City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

Pointers for the Artistically Challenged

Avernal_EU

By Avernal_EU,
Posted on: 2006-08-09 06:02 in Multi-Media Fan Creations

 

Posted

The fist is the best of the lot. Kudos for that.

Also I cream my pants (!) when I see construction lines. Even if they are still a little stiff ^^ They are the best part of the process in my opinion...

Loosen your wrist and begin by making a full page of light circles. Think of it like a warm up. Don't tighten your pencil too much either with your fingers

The last pic has a good expression. Therefor you can say there is already a sense of life in your drawings.

Keep it up. It's a start and there is yet much to do but it's a great start ^^

More!

 

Posted

Thanks for your comments Swissy, they mean a lot.

One thing that I found with the fist, was something mentioned in my "Art for Noobs" book, and that is that a common mistake with people that are starting out is to try and interpret what they're drawing rather than just drawing what it is they see.

If you draw a fist, you have certain unconscious preconceptions about what a fist is, and what it is composed of, so that when you try and transpose those preconceptions on to paper, it all goes horribly wrong!

@SteelRat; @SteelRat2
"Angelina my love, I'm a genius!"
"Of course you are darling, that's why I married you. Physically, you're rather unattractive"
http://faces.cohtitan.com/profile/SteelRat

 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
Ok just thought I'd post a couple of my other attempts.. let me know what you think

Female Hero Face
Mad Evil Destructo Bot

[/ QUOTE ]

You're improving at a massively fast rate

Female Hero Face - Really great expression, you've done the eyes, hair and nose very well. You have moved on a lot achieving this

Mad Evil Destructo Bot - Obviously practising foreshortening & again you have done very well with this. The shading is nice and soft too.

Look forward to more from you

 

Posted

Thanks Knighty - I'm glad you liked them both

The female hero face was part of a tutorial for faces contained within the book "How to Draw Great Looking Comic Book Women" - I'm amazed how simple it was to do given the basic building blocks, and I'm going to try and incorporate what I've learnt there in my own compositions.

Mad Evil Destructo Bot - made him because I thought drawing a robot which contains far more basic geometric shapes might help me learn to draw my characters in 3D, and yes get a handle for foreshortening. The big problem I've had is getting the proportions of everything right in relation to everything else (even taking into consideration the whole "7 heads" thing.

The hand shooting the energy beam I'm especially pleased with. When I sketched it out, I thought to myself "make this bigger than you think it should be to give the picture that depth you want" - and bingo!

I'm hoping aswell that my efforts would encourage other would be artists who think that they can't draw to give it a try. As I said in my opening, I believed my artistic ability to be that of a "retarded colour blind baboon", but I am absolutely overjoyed with the progress I'm making, and with a bit of patience and application, I'd like to think anyone could do the same.

@SteelRat; @SteelRat2
"Angelina my love, I'm a genius!"
"Of course you are darling, that's why I married you. Physically, you're rather unattractive"
http://faces.cohtitan.com/profile/SteelRat

 

Posted

SteelRat with your abilities of a baboon you are still far ahead of me. I tried to start out with a simple drawing book and screwed up the stickmen I was drawing. I am going to stick to writing webpages.