Workshop participation thread for Alpha_ProgDes

Quote: Original post by Alpha_ProgDes
I wondered when sketching is there a particular position the pencil should be to your hand. I felt I had to move the pencil in different positions depending on where I was drawing on the paper.

The key is to be comfortable. Having to move the paper around is not unusual - animators use something called an animation disc that allows them to easily orient the page at an arbitrary, comfortable angle without losing registration (the ability to perfectly line up the various drawings). When I draw, I move the paper around quite a bit. When I can't, such as when using an easel in my Life Drawing class, I move around a bit.

As for how you hold the pencil, you want a firm grip, but not a "tight" one. You're not going to start out making perfect drawings; have patience and learn to trust your own hand and pencil. With time you'll become more confident in your strokes and see better drawings.

Quote: It's obvious (and extremely obviously in the next image) I have a issue with proportion. Anyway to help correct that?

One thing you can do before you start to draw is to faintly outline an area on your paper that is of the same proportions as the size of the image/scene you are trying to draw. By examining the relationships between the objects in your subject and the boundaries of the scene, you can more easily place the outlines of your drawings, which will automatically yield better proportion.

Another approach is to focus on comparisons between portions of the objects themselves - how big is this part of the tablet compared to the ruler? how big is the ruler compared to the DualShock?

Quote: Well let's just pretend that I didn't do this... ever

You're trying to "draw faces." What you should be doing is drawing curves and lines - the individual curves and lines that end up representing the faces. Look past the object and really see it. When you're thinking "draw a face," prior to being trained, you end up relying on your internal symbol system of facial features, which has a lot of errors (everybody's does). Things like "eyes are kind of oval shaped, and the pupil is a circle in the middle." In fact, the pupil is rarely dead center in the eye, and the combination of the angle the head is oriented at and the angle the viewer is positioned at contribute to make the pupils oval, too, from time to time.

It's things like this we refer to when we say someone is "drawing what they know, instead of what they see." Learning to draw, ultimately, is learning to see - learning to look closely at an object and see its lines and curves, light and shadow, value and hue.

Do two things for me. First, simplify your scene - you had too many objects cluttering your composition, making it harder for you. Let's say the mouse, the ruler and the tablet only. Second, go slow. Speed comes later, after Seeing (capital S) becomes automatic. Take your time, and really look at the angle and shape of every line and curve. Show us what you get, and I'm sure you'll be pleased with how much better it is already.

Then go on to further assignments.