IndigoGeminiWolf's Artistic Journey

[AnthroHeart]

This is a good guide, because I eventually want to draw a mandala.

It uses Autodesk Sketchbook Pro.

https://www.sketchbook.com/blog/how-to-e...urce=inapp

I want to eventually draw magic between anthros and humans.

But one step at a time.

I'm using a Cintiq Pro 16 drawing tablet, which acts like a 2nd monitor, at 4K resolution.

I'm drawing pretty much every reference in Bridgman's Complete Guide to Drawing from Life.

I'm using it on my main screen through Kindle for the PC. The book only costs like $4 on kindle (though I did buy the book first).

My tablet fits in front of the screen without blocking it, because it is raised up.

Here's some figures I copied from one page. Note that Kindle uses location rather than page number, due to varying font sizes and such.




And this is me just messing around with just some of the pencil, paint, and marker an glow and other types of brushes in Sketchbook Pro:

[AnthroHeart]

These are all the anatomy sketches of the human form I have done from the Bridgman book since October 19, 2017 when I started.
That makes it about a week. Still trying to spend about 6 hours a day doing something drawing or study related.

I think my lines are getting a bit cleaner and proportion is getting a little better. Haven't gotten to internal anatomy like muscles or bones yet.
Just unfinished human forms. The tablet is like drawing on glass.

[AnthroHeart]

My first real digital painting that I put some effort into, following a YouTube tutorial for the most part.

I'm trying to learn environment as well as character design.




From this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qQ7jqXPF0E

[AnthroHeart]

Here is my 2nd digital painting. It took me 5-6 hours over 2 days.




I followed this tutorial:

[AnthroHeart]

Now it takes me 10-15 mins to draw each figure, plus my proportion is better.

[Jade]

Thanks for sharing your progress Gem! It's so interesting!

[MangusKhan]

Figure drawing is much harder than it seems before you first try, don't you think? Ultimately you will be able to envision all the musculature and skeleton, which is neat. I don't think people appreciate the difficulty of being a good figure drawer until they try to learn. I tried to learn, and produced so many abominations, which were ridiculed on the website I was posting to. I have a bad habit of skipping the fundamentals in my impatience for the finished product though, and it doesn't help that I was thinking about making profits by prostituting my art to fulfill deviant sexual fetishes. Alas, I never produced anything worth selling, in the end.

One time I did do a mean portrait of Hitler though. No one ridiculed that.

[AnthroHeart]

Yeah, I have an online course I can take any time that teaches how to draw the human figure from the mind like it's an invention.

It was definitely hard at first. But I still get my horizontal or vertical scales off; mostly horizontal, either too skinny or too fat.

After this book is finished, probably will take that course again (I took part of it but didn't get past bones).

Some days I'm lazy, and others I'm so eager to get started. But I try not to let the eagerness get too much. I just sit and calm myself if I begin to feel antsy.

I am drawing anthros every so often because they have human bodies, except the hand paws, feet paws, tail, and head, and fur. But I believe the
underlying musculature is approx the same. Bones would possibly be a bit different.

[Dekalb_Blues]

This is a good guide, because I eventually want to draw a mandala.

[When I read this I envisioned for a moment an animal called a "mandala" -- sort of a small Beanie-Baby-like distant cousin of a panda. Doubtless in some alternate universe the gingko-tree forests are teeming with these critters. Another strange Earthling who might have reflexively thought this way was James Thurber, the 20th-century humorous writer and cartoonist, long associated with The New Yorker, who had a curious tendency to take abstractions for concrete things, and vice-versa: http://chawedrosin.wordpress.com/2008/06/19/thurbers-new-natural-history ]
....

I want to eventually draw magic between anthros and humans.

[Some lesser-known animal types with which to explore interspecial hybridization: https://urban75.net/forums/threads/animals-you-never-knew-existed.309625]

But one step at a time.

[As the Wise say: Patience, Grasshopper, we'll fall off that bridge when we come to it -- after first making sure we leave it burnt behind us! ]
....

I'm drawing pretty much every reference in Bridgman's Complete Guide to Drawing from Life.

[You might find some inspiration and ideas in these instructional works by Andrew Loomis, a successful illustrator/author with a wonderful idiosyncratic style, who died the very year (1959) I appeared on the terrestrial scene, a Wanderer gone wrong, kicking & screaming over the outrageous inconvenience of having to rusticate thus in this cockamamie galactic backwater & plague-spot, especially now, what with the upcoming planetary cataclysms and all (they told me this whole planet would be like a mega-Tahiti, overrun with hot babes, cold beer, and warm fuzzies -- those higher-density lyin' sons-of-guns Confederation-recruiters and their phony-baloney full-color travel brochures!!). My sainted Father, who as a lad aspired to be an architect & wished to broaden his general drawing technique, acquired a copy of Loomis' first art-instruction book, Fun With A Pencil  hot off the presses in 1939. See  http://www.alexhays.com/loomis for PDFs of this work & others by Loomis. (Note: no foxes were actually hurt in the book-throwing gif. )



This book I actually still have, 78 years later, one of a mere handful saved from a personal library of over five thousand volumes which I seem to have mislaid. [*Takes five to cry into his beer.*] When I was a wee impressionable lad & an aspiring artiste myself, I pored obsessively with beady unblinking eyes (not unlike those of an ambulatory mental outpatient's) over Loomis' work, time and again. Also did I stare compulsively at ca. 1950s & early-1960s issues of Mad magazine, with its amazing cartoon-work by Will Elder, Wallace Wood, Mort Drucker, Jack Davis, et al, not to mention also the mind-blowing then-cutting-edge underground-comix of Robert Crumb), mystically drawn to the idea of producing savagely cutting cartoon-caricatures of humankind with which to while away the fleeting hours amassing artistic fame and fortune until the final apocalyptic world-upheaval, which I planned to sketch with one hand as it bore down on me even as I gave it the finger with the other hand (this is why to this day I make sure I have a charcoal pencil and a sketch-pad on me at all times, and do middle-finger exercises daily).




https://frankhudsonorg.files.wordpress.c...rtrait.jpg

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-eq-alMI8Wz4/Tp...%2B001.jpg
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-lgJGCjrbL7A/UJ...lyWood.jpg




https://larsmagne23.files.wordpress.com/...330521.jpg
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZbOlCX9Metg/TWPvK5ZPx1I/AAAAAAAADdc/irCc8sVrpI8/s1600/crumb3.jpg
https://www.bring4th.org/forums/showthre...?tid=14559




Cheers! 

[YinYang]

Yeah, I have an online course I can take any time that teaches how to draw the human figure from the mind like it's an invention.

It was definitely hard at first. But I still get my horizontal or vertical scales off; mostly horizontal, either too skinny or too fat.

You may wanna check out this book, it was one of our books when I studied art - Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain

My lecturer in this class - naked figure drawing - was quite an amazing character. Carl Jeppe, he's quite famous, so it was just a privilege to listen to him. He drove this minibus that was painted like a zebra, and the first day we walked into class, he forbid pencil sharpeners. We all had to sharpen our pencils with NT cutters.

And the first day the model's clothes came off, all us shy first year students ducked behind our canvasses. I was just giggling softly to myself, trying to pretend as if its the most natural thing in the world. Pretty soon it was the most natural thing in the world, all I saw was shape, light and shadow.

[Coordinate_Apotheosis]

Ahh, sharpening pencils the fun way, one slice at a time, no finer point can be made

Naked models make for the best anatomy practice, it's too bad the human body is embarrassing for some odd reason.

Art is a passionate area of life, I hope one day everyone can explore AND develop their artistic selves.  I personally would like to give making stuff out of clay a try.

[YinYang]

It is funny that we have this..."disconnect"... to nudity. Nudity is a beautiful artistic expression. One of our models was this old lady who joked and said "this is much more fun than sitting in an old age home!" Lol! Goodness, thinking back on that time in my life, I have never been more surrounded by such free spirits. Sometimes we had final year students posing for us, it was eventually all just so natural. And they were in no hurry to get back into their clothes either, when we were done they'd walk around the room naked looking at everyone's work!

Clay is a lot of fun too, we also had a sculpture class. The lecturer who presented that class always said "I was a smoker and I know a cigarette takes exactly 7 minutes, now GO, I'm timing you!"

[AnthroHeart]

I remember twice as an adult where it felt completely natural to walk around naked outdoors.

[YinYang]

I remember twice as an adult where it felt completely natural to walk around naked outdoors.

Yeah, I think the best thing in the world is skinny dipping in nature, as long as there are no critters to infiltrate compromising places... lol! Okay let's turn this conversation back to art!

[AnthroHeart]

  anatomy_as_of_Dec_06_17.jpg (Size: 106.16 KB / Downloads: 12)

[YinYang]

Are those yours, Gem? It brings back nostalgia in me... it reminds me of our 5 minute charcoal sketches we started with. The purpose was to train your eye, he believed if you get your composition wrong in the first 5 minutes, there's no fix, abandon it.

[MangusKhan]

Are those yours, Gem? It brings back nostalgia in me... it reminds me of our 5 minute charcoal sketches we started with. The purpose was to train your eye, he believed if you get your composition wrong in the first 5 minutes, there's no fix, abandon it.

I was going to post the aforementioned Hitler portrait as well as a terrible original attempt in order to prove your teacher correct. Unfortunately, these pictures seem to have disappeared from my files. Digging back further into the past yielded this gem from my teenage years though. I'd forgotten about this thing for ages, and now looking at it some five years later is so interesting. The great thing about art, that I love, is that it provides you with a kind of record of your self. Especially if your work has expressionist elements. You can look back and recapture feelings from long in the past just by looking at what was created from your thoughts back then. I really hope you continue your artistic journey IGW because it is great fun to be able to look back at your creations. Seeing technical progress is very satisfying as well. This artwork I love though because there was no real technique or training that went into it, it just emerged from the chaos with a bit of splattering and gentle guiding.

Ahh, sharpening pencils the fun way, one slice at a time, no finer point can be made

Funny I was so focused on the metaphorical value of slowly sharpening a pencil that I completely missed the joke before. Brilliant.

The discussion in this thread has got me gung-ho about art again. I'd kind of abandoned art when I went to study physics, but I'm taking a break from uni for a while after this year and now I want to start again.

[AnthroHeart]

Physics was my B.A. in college. Math was a minor.

[MangusKhan]

Physics was my B.A. in college. Math was a minor.

I saw that on your website, don't mind me snooping though your bio. I really respect anyone who's completed a physics degree because it's not an easy subject, I'm not even sure I'm going to graduate. Where did that degree end up taking you? I'm honestly just studying physics because I think it's interesting. I have no idea what I'm actually going to do in this life or where this degree will take me.

[YinYang]

Digging back further into the past yielded this gem from my teenage years though. I'd forgotten about this thing for ages, and now looking at it some five years later is so interesting.

That IS interesting. Of course I immediately thought of the joker in the batman movies, because of the mouth. I love that you can see just a hint of a face amongst all the chaos.

The discussion in this thread has got me gung-ho about art again. I'd kind of abandoned art when I went to study physics, but I'm taking a break from uni for a while after this year and now I want to start again.

Make your way to the art shop, I'm very close as well.

[Coordinate_Apotheosis]

My art medium has mostly been digital.  I'm a Photoshop Wizard.

It makes about...  oh...  100% of every advertisement I see appear extra fake.

Honestly though it took a professional opinion of my work to make me realize it wasn't for me.  I remember it now.  'Where's the flow?' She said not seeing the diagonal flow of the image. 'What's the color scheme?' A gentle orange to blue gradient overlaying mostly whites, grays, and blacks. 'Where's the focus?' That really bright spot that draws your eyes to it right there......

Then she turns to another person, compliments them and moves on.

Not much of a Photoshop Wizard afterall.  I would give a foot to be able to draw comics.  The best I can do is write.  Everything else pales to that skill of mine...

[YinYang]

I would give a foot to be able to draw comics.

Yeah that's a special gift, I really enjoy the work of news media cartoonists. That blend of humour, current affairs and then the artistic talent on top of it is quite something.

The pen is mightier than the sword.

[Coordinate_Apotheosis]

The sword in scientific testing revealed itself to be as efficient as a pen, and arguably, old dip pens were basically swords fashioned to cut print into paper without the cut.

Needless to say, but still worth pointing out (pun), the pen would have much less use without the history of the sword.

But the sword also in this way made itself obsolete.  The new sword having become pen.

Warrior becomed artist and illustrator.

Violence transformed to tales.

Suffering reconciled with composition.

The most powerful minds are those with strong hearts.  Who needs a shield when a pen can defend and attack at the same time?