At 6/5/12 10:34 PM, PatBest22 wrote:
Yeah whenever I try realistic, it never ends up well. See the previous entry in my thread, I tried to give the face a more realistic look and in the end it only looked wrong.
Hey Pat!
It looks like you've clearly got some skill here, and that's great. It will give you a good boost of confidence to keep working at it. The difficulty is in your statement above. If you try realistic and it doesn't end up well, that means that's exactly where you should be focusing your attention.
In comic book art (as well as manga, or really any "style") the foundation is built in reality. The style is merely a costume that you put over reality. The better you can draw from life, "realistically," the better off you're going to be. So while it's fun to do these drawings and characters in this style you enjoy, if you really want to improve you couldn't do better than hunkering down and getting in some real life drawing. ESPECIALLY if it doesn't go well.
That's tricky because it's never much fun to draw what we aren't good at. In time it becomes more fun, as you get experience, but at first it will be very hard. The key will be not to give up, and if you don't you'll see vast improvements when you go back to whatever style you want to work in. Foundation first, though. It's your best bet for the long term.
In most of your figure drawing your proportions are off. Your torsos are too long and the legs too short. That's likely what Becky noticed above but couldn't quite put her finger on. I myself didn't know for sure so I redid the drawing and noticed my version had the hips sitting higher, and it felt better. That's exactly the sort of thing that will become second nature when you do a lot of life drawing, minus any style. You don't have to go for Photorealism, we have copy machines and cameras for that, but you want to capture life from life first, then dip into your expanded imagination to create some even better stuff than life has to offer. It's a long road, and tough, but if you stick with it you'll become greater than you ever could be without that foundation.
Much luck with it, and if you'd like to talk about it further please feel free to PM or email me. Cheers!