Workshop participation thread for Fukushousha

About me:

I am a 20 years old programmer .. studying at an informatics univesity in Greece.I love games and am trying to make them apart from just playing them .. but I have the usual problem of not being able to find artists always willing to do it for me.

I have one more problem .... I completely and honestly just lack any talent .. skill and experience in drawing.I just don't know a thing about it.You will soon realise it from the "monstrosities" you will see being drawn by me.

But what I do have is will to try and make myself better at it with the help of all of you and maybe with the help of a friend I have who is REALLY good at drawing.So .. on to the first sketch.

This is a sketch of a spanish bottle of wine and a mug of coffee.As you can see .... it is plain awful.And to imagine I actually tried to make it.I just don't know how to do it so any kind of tips to improve my self would be useful.





I will wait for comments and then either go on to the magazine cover or redo this as many times as I have to.

*EDIT* : had to edit because I had not linked the image properly.

[Edited by - Fukushousha on November 15, 2006 3:57:33 PM]

Learning to draw is learning to see. Our world is dense with complexity - the human face alone is an incredibly complex, nuanced object (think, millions of distinct faces with the same parameters, that would each be recognizable almost instantaneously) - and thus our brains tend to reduce objects to their descriptive minimum. This is why we sometimes see objects in the clouds on in the moon; we are drawing on the same abstraction mechanisms that allow us to quickly recognize objects without parsing all of their data.

Most people starting to draw haven't yet learned to see, so they draw what they know. In you case, for example, you know that the bottle is cylindrical and long, and you know that, when placed on a flat surface and looked at from a perpendicular viewpoint, a cylinder appears as a rectangle. Consequently, you drew the body of the bottle as a rectange.

If you were to look at the bottle and mug again, discarding your "knowledge" of the objects, you would notice that there are curves that you see that aren't in your drawing. An excellent exercise is to get a clear plastic sheet such as a transparency and an erasable marker, then to hold the plastic sheet at a fixed distance from you and trace an object. WHen you're done, look at the shape on your transparency (put a sheet of paper underneath it to see the outline better). It won't conform to what you know of the object, but it will conform to what you see when you look at the object.

Patience is key. Don't be too quick to put something on paper. Spend a little time looking at your subject, studying it, understanding its lines. Later on we will discuss the theory behind techniques like foreshadowing, but the first step is just trying to draw what you see as you see it.

Let's try the bottle and mug again, shall we? [smile]

I did not have any free time to dedicate in this but today I sat down and gave it a try again.This time I took a box of something and a glasses case( correct word?) and tried to draw them like intructed.I am not sure if what I did is correct , but I am sure that it is much more closer to what asked than the previous one I sent.Any comments would be welcome.I am still learning ;)

That's a good start, but I think you should read this.

I read it and it was a good read , but I have a problem.Whenever I try to draw something using vanishing points ,I am reduced to very basic shapes .. but I guess it is because of me being a starter.

I don't know what do ... draw the shape first the way I see it and then find the vanishing points?Draw the vanishing points first and then the shape?

If it is draw the shape first and then find the vanishing points I found it is not right .... or at least it did not work for my drawings.If it is to find the vanishing points first ... I don't know how to find them.I put 3 objects on a chair trying to find the vanishing point of one (a cuboid) from the perspective of me seeing them.But I just can't ... all lines seems parallel to me ... when I see them , but when I draw them they are wrong.
So I think I need vanishing points .. but how can I determine them?Something I think I could use is a photo of something .. anything and then in a paper see it being drawn using vanishing points.

I drew many drawings with vanishing points ... but the end result was not what I saw , because the vanishing points I took were either the wrong number or in the wrong place in the paper.Any help?

Quote:Original post by Fukushousha
I read it and it was a good read, but I have a problem.Whenever I try to draw something using vanishing points, I am reduced to very basic shapes .. but I guess it is because of me being a starter.

Vanishing points and projection lines, by definition, will inscribe basic shapes. The thing is that you can then use those basic shapes as guides. If you're drawing an ellipsoid, it fits inside a cuboid which you can sketch out using vanishing points and construction lines. If I get a chance before I leave, I'll show you how to draw a wine glass in dramatic perspectives using various vanishing point techniques.

Quote:I don't know what do ... draw the shape first the way I see it and then find the vanishing points? Draw the vanishing points first and then the shape?

The vanishing points and construction lines tell you where the shape is and how it should look. Draw the vanishing points and construction lines first.

Thanks a lot ! :)

I will be sure to try it again that way.I also ordered that book you mentioned in the recess thread.Every little helps I guess !

Well hello again.I officialy cast a revive spell on this thread now :)

So ... here is the first assignment.I just did it , was a little late because I wanted to read the book up to this chapter.The whole L-R mode thing sounds fascinating to say the least but also sounds a little other-worldly to me.I mean since I have never experienced anything related to the 2 different parts of the brain it sounded strange to me .Anyway enough talk , here is the image :



I should say I am right handed , so I copied the left side from the book and tried to copy the right side from the left side later.

The book mentions that the target of this assignment is to cause a conflict between Left and right mode.Basically , I am not sure if this is what happened but when I started copying the right side , at start I got confused for about 30 seconds , I could not draw the forehead and nose because the left one went outwards , but this one should go the opposite way e.t.c.

30 seconds later it all cleared out and I drew it to the best of my abilities as shown above.

EDIT: The author sets some very nice questions right after the exercise in the book.

Yes I did use eraser :p , and well ... ehm how did I solve the confusion I had for those 30 minutes?I don't know exactly.It just came to me to just copy the left figure to the best of my abilities , just in the opposite side.
I don't think the solution I gave is close to any ofthe solutions she mentions in the book.


Also I read a little further on the book and I think I udnerstand the whole meaning of the upside down drawing.I will do it later tonight or more likely tomorrow.I am really curious as to how it will turn out honestly.
The whole idea of not thinking it as a person sitting , but as lines , curves e.t.c. sounds challenging !(Being upside down sure will help)

[Edited by - Fukushousha on January 29, 2007 9:43:16 AM]