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Author Topic: Art: Pencil/Paper Drawing  (Read 2453 times)

LadyBug

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Pencil/Paper Drawing
« on: September 17, 2018, 07:47:09 pm »
Hey all! So short backstory; since the start of my current relationship I've been rediscovering parts of myself lost to trying to please everyone around me/trying to be what others wanted me to be. A part of myself I've repressed for a long time due to fear of ridicule is enjoying trying to draw!

Currently I am working on humanesque forms/movement/proportion. Is there anyone out there with ways to study the human form without staring at strangers? As it turns out I'm not as great at "discreet" as I thought myself to be.

Any suggestions for Youtube serieses (series? seri? How does one pluralize series?)? Specific books that helped you out? What about practice techniques? I'm really interested in new ideas and perspectives, as my brain is currently fighting years of "You will fail, don't bother" self-conditioning. :)

Currently I have been hitting the library once a week, flipping through a random book (on art or otherwise) and sketching a skeletal human shape imitating a picture. Then using that figure as a base for different sizes and shapes of people. I am hoping to expand into confidently imitating some forms of motion so I can move on to practicing facial features and clothing designs.

Thanks in advance! :)
« Last Edit: May 09, 2019, 12:58:13 pm by RandallS »

TheGreenWizard

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Re: Pencil/Paper Drawing
« Reply #1 on: September 18, 2018, 07:18:58 am »
Hey all! So short backstory; since the start of my current relationship I've been rediscovering parts of myself lost to trying to please everyone around me/trying to be what others wanted me to be. A part of myself I've repressed for a long time due to fear of ridicule is enjoying trying to draw!

Currently I am working on humanesque forms/movement/proportion. Is there anyone out there with ways to study the human form without staring at strangers? As it turns out I'm not as great at "discreet" as I thought myself to be.

Any suggestions for Youtube serieses (series? seri? How does one pluralize series?)? Specific books that helped you out? What about practice techniques? I'm really interested in new ideas and perspectives, as my brain is currently fighting years of "You will fail, don't bother" self-conditioning. :)

Currently I have been hitting the library once a week, flipping through a random book (on art or otherwise) and sketching a skeletal human shape imitating a picture. Then using that figure as a base for different sizes and shapes of people. I am hoping to expand into confidently imitating some forms of motion so I can move on to practicing facial features and clothing designs.

Thanks in advance! :)
Hey Lady Bug!

You could still try watching people - just do the drawings in an art museum. Perfect cover!

But on a serious note: art museums are a good way to sit, study, and draw human movement using statues as your base. Once you've gotten that nailed down you could try drawing people walking past you.

Another thing you could do: watch and draw movies.

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Sefiru

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Re: Pencil/Paper Drawing
« Reply #2 on: September 18, 2018, 06:15:03 pm »
Currently I am working on humanesque forms/movement/proportion.

For me, what was really educational was reading and drawing comics. Manga especially. What is not useful are those little wooden artist dolls; their range of motion is much too limited and not realistic.

An exercise I remember from art class is "gesture drawing"; you'd need a model to help you. The model makes a strange pose and holds it for 15 seconds, and the artist has that long to draw them. The idea is to get the overall forms without getting sidetracked by details, and also to make larger strokes with elbow and wrist movements instead of tiny sketches.

You said you're in a relationship, maybe you can get your partner to pose for you?
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Uneryx

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Re: Pencil/Paper Drawing
« Reply #3 on: September 19, 2018, 02:45:47 am »
Hey all! So short backstory; since the start of my current relationship I've been rediscovering parts of myself lost to trying to please everyone around me/trying to be what others wanted me to be. A part of myself I've repressed for a long time due to fear of ridicule is enjoying trying to draw!

Currently I am working on humanesque forms/movement/proportion. Is there anyone out there with ways to study the human form without staring at strangers? As it turns out I'm not as great at "discreet" as I thought myself to be.

Any suggestions for Youtube serieses (series? seri? How does one pluralize series?)? Specific books that helped you out? What about practice techniques? I'm really interested in new ideas and perspectives, as my brain is currently fighting years of "You will fail, don't bother" self-conditioning. :)

Currently I have been hitting the library once a week, flipping through a random book (on art or otherwise) and sketching a skeletal human shape imitating a picture. Then using that figure as a base for different sizes and shapes of people. I am hoping to expand into confidently imitating some forms of motion so I can move on to practicing facial features and clothing designs.

Thanks in advance! :)

Hello! Lemme give you some of the advice my instructors and mentors gave me

First of all, everything you're doing so far is a great start. But in addition:

- drawing from sports, dance, and porn is AOK. Just find pictures of bodies in motion and draw them. No awkward staring at strangers and they'll hold that pose forever!
- draw a lot. Who cares if it's not pro quality! Allow yourself to make "bad" drawings. allow yourself to make okay drawings. Just draw. A lot.
- get a good old fashioned dry boring anatomy textbook. If you're focusing on form, you need to know skeleton and muscle structure.
- draw skeletons! Thumbnail out lil' sketchy skeletons! Then give 'em muscles and form. Work rough and loose, that is perfectly fine
- Either get a mirror or take a selfie of yourself making a scrunchy/weird face. using that as reference, draw it 10 times. Draw 20 ears. Draw 11 noses. Don't be afraid to get granular and practice single body parts
- Make weird shapes with your hand and use yourself as reference.
- The local community center usually has a life drawing class available. Also see if there's a Dr. Sketchys or other life-drawing session with live models. Its not creepy if the models are being paid to pose!

Beyond that, do you want to draw realistically or cartoony? I can give you WAY more advice on the cartoon stuff than the realistic stuff.

also:

Quote
as my brain is currently fighting years of "You will fail, don't bother" self-conditioning. :)

Tell your brain no. Spritz your brain with water and tell it to knock that off. Like... that's definitely a challenge, I know from firsthand experience, and it'll never quite go away, but the fastest way to make it go away is to just... do the work. Do it, then do it some more, and then keep doing it.

When I was taking character design class, my instructor challenged us to, if we wanted to REALLY get good at character drawing, to draw 1000 faces. Yes, really, yes, one thousand. It works!

Now - book recommendations!

- Henry Yan's Figure Drawing
- Drawn to Life by Walt Stanchfield
- Drawing People by Barbara Bradley
- Drawing the Head by William Maughan

For anyone that wants to do cartoony stuff
- Character mentor (1 and 2) by Tony Bancroft
- comics, anime, cartoons, whatever suits your fancy! Find a picture of a face and then find a style you like, and try to copy that style as you draw the face. What are the artists trying to express with that style?

It takes time, but dedication and practice really are how to git gud at drawing, and, along the way, enjoy yourself while doing it ^_^

If you have any more questions, feel free to ask.

LadyBug

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Re: Pencil/Paper Drawing
« Reply #4 on: September 19, 2018, 09:05:39 am »
For me, what was really educational was reading and drawing comics. Manga especially. What is not useful are those little wooden artist dolls; their range of motion is much too limited and not realistic.

I bought one of those at a garage sale. He is useless, all his joints are too stiff to move. So I am working on naming him and he just kinda sits around :P

An exercise I remember from art class is "gesture drawing"; you'd need a model to help you. The model makes a strange pose and holds it for 15 seconds, and the artist has that long to draw them. The idea is to get the overall forms without getting sidetracked by details, and also to make larger strokes with elbow and wrist movements instead of tiny sketches.

You said you're in a relationship, maybe you can get your partner to pose for you?

I do that sort of thing at work currently, just with a much smaller time span than 15 seconds. I work retail in a local business so lots of people touch things they shouldn't or try to get things without asking my help. So I grab a quick mental snapshot of that pose (so long as it is safe to do so, like I know they won't pull a gods damned shelf down on themselves or something) and try to re create it later, usually on a sticky note because who remembers to bring their sketch book EVERYWHERE right?

Naw, he is too self conscious to allow me to draw him. But he actively points out cute things the animals do because he knows I like to practice those too.

Beyond that, do you want to draw realistically or cartoony? I can give you WAY more advice on the cartoon stuff than the realistic stuff.
I've basically copied your list into the back of a sketch book so I have no reason to complain about a lack of models. Thaaank you!

Cartoony for sure. My boyfriend writes, and we have been tossing around this comic/cartoon strip idea for a little while. Something to do as a couple that will help us both work more on hobbies that our brains are hesitant to work on for fear of judgement.

You could still try watching people - just do the drawings in an art museum. Perfect cover!

But on a serious note: art museums are a good way to sit, study, and draw human movement using statues as your base. Once you've gotten that nailed down you could try drawing people walking past you.

There aren't a lot of art museums in my area, though I am planning a vacation summer after next to a few in Toronto and Hamilton possibly. That is going to be something I spend time doing on that vaca for sure :)

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Re: Pencil/Paper Drawing
« Reply #5 on: September 20, 2018, 12:49:23 am »
... my brain is currently fighting years of "You will fail, don't bother" self-conditioning. :)

The most certain way I know of to not succeed at a thing is to not do it. Dunno if it's helpful to you to switch that sentence up with very little other change to it, but if it is, 'Don't bother, and you will fail.'

Or from a very different angle, you might fail at drawing perfectly (probably will, at first; even the Michelangelos of the world have to learn and develop the skills before their talent is realized), but as long as you pick up that pencil and out it to paper, you will succeed in drawing something.

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Re: Pencil/Paper Drawing
« Reply #6 on: September 20, 2018, 06:33:32 pm »
I do that sort of thing at work currently, just with a much smaller time span than 15 seconds. I work retail in a local business so lots of people touch things they shouldn't or try to get things without asking my help. So I grab a quick mental snapshot of that pose (so long as it is safe to do so, like I know they won't pull a gods damned shelf down on themselves or something) and try to re create it later, usually on a sticky note because who remembers to bring their sketch book EVERYWHERE right?

Not quite the same thing as I was describing, I think -- the exercise I was thinking of is to put a time limit on the drawing time, not the observing time.
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