Natalie - Art School Journey

[Lightning_Flower]

Still on Week 3 of Term 2. I've just completed the portrait study assignment. I'm not impressed with my shading, but I hope in time I will get better at this technique. I am aware about the advantages of using "the full range of values," but I didn't implement that in this assignment very well.

But guess what? My proportions seem correct at least! I feel like I'm getting better at this!

[Lightning_Flower]

The last assignment for Week 3 was to draw 5 character heads from imagination. I was able to finish 4, and I believe I've improved a little! I did realize, by the end of this, I'm going to have to study even more human heads from real photos.

[snakker]

It's tough, but you're doing an alright job at it. I feel learning the skull and the planes of the head help a ton, getting different viewpoints from various artists also helps to further your understanding of what's important

Proportions look alright overall, where I feel you may be having more difficulty is in the 3D form of the head and its features. When in doubt, try making contour lines either horizontally or vertically. For example, a vertical contour of the midline when you compare to a profile view can help you see if your features are in the right perspective, and horizontal ones help a lot with things like the eyes. It happens all too often, we focus on getting the details well drawn but don't realize that we have two or three perspectives in one portrait

As an example, on the last head, try drawing entirely the ellipse of the brow line through the skull sphere, note the eyes are kind of on a horizontal rather than wrapping around the sphere and placed accordingly, the lids have no thickness/overlap and the nose is facing us while showing a side plane at the same time

There's nothing wrong with re-iterating the same face and angle or erasing/fixing the same one to further enforce what you're learning. I struggled a lot at first and I still feel I need to learn a lot more before my heads are any good from imagination X_X

cheers!

[Pattu_w]

As @snakker said, my best piece of feedback is regarding ellipses and the 3D mindset. The ellipse doesn't hit the edge of the sphere on a straight angle, but wraps around it (Save from the orthographic front view).

I suck at words so i did i little example to illustrate what i meant.

I remember that i did hundreds of circles with ellipses inside on the very beginning of the course, and to this day i still struggle to make a "perfect" circle, nothing that my old friend Ctrl + Z doesn't fix tho lol

[Lightning_Flower]

Something I struggle with, no matter how much I practice, are those basic 3D spheres. Whenever I try to draw them, I get a flat circle with a flower pattern slapped on. Despite undoing and redrawing, it never comes out right. I end up moving on and later wonder why everything looks wrong.

I already started the next week's assignments on more perspective stuff, but it seems I am still not ready to proceed as I am completely missing some basic 3D skills that I'm probably going to end up needing for the 3-point, 4-point, and 5-point (good gracious, does it ever stop?!) perspective drawings. I'm gonna go back and get this MASTERED before moving on.

Thanks for the help, @Pattu_w and @snakker! Back to the grind now...

[Lightning_Flower]

So here's what's been happening lately. I have this notebook that I use for both school and for writing other important stuff down. I just opened that, and for these past few days, I've just been drawing circles with those contour lines that give the circle the appearance of a sphere. I've filled pages with these drawings now. Up until now, they've been looking a lot better, and I think I understand them now. Today, I decided to test myself and create an animation of a rotating sphere.

I think I will continue to use this and try to build the face and the facial features--using basic shapes (e.g. a simple rectangular block for the nose)--on each frame. So far, does this look correct or do I need to keep practicing the 3D sphere more?

The animation was done in Clip Studio Paint. I tried Photoshop's animation feature and I didn't really like it.

[Pattu_w]

Hell yeah, this looks awesome! It looks like you got it, always good practice to keep doing these from time to time but i feel like those can be done along side your other studies

So far, does this look correct or do I need to keep practicing the 3D sphere more?

To my eyes there's no need to 100% master all of those concepts to keep moving forward, but do keep them in mind. Really great job on those tho!

[snakker]

Great job on the sphere!

[mitsuki-youko]

EYYY this animation looks great! and yea photoshop's animation capabilities are meh and onion screen is hard to use. which is why i got CSP cus otherwise i'd draw in photoshop and animate in krita and i wanted it all in one place tho krita's pretty awesome for being free!

[Lightning_Flower]

I've got a lot of practice and hard work to do when it comes to perspective, but here's how it's looking for right now. Hopefully one day I can look back at these drawings and know that I'm a thousand times better at perspective then ever before.

I'm a little bit discouraged at how long I've been doing art and how quickly I'm being humbled right now...but...I WON'T give up!

[mitsuki-youko]

these look really good! esp that 2nd one which has a good sense of depth

[snakker]

That's a cool ethereal feel you gave that last one like the castle is a part of a dream, that smooth brush stroking following the vanishing point really helps sell it and being able to see the top of the wall clearly illustrates we are right above it and gives it a solid feel. the less detailed back wall also adds depth

cheers!

[Lightning_Flower]

From here on out, my drawings are going to be more simple--maybe excluding human drawings and studies. My time has been cut short as I recently started a full-time job. This, however, does not mean that my simple drawings will have less effort worked into them. I will always put in my best.
For example, this drawing would have looked a lot more believable had I added some windows to the wall, maybe if I gave the ground some grassy texture, or had I not rushed the cliff underneath the bridges (there were supposed to be two, but I guess it looks like one with a gap in the center), but I decided to just go ahead and stop at this final version. I still get the idea behind 4 point perspective.

I gotta figure out spheres in perspective...

[mitsuki-youko]

My time has been cut short as I recently started a full-time job

Congrats on the new job! and RIP for the time cut short :3

this looks pretty cool!

[Lightning_Flower]

Tiny update on my progress: I'm still stuck in Term 2 with the head studies and drawings. I'm still drawing them incorrectly (I check my work) and not making any improvements. I'm tempted to hire a temporary tutor to watch me practice and explain to me what I'm doing wrong and what I need to do to correct it, since I can't figure it out myself. I know I can find some professional tutors on Wyzant. I remember having a great experience with private tutoring when I was studying game development and programming. Or if Marc Brunet offers any sort of tutoring sessions, I would love to schedule a couple with him. I'd pay extra, of course.

I'm about to get ready for my next shift, so if I find some time over the weekend, I will post my drawings and try to explain where I'm struggling and what I'm still not understanding. I always appreciate the help, everyone!

[Lightning_Flower]

I'm back. It's been about three months now and I deeply regret letting that time that I could have been practicing slip by.

Sometime after I recorded my last update here back in December 2023, some traumatic life stuff started happening. My life is in disarray right now, but I'm working toward finding healing and solutions. During this time, I either had no time for art or was just too depressed to pick up my pen. Every once in a while, I worked on practicing my basic fundamentals, but I haven't gotten much farther than that.

I'm ready to return and keep working towards my dreams, but I have a couple issues to resolve:

1) During this harsh time, my self-discipline was destroyed. There are days where I actually do have time to do art, but I choose not to. I'm not sure why I do this, or how to revitalize my self-discipline. Today I just found out that Marc offers ARTSchool + Feedback, which is something I think I really want to get once a spot opens up for me. Since I'm going to be struggling with self-discipline and trying to get myself to do art, I know having a teacher to report back to will hold me accountable and responsible for getting art practice done everyday--and I know that I'll enjoy practicing art more when I have a weekly purpose to achieve. While I'm waiting for a spot to open up, I'm going to try to re-learn self-discipline and practice art more, but does anyone have any suggestions or tips in regards to living in a more disciplined manner?

2) I don't remember where I am in regard to the ARTSchool weekly schedule (I remember someone saying something about I didn't have to follow it exactly, but personally, I like following checklists), but before I figure that out, I really feel like I should practice my fundamentals again before I practice something crazy like the human head. Major problem though: my fundamental skills suck. Maybe I didn't practice them enough back in Term 1? I wish I had caught that sooner, but, oh well...

So far when practicing drawing the sphere, I'm doing...all right. I figured out a trick to draw the 3D sphere's Z-axis/vertical lines correctly, but I haven't figured out how to draw the horizontal rings. Best I can do is guess where they are, but it ends up making the whole sphere look wrong. My main struggle right now is figuring out how to extrude a sphere. My first tackle to this problem was to create some reference pictures of an extruded sphere and practice on that. Here's how I did that in Blender...

Sorry about my poor lighting. I had to create multiple reference photos and I was not going to wait hours for these to finish rendering.

So I tried tracing over these, drawing from reference, and then I drew them from imagination. Well, that flopped immediately. I gave up on this approach pretty quickly.

Some days later, while I was on my break at work, I was trying to draw spheres again in my sketchbook, and somehow I accidentally stumbled on a trick to draw the 3D spheres vertical rings correctly (or at least, I hope this is correct. It looked accurate to me)...

*Ignore the perspective grid. I was trying to extrude the sphere and it didn't work out.

It's hard to see how I figured this out, so I'll probably have to record my steps another day, but after learning this and watching a video (can't remember the name of it) on YouTube by "pikat," I realized that in order to draw anything in correct perspective to make it look 3D, there's some rules and tricks to follow. For example, you can't just practice drawing the basic cube by just drawing a box--or it'll look like a flat isometric drawing. You have to use perspective lines and convergence points and all these other rules in order to be able to draw a 3D cube in any shape, angle, size, place, etc.

Now we all know the rules for drawing a cube in perspective: this line converges to this point and that line converges to that point and yada yada yada... So what's the rule or "trick" for extruding spheres? Is there a grid or line in supposed to follow? Because I'm not seeing it. For example, when I try to extrude the face of this sphere in the next following picture, I don't know how to extrude it STRAIGHT from the originating face of the sphere. Whenever I practice this, I end up with an extrusion that looks...angled...and not correctly aligned.

Also, I'm sorry this is a long post. I should have gotten straight to my question, but the reason I wanted to write all this is to get feedback on everything I've learned. Is everything that I've said I've learned correct? Is there anything I'm wrong about that I need to fix before I proceed?

Happy New Year, by the way, everyone! And thanks in advance for the help!

[mitsuki-youko]

Hiii!

First off, welcome back! I'm sorry to hear that you've been going through hard times and wish you the best... ...

does anyone have any suggestions or tips in regards to living in a more disciplined manner?

As an undisciplined person myself, I can only comment on what I wish I could accomplish. I know there are slots in the day where I can work on art.. but because I'm a perfectionist, 30 mins won't allow me to finish anything so I never start. Even though if I work on it for 30 mins, it builds up over weeks, months and years.. Like conceptually I know that but I can't bring myself to do it because I can't finish all in one go (like I only start if I have like at least an hour + which is bad I know...)

What I wish I could do is to just do it. 5 mins, 15 mins, 30 mins, an hour. no matter how much time I have I would ideally like to be able to work on art in one way or another. whether its art school or just drawing/working on my personal project.

As to how you get disciplined to "just do it"........ idk otherwise I'd be doing it XD..

Perhaps start with trying to find out WHY you feel undisciplined.. like for me it's because 1. I'm a perfectionist, and I recently discovered... that 2. I'm lazy.. I don't like having to re-work so I spend as much time planning to NOT rework as possible which ends up with me not doing anything lol. - even if reworking would lead to better work. I simply have to figure out how to not be lazy about it which in turn will help with my discipline. perhaps write in a notebook all the possible reasons you may feel this way..

Sorry lol I can only give you an example of my experience. that's probs not much help :3

Some days later, while I was on my break at work, I was trying to draw spheres again in my sketchbook, and somehow I accidentally stumbled on a trick to draw the 3D spheres vertical rings correctly (or at least, I hope this is correct. It looked accurate to me)...

Oooooh what you did here looks gorgeous!!

Looks right to me XD

You have to use perspective lines and convergence points and all these other rules in order to be able to draw a 3D cube in any shape, angle, size, place, etc.

Yeah I think this is right. If you place a square/rectangle thing in front of you and look at it straight ahead you'll see it do literally that vs looking just like a cube.

Now we all know the rules for drawing a cube in perspective: this line converges to this point and that line converges to that point and yada yada yada... So what's the rule or "trick" for extruding spheres? Is there a grid or line in supposed to follow? Because I'm not seeing it. For example, when I try to extrude the face of this sphere in the next following picture, I don't know how to extrude it STRAIGHT from the originating face of the sphere. Whenever I practice this, I end up with an extrusion that looks...angled...and not correctly aligned.

hmmmm now you got me thinking......

imo to extrude from a sphere... I would first try to "cut the sphere" and then "pull" it outwards.

I've actually not tried this before but just thought through this now and it seems to work...

I think of it like slicing cheese and pulling it out... maybe someone else will have better tips but that's how I would approach it.. I'd try to figure out where it converges and then use that to figure out where the edges are (after first slicing it to get a rough estimate.)

[Lightning_Flower]

Thank you for your response! And thanks for sharing about your experiences! I'll practice what you mean in regards to cutting and pulling out the sphere. I might actually draw a literal cheese block as that's a great way to look at it!

[Lightning_Flower]

I think I figured it out!

So here's what an extruded sphere would look like in one-point perspective. Sure, it looks over-dramatized, so I wouldn't use this often, except in over-dramatized pieces.

(I'm uh...gonna practice shading another time...)

And while this last drawing could be improved--by learning to control my hand better--I think I finally figured out how to extrude a face of a sphere properly!

None of these practice drawings are perfect, but hopefully future drawings will turn out a lot better because of the time I spent practicing fundamentals like this!

Next up: I'm practicing the human head...again.

[mitsuki-youko]

eyy these look great!