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mcrmadness · 3 years

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Madness draws: Behind the Scenes of the latest Farin&Bela pencil drawing.

Aka the one that’s also my icon, even when that was a big risk to take because normally I start hating the photos I have once drawn, especially if I have failed miserably. This is how the drawing itself turned out:

ATTENTION: The original post about that drawing, with better image, behind this link.

This post is solely about the process itself with lots of pictures and also plenty of gifs, because I promised to do one if people would like to see that and I got some comments saying that they’re looking forward for that. So, here’s now that post!

For starters I have to apologize for the terrible quality that is the photos. I used my phone camera only and never thought about posting them, I just took them as a reference for myself and to show the progress to a friend and only after finishing the drawing I noticed that the angle of the camera causes a huge impact on the perspective of the drawing, so I sometimes might have done useless work when I thought some perspective was wrong when it was actually the photo that was wrong and not my work! I mean, take a look at these photos of the finished piece:

You see that? I realized this when I took maybe the second photo of the Farin sheet and looked at it and couldn’t believe my eyes because I didn’t remember drawing his torsto THAT small! And then I looked at the drawing and was like “wtf???” because it looked nothing like in the photo and then it hit me...

Also, another thing that I learn was that I might need to pay more attention to the perspective of the whole thing also because when I draw, I sit at the table so I am constantly seeing the drawing from my perspective instead of looking at it from above so that’s probably also going to affect the way I draw. I try to keep that in mind in the future so I can avoid redrawing things again and again just because my perspective is different than the reference photo’s.

Also the giant forehead of Farin’s in the photo on the right might have caused me to laugh a bit too much but anyway, let’s continue~ Or more like: let’s start for real this time.

Here’s the reference photo to y’all:

What I did in photoshop was to draw a line between them to see how I can divide the photo on two A4 papers. I had been thinking about this photo for some time already because it’s one of my favorites (but now I just feel cringy looking at it after I have drawn it... goddamnit!), and I got this idea that I could try drawing it on two papers in case I fuck up so I can start over or try again without having to do twice the work! Which was actually a good decision because this was the first version of Farin:

And it was awful. I also realized I had never drawn Farin’s face from he front. I have drawn him before from the side a few times but maybe once it came out actually good so that was why I decided to do the 2 paper method - because I knew it was not going to be an easy job! Bela is relatively easy to draw so I knew already that I would not have too many problems with that one.

I struggled with Farin’s eyes the most, at first.

It took me a while to figure out how to do that white line in his lower lid. Keep in mind that this was my first face portrait in over 10 years so I was very, very rusty and I just didn’t remember how to draw like anything anymore. (The photo is tilted because Bela’s face is a bit tilted and my hand can’t draw anything that is not straight [lol] so I have to rotate the photo in order to even draw the sketch of Bela’s eyes.)

So I took my sketchbook and tried to do some eyes...

I was still struggling so much here until I remembered about blending. And I didn’t have my hopes high but grabbed the eyeshadow applicators (my fave tool for blending) anyway, and switched to my other sketchbook in case the paper was the issue and:

Blending. It was all about blending! So with that in mind, I realized I can continue and I don’t need to do these in my old way, everything doesn’t have to have a lineart done but some of the job is done not with the pencils but with the eraser.

Anyhow, the previous Farin looked really bad and was too big as well so I just discarded that and started a new sheet because the old lines were not coming off properly anymore. I don’t remember if this is the old face or new but I think this might still be the old one:

Yes it definitely is the old because look at those lines! This is the new sheet:

And in the photo you can see one of my pencils - I use Derwent Graphic pencils, it’s a 12 pencil set with very soft pencils, starting with H, F and HB and ending to 9B. With this one I used F, HB, B, 2B, 5B, 7B and 9B. The white pencil is actually my new love aka the eraser pencil Koh-I-Noor Hardmuth. It’s amazing, I recommend! I just didn’t order 10 new ones this other day. I actually used about 1,5 full eraser pencils on this drawing alone so that’s why 10.

Here’s a “little” gif of the process on Farin:

I felt crazy when I went for the shirt, and I felt like I was going crazy MEANWHILE drawing it but in the end I did it and I’m super proud of it!

Below is the reference photo, it was pain in the ass to follow all those lines with my eyes and try to find what was I drawing and where was I but I think I did good. That was a fun challenge.

Okay so, when I was done with the new lineart, I decided to go for the shading and blending because that’s what really makes the drawings to pop. I started with the left (his right, my left) side of Farin’s face because I’m right-handed, and in the first photo I had done just the left (right) eye and mouth and nose, but in the second there’s also the other eye done already:

Keep in mind this was not the last time I drew the eyes. Not even close.

Something was off with the right (left) eye so I had to do that one again and I noticed that when you blend but haven’t erased and cleaned it yet, it looks like a black eye :DDD So here’s the before and after images of that cleaning. (Cleaning = I draw, blend, erase, draw and blend more when needed and then erase again, and repeat this as many times as I need until it starts to look ready to my eye.)

So here Farin was “finished” but if you still remember the final piece or compare it to it, you might notice it looks quite different. And you’re right. But more about that later, because at this point I started to work on Bela.

It actually started really well - I also had to do the whole lineart again because it did not match the size of “finished” Farin. I don’t remember if this is the first or second eye but when I had drawn his eye for the first time, I noticed it was not in line with Farin so I had to redraw it. A gif of the progress:

What’s that brown paper I’m using, you may ask? Well I noticed that people have some sort of paper on top of their art to keep it from smudging and I have no clue what that is so here’s my poor artist recommendation: baking paper! I tested it and it works (if you just remember to keep it under your hand, that is...) so that is, in fact, baking paper! :DD

I have drawn Bela’s face a few times before and he’s just so much easier to draw. In fact I used 4-5 days on Farin but I managed to start and finish (this version of) Bela just in one day. And that means that out of 12 hours (because I literally used the whole day for drawing) I used maybe like... 5h or something on Bela. That’s how much easier he really is to draw.

I don’t know wtf is wrong with Farin’s face but he’s extremely difficult to draw and I’m not the only one who has been saying this. I guess he just looks so regular but still unique enough to be difficult to draw. Bela then again has features that are very unique and very... caricature-like? I mean that just by drawing his nose or chin you can make a comic book Bela look exactly like himself, and with more realistic style his eyes already do a lot, but Farin’s really the opposite. My comic book version of Farin is literally the most basic version I can draw, it’s how I draw those characters and the only thing that makes him look himself is the hair, and his nose in a side profile. So I think that’s why it’s so difficult to draw him because he doesn’t look too regular but still regular enough to make is a very challenging task to do properly.

So yeah, the same day as I started working on Bela, I was also “finished” with the drawing:

Also look at how different it looks like from this perspective:

With the reference photo open in photoshop and I don’t understand how Bela looks more like himself in my drawing than in the photo. Also when I showed the WIP to my brother, he said that I somehow had succeeded at making Farin look more like Farin than what he does in the photo even. It’s weird.

But we were still far from finished. I was going to use the fixative on this soon but it just kept snowing the whole week so I couldn’t so every time I walked past the drawings, I stopped to fix this and that. For days I kept telling myself “I’m done, I can’t do more than this, I can’t do better than this.” and considered the drawing finished but still kept fixing things. Every time I was “done” with the other drawing, I saw something to fix in the other one and once that was done, I felt like the first one wasn’t as good and had to fix something from it too. And that led to a cycle where the other drawing was always better than the other and the worse one needed to be fixed. In the end I was hating the whole process and myself and my skills and I was already ready to abandon this whole thing and call it a day and never ever show it to anyone “because I cannot draw”. The photo above, here’s a list of things I redrew after that:

Bela’s eyes, the right (left) one at least twice.

Bela’s nose.

Bela’s mouth a couple of times.

Farin’s eyes x588045028520

And a list of things I kept fixing and fixing:

Bela’s chin.

Bela’s neck shadows.

Bela’s hairline.

Farin’s whole face was tilted so I tried to fix that.

Farin’s face was too wide, which meant also partially redrawing the ear.

Farin’s hair was too long and wide too.

Farin’s nose.

Farin’s mouth might be the only thing I drew only once and I’m actually still extremely proud of how it came to be. I did the lips solely with blending so that was super exciting to notice how I can use it for drawing and don’t need the pencils for everything!

During Bela’s eyes and nose and mouth especially I was hating myself so much and I felt like I was taking the risk of ruining the whole thing and a few times I was certain that was what I had just done too, until I somehow was able to save it again. But because of that, I wasn’t able to make Bela’s mouth any lighter anymore, the color wasn’t just coming off the paper so had to use what was there and make it look like it’s how it’s supposed to be, too.

Here’s a gif about those changes on Bela - the first one has the old eyes and nose, the others have minor changed on the nose and mouth:

(The blacks probably don’t get any blacker in reality, I did add more color to it all the time but mainly it’s just the lighting and my phone camera changing the brightness.)

I did the final details on his nose without even using the reference photo anymore. The photo didn’t seem to make any sense anymore at all so I was just using my mechanical pencil and the blending tool and eraser to make is look better. To my eye it looked more like a very flat nose with a big tip of the nose and he doesn’t have a flat nose and I tried to get rid of that illusion. I still feel like it makes him look bit weird but I’m not entirely sure how. Maybe it was because of my improvisation, idk...

So, Bela was then finally finished for the last time. In the Farin piece his left (right) eye had been bugging me the whole time and I didn’t want to touch it but still I felt like I have to do something about it because it was bugging me way too much. I then figured I could draw the eye line by line and take a photo of it each time to see if it looks right already or not, maybe I could then avoid doing all the phases before I was sure what to think about it. I mean, now the only way to see if it was correct was to draw e.g. an eye from start to finish, I couldn’t see from just the lineart or unblended eye if it was in the right spot etc. And here’s that progress on a gif:

The gif about only the eye would look so nice if Tumblr didn’t make the gifs so HUGE - this one is actually only 300px or 400px or something:

Apparently I also wasn’t happy with the other eye because:

But good thing is: I really enjoy drawing eyes. I love seeing them to “come alive”, my favorite part was to eraser a bit of the color on the iris to make them look like they are actually shiny! It feels like something so small to do and yet it makes a huge impact on the drawing!

And here’s yet another gif of the whole Farin sheet with all of the changes, including the last changes that made his head narrower, and less tilted and more in line. Look at the left side of his head especially to see that:

I can also see his nose changing between the first few photos. I keep forgetting about that but yeah, I also fixed that a little at some point.

And last but not least, the whole drawing in some sort of a timelapse gif:

Last two are the same but just a photo and the scan of the finished drawing. I still keep seeing things I would do differently but no can do, I already used fixative on it, also to keep myself from obsessing with it any more :D And to use it as a study of some sort. I have never been able to draw a perfect pencil drawing and this isn’t one either. I probably never can draw perfect drawings from references.

I do enjoy the whole shading and blending process, so much so that when I was editing these photos, I just wanted to start drawing something so bad but I also figured that I start to lose motivation when I get to the point where everything should be finished but I just can’t make it perfect. Like the current WIP I have, all I should do is to get the proportions and perspective and the lines of their faces correctly and I would be ready but it feels more like a superpower some people possess and I’m not one of those. I don’t know what is it but I just feel that I cannot see. I don’t know how to explain it, but I can’t see what I try to do and somehow keep drawing everything the wrong way. Just like in this post’s drawing too. There’s still things that are wrong and I know what it is but I don’t know how to solve it. My hands just don’t listen to me and they can’t do what I think they should. I also think the reason I cannot draw perfect copies of photos is because you can always see my “handprint” in them. If I copy a photo, it will look like a photo and not like a drawing made by me. So I believe that in my drawing there’s always a part of me visible and I’m not entirely sure if it’s a good thing or not. On bad days it’s not a good thing, obviously. On good days? Well I guess it’s good then because it just means I have my own style which I really should appreciate. But I wish I had my style only when I want it to be visible, but I can’t control it. Just like I cannot write text by hand that would look like it was written with a computer, so I guess I should just try to get used to it, no matter how much it’d bug me sometimes.

#mcrmadness draws #mcrmadness draws: behind the scenes #dä fanart #die ärzte

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mcrmadness · 4 years

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A bit about visual arts and drawing from someone who has been drawing since has been able to hold a pen. With lots of, sometimes really (even years) long, pauses too.

In 2018 I finally was done with schools and my almost 5 years of working in a row ended too. I wasn’t sure if I was ever gonna draw again because for years I had been feeling like drawing but the last time I had ACTUALLY drawn was in 2013. Apart from small doodles I did at school while bored, but those were really nothing because I hated every line of them.

But that Autumn in 2018 I finally had time for myself and I found my inspiration again and I started creating again - I started drawing and I started writing, too. I started having those plot scenarios in my head again - I had had none during those 5 years of work and school that made me so tired I pretty much every day nearly fall asleep while sitting in front of my computer. Since Autumn 2018 I have used over 27 sheets of my sketchbook, mainly it’s for plots and plans and practicing for comics but also some other stuff is in there - and just last week I went to buy another sketchbook and a sheet of paper for comics because I have already used over 10 sheets of this one I bought last year. And before I could barely finish even with one! The old sketchbook has 60 sheets and there’s a few left and I have had it for 10 years. But in less than 2 years I have filled over a half of it already.

My ability to create was destroyed by antidepressants - the biggest reason for me to stop eating them was because I needed to create again but with them I just could not do anything. Or when I did, it all was so shallow and felt like I saw so much effort to even do something so simple. Without the antidepressants it’s been like a totally new experience to draw comics. It’s actually fun now and doesn’t feel like I’m working so hard to get something out of my head, at least not every second.

There’s also been a major change in my attitude towards drawing. In my teenage years I was very lonely and very much bullied and I felt like all I could do was to draw. And even then I felt like I was cheating because I could copy photos with pencils - still not perfectly, but I had created a technique that worked for me. But if I tried to draw something without reference photos... I had terrible temper tantrums with myself because I felt like I had no talent and I’m just lying to myself, “as if I could actally draw, bullshit, I’m just copying photos and not creating anything”. That stressed the hell out of me because when I was drawing those “copy drawings”, all I had in my head was to get it ready so I can show it to people. And I was happy to get them finished but I didn’t enjoy the process of drawing. And then I’d again get inner temper tantrums (that I now recognize as symptoms of Rejective Sensitive Dysphoria!) because I wasn’t getting enough attention, people were not looking at them, I didn’t get comments, I didn’t get anything, and I felt like I suck at everything and “maybe I’m actually not even that good, maybe I just think I’m better than what I actually am”.

I mainly stopped drawing after my late teen years because I realized it was not bringing me joy. It was attention seeking. Drawing was no longer fun, it was just stressful attempt to be seen and to be approved and accepted. I felt like if I can’t be approved and accepted as a person, maybe people could compliment my art and I could feel accepted through that. And then I had the biggest realization ever that I was no longer enjoying any part of drawing and in the end it was just making me sad and angry because of RSD, and I stopped drawing portaits because my friend told me that she thinks “drawings that are copies lack a soul in her opinion” and I just realized that I was untalented, I just knew the techniques but I wasn’t actually good at drawing. (For me it was always either a copy or no reference photos whatsoever or it was cheating - but I know much better now.)

Somewhen in 2017 I felt like I want to draw but I had no ideas. Then I started to come up with ideas based on my own deep thoughts and I decided to create the most simple character ever that would not look like a human but would be human enough to act like a human (they look like ghosts, really, I drew the first one for one drawing in 2013), that I could use for self-comics. I had been DREAMING of a comic book diary or webcomic about my life but I never knew how to draw “myself” because I really hated the idea OF drawing myself. So I started drawing these very simple creatures and my main point was: draw AS SIMPLY AS POSSIBLE, do not focus on details, do not focus on lines, do not focus on how anything SHOULD be - just draw and let them be simple and easy to draw. Take everything out of it and don’t stress the outcome. And it really helped. I haven’t drawn too many of them but lately I have been having a lot more ideas for what to draw. There’s one comic on the way, actually. Maybe even two more in the future.

I want to go back to the “I didn’t enjoy the process at all and just wanted to finish with them asap” a bit because lately I have been drawing more again and I have finally reached that point where I enjoy the drawing process. I just love everything about it, I love to see how the lines get drawn on the paper and how the stuff on the paper evolve, how something doesn’t look good but it doesn’t matter, let’s draw there another line next to it, maybe it will be better, then erasing some of the extra lines to see if it looks better like that or if I should fix more things. Before I was always filled with rage when I did this because I tried to get everything right at once and I was erasing and redrawing so many times I was lucky the paper did not break yet. But not now, I’m just sketching and enjoying the whole process! Last night I actually started TWO different drawings and I never do this - I always want to finish every project before I start with the next one. But I did all the sketching for the first one and I was just on the mood for sketching a bit more so I took and started the second one. Which eventually made me feel like I really really need to go back drawing “portait copies of my favorite musicians”. Because I love drawing with pencils and unfortunately I’m gonna draw on these with markers and erase every trace of pencil from there because they’re only sketchings. But we will see, maybe I will choose a photo to draw with pencils and try to draw another one - haven’t done that in 10 years. Apart from one that I started in 2012 and thought I’d never finish, but eventually did finish it last year. It didn’t turn out that good but mainly because of the persons in the drawing don’t look like themselves that much. But hey, it was over 7 years that I did not draw at all so I guess it’s not that bad.

I still get the RSD aftermath feels everytime I post my drawings somewhere because I still feel like I don’t get enough attention nor approval and it makes me feel like I have no talent nor skills, but at least I’m again enjoying the drawing process the same way I did when I was a kid.

#mcrmadness’ art talk #drawing #rsd #adhd

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