Dec '23
1

Here's the start of my journey through this vast art class!

I'm posting some works that I'm happy with as a benchmark of my actual capabilities. I've been at it part time for a couple years already; I've started my own website (oliroarts.com) and got a good drawing setup going on. The only way forward now is crunching, grinding and practicing. Let's gooo!

Here is a description of myself that I've developed over the years. I think it represent the core of what drives my life and ambitions :

''I love ninjas, and there will never be enough ninjas in my life.

Apart from that, I’m a mechanical engineer working in the field of NDT (Non Destructive Testing). My passion is to transcribe the colors of my imagination into creations. Here I aim to make it shine through digital arts. There is no style I strictly abide to, in my blog you might discover many things. Things that evoke different memories and emotions and other things that might inspire. My goal is to make the world a better and more interesting place by materializing the universe living inside my head and sharing it with you.

Welcome to my imaginarium!

OliRO

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2 months later

Feb '24

Been working hard on the bases!

I started by the very basics; drawing lines and circles. Then I jumped into figure drawing with cylinders. I discovered some pretty neat brushes while doing it, like that sketch shading brush.

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Then I jumped on the next level and realized I needed A LOT of practice...

I committed and drew 100 gesture drawings in 2 weeks. I spent on average 5-15 min on each. I understood a lot of things and my eyes are more sensitive to the shapes and proportions now.

I still need practice, and I will never stop doing those, but now I'm comfortable to jump on the next step...

Feb '24

heyo! welcome to the forums! :smiley:

these are lookin great so far!

Feb '24

Good studies and a great start to your journey! Welcome to the forums!

Feb '24

Now that's a number, quite a lot of work here, good stuff!

Feb '24

Thanks! Initially I wanted to do 200, but after 100 I felt like I had enough practice to get to the next step. Its a slow start for me, but I feel like it'll be paying tenfold down the line.

Feb '24

Looking good mate, Id say these are more complete figure copies than gestures but it looks like a great way to start up. Just dont sleep on 3D forms and quick gestures, they definitely have an important role!

Cheers

Feb '24

Thanks man! Yeah I'm struggling a bit with the correct nomenclature for these kind of drawings. Some call it gestures and other call it something else. I settled with gesture, but as I understand they are usually done in max 2min if I quote Marc on it.

I tried those initially but realized I was not very good. So I decided to bang my head at them, taking the time to draw it properly and to understand the gist of it. What I did really helped me better visualize proportions and see the lines before drawing them. Now my real gesture drawings will be much more productive! Cheers mate and thanks for the guidance!

Feb '24

Indeed, gestures are more about feeling the flow and putting that on paper as fast as possible. It also helps with memorizing poses for future use (for example if your goal is ever figure drawing from imagination) or just to loosen up and make sure your figures aren't stiff when drawing even if from reference.

When doing more detailed figures and making sure proportions are in check etc, you are practicing more hand eye coordination and measuring

When focusing on 3D building blocks you are forcing your mind (hopefully) to really see the 3D shapes on purpose, to really visualize and simplify things into these forms and become more fluent in being able to later on manipulate them and "sculpt" anything you want.

The more I advance the more important all three seem to my beginner mind. The combination of all three ways of seeing it is really the best way to go and it's all essential stuff for drawing figures XD it all sounds so redundant when I speak of these things when they are literally called fundamentals, but yeah, yay for art epiphanies

cheers!

Also, I started doing gestures way slower than suggested, I just wasn't capable of 30s gestures XD

Feb '24

Oh boy I just started 30s gestures and they still look like potato sacks! I really feel the difference in brain solicitation between short and long time-boxed sketches. I see what you mentioned earlier.

I feel like I'm learning much faster though, and my motivation is much more solid thanks to the effort I've put in those sketches!

3D is something I'm pretty comfortable with, thanks to my engineering background. The bottleneck is definitely the gestures. I'm gonna hammer it down with practice, practice, practice. There is no better ways.

I saw your blog btw, you are dedicated! I highly respect that. I'm glad to be in this community : )

2 months later

Apr '24

Term 1 finally finished! Took wayyy longer that I initially anticipated. I've been for the major part pretty consistent in my practice session, but they're not as long as I would like them to be. Still, I see tremendous progress already!

Lineart Study

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Lineart Study Background with simple shading

I also sidetracked for a bit and got reaaally interseted in a particular artstyle and process. I discovered Kionaoki's style and spend a hefty chunk of time understanding their process. So far it looks like this.

Grisaille

Colored

I still got a long way to go, but I've learned so much already. The thing that surprised me the most is that the drawings I like the best are the ones that I've spend less time drawing the initial lineart. It feels like lines were guided by my unconscious, as opposed to thinking about how to draw them which seems to break the ''naturality''.

Term 2, here-a-we-goooo!