Official OT-Creativity Thread 2

[Ryumaru]

Conceit: As a painter who loves lost edges I can only ponder why you are strictly utilizing hard brushes? It's nice to see you lose priority through lack of detail, but other areas are so busy that it seems to take away from the advantages of vector like illustration which utilizes well designed and constructed shapes to create strong compositions. This is all of course THINKING which is supposedly what you were getting away from in this exercise, which is OK. I think too much anyway, spending my time looking at works and saying " I could do that" instead of actually doing it. Have I ever seen a completed work of yours?

As an aside I saw some of the winners of the batman t shirt design contest and I can say objectively yours are better from a design standpoint. However, the masses are always into whats cool and hip ( damn youngsters) and don't know  a thing of balance and composition. You probably never had a chance at the contest BECAUSE of your skill level. You were elevating the subject to a piece of art, when everybody else just wanted a cool t shirt. Whens the last time you heard someone say " man that batman t shirt has a great composition, I think I'll buy it!" ?

[Conzeit]

Ryu: Um....I guess part of me wanted to do pixelart so I did something pixelart-ish which is using flat shades :p also I kinda feel that if I do things right with hard brushes first smooth brushes will add to it instead of me cheating depth with smooth brushes. I think it definitively has some problems composition wise, I mean the tree is far more interesting than anything on the picture so the composition is way way off balance. I'm not exactly sure I know what you mean by "lose priority trough lack of detail", do you mean trying to guide the eye trough using less or more detail in certain areas?
There's no problem with thinking about it afterwards, I can see what I did wrong and if I learnt anything from what you said next thing prolly wont suck as much :p just because it's something I'm mindful of now and when you truly learn you dont have to think about something to apply it....right? :p. You did say you saw a completed work of mine, I think it was on...um that forum that splintered off the pixelation where ndeal and josh go..that I dont remember what it was called :p

Ha, thank you about the Dark Knight thing....honestly I'm not crazy about the two revealed winners so far but I think there ARE designs in there that are far better than mine,( check the ones I voted for ) so I dont  care that other people win :p Also the whole voting thing is a very big factor in this one, you're expected to either have a following or promote yourself somehow, they do outright say in the site that "self promotion is defintively a big factor for a good artist" so you get what you get :p
I saw the crappiest shirt in there which was just chibi versions of the main characters except the artist called it "minimalist" and promoted the fuck out of it so he got like 400 votes :p. there were lots of shirt that simply spammed their way to the top...I give the "minimalist" guy some credit because he took criticism in a stride and his spam atleast was coherent comments everywhere he posted and not "hey vote my shirt nao hehehehe" copy pasted verbatim everywhere :p He seems like a genuinely good guy trying his best to win under the self promotion situation but I would still be pretty pissed if he got anywhere in the top 5

[Ryumaru]

Ah, that is a fine enough answer; in traditional painting of course, it's much more difficult to soften a dry hard edge than it is to sharpen a soft one so instinctually I don't think of that as an option. However, I do see a lot of your work utilizing this style- it seems you theorize of the next step but don't often get to it. I'd like to see you take a piece further.

All I was saying was that you utilized well larger shapes as shadow and less detailed areas. You could have just as easily made the shadow shapes high resolution and broken up like you did the lights ( but it's good that you didn't!)

Punaji perhaps? I do remember a finished piece, but can't remember what it looked like now.

Yeah some of those are really good, although it looks like they didn't make it to the final cut either; if it's purely based on votes 0.0 I kind of despise self promotion but it's so necessary these days to live comfortably as an artist. I find it difficult to split time between being an artist, and telling the world you're an artist.

[9_6]

9_6: Looks nice. I don't think the lack of volume has anything to do with  rubber erasers or gestural drawing; the problem here is specifically the subject matter. It's extremely hard to convey volume with something like patterned fur without a really strong form lighting situation. try some simple still life objects with one light source and see how that goes.

Oh actually it did have a lot to do with lack of tools.
The rubber eraser is a vital tool for touchups. Without it, you can't paint additively which isn't a small deal. I couldn't give that tiger its white whiskers because of that and all substitutes I tried would only smear rather than take away.
I had trouble getting values other than sort-of-50%-gray, black and white right due to the lack of tools and me not knowing what I'm doing and I still feel that subtle values are something that just happens randomly rather than a thing I can control.
Specifically, I wanted to convey the orange as a smooth transition of darker gray into the white and was unable to do so.

By "gestural" I meant the fact that you just can not get right down to details with charcoal like you can with a pencil or even digitally.
That is not to say it isn't possible to work detailed, you just have to think of new ways to achieve it.
In some ways, it forces you to start off rough and think in terms of value rather than lines which, I feel, is what I've been lacking.

Does that make any sense?

Anyway I tried doing still lifes but those are just depressing to look at because I can't seem to get proportions right.
I have definitely been constructing way too much and never really learned to look.

Some "effort pieces", studies of northern gannets:




I like to think that I somewhat improved on the technical level but I'm still mostly getting the hang of the tools.
I have trouble getting large areas of black to stay black. Using willow charcoal. Can you believe that?
It is kind of an "immersion breaker" to see stripes of dark gray shine through where pure black is supposed to be.
I actually had to cheat a bit and photoshop the second one to darken the background and it's still not consistently black.

Also proportions. Always the proportions.
Here are the refs.

[Ryumaru]

What I meant was that your attempt was honest enough ( and of course the kneaded eraser is extremely useful) but that you were kind of doomed from the start due to the reference. If you blur your eyes, you find that it looks much more like a 2 dimensional pattern than it does a 3 dimensional form- kind of like a tiger tie-die.

This is all to say that I thought from what I saw in that image you have he ability to produce an image that could capture form, but that the reference was poorly chosen for such a purpose.

I get what you mean by gestural, but that word has other connotations in drawing, specifically a more linear based approach where one seeks out the action in a pose etc. Charcoal drawing is " tonal drawing" where graphite is naturally linear based( this can of course change by deviating from the standard medium practices). One arrives at detail by a worked up and gradually decreasing size of " value tiles" to indicate finer details ( kind of like starting an image as an 8x8 tile and then slowly refining and increasing resolution to 64x64) where as the other starts at an already more or less infinitesimal unit ( thickness of the pencil lead) and must work a bit harder to get the general effect.

The latest seem to be better subject matter for what you are trying to do. I don't know if you were joking or not, but compressed charcoal will be a good bit better at helping you get those deep darks. Willow charcoal is beautiful, but can float away on a moments notice. I like the second drawing: the strong core shadow and appropriate reflected light on the necks is nice!

[9_6]

The latest seem to be better subject matter for what you are trying to do. I don't know if you were joking or not, but compressed charcoal will be a good bit better at helping you get those deep darks. Willow charcoal is beautiful, but can float away on a moments notice.

Oh dear, an online check tells me that actually exists in stick form.
I have a charcoal pencil that creates the blacks I need but I hate that darn thing because sharpening breaks it off all the time no matter how careful I am so working on any kind of large area with that is just not possible.
The clerks at my local art store told me, it only exists in the pencil form they happen to sell. I almost sharpened that thing out of existence now and don't really use it anymore.

I guess I know where to buy my tools from now on then.
Thanks!

Also "white charcoal". What is this even!

[Ryumaru]

Ah yes, the sticks are much better for large background passages than the pencils! As for the pencil you have, I don't know if you just use a normal sharpener, but the traditional artsy way of doing is with a blade:

http://www.paintdrawpaint.com/2011/02/drawing-basics-how-to-sharpen-charcoal.html

as far as white charcoal, I don't know exactly what it is. I've used it before and it is different than pastel whites from what I've seen. It is probably just a difference in the type of, and quantity of binder. Not necessary for what you're currently doing, especially if you are not working on a middle tone ground!

[9_6]

Oh I have a special sharpener that sharpens at a steeper angle than a normal one does and is supposedly made for this but it's still no good.
That lead is just too fragile!

Sharp, open blades are nothing I'd really like to handle on a regular basis. Let us not challenge fate!
Besides, I don't really see the point in the pencil.
Sticks have a much better feel to them, it's not really much more precise than a stick anyway and sharpening something that way surely makes a huge mess that is hard to contain.

White charcoal is something I expect to get areas that can't be made entirely white with the eraser anymore because the pigment has been pressed into the paper too much white again.
I'll see if I'm right in a couple of days. Will have all the tools together then I suppose. Only got myself to blame then haha.

I tried drawing (painting?) that tiger again, now with some new tools and the bit of experience I collected over the past days.



Some more midtones and a hint of volume crept in there.
I'm still wondering how on earth to get consistent, large shapes of mid tones right.
It's things like this that completely baffle me.

[Ryumaru]

9_6: I would suggest toning your paper first so that you have a smooth base to work on. Then you can build shadows and highlights out of it. Get some powdered charcoal ( either buy it or just sand your charcoal utensils ) and wipe with a chamois or cloth rag. This technique of course requires good drawing paper and a kneaded eraser for best results. If you're not looking to be a bit messy than charcoal is NOT the medium for you.


Unexpected, lucky, probably won't happen again for a while digital painting level up:

[Facet]

Ryu: Don't leave us hanging what was your breakthrough and how might someone replicate it?

9_6: Are you treating the charcoal like a pencil/stylus? one of my favourite things with dry sticks is the ability to get a massive range of energetic-looking marks on the broadside; like a palette knife or a fan brush. Compressed sticks can be unforgiving but they lend much finer control without blending, (less dust and smudging too) and they're by far my favourite.