Hello again, fellow students!
I hope you all have had a great week and managed to achieve what you set out to do.
I'm posting stuff today because I'm taking a break tomorrow and hopefully doing a big pile of nothing. Wish me luck!
Week 4: Perspective 1
Overall, it was a good week. It was definitely more laidback than last week. Spending time working with the Kamvas was important, as was getting a laptop stand that puts it 4in higher and keeps me from hunching over. I did the daily pen control, but I don't feel like sharing those as they are just warm-up exercises. All of those exercises are good to get loose, and I added making straight lines by connecting the dots at different lengths.
Perspective
I feel like I'm pretty familiar with perspective, but struggled with what to practice drawing in perspective each day. I've study a bit of the technical aspects of perspective with projecting forms from the 2D ground into space and I tried to recall that a little bit (I think it was a Scott Robertson Gnomon video). Though I tried to do a few more freehand to keep it sketchy and to practice without the aid of the software's guides or snapping. So those straight lines aren't great, but I can always go back with straight lines and tidy it up. And speaking of sketchy, a lot of my line work lacks confidence as I try to find the form, gesture, or whatever. I've done this for so long, I feel like it's almost "my style." But when I see the clean and tight linework others are doing, I can't help but think maybe I should try to be more confident and accomplish with one stroke what would take me 20 tiny feeler strokes.





Gesture
Some of these do a good job, while others I got stuck drawing individual items. It's pretty easy to tell when that happens, because the figure isn't complete. I'm using QuickPoses and am getting close to completing the time for the Beginner Certificate at 89.5% (17.9/20h).





Proportional Studies
I admittedly struggled with this exercise. Probably means I need to rewatch the video (again) and keep doing them. They just feel so stiff. I draw comics for fun, so I wanted to capture what my default breakdown is before I rewatched the video. That's the first one and then the second is after watching the video. Not sure what the third and fourth ones are, but the last one is me trying to be more intentional with my linework. I tend to draw dudes buff, so I felt like they were way too cramped in that tiny little box, which becomes evident in the images themselves. Though I probably should have slowed down, now that I look at them again, they look like crap - for the most part.





Lineart Studies
I'm still working on these and will further share them with the references once I get them done, but I wanted to share two of them that I did significant work on this week. First is Cohen the Barbarian after Paul Kidby for Terry Pratchett's Discworld and second is Lobo after Simon Bisley's for DC Comics Lobo's Paramilitary Christmas Special. I don't like how messy the leg linework is on Cohen, I must have been half asleep chopping those lines. I will need to clean that up. And I feel like I'm spending too much time on Lobo. It's a fun image, but I can't help but think I should be working on something else.


Let me know if you have any tips for eliminating hairy, chicken scratch lines. Or if you have any insight into what I might need to work on (besides slowing down).
I'll dive into Week 5 on Monday morning. I hope you all have a great week!
Cheers!
-Jim