Drew's Improvement Process [Critique Very Welcome]

[Drew]

Thread to improve my art.
Rather let the side down with my art on NaNoRenO in-fact. Working to improve the quality and speed of my work.

WIPs & improvement activities - critiques and suggestions are very welcome.

[Drew]

More sketches
1) 1/2 body shots, including come rough hair - which I'm really bad at.
2) Face practice trying to get happy with features before working on expressions.

[Drew]

Faces and colouring tests - still very rough, I would like to sharpen up the lines.

Quite a few squiffy eyes and mouths that I need to look at in future.

[Drew]

I reflecting back on the sketches I posted last I decided that I was very unhappy with them, so I went back and tried to work out the things I didn't like into a better image.

My line-art is still very scribbly/sketchy that I'd like to improve on in short order.

Edit: Always see things in different light when I post up. Maybe it's a monitor thing. The neck is too thick, she looks like a prize fighter.

[Drew]

Mmm - trying too keep myself practising at a consistent rate.

WIP starting sketches...

[sendo]

Hi Drew,

Nice to see you practicing. I notice that there's no definite direction you're going for? It seems you're going for realistic proportions and features but you're also mixing the stylized anime eyes. There's nothing wrong with this, but I encourage you to study the realistic proportions first before stylizing — it just makes it easier for you to exaggerate or diminish features because you know the underlying structure. Right now, you're still drawing "symbols" of facial features (i.e. the eye is a tapered oval and the pupil is a circle and you're drawing almost everything in front view). I also see you're using guides but you're not using them effectively.

I found Andrew Loomis' Drawing the Head & Hands very helpful in those regards. A particularly helpful part to note is his 'construction' approach. You might have already seen this (based on your guides) but it's important to just do it how the book does it. Try to copy it, and really pay attention to how the facial features are broken down to simple forms. I'd go in-depth, but the book is already more in-depth and articulate than I could manage haha :D

Once you have a good understanding of realistic proportions, you can stylize them however you want and still retain that level of 'realism' in them.

[Drew]

Cheers - it's good to get a different view point.

Nice to see you practicing. I notice that there's no definite direction you're going for?

Yes, I've not draw for a while now, not that I was ever great. I want to build up my skills before branching out in different directions.

It seems you're going for realistic proportions and features but you're also mixing the stylized anime eyes. There's nothing wrong with this, but I encourage you to study the realistic proportions first before stylizing — it just makes it easier for you to exaggerate or diminish features because you know the underlying structure. Right now, you're still drawing "symbols" of facial features (i.e. the eye is a tapered oval and the pupil is a circle and you're drawing almost everything in front view). I also see you're using guides but you're not using them effectively.

Ah, agreed - that's a good point I guess I've practiced drawing individual features for a while now from different tutorials so it looks a bit weird when I try to bring them all together. Guess that's a danger of teaching yourself stuff, you don't see the right paths to take or methods of doing things.

I found Andrew Loomis' Drawing the Head & Hands very helpful in those regards. A particularly helpful part to note is his 'construction' approach. You might have already seen this (based on your guides) but it's important to just do it how the book does it. Try to copy it, and really pay attention to how the facial features are broken down to simple forms. I'd go in-depth, but the book is already more in-depth and articulate than I could manage haha

Thanks, I have one of the Loomis books but not that one. Yes, no point of repeating things.

Once you have a good understanding of realistic proportions, you can stylize them however you want and still retain that level of 'realism' in them.

Definitely, don't want to run before you can walk, or hide skill gaps behind 'stylisation'.

Thanks again for your help.

-Drew

[Lilan]

@Drew: Keep it up! You'll get there if you keep on practicing
I would advice you to draw more from life, and a photo for REFERENCE (eg. Looking how placements of features and techniques are done) .

In our class, we would draw objects in front of us for 5, 30 or 15 minutes. Start at "seeing" more in 3d.
For exercises, blind contours where you only look at the subject for like 5 minutes. And continuous line drawings also. That's all, for now. You can focus if you take one step at a time. Good luck!

[Drew]

Thanks for the advice Lilan. I keep on practicing, and like you say taking things one step at a time.

Below, a selection from more practice based on recent advice. Always looks worse on the screen to me, but maybe that's just seeing things from a different pov.

Some work on more realistic eyes:

General proportions, from Loomis and similar:

[Drew]

Some more practice...

Head proportions with full body (& tiny little hands... well tiny body in general)

General faces, and trying to work from hair from refs.

[Drew]

Let's see how far I can take an image based on the practice that I've been doing. Been using various random reference images.

Hopefully getting better. Well we'll see.

Sketch. Seen a few things wrong already, torso looks overly large and one of the eyes is too far over. Fix them as we go along:

WIP 1:

Onward!

[Drew]

WIP
Tweaked the eyes, still not sure if they're working.

Outline finished:

Colours blocked out:

[Drew]

Shifted the mouth over to better align with the nose and marked out my highlights and shadows...

Told it might look a bit 'too Disney'? Maybe the eyes are still a bit big?

[Carassaurat]

Good progress! If you're getting into shading, I think Loomis usually talks about the planes of the head in his books -- that would be a good place to study now. Thinking of the head as a set of simple shapes is key. I'm by no means a terrific artist, but I make a quick paintover; I think you're not too far off proportionally, but you have some areas, like the jaw or forehead just that go off into a bit of a weird direction.

[Drew]

Carassaurat: Thanks for the feedback and the paintover. I'll try that out.

I remember the bit in Loomis you mean, I think the one I have is for a male face but I guess the general rules are the same, only a bit softer.