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J Menriv
•
1yr
added comment inProject - Organizing Line Weight
Asked for help
Hey everyone,
I wanted to share my two projects: the initial one and the updated version after watching a helpful demo. I'm looking for feedback and suggestions to improve my technique further.
Before Demo:
In the initial project, I focused on capturing the most noticeable and high-contrast shadows. I felt comfortable tracing those elements, but I struggled figuring out the rest.
After Demo:
After watching the demo, I learned some valuable insight. Now, I feel more confident about how to identify the the elements that contrast and understand that this exercise has more range than just the high-contrast shadows, which has significantly improved the overall look and feel of the project.
I would greatly appreciate it if you could provide feedback on one or both versions.
Thank you in advance.
Same Old Sam
1yr
For whatever reason it won't let me reply to your reply to me, so I'm just going to post it here instead. @J Menriv:
No need to apologize for the original photo, haha. I was just curious because I think I've only seen pencil and digital work so far in everyone's submissions. I totally understand the difficulty in taking photos of pencil drawings too, for all the reasons you mentioned, so I think editing your photo was fine. Plus I've definitely seen Stan do the exact same kinds of edits when he does the critiques.
For the record, your unedited photo looks great too. Those bold, thick lines look really consistent, so it's not like the edited photo was hiding mistakes or shaky linework.
Also, I think I get what you're saying about the shadow thing. Thank you for taking the time to explain your process in words for me. Specifically, "not completing them entirely" is an interesting idea, like you're just giving the subtle impression of shadows instead of explicitly drawing them. I'll have to keep that in the back of my head and see how it feels.
Same Old Sam
•
1yr
Asked for help
I actually had a lot more fun on this assignment than I was expecting. Maybe that's because there were a couple elements that made it "easier" (to get a decent looking final product anyway,) since this was tracing and I did it digitally. Varying digital pen pressure feels a lot easier than varying physical pencil pressure like I've been doing with the mushroom warmup exercise. My pencil doesn't go jerkily skittering over my paper when I start pushing harder.
I hope it's clear which rhino is which, but in case it's not:
Left - Hierarchy of Importance
Right - Shadow and Light Direction
In the photo, there are two very strong shadows on the rhino's flank/buttock created by folds in its skin. I tried to represent those with a single, thick line, but I don't think it turned out too well. I'm curious if there's a better technique anybody found for those areas. Maybe I just made them too thick.
I just thought about it for a bit, and I think I realized something about varying pen/pencil pressure mid-line. With the digital drawing tablet, I can easily rotate and resize the drawing so that I can do every line comfortably. This is harder to do, or straight up impossible sometimes, on physical paper. I think for the mushroom exercise, which I've been doing on paper, my pencil skitters when I'm pushing the line. Maybe on paper I should plan my ellipse, and where I want the darker part of it to be, so that I'm only bearing down on the pulling motion of the stroke.
After doing a couple tries, it seems like I'm either onto something or placebo effecting-ing myself. But this seems to make intuitive sense to me: I have greater control over the pull of a circular stroke rather than the push segment.
Same Old Sam
•
1yr
Asked for help
I think my searching lines got a bit too messy on these—as evidenced by how I basically drew the hand twice, one on top of the other. I think that messiness largely stems from making my lines too dark too early. I'd put down a light line, realize it was wrong, and then, in going to correct it, put down a dark line that was also wrong. I'm definitely going to redo these, but I figured I should post them for the sake of faithfully documenting my only pre-demo attempt.
Yup, I agree with what you said! Try to keep the "loose sketch" part relatively light, and only start to apply more pressure when you feel like you got a good idea of where the line should go to
I really love how simple and polygonal your snail looks. It's like I can see each induvial pencil stroke.
Same Old Sam
•
1yr
Asked for help
Those big straight lines were difficult. I think I probably needed to use more shoulder and less elbow for that movement. I did a light-ish messy under-drawing and then went back over it with a darker pencil in hopes of getting cleaner CSI lines. It worked well in some places, but I found myself doing a lot of erasing so that I could re-adjust the placement of certain lines in relation to one another. I did the table (I think it's a table) last, but I think doing that first—and comparing everything else to it—would have been a better idea.
Same Old Sam
•
1yr
Here's my third attempt, which I did after watching the critique. I think I did a better job keeping my lines straight and only using five values. (I got a wider range of pencils!) This is pear #1, and I did this on newsprint. I can't decide if the background adds to it or makes it looks messier.
Same Old Sam
•
1yr
Post-demo pear #3 on the left, my pre-demo pear #1 on the right. The left is pure white copy paper while the right is toned grey sketch paper, but, ironically, it almost looks like the opposite. I'm not sure I did any better after the demo, but I think my sections have cleaner borders. I'm still not getting the wonderfully chunky planes other people are getting (maybe I need to shade longer and commit to a larger drawing?) but I think I'm going to move on to the next lessons.
Same Old Sam
•
1yr
Asked for help
Pear #1. Pretty messy first attempt, but I wanted to go ahead and push through the posting-my-work nerves now. I'm not sure that using grey-toned paper did me any favors as far as having 5 cleanly defined values, but that's okay. Maybe I'll do another one on copy paper.
@nineofnaps
•
1yr
There really needs to be tips on how to not smudge the paper for left handers. I'm even wearing a "smudge guard" glove but still have difficulties. Any critiques welcome!
Not a lefty, so I don't really know what I'm talking about as far as smudge mitigation goes, but I'm wondering if it's a problem with this particular reference photo. The shadow, where we're putting down the most graphite, is on the left side of the object. I wonder if a mirrored photo, where the shadow was on the right, would give you as much trouble. Also, I don't know about you, but I did the shadows first, so maybe in instances like these working right/light to left/dark would work better? (I feel like a kneaded eraser would be able to pick up some of those smudges after you're done, but that doesn't help if there's any smudges on the drawing itself.)
