Challenge 3: Drawing a Superhero

Our group decided on the next challenge for us to do, which was to draw some kind of superhero. Being a fan of Avatar, I started to think about waterbending (controlling the flow of water) and now all I needed was a character to fit this power. I started by thinking that I wanted a martial arts master, because of the fluid movements in waterbending, but I did not just want to draw a waterbending human. Thus, my thoughts initially brought me to a panda, due to them just looking awesome when they do Kong Fu – but they did not fit that well with my waterbending trait. My friend Gideon over at WildWonton suggested I look at monkeys to see if they fit the description – and he was right – a monkey fits much better due to the already curvy nature of their body and tail, and they can look quite ominous when they want to.

So I settled on the monkey. I chose a reference image and did the same stance as the image. I also copied quite a lot of the image but I tried to change some details and make his clothing more “waterbendy”. I am not very good at drawing water, but the orbiting water around his legs, arms and torso turned out quite good. 

I tried to do the shading without looking at the reference image and I think it turned out rather nice. After having done the hand study, the palms and fingers were much easier to draw, as I have previously had issues with these. 

Overall, I am pleased with the result, but I am very excited to see how he stacks up against the other superheroes!

   

Travel Drawings

So I went to the United Kingdom for a business trip, and on the journey, I got very inspired by an artist who posts videos under the name of VamosArt on YouTube. He makes drawings that are very realistic and which have a quirky 3D side to them. I wasn’t about to venture into the complexity of the 3D drawings just yet, but I found a picture of a 3D panda and I wanted to draw it as realistically (not including fur) as I could. 

The panda is really cute and I think I did a pretty good job of making the shadows realistic. I relied on my studies of gesture from YouTube and other places (especially Proko on YouTube) to get the right proportions and flow in the panda’s stance. This helped a lot to make the final drawing more believable. It was also my first time drawing a bamboo stick, and I went a little freehand with it at the end, but also that I think turned out pretty good.

I had a lot of trouble with the teacup – I have never been good at drawing glass and liquids, so perhaps this is one of the areas I should look more into in the near future 🙂

I have posted both images below. The original image is by Cryptid-Creations (They have a lot of other good stuff too).

  

   

Challenge 2

The second challenge in our newly founded group was to draw hands and first seek out learnings on how to draw them, in order to improve.

I found a bunch of good videos online, such as videos by Proko, and others, that mentioned how to draw hands and other body parts. The most helpful part for me was to imagine the hand as a trapezoid with a circle for the thumb and cylinders for the fingers (as shown in this video).

In order to improve, I set out to do various sketches and studies of different positions of the hand and the relationship between the fingers and the base of the hand. I believe I got a good hang of this by the end. I also did some tutorials on how to draw hands (see the 2 images that are noticeably better than the others in the center-bottom of the image below). This also helped to learn by drawing it correctly a few times and getting that feeling into my fingers.

  

After having practiced a lot I then tried to draw my own hand in different positions, gradually getting more and more complex. The result is below, and I think the final hand (bottom right) is quite good. However, as it was pointed out, there is still an issue with the length of the joints on the two main fingers relative to each other, and the smallest fingers are a little too small compared to the rest of the hand. So, there is definitely still work to be done, but in general I am pleased that this is a huge improvement over my previous level 🙂

  

Challenge 1

In the group the I met with yesterday we decided to have some challenges that we would give each other once in a while, just to make things more fun.

This is a great idea, and the first challenge was to draw a cartoon character as a human. As I am still learning some of the basics and not fully able to draw well without a reference, I chose to use a picture for reference again. The picture I chose was Timon in human form from the image below (original by Fernando Mendonca):

  
I went ahead straight away and it was very exciting and felt more creative than usually. I had just bought some new colored pencils, so I was also itching to try those out. I can definitely recommend them (Pablo pencils).

This is my rendition of the image above:

  
I think it went very well and I tried out some different techniques like the pressure of the colored pencils in different places, which acted as a sort of shading. Also, highlighting the edges of the pants worked out well, but i could not do that with the face because the skin pencil (not a Pablo, just one I found), wasn’t soft enough to be able to give a deep enough color to highlight the edges.

All in all I think this turned out very well! 

Drawing with Friends

Today, we had a drawing session at the library with a group of friends – exploring the way we each view drawing and what we each get out of it.

Some of the things we did were to look  at what each of had dine before this meeting and then we chose an animal to draw. I chose a tiger, and I did not finish the drawing in the time we had, but I finished it when I got home later. This is the tiger I drew (name: Mr T – I think it is a good start to my new sketchbook, which I bought on the same day). It was supposed to be a mix of a dragon and a tiger, but i really liked the tiger so i just continued with it. You can still see the eraser marks from the dragon claw 😛

  

It was a great day and I learned a lot by just discussing different approaches to art. I look forward to future sessions. Here are some links to websites with the other participants at the meeting – check out some of their fabulous art 🙂

WildWonton – also here on WordPress – some really great art and photography, and also some travel tips 😉

Iseaway – check out the profile over at deviantart and look through the gallery!

Enjoy!

Drawing Upside Down (Part 2)

The second drawing I drew was that of a German Soldier, originally drawn by an unknown German artist in the sixteenth century. The outlines of the horse and the detailed shading made this an enjoyable excercise. I had less trouble making the different parts of the horse and rider proportionate to each other, than I did with the Spider-Man drawing featured in the previous post. However, I still feel that the neck of the horse is a bit too thick.

The drawings I have had to draw have become more and more complex, starting with a line drawing without shading, to a complicated drawing of Spider-Man with no shading, and finally to a very complex drawing with shading and multiple subjects. This last drawing proved quite challenging, but I am very happy with the outcome. Again, I here is the original drawing from the book, and my drawing next to it.

The next part of the book will teach me to go back to my childhood drawing roots and pull some of that into my drawing as an adult. I look forward to learning more!

Drawing Upside Down (Part 1)

The next challenge in my path of learning was to draw Spider-man. I tried to follow the advice from the book and refrained from outlining the general shape first, as the book said that this could become frustrating as th individual parts may not end up fitting inside the shape. Instead, I drew each shape in connection with the last, almost like a printer, drawing from the bottom and upwards.

Here is the result – I am quite happy with it, but there is obviously still plenty of room for improvement:

Learning the Basics

Recently, I got a copy of a book called “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” from my good friend Gideon – already a great artist himself.

I have just started reading and have learnt the basic differences between the left and the right side of the brain.

It turns out that the left side of the brain inhibits artistic perception because it wants to “understand” everything around it. This means that when it sees a hand, it conjures up images of all the hands it has seen and gives you a general image of a hand, and tries to draw the hand, using all these past references to guide the hand. The problem is that it is also impatient and wants to get the job done as quickly as possible. The combination of these two means that the result becomes sloppy and inaccurate in relation to what you are actually seeing in that moment.

The first exercise was to draw the vase and faces. An interesting thing happened when drawing the second face – it felt like I automatically switched focus from the face i was drawing to drawing the vase. This was because the right side of the brain is more adept at spatial recognition, and to make the two sides symmetrical, it requires that you align the curves on the two sides as closely as possible. The easiest way to do this is to draw the vase (the shape that exists in the negative space) instead of drawing the face. This was an interesting exercise that taught me the feeling of being in what the author calls R-mode (acting with the right side of the brain).

The second exercise was to draw Igor Stravinski upside down (Picasso made a drawing of him). It was quite fun to do this and it took some time, but the result was great. The image turned out well on the right side, but when I got to the left side, I started making the image too stretched – but it was a great experience and it was nice to see what I can achieve when taught in the right way and using the right techniques. It also was fun to be in the R-mode for an extended period of time (because the image was turned upside down and so the left side of the brain did not recognize the image and did not want to take up the task). The drawing took around 40 minutes to complete. The left picture is my portrayal, and the right picture is the original.

Next up is an upside down image of Spider-man and a Sixteenth Century German knight on a horse. Let’s see how those go 🙂

The “Before”

To know whether you have improved at something, you must first know where you came from. So I am putting these pictures up to show what I have been able to draw so far. Important: this is not freehand – I was drawing these by looking at existing drawings. These were done at different times over the past couple of years.

My path of learning begins

Hi,

I made this blog so that I can have a log of how my drawing has progressed through time. I will post pictures of what I draw and what I have learned in the process here.

Let’s begin!