How Do Art?

[Oeufa]

So lesson 4 is cubes! Wahay! The exercise begins with a couple of foreshortened squares, then building a cube, then building more cubes with adornment etc:

Next was to get a box in real life and draw it. I picked this crackerbread box:

And then started work with some basic lines

Added the lettering (yes I ran out of room so it reads crackers instead ac:

Then finished up with the shading etc

Still pretty messy so far, and some of my lines are still not quite right. Oh well, it's a step in the right direction at least Today will be lesson 5. I'll post it some time this evening when I finish it.

 

[Mole]

All that is necessary for art is to supend our disbelief then practise, practise, practise. And it takes 10,000 hours of practise to become a master. So draw every day. Take your notebook everywhere and draw everything.

 

[Oeufa]

Yeah Victor, I'm well familiar with the 10,000 hour rule. It's something of a misnomer though. A single hour of thoughtful, precise, purposeful practice will get you much further than 10 hours of messing around. Anyway, on to the next lesson!

Lesson 5 - moooooooooooooar cubes. Hollow cubes this time. On the left, the first exercise to draw a box with open flaps. In the book he speaks a lot about the direction on a compass all lines should follow when doing these things. I didn't really follow it though. Went a bit overhead.

The picture on the left is another exercise of making the box a chest. The lid doesn't seem right to me though. I don't think it's large enough to close.

Also my shadows seem too droopy. Sigh.

 

[WALMART]

lol - the bassute, the deli paper, the apple speakers


This thread is the best on TypC. I'm glad to see you're off to a good start

 

[Oeufa]

Well lesson 6 was an odd one. Stacking tables. It starts off with some basic stacking of cubes

Then for the bonus, he wanted people to build large structures of cubes. Whatever you wanted. Here's an example of someone else's:

And here's my own monstrosity (don't ask):

I'm really not happy with any of my cubey shapes. I think I might go back to lesson 4. I seem to have missed something on the way, because all my lines look out of proportion. /sadface

 

[kyuuei]

You're already improving drastically. I was going to suggest getting a complete beginners book and just practice and practice. Don't just take and leave the principles from previous lessons--when you finish the book, go back and re-do the lessons, and compare the first round to the second. I'll bet you'll see a dramatic change. Also, don't go back and re-do a lesson just because it isn't perfect. It won't be. Ever. Better to keep going. You're more likely to identify WHY it looks off/wrong when you've challenged yourself on further exercises than repeating the exercise over and over again right away. If you wait until it's perfect, you'll never leave lesson 4.

I started out like you--unable to draw efficient stick figures. I just kept drawing and drawing bad things. Eventually those things got a bit better--or I should say, I got faster at drawing bad things. That evolved into me being confident enough to start drawing out of books--and I chose anime because I'm an anime nerd (casual now, more hardcore as a kid) and it grew from there. Art is like math--the more you practice, the better you get, even if you have no talent for it on your own.

If you want some bonus studying--look on fan art pages for the particular arts you like. Deviant art is a great place to get it. You specifically want BAD art, or art that isn't perfect even if you like it regardless. Looking at that, and identifying the flaws and what is wrong, it really does help shape the way you draw your own art. I realized I was making hands too small (out of fear of making them too big/long ironically enough), necks too long, faces too flat, etc.

Another bonus studying--pick out a web comic and look at the changes made to the comic from beginning to current. (Example: the art on Dominic Deegan is 'bad' in comparison to later on when it gets so much better, starts to add color and more detail, etc.)

Nothing beats drawing every day though. Practice is the only way to understand art.

 

[Oeufa]

You're already improving drastically. I was going to suggest getting a complete beginners book and just practice and practice. Don't just take and leave the principles from previous lessons--when you finish the book, go back and re-do the lessons, and compare the first round to the second. I'll bet you'll see a dramatic change. Also, don't go back and re-do a lesson just because it isn't perfect. It won't be. Ever. Better to keep going. You're more likely to identify WHY it looks off/wrong when you've challenged yourself on further exercises than repeating the exercise over and over again right away. If you wait until it's perfect, you'll never leave lesson 4.

Good point. I might just get another book after I'm done with this one - there's a few knocking around for kindle pretty cheap right now. I have one on cartooning upstairs somewhere too that I never used. Might just dust it off and give it a bash.

I started out like you--unable to draw efficient stick figures. I just kept drawing and drawing bad things. Eventually those things got a bit better--or I should say, I got faster at drawing bad things. That evolved into me being confident enough to start drawing out of books--and I chose anime because I'm an anime nerd (casual now, more hardcore as a kid) and it grew from there. Art is like math--the more you practice, the better you get, even if you have no talent for it on your own.

If you want some bonus studying--look on fan art pages for the particular arts you like. Deviant art is a great place to get it. You specifically want BAD art, or art that isn't perfect even if you like it regardless. Looking at that, and identifying the flaws and what is wrong, it really does help shape the way you draw your own art. I realized I was making hands too small (out of fear of making them too big/long ironically enough), necks too long, faces too flat, etc.

Another bonus studying--pick out a web comic and look at the changes made to the comic from beginning to current. (Example: the art on Dominic Deegan is 'bad' in comparison to later on when it gets so much better, starts to add color and more detail, etc.)

Nothing beats drawing every day though. Practice is the only way to understand art.

I like this idea of fan art. I'm a sucker for watching drawing tutorials on youtube (Mark Crilley fans, anyone?). Maybe I should follow along with them sometime. One thing I'm daunted to try is the human body because there's just SO much of it. Though I can take it one limb at a time I suppose

Since I have a decent amount of free time right now, I might start doing one drawing a day that's not related to the exercises in the book. Even if they look terrible and bad. Could be fun

 

[/DG/]

Ooh I love how you are posting your drawings for all of the lessons.

Subscribed!

 

[kyuuei]

Good point. I might just get another book after I'm done with this one - there's a few knocking around for kindle pretty cheap right now. I have one on cartooning upstairs somewhere too that I never used. Might just dust it off and give it a bash.

Yeah, this is the best part of learning French for me right now is the amount of awesome stuff I get to learn from. I have a couple really fun reading books.. and so far I can read French better than I can speak it or understand it.

I like this idea of fan art. I'm a sucker for watching drawing tutorials on youtube (Mark Crilley fans, anyone?). Maybe I should follow along with them sometime. One thing I'm daunted to try is the human body because there's just SO much of it. Though I can take it one limb at a time I suppose

The human body is really scary. It's one of those things where even with a ton of practice you'll still make mistakes. it's just very intricate. Starting out with your favorite part is probably where it's at.. once I could draw the eyes I was hooked on the rest.

Ooh I love how you are posting your drawings for all of the lessons.

Subscribed!

+1! <3 Post them for us plz

 

[Oeufa]

Yeah, this is the best part of learning French for me right now is the amount of awesome stuff I get to learn from. I have a couple really fun reading books.. and so far I can read French better than I can speak it or understand it.

Something I found super useful when learning Swedish was to have the English novel and Swedish side by side. I'd read a paragraph in English to get the jist, then read it in Swedish. That way you're not translating word for word (bad) but getting a general understanding of the language and how it flows. You'll pick it up quicker if you don't have that English interior monologue translating everything word for word

The human body is really scary. It's one of those things where even with a ton of practice you'll still make mistakes. it's just very intricate. Starting out with your favorite part is probably where it's at.. once I could draw the eyes I was hooked on the rest.

+1! <3 Post them for us plz

Eyes. All of the eyes. Yeah maybe I'll start with something like that.

Depending on how much time I have today, I'll try to get a drawing of something else done as well as Lesson 7.

Will Oeufa ever learn to draw? Will her shadows stop looking flaccid? Will someone die from proximity to bad art? Find out next time - same Bat time, same Bat channel.

 

[kyuuei]

 

[Oeufa]

Not much time to stop and chat today. I only got the main part of Lesson 7 done - "Advanced Cubes". Constructing building-type things with ramps and arches etc etc

I'll have to do the bonus tomorrow - I'm off now to go celebrate a friend's birthday. I'm not enough of a martyr to my art to miss a night out for it

 

[Red Herring]

subscribed

 

[Oeufa]

Thanks to everyone who left me supportive comments, either on thread or as reputation. It's pretty cool that ye find my crap drawings entertaining

Alright so here's the bonus from yesterday's lesson. The stairs came out wonky as a wibby wobbly wonder. Meh.

And here's my bonus fan art of Shane Tyree doing the animation for Pat Rothfuss singing "I Crush Everything".

I'll probably do Lesson 8 while I'm in work later. I'm kinda looking forward to it. It'll be a koala

Any suggestions for any more bonus fan art, request away!

 

[Viridian]

Ok sure. What makes you say that?

He's notorious for several things, including sticking to artistic rendition stereotypes, not varying body shapes when drawing women, calling people who critique him "trolls" and whatever the heck you might call this:

Your art looks awesome, by the way! Keep it up, practice makes perfect!

 

[Oeufa]

Wow that's just, I mean, yeah. There are no words. Instead, koala!

(Sorry for the crap picture, I'll replace it with a scanned version tomorrow)

So lesson 8 was Koalas. The 3 circles at the top demonstrate how to get different textural effects. Then there is koala. Bonus is to draw a crowd of koalas, and then get some pictures of real koalas and try a more realistic one. Alas I'm out of time this evening (didn't get to draw in work today - stoopid customers expecting to be served ) so the angry koala mob must wait their turn.


Today, koalas. Tomorrow: the world*!










*Disclaimer: May just be more koalas. And some cubes.

 

[Red Herring]

That's an awesome koala!

Keep'em coming and stop playing down your drawings.

 

[Oeufa]

More koalas. Never let it be said that Oeufa reneged on a koala promise.

Crowd of koalas:

"Realistic" Koala (really disproportioned - I'll be trying this again later if I get time)

 

[Oeufa]

So I'm finally all caught up on my lessons now! This morning I was babysitting for an hour so I got yesterday's lesson done - The Rose. It started off by getting you to draw a couple of foreshortened circles, then making one of them a bowl of cereal. Next was to draw a few flags.

And then put these two principles together to make a spirally rose. Once the first one was done step-by-step, you could try doing a small bunch of them as the bonus challenge (I ran out of room on my paper )

Just as I was finishing this up, the baby I was watching found a cold cup of tea somewhere and poured it all over the ground, bringing a well-timed end to the morning's drawing session

Then this afternoon I was in Burger King waiting on a friend so I decided to try get Lesson 10 done. It was all about cylinders. It started off by getting you to draw three cylinders together. It then invited you to grab three cans or something similar and draw those. Except I was in Burger King so I just drew my smoothie (and ran out of room AGAIN - I need a bigger sketchpad )

I was starting on the smoothie when my artsy friend arrived and had to watch me finish. My shading "technique" was making her cringe a little bit


I still want to have another crack at the koala picture. I might try doing it properly by drawing a grid or something. Maybe it'll make it easier

 

[Oeufa]

On to Lesson 11 - Advanced Cylinders. Oh joy This lesson was relatively straight forward. It gets you to simply draw a "cityscape" of cylinders. I tried to bear in mind what my arty friend told me yesterday about the direction of shading, and a tip I heard that you should blend in one direction only to get the dark->light transition more smooth. Thus this picture took way longer than usual to shade.

Then for the bonus, a field of holes. Awesome.

Lastly, I was at a Colm Wilkinson gig last night, and of course he ended the night with Bring Him Home. It put me in a Les Mis-sy mood, so I decided to try a bit of fan art. I was thinking of drawing the barricade but scrapped that and went for a metal plate with 24601 instead. It's supposed to be engraved but I'm not sure I managed to get that across.

Anywho that's that for today. If ye have any advice for fixing my pictures or tips on how to correct something that looks wrong, please please please lemme know. Or lie shamelessly and flatter outrageously, I don't mind