Friday, October 20, 2006

Boring art stuff, no pics (ok, I lied... one pic and links to more)

While I'm on this whole art kick I want to jot down a few of the important ideas that have helped me along the way, partly just to remind myself of them, and in case it can help anyone else. Posting all this stuff (and digging through all my old art) has made me want to get back to it again, and also I've been able to look at it all with a fresh eye and see the weak points that I couldn't see before. So I'll start with a quick critique of the stuff I posted recently and what I think I need to work on.

My main focus has always been on figure drawing. Obviously, from the first batch of drawings I posted, I wanted to draw comics at one time. Some of my greatest influences/inspirations are comic book and graphic novel artists, far too numerous to mention here. But it wasn't just American superhero type comics.... in fact my favorites were always the Warren magazines... large format black-and-white horror comics that came out in the '70's featuring mostly European artists (yeah, even then I was Euro-centric... weird huh?). Eerie, Creepy, Vampirella, The Spirit... these were fantastic!!! So much more expressive than most of the superhero stuff, and more realistic, and at the same time expressively drawn. But anyway, I can feel myself wandering away from my subject.

Ok, Critique of my recently-posted stuff:

The ones I like the best are the ones that feature either multiple characters interacting or a figure in a definite environment (where the environment is more than just a few lines in the background). And I think it's for the reason McG (Uhhh.... that's Michael Granberry) mentioned recently - because there's drama in it. There's no drama in a single character floating in space or in a mist-filled room. I also like the ones where I resisted the temptation to scribble a lot of artsy lines everywhere. Or at least keep them subordinated to the effect of the piece, and not let them destroy anatomy or solidity. And finally, I like the ones that are just tighter than the rest... I tend to draw too loose sometimes, not enough detail and not enough anatomy and proportioning. For many years my goal was to loosen up, and I did that, but now I feel it's time to tighten up again, hopefully with a new perspective I've learned along the way.

On to those tidbits and morsels of random info that have helped me in my artistic journey:

The singleshadow. My own word for a well-known concept that I learned from the invaluable Robert Beverly Hale books, the finest and most advanced drawing/anatomy books I've ever laid eyes on (and I've seen quite a few, believe me!). The idea is that all the shadows on a figure should be part of one big shadow... all serving to define the major forms. If they get scattered all over the place and no longer describe the larger form, then things are just getting confused. Helped me loads. In fact, the more I learn about advanced figure drawing, I find that learning to define those major forms is the most important step. If you can do that well enough, you've got a good drawing/painting.

The trusting line. Again, my name, and a concept that I assume is well known, though I haven't really heard of it anywhere, though a lot of artists use it or a variation of it. If you look at the last Fiona Apple drawing I posted, the one where she's singing into the mic with headphones on..... this is a good example of it. Basically you place your pencil (or whatever drawing implement you're using) and look at your reference, trying to fix the next series of curves and landmarks in your mind in relation to the entire page, and then you start the line. You keep going, confident and strong, until you've reached the logical stopping point. It's very hard to do, and you really do have to just trust that it will work, though sometimes it won't. It depends on your knowledge of anatomy and of how to draw from reference, be it from life or photoref. It helps to understand certain principles, like finding the center point of your image and the center point of the ref (easy on photoref, just place your figure exactly like the one in the pic) or just visually breaking the image area up into quarters to see what parts of the figure fall in each quarter. And sometimes, for tricky parts, you need to rely on old artist's tricks like visually aligning some part with another.... that elbow is directly under the nose etc.You really need to do these things in your mind before starting each line, and sort of visualise the line on the page before drawing it. It's easy to end up with a distorted figure this way - in fact it's hard not to, bu it usually looks cool. The trusting line is not the same as a contour drawing, where you don't look at your paper and never lift the pencil and never stop until the whole drawing is done. That's more of a 'learning to see differently' exercise, though it can produce some nice (if not realistic) drawings. This is more about boldly carving out the parts of your drawing with a strong single line, something Egon Schiele and Gustave Klimt did extremely well. My drawing used to be all fuzzy with re-drawn lines until I tried this. A key to drawing this way came to me again from Hale, when he said that the master artists of history started by learning the skeleton and all its bony landmarks (because bony landmarks don't float around the way a nipple or a belly button - fleshy landmarks - can). Then they would simply run a line, appropriately curved, from one bony landmark to the next.

Silouhette. This kind of covers a few ideas all rolled into one. My Paintings used to look like crap until I realized that an entire figure should be either light or dark. Or, in the case of someone maybe wearing a light shirt and dark pants, use contrast to make the figure stand out from the background. Your shading shouldn't make parts of the figure so dark it becomes unreadable against the background. Another factor of silouhette is that each character should "read" in silouhette, for instance if it's seen from far away as just a dark shape against a light background, you should be able to tell who it is. In a situation like this it helps to turn the face in profile (something I tend to do even close up). And here's a factor that combines both silouhette and the trusting line..... I sometimes try to simplify things so much that with just that one line I'm describing the silouhette and conveying information about anatomy and clothing. Kind of hard to describe... this is something I get from Schiele and Klimt, through Kent Williams. I'll try to find an example and post it. When i can do this, I feel like I'm drawing at the upper limit of my abilities.

**EDIT**

I decided to upload this pic of a drawing I did some years ago as a demonstration of how a line can describe anatomy and do something else at the same time. In looking, it seems I actually came back in and drew the hair (along forearms etc) later, but I could have done it with the trusting line as I was drawing it. In fact, studying Schiele convinced me that details can be concentrated along the line itself, since line denotes a plane change, and that's where you'll tend to see details best. It's also where color and shadow change. Worthy of lots of contemplation/study, no? (I mean the tecnique, not my drawing)
Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting
to see the kind of drawings I was trying to emulate, check out KentWilliams.com and to see what inspired HIM look at some Egon Schiele drawings.

That's all I got for now.... if I think of more later I'll post more. Jeff, you said you were thinking of learning some Photoshop technique. HERE'S a nice place to start. For coloring stuff, one of the coolest things I ever learned was how to creat a flats channel or layer. And, for anyone interested in learning about ar or improving your skills, or just seeing a whole lot of incredible stuff, check out Conceptart.org.

C-ya!

4 comments:

UbaTuber said...

Good stuff man....some pointers passed on from my college profs...draw your trusting line fast (she used to call it the line of the pose, but I like yours better), try not to think about it too much....get a big pad of paper and do like four on one sheet in 30 sec or something, it'll help keep the line sort of fluid and free, without the rigidity that comes with overthinking...course this is much easier with a model....in figure drawing class (hands down my fave, and not just cause naked people :) we used to start off with 10-15 poses, just drawing the trusting line, then we'd do 20sec drawings, trusting line and some form (ball for the head ribcage pelvis etc)...we'd slowly work up to a complete drawing each day, which would usually take the last 45 min of class (3 hours)...
Another thing I like to do is exaggerate parts of the line where something interesting is happening visually or where there is a lot of weight to the fig, like the curve of a hip or the boniness of an elbow....example in your last image: the line at the top of the hand is thicker, darker, than say, the line of the shoulder...much more interesting than if the lines were the same size and shape all the way around....
I like to let the lines 'breathe' a bit too, by completely erasing them away in areas where they are thinnest, like the right side of the ribcage on Iggy Pop up above :)....you'll find that in some spots you don't even need to draw contours, the eye connects the dots on its own....I'll try to find some pics to show, will dig out my giant newsprint figure drawing pad, which is chock full of figure studies from the semester, great reference material....

I love these posts, awesome work....

Darkmatters said...

Yes, good points! I almost mentioned some of the additinal points, about what I call "building up energy" by thickening the line and leting line fade where light is stronger or for other reasons.

But I find if you try to go too fast you'll mess things up. Fast is good for just messing around or doing quick sketches, but if you're trying to do a good finished drawing you need to take it slow. There's a lot of information to keep in your head and guide your hand, and if you rush you'll mess it up. This was confirmed when I got to art class and the instructor said that loose painting or drawing styles look like they were done fast and sloppy, but they're really not. He said it does help a lot to draw that way in sketching, to free yourself up, but those "loose" drawings/paintings are done much more methodically (and slowly) than you'd think. And every move of the pencil should be guided by knowledge or in response to visual reference (or for some good reason) rather than just making stuff up or scribbling.

If you look at those Schiele drawings, he didn't whip them out in a big hurry, though I'm sure after doing it for some time you get faster.

Trishymouse said...

Glad I found you - I love creative people and this kind in particular...

Darkmatters said...

Hi Trish! I'm glad you found me too! It's funny.... actually my blog is suppposed to be about my stop motion animation project, but this month I've decided to write a lot about my drawing and painting. I'd better get back to my puppets - they're starting to get lonely!