malcomModerator
Sep '19

For the circles, just don't go slow. Don't worry about being too perfect. You want to be confident in doing it fast as well. Besides that your doing good. Keep up the good work.

Sep '19

Thank you Chad and Malcom for your well-wishes and advice. :pray:

Now, on to day two of Chris' death march to artistic excellence: Figure drawing!

I won't say that I'm amazing at it, but I definitely have spent more time doing it than any other artistic endeavor, so I'm not completely green around the gills.

Despite having a copy of Loomis' "Figure Drawing for All it's Worth", I can't say that I've ever actually copied his ideal proportions before. I cheated a bit and used photoshop's symmetry function to save time, and I used the opportunity to try to add what anatomy I know to the picture. Of course, now that I look at it I can see that I made the woman's shins too short.

Grass is green, water is wet, and gestures are hard. First is 30s and then 1min gestures. I used https://line-of-action.com/ for these.

Sep '19

hey, Chris and welcome! :smiley:
Im not 30 yet, but getting close to it too, just not the next month, haha

and yes freehanding a circle is hard but the main point however is to get your eye and hand coordination in sync.

Gestures so far looking good
hoping to see more from you :+1:

Sep '19

Day three: Perspective! There are no brakes on this art train.

The study of perspective is fascinating. I'd previously watched a lecture series on perspective by Marshall Vandruff, so many of these concepts were already familiar to me. I'll be doing the room assignment over the weekend, which I'm looking forward to.

More gestures today as well. I'm trying to do at least an hour of gesture a day, if not more. Towards the end of my 30s session I was definitely feeling in the zone and I got some sexy lines down. Interestingly, I feel like my minute gestures are the weaker of the two.

cedricgoModerator
Sep '19

I can relate to this. I've always felt like it is because 1 minute is too long to just lay down a quick gesture, but too short to do something more detailed. It's just such a weird middle ground between 30 seconds and 2 or 5 minutes. At least it is for me.

Anyway, you're doing really good. The gestures look nice and the perspective assignement also look pretty solid :+1:

Oct '19

The weekends are over, so it's back to the grind. Besides doing my daily gesture drawings (which I forgot to save this time), I started work on the 1-point perspective room assignment. I went into it with gusto and excitement aaaaaand kind of stalled after a couple of hours. This is very much a WIP, since I don't really know where I want to go with it from here. This is where my neglect of doing environments really starts to show, but hey! at least I know where to spend some more time. Always look on the bright side, etc.

Oct '19

There seems to be a trend of a bunch of us turning 30 and starting this course. I turned 30 last month. Your stuff look great so far. Hope to see more from you =)

Oct '19

Seconding that motion. Where can we go to start this exclusive club?

cedricgoModerator
Oct '19

Reply to

chris.geringer

I think you did very well with the actual perspective and having all the things aligned and going properly to the vanishing. There's only one thing that I think may not be completely accurate and it's the proportions of everything.

So the way I like to do it is to insert a ''character skeleton'' in the picture to check the proportions of things compared to a human. There would be 2 ways to tackle this. The first one I did is using the chair as a reference point. The seat of the chair should be slighlty below the knee and the full height might change, something around the crotch can work. So from that you can build a full figure.

So with this done, you can now move the full body measurement on the back wall, and it shows that the room looks abnormaly high. I believe a room is usually around 2.50 meters tall (so around 11 or 12 heads high). So unless it's what you were going for, you might need to correct the room height.

The other solution is using the back wall as a reference to build the figure. So using the back wall you can divide it in 11 or 12 parts and your guide figure would be 8 parts high. If you do it this way, then when you move the figure to the level of the chair, you will see that the things in the foreground are too small in comparison.

I think it would probably easier to correct this using the first way as you won't have to really rework the stuff on the right wall that you've already did.

I hope my drawings aren't too messy and that they make some sort of sense. You definitely undersatnd the basic of perspective, you just need to make sure everything is in proper proportions.

Oh and by the way I'll be 30 too next year too :laughing:

5 months later

Mar '20

It's been some time, but I'm back, baby, and ready to give this another go.

Where the hell have I been?
Long story short: massive depression break! Around the time I stopped posting I came down with a jumbo-sized case of gnarly sads and it really messed me up. It's been a lifelong struggle to manage my illness, and I don't know if I'll ever really "get the hang of" dealing with it, but I figure that sharing my struggles might help someone else down the road. So, if you're reading this and feel like maybe it's not worth it: hang in there. The ride is a bumpy one, but it doesn't last forever.

Anyways, now that the sob story is out of the way, here's what I've been working on lately.

My idea for this is some sort of dormitory or small apartment for a student where space is at a premium. This is obviously a WIP, and many things are placeholders or unfinished (the squiggle in the bottom right that was supposed to be a bean bag chair, for example). What I wanted to get right before moving on is the design of it before I go back and fix proportions and do set dressing and the like. If anyone has some suggestions for improving the composition or design input, I would be grateful. :pray:

20 days later

Apr '20

Hey y'all. Been awhile. I've been taking it slow, just trying to get my sea legs under me again, which is why it's taking me so long to do anything. I figure it takes body builders awhile until they can bench press hundreds of pounds, so why would working on art be any different? I'd rather go slow and consistent than burn out and not do anything for months at a time. That's what I'm telling myself, at least. :wink:

Anyways, I redid my 1 point piece, this time being a lot more careful with measurements and proportions. I'm still not completely happy with it, but I think that might just be because the work is kind of tedious. Plus, I don't do this kind of thing often, so I'm bound to only be "okay" at it.I think it could probably use more in terms of set dressing, but at this point it feels like I'm getting diminished returns from it, so I'm probably going to move on to the 2pt. piece. Let me know what you think!

Apr '20

Hello Chris! :)) This 1 point perspective looks great! I maybe wrong but since I'm no professional/good myself but I think the the right end of the couch is kind of off from what I can see compared to the left. Everything looks great so its kind of sticks out to me.

Apr '20

Thanks for replying, Ivan. I think I see what you're saying. It's weird how you can look at something for days and not see something but the moment someone else says something it's all you can see.

10 days later