AuthorTopic: The Daily Sketch  (Read 1350859 times)

Offline wolfenoctis

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Re: The Daily Sketch

Reply #3360 on: April 26, 2017, 04:18:31 pm

Offline floralfatigue

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Re: The Daily Sketch

Reply #3361 on: April 27, 2017, 06:18:50 am
Hey peeps I'm back!

@Ai I'm really loving your plants! I've actually been asked to do some trees for some band posters and freaking the fuck out because my forest drawing abilities are minimal. How did you go about articulating the leaves?

Trying to get back into the habit of this - was in a rush this morning and krita only saved halfway. Still playing with landscapes.Or the idea of them. Will try check out Shaddy Safadi's tutorials apparently they're quite good.



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Offline Ai

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Re: The Daily Sketch

Reply #3362 on: April 27, 2017, 08:22:14 am

@Ai I'm really loving your plants! I've actually been asked to do some trees for some band posters and freaking the fuck out because my forest drawing abilities are minimal. How did you go about articulating the leaves?
Thanks :)

My approach definitely depends on having pencil sharpened with a long 'bullet' point, as this lets me put the gesture in in very light tones (side of pencil, with overhand grip) and sharpen it up later as needed with the point. You can see this in the leaves on the second pic: most of them have thick lines, a few are sharper.
This might not seem like it makes a big difference, but I find being able to switch between general and specific like this extremely helpful.

Beyond that:
* Whenever joint articulation is especially important, I remind myself to think of the spaces in the object as being tangible (eg. a huge irregular balloon straining to expand against the solid forms of the plant). This helps make the members more firmly 'ranked'/'sorted' into clear locations in space.
* If you are using tones rather than just line, the planes at joints usually turn over one axis and then fade into another axis. Clearly tracking the turning of those planes helps a lot to give depth

* Leaves are spatially-sorted series of front edges (the remainder is easy to fill in given a good front edge, or can just not be filled in as in the lower leaves in my second pic. In any case, leaving it till late in the piece is usually good). Reliably distilling what you see into a definite spatial ranking is pretty much down to practice.

If I look at what I've done here, I'd say what it most lacks is clear punch-outs (some level of crisp silhouetting -- not on the entire drawing, just on the most important parts so the viewer automatically extrapolates them to the vaguer parts). The tiny yet non-tangential spaces where different clusters of leaves overlap, are what sells the scale of the leaves; And fading out some of the higher 'see through' parts of the overall foliage conveys that the space inside the tree is.. well, a space (ie. some light from the sun penetrates). For a forest, I'd suggest each tree should have only a few such spaces shown, and using other cues like changing overall value to add depth without making the big picture messy.

If that isn't quite enough, you might also gain insight by investigating L-Systems, which describe the regular pattern in which joints develop in plants and trees.
« Last Edit: April 27, 2017, 11:51:40 am by Ai »
If you insist on being pessimistic about your own abilities, consider also being pessimistic about the accuracy of that pessimistic judgement.

Offline floralfatigue

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Re: The Daily Sketch

Reply #3363 on: April 27, 2017, 01:46:14 pm
@Ai

Thanks so much! The advice got me quite excited so I had to go out and try it. Drawing from life as I'm not quite accustomed to using sources yet.



That's my practise paper. First one is top left.



The above is, admittedly, a tree that is easier to draw. But your advice about the spaces between the trees ballooning from a central point helped with this one. I still need to figure out how to articulate particular leaves it seems. The L-system is really interesting, checked it out and the concept definitely changes the way one looks at natural forms.

Realised now that you lightened the sketches digitally. Made a cool effect.

On a side note: Does 'Ai' come from the Left Hand of Darkness? The main character is named Ai.:P

Second side note: Should we limit our posts to one a day? If so, sorry bout that will 'edit' next time.

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Offline A2J2TIWARI

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Re: The Daily Sketch

Reply #3364 on: April 27, 2017, 02:26:16 pm
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Offline Mathias

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Re: The Daily Sketch

Reply #3365 on: April 27, 2017, 02:37:33 pm
dennis we're dragon bro's                                   now let's color them

« Last Edit: April 28, 2017, 08:21:51 pm by Mathias »

Offline Ai

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Re: The Daily Sketch

Reply #3366 on: April 27, 2017, 03:05:21 pm

Thanks so much! The advice got me quite excited so I had to go out and try it. Drawing from life as I'm not quite accustomed to using sources yet.
[...]
The above is, admittedly, a tree that is easier to draw. But your advice about the spaces between the trees ballooning from a central point helped with this one. I still need to figure out how to articulate particular leaves it seems. The L-system is really interesting, checked it out and the concept definitely changes the way one looks at natural forms.

I don't think there's any per-day restriction. Personally I just try to think about how much vertical space I'm taking up, and put some images in spoilers to reduce that if needed.

Glad it helped. Right now, I need to go to bed, but some quick comments:

* Nice consistent tone application, you're obviously comfortable with it.
* Not such a fan of the zigzag motion on foliage, it directly creates tangents.
* Pretty respectable planes
* Except at the base of the tree. which feels like it isn't turned in 3d near the lowest joint.
* Left Hand of Darkness sounds like it might be funny, but nope, not the reference.
* Don't know what is going on with the line moving towards top-left. Is it supposed to be the edge of a block of leaves ?
* Yeah, ground plane was added digitally. It really helps a lot IME, I'm trying to get in the habit of putting a ground plane clearly in most drawings to begin with.
If you insist on being pessimistic about your own abilities, consider also being pessimistic about the accuracy of that pessimistic judgement.

Offline 0xDB

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Re: The Daily Sketch

Reply #3367 on: April 27, 2017, 10:24:33 pm
Mathias lives too! \o/ Gurureat! Go ahead with the coloring, will finish my DAGRON later.



Offline floralfatigue

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Re: The Daily Sketch

Reply #3368 on: April 28, 2017, 09:15:29 am
Thanks for the feedback Ai, I also don't like the zig zags - I'm out of drawing practise so gestural marks don't come so easily to me.... I was trying to copy the fluidity you managed with your leaves in the first one. Perhaps it's just a case of trying it with leaves only for a bit and focusing on that. Tried to draw a tree with overlapping branches and ended up 'colour coding' the ones on different planes so I could keep track of where they were placed in space. O_O


I tried to do that thing that so many people on here seem to get irritatingly right, which is to use previous practise on form to make more things. I think there are certain things I'm lacking because everything looks kind of flat. [Will upload later because internet is broken]

Still broken but hey


Had a Skype chat with a friend last night. I think we ended up talking for 3 hours - but I drew her while we were chatting. It was interesting because the conversation got heavier and the colours I was using got more expressionist.




 

Added spoilers. I don't mean to be irritating with my copious drawings but once I get started I can't stop O_O and there are so many facets to develop on :P
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Offline Ai

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Re: The Daily Sketch

Reply #3369 on: April 28, 2017, 10:45:32 pm
Thanks for the feedback Ai, I also don't like the zig zags - I'm out of drawing practise so gestural marks don't come so easily to me.... I was trying to copy the fluidity you managed with your leaves in the first one.
Haha, that was actually pretty much a polygonal blob (think cel-shading / anime, except I try to think of it as a cluster of simple 3d shapes); one way I get it more gestural though is I don't draw shapes continuously A->B->C->D->E->F->A , instead I move my arm rapidly and put in only the line segments that line up with the gesture (eg A C E -- often consecutive line segments use different or even opposite gestures). It requires concentration to keep the full shape in mind.

I regard the way gesture is described in Nicolaïdes 'Natural Way to Draw' as the gold standard. For me, it was very effective in levelling up my gesture skill several levels, but I'm also well aware that there are more levels to go (gesture is deceptively simple).

For a lot of it, it's simply volume of work (eg. I've done 3000+ gestures in work for Nicolaides alone). But one part that I feel is particularly helpful is where he says 'every so often, do a session where instead of 25 gestures x 60 seconds per gesture, draw each of those 25 gestures in 7 seconds'. That really forces you to get the lead out, because you simply cannot capture the movement of all major parts in time if you *don't* move loosely and quickly.
If you insist on being pessimistic about your own abilities, consider also being pessimistic about the accuracy of that pessimistic judgement.