learning about perspectives.

[Ai]

Stuff I drew yesterday but was too heat-exhausted and sleep-deprived to bother posting:

* Abstracting tree tone patterns (most of these are done while travelling, so I start off with a glimpse of the reference and have to draw the rest from memory)



Composition + misc :
Spoiler: 2 pics

Doing these value oriented studies, I really feel the gamut limitation of paper+pencil (or charcoal). At other times I've tried mixing in other things like texta, biro, various types of marker for greater contrast.. generally looks incongruous with the pencil though.

@Ambivorous: The left one is a clear improvement in .. clarity. Are you using a single grade of pencil (eg 2B), or more than one grade (eg 2H+2B)?

[PixelPiledriver]

@PDD: you need to post more man, nice work 

Thanks. 
I'm trying to, but it's hard to keep up.
I really respect your consistency, need to find a way to hype myself up to do the same.
Well small steps for now, and maybe over time I'll get back to posting daily.

A quick sketch while shopping at Ikea with Jengy.
Not time for anything else.

Wolfy, can you describe what each of the lines you've drawn on the girls represents?

@Ambivorous: Don't really use them to draw, the main lines of importance are highlighted in green, it should look familiar to you, it's the gesture. I will use some horisontal lines sometimes to align things but they are not consistently the same and don't serve any constructive purpose:

@Ambivorous
To put it another way, not every mark on a page has an immediately specific or unique description.
Or a 1 to 1 relation to a physical feature, like a line used to represent an anatomical form.
But they all fall under construction, and each is a tool to help the artist create the drawing.
Volumes, length, alignment, angle, projection etc are examples of using relative marks as tools without necessarily "drawing anything".
These help you create and judge 2D and 3D relationships.
A combination of those marks together lay out a guide for you to apply another layer of construction marks or marks with a physical and polished intent.

Whether you leave them in or not is up to you.
A lot of times I erase out construction lines from my drawings as I work, after finished a mark as a tool I no longer need it. --> more often when using a single layer approach rather than having construction on a layer below
But it's useful to leave it in while working for overall comparison as you develop the art.

[wolfenoctis]

@PDD and Ambivorous: I used to do a lot of construction lines with my drawings, but it got really technical and produced mechanical results which took a much longer and would be suboptimal for animation. I think it's a useful exercise to do some of these mechanical drawings to try to give you an idea of the 3d shape of the body but not for your main drawing technique as you tend to lose the flow/gesture of the figure. Some old examples below:
   

[Ambivorous]

@Ambivorous: The left one is a clear improvement in .. clarity. Are you using a single grade of pencil (eg 2B), or more than one grade (eg 2H+2B)?

Oh I'm not actually supposed to be focusing on clarity - it just makes things take longer. I get carried away sometimes though.

So funnily enough, on all my sketches, I write down what pencil I used (you can see the B on both of those). This was useful in the beginning because I was learning what kind of things the different pencils do (I have from 2H to 6B), but I guess now it's kinda superfluous because I can recognise what pencil I used just by looking at my sketches for the most part. xD
That said, I only used two pencils on one piece if I remember correctly. I think I used my H or 2H for the lines and then went over those lines and did my shading in one of my heavier Bs (I marked the sketch as being 2H + 3B or whatever) and it made quite a massive difference. It's a lot easier to draw the lines with the harder pencils and obviously shading with blacks is the best for that sweet contrast.

@PPD and @Wolf:
I feel like I should use more construction lines then. That rotating thing looks like extremely good practice in fact.



Meanwhile I've been practicing drawing metal and also more light stuff with the gem. Woo!
I just go to town with the edits these days as well. It's quite fun and feels more useful than just copy pasting.


Well, thanks for reminding me about using different pencil grades on the same image, Ai. xD




Pixels pixels.



Did a sprite exchange thing on DA with that Justin guy who came here that one time. He asked for the same sprite (I don't actually know if he knows I am the same guy).



And some random adorable thing to practice fur.

[Night]

-snip-

Damn, that's pretty cool dude, never thought of doing something like this and now that I look at it, it makes me want to try it myself.