Mason's - Art School Journey

[Mason_]

"Photoshop" (CSP) assignment, I don't think I understand what the tone curve or level correction tools are doing. You add a point to the curve in the middle, bending towards the top left makes the picture lighter, bottom right makes it darker. But making the graph bend in crazy ways makes the picture all sorts of colours. So I'm a bit confused.

[olashamala]

Same! Although the second time I did it, somehow I was closer to matching the original picture.. Still, I'm doing it randomly having no idea how it actually functions!

[Mason_]

Some more practice. Last week was not good drawing wise. Hopefully this week will better.

Zagreus from Hades. Haven't actually played the game, but I think the art style looks cool. I'm keeping these character drawings to 50 minutes, even if they're not finished.

Practice exercises. Okay, but not quite happy with spheres. They don't look "solid."

Cylinders/skeletons over ref photos - the four columns to the left. Then some doodling from "imaginiation." Drawing over them has helped me realise I tend to draw female figures alot "bulkier" than they probaly shoudl be.

And some more. Forgot to draw on a different layer.

[Mason_]

Some more exercies, gestures and cylinder trace overs:

Final character draw - copied a sketch of a viking by Ramon Nunez from a book I have "Sketching From the Imagination: Characters" - it's got lots of examples of characters drawn by different artists. It was hard to pick one. This turned out a lot, lot better than expected.

[Gordon003]

Look like you recaptured the flow and personality of that Viking. Great job!

[Mason_]

Thank you Gordon. It's a far cry from what I usually draw. Tried the proportion exercis, in the middle with what I might draw "naturally" without a ref on either side. I used a Loomis diagram as. reference. Needs some practice.

Also question if anyone knows. From what it looked like in the video - Marc used 8 heads for both the man and woman - but the face of the woman was shorter making her smaller. Is this right? No difference in the proprtions themselves? - i.e. 8 heads.

[Pattu_w]

face of the woman was shorter

Yeap, that's the ideal proportions for the figure, for male and female. Since you mentioned Loomis here are the proportions from his book.

[Mason_]

Thank you! Created a 8 head guidline frame and and traced over the loomis figure for this one. I'll try a hand drawn one again tomorrow that's cleaner than the first.

[Mason_]

...and again. Probably cheeting a bit, but CSP has a perspective ruler for 1, 2 and 3 pts perspective. I've had CSP for several years and did not know this. Used it to draw the 1 pt cubes.

[Mason_]

And some more. The womans proportions this time. In both the man and the woman 8 heads seems kind of long. I check on one of Marcus's drawings and yeah its 8 heads. I'm just used to drawing more cartoony looking characters I guess.

Convergence Lines

Gestures

Traced Proportion Lady

And checking Marcus's drawing:

[Mason_]

And some more -

2min Gestures:

2 pt Boxes

Some cylinder people.

[Mason_]

Aaand more. I'm trying to keep up with the Weekly Assignment schedule, but I'm struggling. (Got alot else going on.) Will probably try and split each week into 2.

Full measred figure. As you can see, measuring the figure from side to side needs some work. I found this really interesting though. You measure it, think okay that's 3 number of heads down, look at it again and think, "Really? No, it can't be, that looks much longer than 3 heads." - measure it again, yup that's 3 heads.

Aang! From his character design in a comic, that's not yet released.

Proportion exercise.

[olashamala]

I was thinking just the other day of doing the same (splitting the week into 2, or 3 weeks). The original guide is crammed for me to the point of never being able to stick to it

Really great line work with Aang!

[Mason_]

Thanks Olashamal.

Took a break for some just for fun drawing. Amity from a grimdark alternate universe fan comic of The Owl House.

As an example of being inconsistant that I mentioned in my first post. Below you can see my first attempt, that I scrapped and started again. As you can see it looks very different.

[olashamala]

Definitely can see the improvement! I guess even for us inconsistent folks we can improve

[Mason_]

Thank you! I just wish progress wasn't so painfully slow.

Back to the usual. With the full-figure measurement exercise, Marc mentioned you could check accuracy, by just laying the reference under your line work. But, doing it that way, I wonder where the line is between checking and tracing.

Measured figures:

Cube Stacks/Patterns

Gestures

[Gordon003]

Nice art studies of figure and perspectives!

Regarding about accuracy, i think you went a bit too far lmao. Looking at the comparison is way too much like tracing (unless you have an absolute great eyesight to see the difference). I'm not saying it's bad to be that accurate but perhaps you may want to ask yourself what's the purpose of doing this art study? If you are founding to just aimlessly drawing and not learning anything, then you are mostly likely to be tracing

For me, accuracy means the ability to deconstruct the character pose into separate easy shapes (e.g. oval shape for ribcage) but still hold the connection/purpose of the action itself. But that's my interpretation and could be dffierent to yours which is all good.

Check out this video on the meaning and usage of tracing.

Aside from that, your gesture drawing looks so damn great. Keep it up!

[Mason_]

Thanks for the comment Gordon. Life has been...a bit challenging this last month. So it's been a while. But I'm back on the bandwagon.

Some rotated volumes and 5 minute gestures.

[Mason_]

More 5 minute gestures. White on black for fun and some cube stacks.

[Mason_]

And some more gestures. I used a much thinner brush than usual, which helps I think.