Ebzketch's Stuff

Hey here's some of my stuff right now I'm trying to get better at drawing and digital painting and when I'm at school I do 3d animation and I haven't animated 2d in a while but I'll get to that after my drawing skills are better.

edit: also something I hadn't heard before is the term chickenscratch which is a good word for it. I'm trying to not do that. I used to do that a lot when my eye was more skilled than my hand and it was mostly so i would have to decide where a solid line was i guess. It's a bad habit and I'm progressively kicking it. I'm also trying to be able to draw with a tablet which I'm not that great at and it makes me chickenscratch



Sketchbook 1(oldest)

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Sketchbook 2

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Smaller Sketchbook

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Loose Papers

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Older Digital Stuff

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old class projects
http://ebsketch.deviantart.com/art/MeProfile-Draft-305960354

http://ebsketch.deviantart.com/gallery/37486786#/d525ur1

http://ebsketch.deviantart.com/gallery/37486786#/d525vnx

I'mma say this one mo' 'gain: thassa lotta shit.

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Your sketchbooks and loose papers remind me of my skill level around 6th Grade to 8th Grade. In other words, it looks as if you draw a lot for fun, but haven't undergone any of the training required to shoot those technical skills to the sky.

I wonder if you've browsed our past threads. You should if you haven't. I'm basically gonna repeat myself:

2 fundamental requirements to draw like a beast:
-Ability to envision and understand the subject of the drawing in 3D space (Animation level up, painting/light physics level up)
-Thoroughly know the subject of your drawing. The more complex the drawing, the deeper the knowledge should be. (This is why we learn living beings' anatomy - living bodies are complex)

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Unfortunately, I forgot how exactly my skills leapt. I just remember trying to learn those two fundamental concepts until I had finally accumulated enough learning/data to enter another level of drawing. Not sure if it snapped or if I had just slowly reached that threshold without realizing it. (With me, snapping is possible. )
...and I talk about myself so that you could relate to that experience a little.

Edit: left out the legs and other stuff because time was running out to upload this and see the reference.

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here is some more digital stuff but it's really bad and I don't know why I applied half the colors I did to one of them and the other is just an unblended mess that's I don't know how to begin to finish but I'll work on them later after I try and paint something more simple maybe.

so here's the first one I did where I drew the portrait on paper then I painted over it in photoshop and the only thing that's pretty much right is a portion of the forehead. This is much better than my second one.

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On this one I just laid out where some colors may be then I ran out of time. I don't really know why I approached this version in this way.

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tried to do a self portrait with some shading the other day and hur it is.

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Not bad stuff dude, keep it up.

Your self portrait...the nose looks a little flat, and it seems that way not cause of how your nose may look for real, but the drawing actually seems like it's more flat than it should be. Overall the head has an okay value range but maybe you can push the darks more.

Also, please don't trace pics. The chick one is obviously traced. It's a bad habit, even for practice most of the time. You'll never 'need' to trace anything to learn.

And a little word of advice, don't sign your signature really huge for serious drawings, especially if you're doing a complete illustration. Keep it small and readable.

One more thing... you look kind of like an Arab. What's your ethnicity?

couple things,I do agree that the second portrait is obviously traced, mostly because I did it in photoshop. my first photoshop portrait isn't traced but the second is because I was focusing on how to paint but I kept getting more and more distracted at how much the portrait didn't look like the picture and I figured that if I traced the real thing it'd be better than painting something that's closer to a cartoon. The one that's traced is the blocky one I thought I put that up there somewhere if not that was one of the first things I said about it in irc :/ u weren't there though, hitorio was. The nose is flat but that's because when I drew it I made the nose to wide but shaded the values of color the same and there was a glare on top of that but i could've shaded it slightly now that I look at the reference again. I'll have to remember to pay attention more. also the scanner doesn't pick up the shading all of the time that's why on the drawings they're kind of dark so you can see the lines because I put the contrast up and the brightness down.
I'm black
I don't usually sign so I just tried to scribble but if I made it small it wouldn't look to great so I just made it big and made sure it didn't intrude the face space and I know what you mean I would've left it out or made a better one if I planned on showing it to a school or something but this is in my practice sketchbook because I didn't know how ti would come out.
also, the lips threw me off with the color difference and I colored them in too dark. I didn't change it because I didn't know how it could get much better in pencil and I just left it like that. I'm not very good with lips, I don't know what it is. it might be the way you have to draw them horizontally or something.
I also may have added a little too much cheek but that maybe kind of because the background is dark in that area the same thing for the rest or the left side of the head.
I notice a lot more minor mistakes after going away from it or sleeping.
Anyway, here's the picture so you can see how I did.

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lol I am actually a lot darker than that but the lamp is about a foot and a half in front of me. next time I'll take the picture with light from the window or something.

the way the shading was done on the right side of the nose makes it look flat, it seems.

It's a pretty nice self portrait overall though!

yeah I think it also looks crooked I tried fixing it but it just gets worse and worse I'll come back to it later and see if I can figure it out. I did start another one I'll post it below.

It's coming out pretty light compared to the actual drawing but it does need to be darker. This is not done.

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Okay, took em a while to respond again, but on your self portrait the nose definitely has wrong lighting. You must have smudged the pencil too much and couldn't really get it off or something..?

Also, are you thinking of the face in 3D form when drawing it or just trying to copy the flat image you see onto the paper? It seems like you're doing the second.

Try constructing the head like a basic polygon sculpture thing. It helps you perceive faces and heads for what they really are; their essential qualities. It's how you get the likeness better.

Think of the head like this
https://i.imgur.com/lyr2f.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/CHdtb.jpg

Do exercises of this and your construction and lighting skills will improve.

You know what... think I'll draw that head myself.

I was trying to copy down what I saw and I was thinking about it in 3d space but I didn't want to add anything to the picture that wasn't there but I did add a slight shading to give the bottom of the nose a little roundness but the light is coming to the front of the face so the nose comes up very light like in the picture I posted. I'll try and work it today though and consider your criticism. Also thank you for the exercise suggestion an d links, I'll try it.

hey ebsketch, you mentioned wanting to try that stuff.
Have you tried?
If so, got any results to show?

I've tried a few heads and drew one of the heads that edyrem posted but mostly I've been coloring in photoshop some muscles for school when I'm done with making the study material on anatomy that I'm working on I'll post the link to the finished project and maybe some could tell me if I should be learning more muscles.

Here's my first attempt at the big head

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Here's my second that I made since the first was coming out so badly I used a grid :c

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Here's another portrait with only light shading

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Hey nice to see you tried it.

But if those grids are for what I think they're for, you're doing it completely wrong.

It's not about copying 2d patterns, it's about making the shape up in your head. Seeing the backside that doesn't show. You're supposed to draw what isn't there, get it on the paper, get shit messy and sketchy.

Last pic is not bad and your lines are nice and confident - I don't know if that's after constant erasing or not.

Problem with the lines though, is that you don't change the line weight or place them in all the r ight places. You may be starting to draw what you see rather than what you symbolize, but you're still heavily relying on it for the lips nose, and slightly on the ears.

Head looks nice and accurate though size wise and everything. Lips are a little low and I think your lips are actually a little higher than that but I could be wrong.

The important question is what are you learning from this? Are you actually getting better at recognizing planes on the head? Is the mental process 3D for you or are you just getting good at copying 2D and getting an overall 3D feel out of it?

Two types of artists that draw from life and shit:
Copiers
Creators

You're using copier tactics. Which is a shortcut for learning to draw images you see, and there's nothing 'wrong' with it.

But it's limiting if you want to truly understand drawing what you see, and be able to draw the subject again from imaginary angles... and expressions if you study the person enough.

Point is: draw shit in 3D forms. Be a creator. Yes, draw the lines behind the skull that we don't normally see. Yes, make a primitive looking super low poly version of whatever you're looking at. No, that doesn't mean you don't understand the complexity of the drawing - it means the opposite actually.

It means you read complication and know what the most important info is. And knowledge is power, friend.

It's all fine and dandy that you're learning the muscles, but muscles and their shapes on an athletic body aren't specifically the holy grail of art/ animation.

I think some people place too much importance on muscles and muscle definition.
If you only know how to draw athletic bodies, what good is that if you want to have characters that deviate from that athletic standard?
What if you were to draw some fat guy? would you still be able to?
You don't actually see the muscles, only their effect on the skin at some places on the body.

I definitely dig the face drawing, by the way.
There seems to be some slight errors in there with specifically the lips, their placement and volume.
this might be fixed by shading them a bit, as the other important parts of the face are shaded, but they're not, giving the illusion of being flat.

do you want to use your skills in animation as well? or are you only going to focus on art in the future?

Thank you Edyrem for the talk about your post on irc. The reason I used the grid is to place the 3d shapes from the framing/beginning process in the right place. I might do ti more, it may help me be able to get close proportions when there is no grid.

I know what you mean about the muscles it's the first thing I thought of when I thought about when I started learning anatomy but how I think about it is since they're the same in everyone I can just imagine them smaller and knowing where they are will, at my level, help me at least a little but really knowing all the names and where the muscles and bones and everything is really really helping me break down what I'm looking at when trying to a draw a figure now I can go around to the skinny athletic or fat people and try and identify muscles and whatnot that I learn from anatomy in what I see or who I look at and it's been a big help.

Thankyou for the compliment on the face. You guys seem to like it more than I do lol. I guess I'm just focusing on the fact that I couldn't make it darker and could only get that close to the reference. The nose is definitely off. I put it up to the reference and was a little surprised by how close to the reference I'd gotten the rest of it but the mouth was really off. I tried fixing it but I figured that if I kept putting it up to the screen and changing it wouldn't help me learn anything and make what I posted further than from what I would naturally get so I just left it. I'm not so good on the lips but maybe learning the muscles of the lower face will help me here if I'm picturing all that has to fit on the face.

As for your other question the reason I'm trying to learn drawing is for animation. I really REALLY want to be a good animator and someone pointed out how much of an ability to draw you need to be a 2d animator. Even if this doesn't turn out to be my main career I want to be able to do the best I can at it and I still make time to make sure I keep learning 3d animation so either way it's only good. When I was talking to an animation director who really only does 3d then I really got invested and I've improved a lot since then but now I still have a ways to go.

>The reason I used the grid is to place the 3d shapes from the framing/beginning process in the right place.

Grid, 3D shapes, pick one.

As for anatomy, yes it's very helpful for knowing what people look like, but don't get too caught up in medical detail since you ought to be using your time practicing MAKING shapes before worrying about the name of one of the neck muscles.
Basic anatomy is pretty helpful though, but you could learn (very) basic anatomy by doing figure drawings from refs.
Learn to draw 3D shapes in 3D perspective

Know how I said you could do the 2D shortcut to drawing stuff if you want, that even though it's not recommended for truly understanding what you see, it's still your choice and you can do whatever you want?

Well the moment you said you wanna be an animator you just threw grid drawing out the window. That shit is gonna take you NOWHERE in animation. Now you desperately need to develop your 3D perception via drawing refs with the basic techniques I showed you in IRC.

It's the only way.

...and if you ever need visual inspiration and re-realization of why 3D competence is so important, go look at the sprites of 2D fighting games. I recommend Street Fighter III for the purest example of what I'm talking about.

...and this is where I try to piece together a gif out of individual jpg files.

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everytime I rep you I'm jelly that you have more reps than me

No worries; keep on being the iRC sensei and you'll overtake me in no time. I've been rather passive on my comments lately.

I do know that an abundant amount of 3d sense is required to be a decent animator but things like that gif do help remind me so thank you. It helps to see it demonstrated, I'll find to find more examples and of course improve my own skills. If someone could put some links of someone else's practice/study sheets on this that'd be cool. I never know where you guys get these pics.

What do you mean?

Character spreadsheets? Or just sketch studies? Animation studies/gifs?

any good samples of what we're talking about

Just get into the habit of saving shit that looks cool.
I started 1-2 years ago and now I have over 600 mb of hand picked shit.

Look shit up yourself and find things that are new to you. I've found shitloads of stuff browsing places like /ic/ where names get dropped sometimes, which makes me google pictures from those names and download art they made. Find sites where that artist posted shit and look around from there if there's anything else that catches your attention. That's one way to do it. Mainly just be observant and be quick to google any clues leading to good art.

Ebsketch, why don't you check out our resources topic in the seminar section? You might find what you're looking for in there.