My blog has been fairly sloppy as of late in terms of drawing, so I'm making this one big entry containing all of the drawings that were submitted for my second year portfolio. I took these pictures in the order I submitted them, so they should hopefully be somewhat close to chronological.
This first drawing was some pose practice with the new character sheet of Redi, from my series Oddball. I made some changes to her anatomy and wanted to practice some stronger poses, basing the shielding pose on a basic triangle shape, adding a stronger, straighter dynamic to the gesture.
INDIAN PINKIE
In this early exercise, we worked with Indian ink on paper, looking at the different means of applying the ink, whether scraping with sticks, pouring, or blowing into place. Aside from the medium, this experiment had no real goal, and the results are an interesting reflection on my thought process. Even with the abstract form of mark making, I still stuck to recognisable shapes and faces, still maintaining a fairly cartoony and somewhat comedic approach to the drawing.
In the second picture, I partnered with Arron. Hyperactivity inevitably kicked in with this joined project as we drew Sonic the Hedgehog punching Pikachu, Pinkie Pie announcing the end of days, and a giant burning flower. In hindsight we should have done a lot more with this picture, seeing as the drawings Arron produces are top notch, wasted potential aside, we had a few jokes and giggles.
TURTLE SURFER DUDE
A belt buckle print and textures from various brick patterns.
Patterns from floor panels and a metal sign.
This exercise was another test of our creativity, we started by venturing out into
the apocalyptic ruins of Leeds in search for sweet, sweet textures. The above image shows a collection of textures gathered from various spots, including letters from signs, prints from metal plates on the ground (thank lawd it wasn't raining) and a belt buckle I found lying around. I ended up making patterns from the metal plate, which provided the base shape of a turtle.
The next part of the lesson was to use our newly created shape to draw a 3 dimensional version, I used projection lines to figure out the front, back and side angles before drawing and shading the final, partygoing turtle. The most challenging part was incorporating the roundness into his design. Rather than a sharp, boxy shape, I chose to translate a shape that consists almost entirely of curves, so getting the correct form and volume took some thought.
STEVE...TWO...ONE...DRAW!
In this set of drawings, we worked on drawing Steve's head as he rotated around. I mention this quite often, but I'm quite a slow perfectionist when it comes to drawing, so these exercises are incredibly useful to help me break that. Time gradually went down throughout this short series of drawings from 3 minutes to 10 seconds. I noticed myself conforming less and less to a consistent style as I progressed. Some pictures provided me with humorous faces that I may be able to use as reference in future works.
This next series of images got a bit out of hand. I can safely say I've never drawn a full character gesture in a single second before. Nevertheless I feel I managed to grab the gesture lines in later work that would act as a skeleton for a full picture. Working on the silhouettes also helped with proportions, as I was looking at the pose as a whole, rather than focusing on individual sections such as the arms and hands. A lot of the time I tend to focus on the lines rather than the form I'm creating, so this worksheet was very helpful.
We also did some more reasonably timed sketches of Steve as he rotated on a chair, I'm happy with a couple of these, but looking back they leave a lot to be desired as far as construction and consistency go. My favourite drawings would be the fourth and seventh, I feel these captured the facial structure the best.
In worksheet, I spent even more time drawing Steve, I'm happy with most of the face, but the stretchy turtle neck is a pretty big blow to the anatomical correctness. The images on the left were focusing on redrawing the silhouette left by the side of his face, these were gradually becoming more flat as I reproduced them, so I drew the cartoon version of how I saw the face turning. I'm happy with how I captured form with the shading, but the structure layout still needs work.
In this test, we focused on the negative space left by the model, it was a nice change as I could look a lot more at muscle texture and form which I can't normally convey with lines alone. To accomplish this effect, I layered a piece of paper in charcoal to black it out, then worked in the highlights and mid-tones using an eraser.
This second worksheet followed, using the same technique on the left to practice a less standard pose. The scribbles on the right were intended as a "live animation" test of sorts, showing a character going from a push up position to standing. We only had a few seconds to flesh out these drawings and give the needed information, so I stick to basic stick figures, with a kite shape to illustrate the shoulder orientation.
In one of our earlier sessions we did a similar exercise to the above scribbly poses, we each took it in turns to make some "dead" poses, we drew the poses in three stages, a stick gesture drawing, a silhouette, and a five minute full body sketch. This was still early on in the year so I couldn't draw as much in five minutes as I can now. I made myself use pen for this test so that I'd be braver with my lineart, as opposed to pencil where I can hide the framework.
We used a stick in place of an imaginary weapon, some used it as a gun, and some used it as a spear or sword.
TREE TIME - Nature VS Nukes
This image sequence was made to illustrate a story without the use of any actors or typically moving objects. To accomplish this, a common idea was to show a time lapse process through the storyboards. I worked with Arron to create a man vs. nature story across time, showing the growth of a civilization that eventually collapses inwardly on itself in contrast to a tree that stands the test of time and drops an apple, restarting the reproductive cycle.
DISTANCE
In this lesson, we looked at scaling a character, seeing how many heads fit into the body and applying perspective to this. Due to me working in A5 sketchbooks for doodles, and working on a graphics tablet for my digital art, my brain has naturally adapted to drawing in a specific size, so this was useful to see which sizes are my weaknesses. I feel the smallest picture is the best, and the further to the right they go, the less I'm happy with them. I also messed up the perspective on the far right, and the model is now flying. It was around this point that I started using diagonal and hatch shading to show shadows and muscle mass on models, a technique I now adapt even into my sketches as it looks a lot more uniform than scribbly shading and can be used to show different tones depending on the line spacing.
FEMALE MODELS
This year we got to work with two female models. Females, to me, are much better to practice drawing as their bodies are more naturally curvy, and as such can show a lot more expression and exaggeration. For these warm up images, we looked at some basic poses. I often have trouble in warmup when it comes to finishing the drawings so I try to focus on the most important areas, which are usually the legs, shoulders and hips. These show the orientation of the body as well as map out the height and width of the rest.
The following pictures are some of the larger works I produces, I was really aiming to add a sense of depth to the body through shading, as I'm used to drawing more flat, 2D characters. As mentioned earlier, I now use linear shading to make a more consistent style, as well as achieving different tones in the body.
One thing I always struggle with is feet, in the near future I should really do more observed studies and figure out how to structure them properly, the main problem is the orientation and showing that in the drawing. I never draw bare-footed characters either, so I need to practice more with toes (and fingers too). I often draw them too fat and don't have enough room for them all, this is likely due to me using a four finger design on my own art styles.
I've started looking for more hidden shapes to base poses on, these give them a lot more strength. An example can be seen in the image below, where the angle of the back, the legs and arms create a triangle shape, with the strongest side being the arms that are locked into place.
This image feels incredibly out of proportion, the main effects can be seen in the torso, where the typical "hourglass" shape is distorted, making the hips seem short and the chest area seem elongated. Although I failed in this picture, I now have the knowledge to look for these things, which to me is a sign of improvement.
Perspective failed me once again on this image, the angle of the body looks as if the viewer is looking down, however the size of the head seems too small, and appears to be looking from beneath, my only conclusion is that the model was leaning away from me at the time, but then the relation of the back arm to the legs would be different.
The drawings at the top of the page are probably my favourite of this particular model, I feel as we moved to more complicated poses, I thought a lot more about what I was doing, rather than mindlessly drawing what what was in front of me. Now that I think, this is probably why I've not been completing my drawings as much at points, I've been taking time to think how the limbs work with one another and how perspective applies to what's in front of me, but when you have five minutes to draw, there isn't much time to lose.
The picture above was a composition test, we were told to make a scene with a group of pictures of the life model and I wanted to take this chance to test out depth in my drawings. The right hand side of the picture worked a lot better than the left, which was the side I tried to throw the last few drawings onto to fill up the space, as previously mentioned I'm better at working around a very specific scale, and as such aren't massively happy with the larger drawings, aside from the one on the bottom left, where I had time to play with the shading on the hair and body.
For the next part of the session, we did some 10 minute drawings focusing on specific areas of our choosing. Seeing as the model had dark hair, I wanted to use a graphite stick to really show the contrast and shadows provided by the lamps lighting the model. The picture on the left is one of my favourite shading exercises in this year. Due to it being cold, the model was lit by two large lights that created very strong, shapely shadows on one side of her body that I managed to capture quite well in this observational drawing.
The other half of my shading worksheet, the image on the bottom left was fun to draw, keeping all the lines in one direction while changing pressure to develop a sense of depth and form.
These pictures are quite possibly my favourite of the whole year, this is the time I learned to use the shading technique I now use in my drawings, we were told to shade the entire picture, leaving no white marks and then use three different tones to bring out the form. I'm very happy with how these ones turned out and hope I manage to improve and utilise this technique further as I progress.
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