AWKWARD ZOMBIE

You guys are awesome. Long reviews coming up.

Runes:

Over all proportions are good, watch out for the left cheek, you've got it coming out a bit further than it is in the picture.
Also make sure you are constantly aligning the various details, you can see where I've adjusted the collar based on where it's lining up to his facial details.
Careful with your line work, don't just outline objects like the lips and then colour them in. He ends up looking like he's wearing lip liner because of the dark line around his lips. Either stick to shading or only apply lines that suggest the shape(like Riku) as opposed to drawing a full line around it.
With your shading, don't just fill in entire areas because you know them to be the one colour. The right side of his cheek is much darker than say the nose tip. So either use an eraser to pick out the highlights, darken the shadows or leave the highlights white.

Verom:

Love the way you constructed the head, you've got a really good sense of 3 dimensions.
Watch out for the nose tip and the fullness of the cheeks. Right now the nose tip is really round and Sir Ian's nose is sorta egg like.
Also the angle of the mouth should tilt right a bit more.

Riku:

Excellent proportions, you've got a great sense of detail. Watch the spacing between the eyes, nose and mouth. Slightly long there.
I recommend cutting back into your sketch lines with an eraser in some places (specifically nose and chin) The shape of these parts is sorta lost under the mass of sketch lines.
I've circled that bit of his collar because in the photo his left hand covers the corner of the collar. While no one will look at that and say it looks wrong, it's important when drawing from reference to not make up details or draw how we think it looks.

DND:

This is really cool, I think you've done really well breaking up all the shapes in his face. Those large chunks of PANK are where I think you could afford to go with your darkest shade. The light green is where I think the shading should be reduced.
Eyes are a little far apart and I think to make them look deeper you'd have to add a thicker line or dark triangles in the corners of his eyes.
Bow of the lip is also too wide.
There's something about the nose bridge that makes it seem too high but I couldn't figure out how to fix that. I think that this style is really sculptural and that perhaps instead of shading where the shadows are in the photo, you'd have to approach it differently and put shapes and lines down in a way to convey form. Kinda like a pattern on a 3d shape if you get what I mean.

This is great stuff, everyone. Keep it up!

Thanks for the feedback.

My main problem with my art is how long it takes me to do anything - I went way over the amount of time I wanted to spend on this piece (I was aiming to stop at 30 minutes but I went all the way up to 80 minutes).


I catch what you mean; If I had been prepared to spend more time on this piece I would have laid down line work/line shading in the same way I used in the skull piece in my signature - the lines being used to suggest the direction of planes/arcs on the skull (the skull piece took me hours and hours and hours to finish).

I also agree with everything else you've pointed out.

Okay I feel a bit silly for this... my scanner died about 2 weeks ago so this is actually camera-vision and probably sucks, but I wanted a shot anyway. >>; Warning, it goes into uber-huge because apparently I can't remember which sizes deviantart likes.

http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2013/ ... 5wlbud.jpg

I got bored on the bus and started shading the only bits I remembered/had marked, hence the few very dark bits.

Edit: Oh, also, someone needs to tell me how to eyebrows. I've never been able to do them properly. o.o;

Depends on the eyebrows. They're all different.

This is a good thing that you guys are doing. Thought I'd participate.

Don't art from memory when you're trying to draw from reference. Shading is integral to shaping the face and making those details up can completely change what you're going for.

Overall details are correct, but you need to check to make sure details line up and are in proportion to one another. Eyes and chin are a bit big and I imagine it's because you spent more time detailing those parts. The chin for example has a lot of shapes to it and I can see where you've observed all those shapes but they've all become an equal size and made the chin grow.
The blue lines are where I've aligned parts of his face with other parts of his face to keep them in proportion.
Pay attention to angles too. His right eye was too high and his mouth needed to tilt more.
The other way I check proportions is to look at negative spaces, the gaps between details. Like the space between his nose tip and his cheek or how far along his chin the collar meets up.

Dan:

Very good, I can easily recognise it. Your proportions are fairly accurate with the exception of the chin being too long. Like Riku I recommend cutting back into some of your line work with the eraser in some areas as the shape is lost under the line work. Watch out for those nose, it looks like you've joined two ovals with a curve. His nostrils aren't that round from the front.
Also I can see where you've fuzzed the collar -because that's what a collar looks like- Don't do that.

Thanks for the feedback, although I'm kinda curious as to what you mean by fuzzing the collar.

Making it up.

I did a sketch of this one.



I have a lot of difficulty with shading and line thickness. Oftentimes I feel like what I draw is too static and lacks life.

http://imgur.com/n6wMMYF.jpg

Edited in GIMP. Would have worked on the lining, but all I had was this.

That looks great, [IF]!

Awesome.

Well the comic is up, so if there's anyone who hasn't finished yet please post today. I'll be doing the last review for this session when the day ends and then we move on to our next topic.

Alright, looks like that's it for this session.

IF:

Very good! I like the sensitive use of hatching especially on the bags of his eyes and the left cheek specifically.
Space between nose and mouth is a little long. Top half of the head is a little bit narrower than the photo, the hair and his right cheek bone could come out a little more. Most importantly though, almost all the details line up! I was able to draw a line from one point to any other point and like 95% of them time everything matched up. Excellent proportions.

Runes:

Size of the face in relation to the head is correct though the nose and mouth are a bit far down. Left cheek is coming out too far so his head is wider than it should be. Take care with line weights his eye lids don't look as heavy as they should because the same line thickness is applied all over. Lines on the top lid would be heavier as they also cast a shadow over the eye.
Make sure to check the proportions by aligning the details.

Example:

Notice how the left side of his nose lines up to the mouth as well as the inside of the white shirt.
The neck on your piece looks much thicker because the inside of the white shirt aligns to the outer edge of his eye.

Take care with your shading. Like I said earlier, don't treat shading like bucket fill. Apply shading to convey shape/form not colour.

Those are spots colour picked from his nose tip and the shadow on his cheek. Pretty big difference when you see them like that.
Even more so like this:

Also, you mentioned you were working from your phone? I'm thinking that it might have been harder to really see what you're drawing at that size. I've got an extra big screen and even so that picture was kinda small. You might have an easier time with a big clear picture on a bigger screen.


Lesson review:
So, what I was aiming for in that lesson was to get a feel for how everyone worked but also get you guys to really analyse your subject matter.
I can see everyone has looked really closely at the details of Sir Ian's face and I think a few of you ran into trouble when those details sort of ballooned out or the spaces between details felt greater than they actually were.
That cartoony image of an artist closing one eye and holding up their pencil or brush is actually a thing. It's for 1. aligning details 2. checking angles 3. comparing proportions. I did that a lot while comparing your drawings to the reference images. I totally recommend doing this. Might seem silly to anyone not used to it but it's pretty useful when trying to draw accurately to what you're seeing.

A note on 'fuzzing' or 'making it up'.
I pointed it out twice on the collar where the hand meets. It probably seemed super insignificant but the reason it's important not to 'fuzz' is that when it comes time to draw from memory/imagination you want to have an accurate idea in your head. But your memories aren't gonna be very accurate if during your study drawings you only half looked at your subject and finished the rest on an idea of the subject.

I can draw something that looks like a bicycle, but if I were to try and make it look good I'd fail as they aren't something I've got committed to my memory. So I grab some reference and do some studies so I can try draw it from other angles should I ever need to. But say I never bother looking at the spokes. Where they meet up, how they connect, how thick they really are. I just make it up for each of my studies because it's roughly what they look like and people will get the idea.
I tell ya what, it'll look pretty bad if I ever got asked to draw a bicycle.

The other thing too is those details can be used to help keep the rest of the picture in proportion. If you make stuff up you may find your proportions getting messed up.

Hopefully you guys have already gotten something out of last weeks lesson.
Let me know if there's anything that confuses you.


Art Class: Lesson #2

Hands!
Or feet if you aren't feeling challenged enough.
Try drawing your own hands or a family members hands/feet. (Photos are fine too but your hands and feet are right there, so convenient.)
Try different gestures and angles too.

These are a few studies by an up and coming comic artist, Cassandra James.



I'd like to see a minimum of 4 studies and some different positions like a fist or thumbs up.

Also: Are all you guys seeing my pictures? I got told photobucket is really shitty and doesn't always show up.

http://imgur.com/3fjlraJ.jpg

Trying to get away from using lines so much. More to come.

Oh this is good.
I think you shouldn't back away from lines though. Instead think about line weights and hatching.

Also, are you smudging with your finger or something? Or is that just smudging from being worked on. If you are smudging with your finger I suggest not to. It makes your art murky and shading in that manner lacks definition.

Sorry teach my dog ate my homework and then i...