Weekly Sketch Thread -

Awesome! I like the way this thread is going!

@Moosey - yeah man the challenges never end. Once you finally get past getting the human form down the lo and behold you actually have to drape it in something! One of the best books I've ever seen on how to work out natural looking clothing on humans is

Amazon.com: Dynamic Wrinkles and Drapery: Solutions for Drawing the Clothed Figure (Practical Art Books) (9780823015870): Burne Hogarth: Books

Burne Horgarth drew the original Tarzan back in the day. He was an absolute master. In the illustration and cartoon world he's well known for a series of books he published on rendering complex subjects. He had a great knack for breaking things down. He would have... he started work as an artist at 15 and worked all the way through the depression. No small task that.

Here is a Flicker page that's got some looks at his Dynamic Wrinkles and Drapery stuff... I've owned the book continuously since I was a kid and I still refer to it. (crazy... can't think of many other things I've owned that long or that continuously) ... at any rate... take a look and see what you think.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/teohyc/3988697889/

Very informative. One thing that stuck in my mind is that fabric is very dynamic. Very fluid yet often terminates in sharp angles. The joints (elbows and knees) often act as anchor points that folds and wrinkles tend to radiate out from. You can see that in real life once you start to know where to look. Different materials handle differently as well. Silk is different than say the cotton of a kimono as would be the crisp cotton work shirt with cuff links. Once you get your head around it you begin to wrinkles and drapery in a different way. I've always found the hakama from Daito-ryu and other traditional arts fascinating because of the way they fold and gather.

You mentioned working from photo reference. Nothing wrong with that. It's not 'cheating' - we get sold this idea somewhere along the way that artists need to be able to create straight out of there head. A very narrow view. All the great masters throughout history have copied. In fact it was de riquer in the time of the Italian masters. One has to be careful with photo reference because the lens can distort and image.. and it's easy to fall into the trap of straight copying... that sucks the life out of a drawing. But nothing wrong with photo references as long as start to understand what to be looking for in them.

I'll do some overlay corrections on your drawing to give you an idea of how I'd approach draper in that scene. It's not that my way is the only way or 100% right but it's good to get revisions from someone other than yourself. As artists we tend to so comfortable with our work and that comes back to get us. When I was at Disney and before that at Hanna-Barbera... all day long my drawings came back to me covered in red... corrected rather unceremoniously by senior artists. ahhahahahah... my ego was shattered... but I learned a ton in a very short time just simply having someone mark up my drawings. Ideally... that's how school should be... but sadly most aren't.
 
Great resource SlipTheJab; it even shows that Chi is following the wrinkles in the fabric




OSu!
 
Ha! Yes! Funnily enough I was thinking the same thing! Everything starts at the waist or the center... so in this case it's not far off what I teach in boxing and Muay Thai or what the Chinese teach in CMA's etc. etc.
 
@Moosey -

Ok here's a quick mark up of your sketch. Hopefully this clarifies how you could attack the drapery in your sketch. The green dot represents an anchor point or point where the fabric is bound... as the fabric moves away or radiates out from that point... the tension and therefore the wrinkles dissipate. It's almost like physics.

So what does that mean for you the artist? Well it will mean that you want to start making some clear cut decisions on where your anchor points for drapery and clothing are. You'res is an interesting example because the way on side of the gi jacket folds over the other obscures the wrinkles. The uppermost side of the jacket is easy to see that tension point is at the knot in the belt and most wrinkles on the torso tend to radiate out from that point. Now... it's important to note... the wrinkles for the part of the gi folded under the top part are also radiating out from that same anchor point. So they are also anchored at the belt.

On the heavy material of a gi it'll be less pronounced but you will see that those lines will eventually head all the way up and over the shoulder and punching arm... that is your other anchor point. The coefficient friction of the arm against the cloth of the gi provide an anchor of sorts. But relatively secondary compared to the knot in the gi belt.

Note: for the sake of clarity... I drew in red the edge of the uppermost layer of the gi jacket... not how the wrinkles from the layer under that radiate out from that same central binding point at the belt.

So that might at first seem confusing... but when you see it now and realize there is a system that most fabrics follow then it'll hopefully be much easier to see how wrinkles work. I'll post up a few other examples with gi's for you as well. It's important to note that sometimes there are variations in this. Depending on how tight fitting or heavy the gi material is.

Also...
KEY POINT - it doesn't always have to be 100% accurate. You're not taking a scientific photograph... it's an artistic interpretation so you can push this concept and exaggerate to get your point across. The diagonal angles in the wrinkles out from that central point give the illusion of speed and motion. Very important concept. Diagonals add motion to any work... so lucky for us they're generally there in nature as well.

Let me know if this helped or if it's far too wordy and convoluted.

AND - what I'm saying is my nutshell version of the Burne Horgarth stuff... he's really got it down pat. And explains it in a very clear and concise way. It's totally worth pouring over his stuff again and again. That Flicker page I posted shows some of his best stuff.... he clearly illustrates what I ham fistedly try to explain. so when in doubt... refer to Hogarth!
 
ok, i got bored and decided to do something anyway. might make something a bit better once i've got some more practice.

sorry for the crappy img quality. phone camera. also, i hate hands and feet.

img:
View attachment 22867
 
Bored is not a reason. It's an excuse. Do it because you want to do it.

Do that times 10 on the page. Don't make it fine art. No big gold frame. Just fill the page with sketches. Don't devote so much time to one sketch... do dozens of them and just get your arm and shoulder and hand moving. Don't go back over lines so much. Try to develop a flow. It takes us a lot to loosen up while working. Continually the bane of artists. You seem have a pretty decent grasp of anatomy... that will no doubt be informed by your training! That's always good. Now get sketching and fill an A4 page with sketches of the same topic 'impact'... different angles... exaggerate some... pull back on others... really exhaust the topic.



yes hands and feet are where I'll usually look first. They take a lot to get to them. You can spend a lifetime in itself just mastering them. For now go for gesture... get the figure down in as few strokes as possible. Try to give the viewer and immediate flash of the concept you're trying to get across - the core gesture!
 
i've actually filled a few pages already, but not with the impact topic. been copying images from posemaniacs, currently using one page per image that the random pose viewer throws up. but now, i'm off to sleep and will continue when i wake up
 
Not quite a sketch BUT it took me all of ten minutes to do. Kind of a theme I've spent quite a while developing in doodles.



Before I say anything, I wonder if it's obvious what I was getting at here with regards to "impact..."
 
Some good martial arts-based study material for "Impact" drawings.

Slow Motion KO Colection Karate Taekwondo Boxing Muay Thai offtopic Brutal KOes - YouTube
 
Good stuff! Now take it further and fill a whole page with them. Dozens of them. Remember they are not perfect finished art! They are sketching... ultimately developmental. Work them from every angle.

The word or concept we should be trying to work to is IMPACT... so what is the clearest way to show that? You try to figure that out in the sketch. So it will mean lots and lots of little thumbnail drawings... rough drawings that you work out the concept with. You might want to try showing the moment of impact or just after impact... give it a go and post more up!!
 
Rest assured, if I was going for "perfect" I'd still be working on it. I tend to be perfectionist in the extreme when it comes to drawing; probably why I don't do it all that much.

And I like my pictures big and clear, otherwise I have trouble making out the finer detail myself. Being somewhat myopic will do that to a guy.



Sigh... there goes the rest of my day.

Here's something more along the lines of "thinking with my pencil."



With the guy doing the push kick (it DOES look like a push kick, right? ), you can assume the other guy flew off the page.
 
I'm not sure if this counts as a sketch but I've been practicing speed painting and tonal value recently (I'm aware of the errors but I'm focusing on lightening up on detail and proportion)
 
@ Rand86


yeah man I hear ya. It's easy to do. When you sketch try to go for less detail and more gesture. Detail is generally the last resort of poorly constructed anatomy. Often times in illustrations you'll see a huge amount of detail to make up for not well thought composition or anatomy.

So you have to make a decision when you start... there is a time for fully rendered final artwork. And a time to sketch. You must put the sketching and the gesture in front of the fully rendered artwork. It's the planning phase. It has to be... if something is off you will see it in the sketch phase... if you jump right into a masterpiece of rendering and then only after X number of hours rendering that your anatomy/proportion is off it will suck. So sketch away. It doesn't cost a dime and is the best way to develop the eye and hand coordination required.

Your second set of sketches read. As silhouettes most of them will read. That is the classic animators bench mark. Can a pose or a character read as a solid silhouette? If not you'll probably want to reconsider the pose.

I'd go ahead and leave in all your construction lines to give a sense of the structure. Get that 3D shape going let us know where his hips are and how they relate to his torso. Get the heads away from round circles like PacMan and more towards an accurate head shipe which is more ovoid or egg like.




Yep these sketches are getting closer to the direction you want to go to be improving. Paper and pencil are cheap. Everyone has a million bad drawings in them they have to get out of the way before they scratch the surface of the brilliant stuff. So do like I do... keep sketching! :P I usually tend to look at my sketches after a while think... ok... this month things suck just a bit less than last month. It's a long, but relatively interesting journey.
 
@Hapuka -
Absolutely! Painting sketches are totally valid. In fact many of the top instructors stress the value of quick sketch paintings. Very good stuff! Is that traditional medium or digital? I'm guessing Photoshop? Looks pretty good so far... will be nice to see the finished piece!

Get some sketches up! You can use Pshop as well. I do it all the time. Just say no more than 30 - 45sec per sketch and absolutely fill and A4 page. Use whatever reference you want... try to capture that gesture or line that nails the pose... so anyone looking at a quick glance would go 'right... lunging at something' or 'yup... dynamic thrust off of his the balls of his feet'...
 
So, a bit rusty at this but here's my first try at a thumbnail sketch trying to sort out some motion. I don't have a scanner so I apologize for the image quality. The head at the back of the kicker's knee isn't intended to be part of the study.
 
Slip*

Hahahahaha! You should see what my old college notebooks look like.

Funnily enough... I more or less gave up on drawing seriously before starting capoeira. A doodle here, a cartoon there... but that's about it. Then I started training and I just kept coming across more and more pictures... brilliant stuff... fluid, graceful movement frozen on paper. Even the picture in my avatar - it REALLY makes your chin throb with sympathy pains. I found it all oddly inspiring.

I actually never got hang of using construction lines; mostly I go by feel and trust myself to spot whenever something's off in regards to proportions. Having said that, I have several good textbooks about this kind of stuff lying around so I might just go ahead and put some time in to learn it all.

*mind if I call you that?
 
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