Natalie - Art School Journey

Well...I've come to a problem at this time. My next assignment is titled "Study (copy) 5 characters from professional artists/shows/games you like (lineart only)" and I am already having trouble with this one. I don't think I should move forward to the "perspective" part of this term until I can do this assignment correctly.

I drew at least two characters so far, but they were completely out of proportion and I drew them a lot bigger than my reference image (I completely discarded those projects out of frustration). When I started art for the first time many years back, I always managed to draw my subjects too large and out of proportion, so this is a reoccurring issue that has always followed me around. Here is what I'm working on currently for this assignment...

Credits to Nintendo for this render and character.
Before this class, especially during the year when I first started art, I would normally just pick a place to start drawing (like the head, for example) and draw the character from there. Then I would end up using the whole paper to draw the upper half of the character because I would draw the head way too big...and I would have to be stuck with it for the rest of the drawing. Now for the first time, I'm working in Photoshop and I can have the reference character perfectly side-by-side with my drawing. I should have been able to draw in proportion better than I ever used to...but I was wrong. Now here is my third try at copying a character--Agent 8 from "Splatoon 2: Octo Expansion." As you can see, I am drawing too close to the perimeter of the box, and even going outside of it completely!

I came back to this video again...and I'm still not understanding how Marc Brunet does this so perfectly and in proportion (there was an explanation for his drawing of the left foot being outside of his box). Measuring heads doesn't seem to help me as I'm not really sure what to do with that information. He uses simple circles to mark where the joints should go. I tried doing that but ended up placing them all the wrong places possible.

Is there a solution to this? Or is this one of those things that I have to practice and fail at over and over again until I can get it right? If it is just a matter of practice, I will practice a full figure line art drawing from a reference every day until I feel comfortable enough to move on with the rest of the term, but that could take a long while...

Thanks in advance for the help!

OK, since my last update on drawing characters, I kept practicing on this assignment as much as I could. Today, I tried drawing a new character entirely and...

I think I did a little better than before. : )

Looking at this drawing as a whole, I see a lot of mistakes: Josha's legs are too close together, her left arm and baggy sleeve are still drawn out of proportion, etc. For now, I'm gonna have to give myself grace when it comes to drawing hands, but everything else can be drawn better and I can improve from this, I think.

Again, thanks for the help! I'm gonna continue with the rest of the term now, but I'll keep practicing this as well!

Starting this assignment on perspective! I've kept my messy layer hidden. I'm going to add a lot more curves and organic shapes another day to balance out all these straight lines and pointy edges.

I've come far along. I'm now on Week 6 of ART School--although I am going back and practicing a few previous assignments. I have now run into another issue with copying a project from other artists.

I am ready to start the last assignment in this Week, but I'm not sure how to do it...

I first decided to search ArtStation for professional drawings of environments, and I found a pretty one here by Adam Brown. I will add a link to this at the end.
Once I imported the drawing into Photoshop, I immediately didn't know how I was going to copy something of this incredible size.

I first tried plotting some convergence lines and...now I have points where the lines meet in all kinds of places. When I look at this artwork by itself, everything makes sense, and nothing seems to be out of place or drawn incorrectly, but according to the lines that I drew over the artwork, there is no one-point or two-point perspective going on in this.

This is the second time I've been assigned to copy other artists' work and not knowing how to do it. Is there something I'm missing from the video lectures that I am watching?

Artwork by Adam Brown featured here: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/rAb0ge

Thank you, @mitsuki-youko and @catsforsnacks for your guidance! I will start practicing and working through this assignment for the next few days! Later I will also complete and post my original drawing of a one-point perspective environment (Perspective 1 Assignment 3)!

My original file containing my first point perspective drawing went missing. Not exactly sure how that happened, but I decided to just move on instead of starting over. Hopefully that won't impact my growing skills...?
I'm now working on an original second point perspective drawing, but I ran into some 3D issues.

To avoid making things appear bigger or closer than they appear, I've pushed my vanishing points outside of my canvas, which I think ended up working. This project is near completion, but I wanted to take a small step further and add some shapes that have extrusion. Instead of having a flat door on my main building, I wanted to extrude part of the wall towards the interior of the building to make a hallway-like entryway. I was also going to add a staircase leading up to the entrance, but after about four or five times attempting to make a staircase, I couldn't figure out how to correctly draw it. In addition, I wanted to add a pedestrian signal on my post (roughly drawn in green), but it looks...wrong.

I fired up Blender and remade one of these problems and tried to see where the edges were going and what the angles were and all that, but it didn't really help, unless I did it wrong in Blender too.

Any solution to this? I appreciate the help.

Making progress!

And here is one of my works for Digital Production Assignment A.

Now I will be working on that box cover assignment!

I am now on Term 2: Week 2 of ART School, and the lessons and exercises are getting more challenging! So far I am doing well with studying the human head, but I am facing some difficulty with the "Photoshop for Digital Production B" assignments.

Blending different colors or blending dark and light tones are not new to me, but in Photoshop, blending does not feel the same.

This above screenshot depicts a blending method that uses Photoshop's Mixer Brush Tool. The results are...sketchy. No pun intended. It did a pretty good job blending the two colors together, but look closely at the results. Where did those sharp, unnatural strokes come from?

Now this is Marc's method featured above using the default Hard Round Pressure Opacity Brush. It works, but it's not smooth. I found this method to be the most difficult. Color picking and brushing and color picking and brushing...it took a long while to get to this result. I can't imaging working on a large scale project and having to blend each section one at a time like this.

Finally, this is the method that uses Marc's Smudge Brush and the Photoshop smudge tool. I liked this method better than the previous methods, but the smudge brush seems to allow me to stretch the colors a small distance. If I try to smudge one color over to the other with a longer distance, it ends up looking scratched on. You can see how tight the blended colors are in the center. I'm not sure how I would achieve blending a color all the way across the subject I'm painting.

I'll keep practicing and working through the assignments as best as I can. Maybe I'll figure all this out along the way, but if anyone has any suggestions or tips I would greatly appreciate it!

Ugh! I'm horrified by this! I really did try my best too.

I've been getting busier and busier lately. It's hard to find the time to practice art. I'm on Week 3 of Term 2 right now, but I don't think I'll be able to practice all my current assignments in a mere week. I will need a lot more time to practice drawing the head and all of its different features.

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!

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.

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...