Not May, but the semester is finally over (not officially, but with my finals schedule, I've practically got nothing left)
I'm back :D I feel god-damn awful though, so for the next few days I'll be sharing the handful of sketches and scribbles I made over the last month or so. It's not a lot, but hopefully I'll be on my feet when they're all posted and able to work on my own art again. Thank you guys for your patience and support while I was gone, it meant the world to me as I was trudging through the rest of the semester <3
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Drawing from class two weeks ago, prof was introducing us to photoshop because not everyone had used it before, so those of us that were already familiar with it were goofing off lol
Small update; I have recently been given courage to come out and say that this blog will be temporarily put on hold. I'm not falling behind in my studies per se, but they've become such a massive source of stress that I can't focus/don't have time to draw for myself lately. I can confidently say my mental health is the worst it's been since last year; guilt for not talking to people and for not being more active on here is eating me alive, so I think it's best if I take at least one of those pressures off of myself.
When I'm back I'll likely have some classwork to show off, and maybe if the stars align, some personal drawings too haha. Until then, I'll still be somewhat active on my alt (@dawntheduckrb) and might even post some doodles there, so feel free take a peeksies if you want :D (posts are all over the place there though, so don't follow if you don't want dash clutter lol)
Sorry for any worry I caused; see y'all in May :)
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Gesture & Figure Studies
I mentioned in a previous post that a professor of mine gave me some resources that I find super helpful, and that once he fixed the links to those resources, I would share them here.
So, as promised, I'm making a post to compile the various online goodies I've been given/stumbled across on my own. All of these are super good resources to practice gesture drawing for free, and in a more comfortable environment than staring at a real person three feet away from you. Some of these are also good references to have for longer drawings, so feel free to use them in whatever way helps you! Links put below:
Before anything, I think it's important to explain what exactly gesture is. At its core, gesture is simply looking at some form of reference, and drawing what you see as quickly as possible. Gesture drawing isn't actually exclusive to drawing people; it's helpful with pretty much all subject matter, such as still-lifes or landscapes. This post focuses on figure studies, but the techniques found here can be used elsewhere too.
These exercises are typically done in increments of 30 seconds-5 minutes. That's not a lot of time, so it's very important to not get hung up on details while working. Instead, focus on whatever you're drawing in its entirety; the point is to capture the energy of whatever you're looking at, not each individual shape. These drawings tend to look a little goofy and that's perfectly fine! The important part is proportion and energy, not form.
Below are a couple of videos that I think best help introduce gesture drawing. Seeing it is action explains it better than words can, in my opinion:
A demo of figure gesture drawing (this is closest to how I was taught)
Short video that explains good things to watch out for while you work
And for the poses:
Playlist of timed poses (non-nude)
Playlist of timed poses (nude)
Pose image library (nude/non-nude/hands/more+)
Timed image library (nude/non-nude/hands/more+)
Another timed image library (nude/non-nude)
Pinterest board of hand/feet references (helpful even outside of gesture drawing)
HUGE pose reference library (very helpful even outside of gesture drawing)
DeviantArt page for the above (more poses I believe, but harder to navigate)
I'll update this post if I add anything else to this list, but this is all I have for now. Hopefully a couple of people can find this useful :D
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First project is done :D
Actually, even though I'm in two studios this semester, I'm likely only going to post class projects for my digital one, since the other is a figure drawing class, and I can't exactly post drawings of other real people (we will do a self portrait, so I *might* share that one if it doesn't turn out as inaccurate as the last one did).
Project notes under the cut as always (and bonus, I got some cut out! Picture below)
I can't lie, this isn't exactly how I wanted it to turn out. I actually started to hand draw in more complex shading, but when I opened the file this morning, everything I had done over the weekend was completely gone (weird computer issue, not because I forgot to save it). I ended up having to add in some reallly simple shadows at the last minute (just because some of these really needed some modicum of depth in order to work), and barely got this done in time. But, it's done, and it's turned in :)
This project was meant to familiarize us with using Adobe Illustrator; we were told to make a sheet of 6-10 stickers that represented a place we can't actually go to. I actually did a very similar project last spring; that time, we were told to depict a place that we wanted to go to, so a real place. This one was was a bit more abstract, and I'm in my baby-ex-christian era, so I really wanted to do heaven and hell for this. It felt like tasteful blasphemy, and it felt nice doing this for a prompt that implied that these places weren't real. Made me happy :D my professor loved the idea, so I took it and ran with it haha.
The class loved it; mine was the first one they wanted to discuss during critique after the only volunteer went, and it felt really nice. I put a ton of time into this so I'm happy to see it pay off even if it's not exactly how I wanted it to turn out.
I'll probably play around with it more? I won't be doing the complex shading I initially had planned because that was not a fun experience to have to redo. Some color and shape adjustments are needed for me to be fully happy with it though, so that'll probably be a "my personal free time" thing.
I went to war with the Cricut in the art building, but managed to get one set to cut well :D my classmates took some of the ones I cute out, which made me really happy. I'll be making some more to give to friends so I'll probably post more about my paper cutter woes on my alt within the next week haha
If anyone is interested in having some, lmk and I'll see if I can figure out how to mail them? I can't say for sure if I'll be doing that just yet, but if some people are interested I'll look into it!
Anyway, I'm still proud of these, and I think that even with the hiccups included, this still turned out light-years better than the last time I did this project (or, a veeery similar one). Will definitely be decreasing the detail scale on the next project though :')
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So uh, I already have my first project done? It's actually just supposed to be a small exercise to get us familiar with Illustrator (because we all already forgot how to use it), and we were only allowed to use the shape drawing tools (so like, no free-handing anything, no editing line points, no gradients, nada; just the square/circle/polygon/star tool)
So naturally I made a duck
It would've been a certain fluffy prince had it not been for the "no free-hand drawing" requirement. Bummer.
Not my favorite in the world but there's only so much you can do with four tools lol, I'm kiinda happy with it and I'm eepy so I think it'll work :D
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