As some of you might know, there's a new section on the site where you can check my art! It's mainly sketches. I should really use thumbnails because it is going to take ages to even load at this rate lmao.
I wanted to have a place where I could simply upload stuff without having to make a whole post about it, so there it is. As you can see, the oldest drawings were made in good ol' fashion, but this year I started using my drawing tablet. I know most people start with a Wacom, but I went with an Xp-pen and I really like it so far.
In any case, I figured I should review the fundamentals (again) to make the most out of it. After playing Silent Hill 2 Remake, and with the goal of doing concept art in mind, I thought learning how to draw characters was a good idea.
In order to do that, learning about flow, energy and proportions is paramount to achieve good, organic character design, which is why I began practicing gestures. That picture up there are the gesture drawings I did the first day.
And these ones were drawn on the seventh day of practicing around one hour a day. Much cleaner, if I say so myself.
Eager to test my new skills, I did a "study" on the concept art for Vaas Montenegro for Far Cry 3, made by Bruno Gauthier Leblanc, this is how it turned out:
Not too shabby. The gesture training paid off, it is not the best, but it does the job. Now, the elephant in the room here is my coloring. Although the base colors are fine, my values are all over the place, they do not match at all.
These blurred black and white images demonstrate how you can still make out volume and depth in the reference, even with reduced information, while my drawing just looks flat.
Thus, the conclusion is that before even thinking about coloring, first I must get better at discerning and grouping values. So I did some practice.
Clearly two drawings are not enough to make enough of a difference but hey, drop by drop makes an ocean, right? I'll eventually get it right if I keep at it.
Although... maybe stillframes are out my league for now, huh.
Closing words
Well, there it is. None of this learning would've been possible without all the feedback I got from various people online. It is very important to share your work and post it somewhere. I also recommend joining a community or a server that focuses on learning art if you really want to improve.
There's usually people that are better than you that will point out your mistakes and ways to fix 'em, as well as people with a similar level with whom you can share the awesome experience of learning a skill while supporting each other.
Some resources:
- quickposes.com - dynamic poses to practice gesture drawings
- filmgrab.com - stillframes to practice value studies
I find that practising 90% of the time and spending the last 10% to test your skills with drawings or studies is the way to go, at least for me.
Thank you for reading my post! I am definitely not qualified to give advice on art xD, but I think that there's value (get it?) in sharing my experience and the soykaf I do from time to time.
Счастливо!