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!