Learning to draw with Sockembop

[Sockembop]

Welcome, Newgrounders! I've been a participant on the art forum to varying degrees since its inception and have been doing art on my own for as long as i can remember. I also took some art classes in high school but never really focused on or cared about the lessons being taught. Over the years I have slowly improved (very slowly) by drawing things inside or at least not far out of my comfort zone but I often run into things that I struggle with because I simple don't have a very good understanding of art fundamentals that I now wish I had payed attention to when I first started drawing. Tonight I decided that I am just sick and tired of spending hours trying to transfer an idea from my head to my computer screen only to throw my work away because it just isn't getting better (or often it's getting worse). I'd like to cordially invite you all to join me here in this thread to take part in my struggle to become a more competent all around artist.

In this thread I will be describing and posting the results of my attempts to overcome the bad habits I have picked up in drawing and painting over the years and working to build a better foundation of arting skills. I invite anyone who is interested in following along with my various practice sessions to please do so and post your own results here as well.

If you have been focusing or wanting to focus on a particular area leave a comment and we can practice it together!

This week I will probably spend some time with anatomy and poses and perspectives of the human body. Tonight I was on posemaniacs.com scribbling down poses in 30 seconds. I will probably do a little of this every day in addition to whatever else I decide to throw in there.

[JKSSN]

Consider me your "student!" C:

Question?

Should we also post our progress too?
Also, 30 seconds gesture drawing for how many minutes?

[Sockembop]

At 11/19/14 10:46 PM, 123mine123 wrote: Consider me your "student!" C:

Question?

Should we also post our progress too?
Also, 30 seconds gesture drawing for how many minutes?

Hehe I'm no teacher. We're all students here. You should absolutely post your progress and you should go for as long as you like.

[HeThinkzLikeNoOthEr]

This sparks my interest as well.... should we post drawings in this thread?.or our own thread?..I've been going through somewhat of the same situation as far as getting out of my comfort zone....you learn lots more that way...

for example...when i was sketching animals...i created interesting shapes that I normally wouldn't when drawing anatomy...and animals are sometimes in positions that if you were to draw a human in would be quite interesting!!!

[Sockembop]

At 11/20/14 02:12 AM, HeThinkzLikeNoOthEr wrote: This sparks my interest as well.... should we post drawings in this thread?.or our own thread?..I've been going through somewhat of the same situation as far as getting out of my comfort zone....you learn lots more that way...

for example...when i was sketching animals...i created interesting shapes that I normally wouldn't when drawing anatomy...and animals are sometimes in positions that if you were to draw a human in would be quite interesting!!!

It would be cool if we could have people posting there work here but if you would rather put it in your own thread that's fine too.

I'm terrible at drawing animals so I could use some practice their too.

[JKSSN]

At 11/20/14 07:17 AM, Sockembop wrote: I'm terrible at drawing animals so I could use some practice their too.

All I draw is animals! D:

Oh and, btw, I think I would rather just post my progress by the end of the week with a collection of all the stuff I done.
So basically, this 1st week of studies is made out of... 30 second gestures?
And length of time doing this is probably 30 minutes a day?

[Discomfortzone]

Hello, I've come to this site looking for art students to hang out with, and it seems like I'm not alone. I'm all up for sharing my knowledges and for pushing each other onto new grounds!

I would like to meet some who are willing to talk over a Skype call to learn to know each other and easier converse.

My skype is: xskellx

Anyone may add me, but please state that you are from Newgrounds so I know you aren't one of those weird scam-girls and rich-not-rich men who needs a loan. Just Copy/Paste this secret message and send it over Skype when you add me:

"Newgrounds. Draw, let's, do it!"

Quick-info:
I am 21.
I am Danish.
I've had 1 year of basic visual education on The Animation Workshop in Viborg.

P.S. Age doesn't matter, as long as you are mature and willing to learn.

[LurkinPanda]

My biggest issue with my own art is just how it looks. I've come to love my drawings but hate my paintings because they don't come out how I want them to. I want them to look painterly and while I'm painting I guess I'm so into the image I just don't worry about it until I finish it and the feeling sets in that I don't like it. What I'm going to be working on is making my images look more painterly.

• 

  Golem Night

  by LurkinPanda

  Illustration

  1,027 Views

  (Everyone)

^^^^^
Example of how I don't want my art to look anymore.

Skype: Lurkinmcclerkin

[Havegum]

Hey! I don't have any studies to show for today, but I'll give some feedback to everyone that did so far! Hopefully this will be an arena for mutual inspiration and a channel for shared information! I'm sure everyone is interested in improving their work and I hope everyone will share their ways of practice that they find the most effective!

· Goal
I want to start by setting a goal for myself as I believe having something to work towards is a good motivator. From now and to the end of the year, I want to focus on perspective and the goal is to be stronger in freehand perspective drawings. That is, being able to draw objects and scenes in approximate correct perspective without relying heavily on grids.

I will achieve this by drawing scenes and objects from reference both in the reference's native perspective, but also with a changed perspective. I will also do imaginary works using 1-, 2-, and 3-point perspective. Towards the end of the period I want to create a large and detailed illustration from imagination, with correct perspective. Unfortunately I'll be unavailable next week due to field exercise and combat training and also at various times in the holidays, but I will strive to keep up with the thread!

--

At 11/19/14 09:00 PM, Sockembop wrote: This week I will probably spend some time with anatomy and poses and perspectives of the human body. Tonight I was on posemaniacs.com scribbling down poses in 30 seconds. I will probably do a little of this every day in addition to whatever else I decide to throw in there.

Gestures are something I'm familiar with and I'd like to think I've improved a lot because of it! The gesture is a great tool to quickly plot down information and set up for a more finished drawing. Your gestures are mostly based on contours, which don't really describe 3D volume so well. The goal of the gesture isn't necessarily to capture a likeness to what you're referencing. What is important is that you capture the story. In other words "what is this pose doing, and how can I describe it in the limited time I have?".

The book Figure Drawing: Design and Invention by Michael Hampton covers this better and more in-depth than I could ever, and luckily the author has a free video on youtube that quickly covers the most vital elements of the gesture. The major masses (head-rib-pelvis), weight and balance are all important aspects to cover. Personally I use Quickposes and pixelovely for reference. They have larger image bases, cover more body types, and have plenty of dynamic poses!

At 11/20/14 02:19 PM, LurkinMcClerkin wrote: What I'm going to be working on is making my images look more painterly.

I'm not 100% sure of what you mean by more painterly, but I'll share a tool for practice that helped me tons with understanding rendering and composition, which are both key aspects of painting. Master studies! The idea is to take paintings you like (optionally grayscale them), and try to duplicate it exactly!

This gave me a much deeper insight in how they used values to form their compositions than simply looking at it would ever do. As the conceptart workshop recommends, doing 20 one-hour greyscale studies will force you to get the major composition down first and leave the details for later - this forced me to adapt a healthier work flow that was more flexible to change when I spotted mistakes along the way.

[LurkinPanda]

At 11/20/14 03:28 PM, Havegum wrote: Wall o' Text

What I meant by painterly is to control my need to render everything. It gets so out of control the subjects in my paintings seem to separate from the image. So yeah working on my compositions seems to be what I'm getting at. I'm not good with words.

Thanks for the link and I got right on that. First day's study is of my favorite digital artist Marc Brunet. This was an hour study.

[Sockembop]

At 11/20/14 03:28 PM, Havegum wrote: Gestures are something I'm familiar with and I'd like to think I've improved a lot because of it! The gesture is a great tool to quickly plot down information and set up for a more finished drawing. Your gestures are mostly based on contours, which don't really describe 3D volume so well. The goal of the gesture isn't necessarily to capture a likeness to what you're referencing. What is important is that you capture the story. In other words "what is this pose doing, and how can I describe it in the limited time I have?".

Oh boy. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. I did a whole pile of gesture drawings tonight trying to keep your advice in mind and I think I was able to learn a lot more from my practice as a result. Many of the scribbles were entirely unrecognizable but overall I think I was able to better communicate what was actually going on with the figure. Here are some of the less terrible ones with the arrow showing early to late in my practice.

[Sockembop]

At 11/21/14 05:10 PM, Sockembop wrote:

Did some practice this morning. Been struggling a bit to keep at it. Figured I'd do a finished character to remind myself why I'm practicing in the first place. Here's my attempt to put a figure together:

[JKSSN]

Ugh, I've told myself to do the stuff you're supposed to do here, but I got with busy with other stuff. D:
Now it's almost been a week, I'll try harder to do whatever tomorrow. :c

[Sockembop]

Instead of just giving up and trying something I knew how to draw, which is what I normally do, I tried to follow through with the pose and I think the results really show off just how bad I am at drawing. So at least it does that right. I think it was close to decent in the middle. I don't know how the next iterations went so far downhill.

[Havegum]

This thread is a brilliant idea and I hope I and others can push eachother to try harder and learn more!
Perspective is my nut to crack this month and for starters here's two houses from reference.

[LuisEC]

whoa nice job on that house! i even just like the design itself, just seems like a cooler thing to do than most regular perspective studies would have.

[Sockembop]

I'm finding it really difficult keeping at it because the things that I need to practice are not what I want to draw but I need more practice to draw those things. Today I decided to do something that's at least relatively easy by drawing some stuff from reference and even then I was fairly lazy I feel like at least I did something. I think my REAL starting point is getting in the habit or doing something every day.

[Havegum]

At 12/10/14 08:37 PM, Sockembop wrote: I think my REAL starting point is getting in the habit or doing something every day.

I always found the weekly "I like your ___, keep it up!" comments in my thread a good motivator for keeping at it. Also I kept thinking that EVERYONE can take 20 minutes out of their day and there's no excuse for not doing at least 20 minutes of gesture drawings every day! Quickposes also has a process tracking with diplomas, so that was also a nice goal.

-

Here is some super rough shit from today. I tried a loose gestural approach but lost focus quickly. I'm not sure if I think learning from rough sketches working stuff tighter as I go; or working from strict grids and loosening up from there. I'll probably do a bit of both and try to find a good middleground.

[Sockembop]

At 12/11/14 05:37 PM, Havegum wrote: Quickposes also has a process tracking with diplomas, so that was also a nice goal.

Hmmm I'll have to check that out for sure.

Here's some stuff I did today.

[Havegum]

I still think an art forum study group is an amazing idea and I'll start posting daily gestures and things that aren't finished work in this thread in hope that others will join me! I want to move away from the isolated threads to more of a mix and mingle thing.

[Havegum]

At 3/5/15 04:41 PM, JojoDodo wrote: You can count me in, mate...this is a great idea :D

Awesome!

I see some other peeps are posting studies fairly frequently, maybe @123mine123 @SuperBastard @Daker777ng would like to pop by!

Anyway here's something for trying a buncha new things. Mostly starting with colour, using a hard brush, colour shifts in the face. Unfortunately hanging a bit down the uncanny valley here

[Sockembop]

At 3/5/15 04:13 PM, Havegum wrote: I still think an art forum study group is an amazing idea and I'll start posting daily gestures and things that aren't finished work in this thread in hope that others will join me! I want to move away from the isolated threads to more of a mix and mingle thing.

Maybe a new thread with a title that more clearly illustrated the purpose of the thread would encourage more participation. Or maybe not I dunno. "Art Forum Study Group" would certainly be a better option, no?

[SuperBastard]

At 3/5/15 05:15 PM, Havegum wrote: I see some other peeps are posting studies fairly frequently, maybe @123mine123 @SuperBastard @Daker777ng would like to pop by!

Ohhhh! I remember seeing this thread months ago and making a note to myself that I ought to start participating in it. Thanks for the reminding me! I had even just decided to stop posting my studies because my thread was turning into all gestures all the time.

Also I didn't think anyone still looked at my thread, so thanks for that too.

My current goal is to learn to draw figures more quickly and efficiently, and to avoid "petting" my lines as much as possible--which means developing greater accuracy with my strokes as well. I don't really know what kind of milestone I should set my sights on though.

Here are my 60 second poses from the past 2 days. I've begun feeling a little disheartened already after only a few weeks of trying to improve; I'm probably just impatient, but I have this nagging feeling that I'm missing things I should be focusing on.

[JKSSN]

At 3/5/15 08:02 PM, JojoDodo wrote:

At 3/5/15 05:23 PM, Sockembop wrote: Maybe a new thread with a title that more clearly illustrated the purpose of the thread would encourage more participation. Or maybe not I dunno. "Art Forum Study Group" would certainly be a better option, no?

I'd think that's the best way to go with this.

Seconded C:

[Spags]

Instead of just giving up and trying something I knew how to draw, which is what I normally do,
I'm finding it really difficult keeping at it because the things that I need to practice are not what I want to draw but I need more practice to draw those things.

This is my life.

I did these today on my own accord and then ran into this thread, so it's the perfect place to post them! I have a long way to go.

[Havegum]

At 3/5/15 06:55 PM, SuperBastard wrote: [...] my thread was turning into all gestures all the time.

Also I didn't think anyone still looked at my thread, so thanks for that too.

[...] I've begun feeling a little disheartened already after only a few weeks of trying to improve

These are the challenges I hope this kind of thread will solve; Prevent personal art threads from being cluttered with studies, ensure more consistent feedback for their hard work, and encouragement to keep up the studies! Also I think it's more social to have a artsy hangout thread.

--

It's great to see so great response! If no-body minds I'll make a new thread with a clearer title later today. Until then, does anyone have some ideas for titles? I'm thinking maybe Art Forum Study Group is a bit plain and dry? Ideally it should be inspiring new artists to stop by. "Drawing Hangout", "The Never-ending Art Workshop"? Something like that maybe?

[JKSSN]

I've been doing 1 minute gestures for months now.
So, I've recently changed and do 2 minutes one by trying to set foundation/landmarks whatever you call it. xD

[JKSSN]

At 3/6/15 01:09 AM, Havegum wrote: Prevent personal art threads from being cluttered with studies, ensure more consistent feedback for their hard work, and encouragement to keep up the studies! Also I think it's more social to have a artsy hangout thread.

Now, it feels really uhm, normal for me to post everything on my art thread.
But, if an art thread dedicated to only studies, I wouldn't mind posting my stuff there instead.

I'm thinking maybe Art Forum Study Group is a bit plain and dry? Ideally it should be inspiring new artists to stop by. "Drawing Hangout", "The Never-ending Art Workshop"? Something like that maybe?

Psh, just someone, make the forum already. xD

[Zhon]

Someone please @ me if a new thread is made, I'm super busy this week but really want in on this down the road and don't wanna forget. I took 2 semesters of live figure drawing in college and ran open figure drawing sessions myself for a few months. It's been a while but I'd like to get back into it, gettin rusty....

[Sockembop]

At 3/6/15 01:09 AM, Havegum wrote:

I'm thinking maybe Art Forum Study Group is a bit plain and dry? Ideally it should be inspiring new artists to stop by. "Drawing Hangout", "The Never-ending Art Workshop"? Something like that maybe?

Art Workshop Mega Thread

It makes it sound very... Mega.