Helen
Cheshire, UK
Recovering art school graduate (2000) who never learned how to draw properly in 9 years training... now 47 and I'm starting from scratch!
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@jbaka
•
6d
added comment inProject - Simplify from Observation
Asked for help
Hello Everyone! Here’s my first assignment, definitely came out looking more like an avocado instead of a pear lol 😂. Question, I was trying to get an even layer when rendering but I kept seeing white spots which lead to the darkened layers. Is that because of the 300 g/sm paper’s texture? How can I improve? Thank you 🙏
Helen
3d
the white spots are due to a textured paper, yes - I have some paper similar and it really shows if you use the side of the pencil particularly. You can try using the tip of the pencil, or look out for smoother paper like cartridge if it bothers you. It looks good though, but yeah ideally it would have a couple more mid-tones. I drew myself a little diagram of the five values to help.
Helen
•
3d
Oh my did I learn a bunch on this one. I could say I got schooled. Firstly I realised that I'm really terrible at listening to instructions! I pretty much totally blanked everything Stan said to do for my first attempt which is a bit embarrassing. In my defence it has been 24 years since I had to listen to instructions from a teacher! So I managed a semi-realistic sketch instead of a proper straight lines value drawing. OK. Try again - this time I looked at the instructions again, totally didn't register them properly AGAIN and just looked at the picture in the lesson, I didn't watch the demo for this attempt. The value capture is a BIT better but the proportions have gone somewhere terrifying. Last one I watched the full demo and then tried again. I realised my laptop wasn't rendering the photo as well as I could see in the demo, so I tweaked the brightness just a touch which helped a bit. By this time I was thoroughly sick of this poor dude so I decided to just rip out a quick sketchy sketch just to get the feel of what I SHOULD have been doing. Values are better, proportions are dreadful but I probably only took 30 mins or so. He looks a bit like one of the ladies from Demoiselles d'Avignon. I'm the new Picasso! /s I also learned that if I write in ballpoint and then use fixative, it forces the ink right through the paper hence no.2 man has writing across his head! Oops. I'm going to have another bash at him tomorrow and see if I can do a better job.
Helen
•
4d
Oh no! I hope you heal well and quickly! Maybe you could take some of your recovery time to look at things that inspire you, like other artists or photos or books? I have a joint condition that means I sometimes have to take it easy and instead of overdoing it I like to take the time to "fill the creative well" - even if it's just browsing Pinterest or watching a few YouTube videos. Drawing with the other hand is absolutely an option, I've even seen it used by art teachers to help people loosen up - I sometimes shade with my non-dominant hand which is a useful skill if you are using smudgy media or you can't rotate your work.
