Friday, July 14, 2023

100 Days of Drawing (week 12)

 

This week


Materials:

  • pencil
  • pen
  • eraser
  • paper (printer paper, notebook, etc)
  • colors (colored pencils, crayons, watercolor, etc)
  • alternatives to the above: smart phone or tablet drawing app.

Day 80: nekojin



I saw this book, Manga Art for Everyone by Danica Davidson and Rena Saiya, at the library and though it would be a good jumping off point for a drawing.  I choose the four characters in the book that appealed to me:
  • shojo manga (shojo girl in Japanese; manga targeting teenage girls)
  • shonen manga (boys’ comics; manga targeting adolescent boys)
  • nekojin (cat person)
  • yokai (beings from old Japanese folklore)
I then looked for youtube demonstrations of these four.

This is our third manga of the series: nekojin (cat person)

  • Art Shogun begins by showing us the pencils that will be used and proceeds to do a step by step demonstration in How to draw Anime "Neko" Girl (12 minutes 2.4M views).
  • Shinigami Arts draws and uses colored pencils to color Neko in Drawing a "Neko" Anime Girl (6 minutes 280K views)

Day 81: the figure's proportions



Draw a straight line. Divide it in half (2 parts). Divide each half in half (4 parts). Divide those parts in half (8 parts). Congratulations! you have the beginning of a figure which will be 8 heads tall. In the video by My Drawing Tutorials, you'll go step by step to locate important landmarks on the figure:

  1. Enclose the top part in an oval. You have located the chin and have an important measure: the head.
  2. Go to the second point down. This point will be mid-chest. Mark a point on either side of it, a head length apart. These are the nipples.
  3. Find the midpoint between the chin and the mid-chest. Make a 'v'. This is the clavicle or collarbone.
  4. Find the midpoint between the chin and the clavicle. This is the top of the chest cavity.
  5. Draw the chest cavity as an oval down to the third point down (the navel) and wide enough to include the nipples with some space on the outside.
  6. Draw vertical lines from the nipples and mark where they intersect the chest cavity. Draw a curved line between these two points that touches the mid-chest point. You've completed the chest.
  7. Draw a horizontal line about an eighth of a head below the navel. Locate the points where this line intersects the vertical lines from the nipples. Draw a curve line between these two points that includes the navel. This is the top of the pelvic bowl.
  8. Draw curved lines from the two points made in step 7 down to the next point below the naval (the crotch). 
  9. Complete the pelvic bowl by drawing drawing lines that are the top of the pelvic bone and making curved lines from the crotch point to the pelvic bones.
  10. To locate the top of the leg bone, divide the line between the navel point and the crotch point into 3 equal parts. Slightly below the second part, make a horizontal line. Mark the two points where this line meets the vertical lines from the nipples. This is the top of the leg bones.
  11. Starting at the points located in step 10,  draw short, slanted lines away from the pelvic bowl. Curve your lines sharply so that they become vertical and end at the point two head lengths from the bottom (the knee).
  12. Add 2 lines for the lower legs with triangles for the feet.
  13. To locate where to attach the arms, draw straight lines from the navel through each nipple. At the clavicle, draw lines almost horizontal, but slightly slanting upward.  Where these lines intersect will be the shoulders. Draw vertical lines from these 2 points to a length even with the crotch point. These are the wrists.
  14. Draw a hand attached to each wrist. 
You've completed a proportional stick figure!

My Drawing Tutorials Drawing Human Proportions Using Stick Figures (17 minutes, 970K views)

Fine Art Tips How to Draw the Figure from the Imagination (11 minutes, 5.2M views)


Day 82: continuous line drawing


A continuous line drawing is simply drawing without lifting your pen/pencil from the paper. You can vary your line weight, but the idea is to draw what you see while keeping the pen in contact the paper

In her video, Continuous Line Contour Drawing Lesson (8 minutes, 780K views), Anna Stump demonstrates doing a continuous line portrait.




Day 83: the figure in perspective



David Finch How To Draw Figures in Perspective (31 minutes, 880K views)

My Drawing Tutorials How To Draw The Human Figure In Perspective (18 minutes, 348K views)




Day 84: the cartoon process


A version of the cartoon process is:

  • brainstorm an idea for a cartoon
  • sketch the idea
  • refine the sketch and idea until you are satisfied (an eraser is your main refinement tool)
  • ink the drawing
  • color your cartoon
Here are a couple of cartoonist talking through parts of their cartooning process:
I’ve included the video from the Day 80 nekojin to illustrate a cartoon process



Day 85: warm and cool colors



NPT Art Connection Comparing Warm and Cool Colors (1 minute, 358K views)



Day 86: line control


I suggest that you watch the first 6 minutes of Salgood Sam's Line Control Exercise (8 minutes, 20K views) since it gives you an insight on drawing from the wrist, the elbow, and shoulder.

Sam guides you through a process for drawing straight lines freehand. You might ask, "Why?". The answer is that making straight lines challenges your drawing "equipment" - if you draw from your wrist, you naturally make curved lines; to make a straight line your hand will need to compensate for the natural curve created by your wrist motion.  Sam also does an exercise for drawing a straight line from your elbow. Bottom line: making straight lines helps you realize that drawing requires eye-body coordination, not just eye hand coordination.

Do the following exercise:

  • make a straight line with a ruler and a colored pencil
  • make 5 freehand straight line using the ruled line as a guide drawing from the wrist
  • make 5 freehand straight line using the ruled line as a guide drawing from the elbow
  • make 5 freehand straight line using the ruled line as a guide drawing from the shoulder

Watch the first 9 minutes of Further notes on Grip! (10 minutes, 5.8K views). Sam demonstrates the flexibility that the tripod grip allows.  He also encourages you to relax your grip. In fact, a tight grip on your pencil might your body telling you to take a break.













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Tuesday, July 4, 2023

100 Days of Drawing (week 11)

The Human Body as a Means of Expression

Let's face it, our bodies are fascinating! And well they should be since we spend all of our life in our body!

And how do we express ourselves? We use our bodies to show others how we feel!

Some of us are better at expressing ourselves with our bodies than others. Dancers, mimes, actors, comedians, and clowns are the people that come to mind.

As an artist, I would like to be able to draw people expressing themselves. So I look for photos of dancers, mimes, actors, comedians, and clowns expressing themselves to learn from by using them as models for a drawing. And this will help me develop my skills up to a point; I'll be limited to the poses I can find photos for.

If I want to be skillful enough to draw people expressing themselves from my imagination, I'll need to know how their bodies work. Specifically I'll need to know the fundamental structure - the skeleton. I'll need to know what moves that structure - the muscles. Finally I'll need to know how movements flow - muscular coordination - that is, which muscles relax when other muscles contract. In short, I'll need to know human anatomy.

So far, I've introduced the following human anatomy in our drawings:

The focus of these drawings has been on surface anatomy. Some of the associated videos have introduced deeper anatomy, for example, in Day 62: the mouth, I provide a link to Proko’s How to Draw Lips - Anatomy and Structure.  

Beginning this week, starting with our drawing of the shoulders, we'll be doing more in depth studies.

I encourage you to learn at whatever level you feel comfortable with, but if you are considering portraiture or manga for your artistic avocation, plan to revisit human anatomy periodically in your pursuit.


This week


Materials:

  • for Day 79:
    • charcoal (recommended: General Charcoal HB, 2B, 6B and White 558 pencils)
    • blending stump (make your own) or old used toothbrush (I cut half the handle off of mine)
  • eraser
  • paper (printer paper, notebook, etc)
  • colors (colored pencils, crayons, watercolor, etc)
  • alternatives to the above: smart phone or tablet drawing app

Day 73: shonen manga


I saw this book, Manga Art for Everyone by Danica Davidson and Rena Saiya, at the library and though it would be a good jumping off point for a drawing.  I choose the four characters in the book that appealed to me:
  • shojo manga (shojo girl in Japanese; manga targeting teenage girls)
  • shonen manga (boys’ comics; manga targeting adolescent boys)
  • nekojin (cat person)
  • yokai (beings from old Japanese folklore)
I then looked for youtube demonstrations of these four.

This is our second manga of the series: shonen hero!

Draw a shonen hero (sketch) by Sikana (5 minutes, 1.5K views)
Draw a shonen hero (ink) by Sikana (5 minutes, 344 views)
Draw a shonen hero (shading and filling) by Sikana (5 minutes, 171 views)

And from My Hero Academia: Drawing Deku. My Hero Academia is a creation of Kōhei Horikoshi. Deku is the nickname for My Hero Academia's main protagonist: Izuku Midoriya.


Day 74: a city in 3-point perspective



How to Draw a City in Three-Point Perspective by Circle Line Art School (10 minutes, 244K views


Day 75: cross contour drawing


The virtual instructor in Cross Contour Lines - Improve your drawing and painting (5 minutes, 114K views) briefly reviews the contour line than jumps into cross contour lines that he draws over an apple to illustrate the apple’s form. He then compares using cross hatching to using cross contour lines to draw the form of a cylinder. Finally, he shows how cross contour lines can be incorporated into applying your media: charcoal, painting.

Draw Awesome takes a different approach to teaching us How to Draw With Contours (10 minutes, 139 K views). He draws the contour lines on an apple and a banana and encourages us to do the same. He then uses the apple with the contour lines on it as the object of our drawing and proceeds to demonstrate drawing contour lines on paper.

Day 76: the neck



Proko, in Learn how to draw the neck - Forms you should know (note: the last minute is advertisement. 5.5 minutes, 223K views), starts with modeling theneck as a cylinder.

David Finch in Anatomy study: Necks (17 minutes, 3K views), draws using various anatomy models he has found on the web.



Day 77: the shoulders



Shoulders are incredible.

They allow us to freely move our arms. 

My study shows the muscles from the back and front (posterior and anterior).

Stan Prokopenko first introduces us to the bones in the shoulder in Anatomy of the shoulder bones. We learn about:
  • the clavicle
  • the scapula
  • the acromion process
In another video, he shows us How to draw the shoulder bones. If you get nothing else from this video, you'll start to appreciate how marvelously complex the human body is.

You may be asking, "Where's the meat?" Well, in How to draw shoulder muscles, you get your answer.

Day 78: color harmony: split complementary


Kickreate quickly explains how to identify the three colors that form a Split Complementary color harmony:
  • choose your dominant color
  • identify its complement
  • select the immediate neighbors 
I used procreate to play with various split complementary trios, and then I played around with tints of split complementary trios.

To help yourself learn, choose your favorite color and identify the two colors that it can play with in a split complementary color harmony. Draw something and use these three colors (and their tints and shades).

Day 79: texture: using charcoal


Charcoal is a wonderful material to use for the following reasons:
  • it can give the full range of values from white through black
  • it's rough, natural qualities can free your expressiveness
  • it encourages you to work in larger formats therefore bringing more of your body movements, and consequently your self, into your drawings
  • you can use your bare fingers and hands to 'move' the charcoal around
For a complete introduction to charcoal drawings, I suggest that you watch the following 3 videos:
I've also included Carley Renée's Meditative Drawing Process (11 minutes) to illustrate using charcoal in a large format (larger than 8.5 X 11 inches) work of art.













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