Forum posts by Aunt Herbert

The problem with light hatching, especially if you work with ink, is, that you can't really dodge the decision how to orient your hatching lines. There needs to be a clear graphical separation between additional features, like wrinkles, scars or face hair, and the lines of the hatching pattern.

In my experiments the best results appeared, when I actually found the constructional underpinning and oriented the hatching lines along them. The hard part is, these are not anything that can really be observed from the reference, they only become painfully visible when I ignore them with my hatching.

I think I understand what you mean, and it works well if the reference is extremely dramatically lit, just a stark separation of dark shapes on a light background, but if the reference is lighted out somewhat more naturally the image loses a whole lot of information if I just ignore the middle tones.

The effect, that the edge of the hatched out shapes is pretty much defined by where my hatching lines end doesn't make it any easier. Sometimes I draw in those edges with an extra line, but that is often a heavyhanded solution that impacts the overall style more than I intend. If I want to define those edges in more details OTOH I am forced to put the hatching lines closer together, which I would need to correspond with making the lines even finer, to avoid darkening the tone. Drawing the finest possible lines with a brush without losing contact to the paper and ending the line prematurely is a bit of a pain in the butt, too.

So my theory is, if I get that "plane thingy" nailed down to a far further extent than where I am currently at, it would free my focus to concentrate more on my brush work.

I would say the time isn't too short, you use too many lines, as you try to go from details to overall structure. Simply increasing the amount of time might just lead you further down the dead end.

Eventually you will have to learn to see and use overall structure first, before you worry about details. There are some very basic tips displayed by this site throughout the classes, about line of action and finding the masses of the body. A more complete and useful explanation of the concept, as it refers to the human figure I found on proko.com . The free courses are totally sufficient, and I would highly recommend them to anyone starting out with tackling the human figure.

OK, I have been wondering what exactly you mean with "Redlining", and been googling it, but so far my search hasn't turned up conclusive results. Can you elaborate?

And yes, if I stick to Loomis construction, I am drawing a basic circle, a brow line, a center line, one or two cut-outs for the planes on the side, a marker for the nose and the chin, ears, a chinline, and at least two lines to indicate the neck. That's a lot of lines to draw properly in 30 seconds, and more intricate Loomis heads also include lines for the cheeks, eyesockets and the lip muscles and more. Compare that with a center line, three masses and four limbs in a basic 30 sec figure sketch, it's just a lot. The 30 sec sketches in figure drawing are to encourage the use of fewer, more essential lines to describe the pose, what is gained by hurrying up, when I already stick to a fixed formula for how many lines are deemed essential?

And all those lines won't give me much individual information about a head, except its orientation in space. Mimical expressions or individual features certainly won't be visible by then, and heads don't have a lot of joints for complex poses. I can certainly try to include some first informations about neck and shoulders, but they are not really at the core of the Loomis method, unless I misunderstood something on a very basic level. 30 seconds is about the earliest, when I am almost done with sketching out basic proportions. And they are pretty much identical on most heads, so "unspecific" in relation to the reference, whether done well or badly. After 30 secs I can see whether my circles are smooth and my lines are straight, but not whether they properly relate to the reference. Especially not without the reference.

Hmm, I certainly didn't reach new heights today, but OTOH, drawing from different reference clearly threw me out of my comfort zone, which is always a good thing.

Mhm, I have just gone away from using 30 sec and 1 minute for heads, as I feel, like I am not self-critical enough to learn much from it. Thing is, all the results look "good enough" to me, and I don't even realize what mistakes I made until minutes later, when I try to fill in the gaps. Evaluating them after the lesson, without access to the original reference is also a bit hard. I can see on a 30 sec full body figure if my lines convey a convincing pose or not, but after 30 sec of Loomis construction, there is always the same very unspecific arrangement of circles and lines on the page, and little to judge quality from.

Practicing circles and lines is certainly good in itself, but I would rather rate that as line quality training than as portrait training, and I seem to miss the crucial difference to benefit of it. Is actually looking at photo reference even a benefit in such an endeavour, or would it be more "methodical" to just look at examples of Loomis construction instead, and maybe use a 20-sided dice to randomize perspectives?

You are certainly right, that I am not really sticking to a method here. I was always just talented enough to cut the corners and get decent results while dodging the hard work, and it kind of bites my in the ass, when I want more than decent.

Using full figure poses as reference for portraits is actually a good idea. At least it gets a bit around the problem, that 90% of this pages portrait library seem to be taken from the same 4 or 5 people. On the other hand, when I judge my own full figure drawings, the relationship between head, neck and shoulders doesn't strike me as my central weakness, but maybe that's my bad old nemesis of "good enough" again.

Talking about my character flaws, I wanted to be drawing for hours now, instead of debating in online forums.... GET .... TO ..... WORK, lazy bum!

See yas,

AuntHerbert

I have drawn a number of portraits over time, and when I initially encountered Mr. Loomis methods it certainly gave me a major boost in finding the proportions of the face and a decent placement of its features. Especially his use of browline, centerline and chinline helped me a lot, then I improvised along and muddled the method with my practical experience into a satisfactory result, especially in quick sketches. Getting more confident and with the goal of finishing my sketches quicker I started to leave Mr. Loomis' method more to the wayside. Instead of finding the browline, I just started drawing with the brows and tip of ears, etc. Shortcuts that worked well at the level where I was.

Now I want to improve my shading, which means first, that I need a way more detailed understanding of all the darn planes and angles on a human face, a real proper constructional foundation. I have seen some drawings of people, who obviously stick way, way stricter to Loomis than I ever did, and was gripped by constructive envy. I want to be able to do that, too.

So, back to grinding foundations, I am currently working mostly at drawing from reference, timeframe 10 minutes+, and with the goal of starting each and every draft with a complete and detailed Loomis construction. The results look OK until around 5 minutes, when I am done with the initial construction and begin to add details. Adding details reveals all the minor deviations from the reference, that would have been largely unproblematic in a rough sketch. Also, I can see those details on a reference, but I would have a hard time drawing them all from memory.

My biggest hurdle atm seems to be the side planes of the head. With Mr. Loomis and most of his epigones it all sounds so easy: "The human head isn't a perfect sphere, so let's cut off a bit on both sides, approximately 2/3 of the size of the initial sphere. The ear is in the lower backward quarter of this circle". When trying to apply that to a reference, I feel like I am totally guessing. Are there some landmarks on the skulls, where to actually place that cut-off? The tip of the cheek bones, outer edge of the brow and the area where the flat of the forehead turns to the temples might fit. They are often lighted very prominently and make excellent marks on the face, but they are not really aligned in a half-circle (or only very, very roughly). Also the way they correspond to the ear seems way off in comparison to Loomis templates.

In many drawings that I've seen the ear almost fills the lower hind quarter of the cut-off, but if that cut-off extends forward until the cheek-bones, with the ear in the centre, that would only happen with semi-elephants. Without any landmarks on the other hand, when I judge the size of the cut-off from the size of the ear, I feel like I am just drawing a random circle, that doesn't really help me later on with placing details, and seems quite arbitrary and useless.

I'll probably upload a few attempts later on today to illustrate my points, but I know there are some people on this site, who are extremely proficient with Loomis construction and hope someone can answer me one of these questions from my description of the problem so far: Either, where to place that cut-off exactly when drawing from reference, or, what parts of the face/head the rim of that cut-off actually is supposed to correspond to.

I would be very grateful for some instructions, as I feel like I am turning my wheels without really getting off the spot. Reference literature, that explores the subject in detail would be appreciated, too, but a straight answer, if possible, would obviously be a quicker, more immediate help.

Thanks for everyone's attention



Aunt Herbert

Aaaaaaah, yes, thank you, that was the page!

Hi Sanne,

Thanks for your answer. But I remember having scrolled down one of the pages and seen a complete page with thumbnails of all currently submitted -and older- pieces. It is that page, that I no longer seem to find.

The 'Skip to next' button only presents submissions, that I haven't commented on yet, and seems to have some more filters added. I remember a submission, that I hadn't commented on two days ago, then yesterday I was told, that I was "up to date" (?) with my critiques and there were nothing left to critique on, now today the submission from 2 days ago shows up again.

"Skip to next" also doesn't allow to look up older submissions, to see what critiques other people gave.

I am still a bit at a loss in navigating the page. I occassionally stumbled upon the list of all the pieces that have been released for critique, but I have a hard time finding it. I am especially interested in reading other people's critiques, not only on my on drafts, but on other people's drafts as well, to get a better grasp on what critiques would be most helpful to people.

So, which buttons do I have to click to access this list?

It took me a while to build up the confidence to answer, as your sketches sent my quality sensors into a bit of a roller coaster. My first impression was, "Oh, that looks really good", then on my second glance I thought: "But something is off." On the one hand, you are clearly 90% there, on the other hand there is still that rookie vibe to the images, and it's quite hard to pinpoint down that last 10%.

On the male figure the whole arc from the hip, shoulders to the face and hair, the linework seems 100% spot on. The shading on the shoulders seems a bit overpowered, though, making his front shoulderblade stick out in a strange way. Is his front hand buried in sand? What does the shadow to the left of his forearm indicate? Is that a cast shadow from the forearm and elbow? Then why doesn't it go all the way to the knee? Talking about the knee, I find it hard to understand, where his left leg is. Shouldn't there be a part of the left knee visible? Is that somehow a cast shadow behind him, or is that his left foot? You found good solutions for shading parts of the body, but the shading seems inconsistent over the whole image. Sometimes the contrast between darker and lighter shapes seems smooth, sometimes rather rough, on some parts your darkest dark seems to be way lighter than on other parts, and I can't really imagine a lighting situation that explains the difference in tones. Also I feel with putting so much work into working out light and darks, a cast shadow on the floor would help the eye decipher the intended light sources quite a bit.

On the female figure the proportions of her thighs and calfs dont seem to match. Either that hip is too bony or those calfs and feet are too bulky. Then you put a really strong shadow on her front thigh, but shouldn't that be matched with equally dark shadows somewhere on her shoulders and arms?

I should point out, that the overall work is still really good. I have an annoying way to critique people: if I list endlessly many minor flaws, that's not to tear you down, it's because I love the quality you already achieved.

good points, thumbs up!

@moritz: keen eye, but is it still punkrock?.... aaah, manga? The most obvious difference in the drawings is: Mihoy drew the eyes approx. 50% bigger, a lot of the anatomical "mistakes" follow logically from that decision. Which is ofc. 100% in tune with the style.

Gee, Manga style is somewhat hard to help, as it follows a quite distinct formula, as developed by the 20th century japanese illustration industry. And you certainly have more practice with following that formula than I do.

From what I have seen somewhere on youtube, and definitely not from my own personal experience, it is part of the style, that you should be able to idealize individual parts of the drawing. Like, find an idealized 3/4 frame for heads, that you use for all adult persons, define idealized attributes (hair style, accessories, scars/grubs/skin tone, etc), that you always use for the same character, find an idealized expression for eyes, nose, mouth, for a range of different emotions, then train to reproduce those parts quickly and consistently, so you can assemble them as needed to fill entire story boards quickly and consistently. If you work for a studio, the "idealization" part isn't your responsibility either, as you are required to just reproduce the studio style.

As for helping you out about "feeling" it's slanted, or that mouth and chin don't align, frankly, even if you used a traditional western style, it would be somewhat hard. If I tell you "that one line should be longer and more to the left" in that one painting, does that really help? Generally "try internalizing the Loomis formula and then practice hard" is the best general advice for portrait drawing anyway. If your target would be to achieve a more realistic rendering, there could be more advice about tones and halftones, coming from the Atelier style, (from the french 19th century illustration industry). If you aimed for more anatomical correctness or more individual expression, there might be other ideas, but manga needs to be simple to be manga.

If I saw your image in a manga book, it would just fit in and I wouldn't think twice about your drawing. It would'nt stop me from following the flow of the narrative, which, by my understanding of manga, means, you nailed it.

I think the OG way to go forward for you would be to draw an entire list of just 3/4 frames, then chose your favorite one and try to stick to it as closely as possible. Then repeat that for hair, accessories, eyes, mouths, etcetera, until you are ready to just assemble the parts as needed. In an application to a studio, you would then send in a set of features for one character, and a few example drawings how they work together in a variety of situations.

Your choice of subject, 3/4 portrait of a young male with a neutral expression, smooth room lighting approx. from top right, would probably be included in the set as a reference point, but to show off, you would need to include some more extreme choices: extreme emotions, extreme angles, extreme lighting, individual attributes or features.

If you are interested in development of a broader artistic frame, the hard truth would be: drop manga and start experimenting with other styles? Manga is a very tight framework to work within, and it doesn't allow for a lot of individual growth, and that is not a bug, that is its actual feature. You aren't supposed to paint a single million dollar frame over the course of half a year, you should dish out a dozen of pages of story a day, without irritating the customer.

Hi Tanner, thank you for your interest in the topic. Do I think David Finch is a great artist and a good teacher? Yes, I do. Do I think the force method has value? Yes I do. Do I feel this solves the problem I mentioned? No, sorry, not at all.

My problem is not, that there is no valid meaning for the term "dynamic", my problem is, that there is a whole range of different and distinct meanings, and I regularly encounter beginners, who can't tell them apart and mix it all up. For example David Finch in this video exclusively talks about figures and poses. Note, that he never mentions line quality or pencil control. And if you compare the quality of lines he uses in this video to illustrate his thoughts and explanations with the quality of lines in his finished works, it's clear he doesn't pay much attention to it at all. Not in this video, not when talking about poses and figures.

Thing is, there are dynamic lines, dynamic shapes, dynamic poses, dynamic shading, dynamic compositions, and these are all quite distinct topics, and the word "dynamic" has quite a variety of meanings, depending on the topic at hand. This page encourages me to give criticisms to other beginners, and a common theme I encounter is a lot of confusion about the importance and meaning of "looseness".

If someone still struggles with drawing two straight and even parallel lines, that extent the immediate range of their finger joints, without using a ruler, then the "looseness" of their lines is pretty much a first world problem to them, and if they focus all their practice time on such a misunderstood topic, they will make little actual gains in their proficiency and only build up unnecessary frustration.

This page is designed to be a good support tool for quick sketching. But the idea of 30 sec and 1 minute sketches isn't to practice to become an even hastier, messier and more frantic scribbler. The idea is to force people to simplify their forms, to use fewer lines to express their ideas. If scribbling hastily relaxes someone and is fun to them, all the power to you, bro/sis/x, you do you, go full Jackson Pollock and let the joy and energy of what you do transcend to your spectators, but that is not the way to learn draftsmanship.

Start out with practicing fundamentals. Knowing about the concept of a straight line doesn't teach your brain to match your observations of what your pen does on the paper to all the fine muscle movements around your various joints to actually control that line. You will feel stiff and tense in the beginning anyway, just because you are entering a very unknown terrain, and utilize some muscles, you didn't even know you had before starting to practice, and feeling "looser" might well be just a result of shunning the hurdle.

My critic, especially with the Force method: Mike Matessi, it's prime author, is a hell of an artist, and, once someone has their fundamentals mastered, following along with his practical instructions and drawing can absolutely help people achieve the next level. But he is somewhat less stellar in finding the words to describe what he does, which certainly doesn't make him very beginner friendly. If you just read his words or listen to him talk, he has a tendency to talk metaphorically and use quite vague concepts. It makes sense if you actually watch him put these vague concepts on paper, and if you already understand basic forms, shapes and lines, and you built up a sufficient amount of dexterity to follow along, it doesn't take too much guess work to grasp his ideas. As long as your pen still holds surprises for you every time it touches paper, maybe don't start with the Force method right away?

Some say the road to mastery is a 10.000 hour journey. Worrying about being dynamic enough is a burden people probably better stay away from during their first 500 hours.

Hmm, I see. You seem stuck a bit on an object level. With which I mean, they way you would describe your images in words. "Here is an arm, there is a phone, there are fingertips around the phone" "Here is a foot, the toes go to the right". And on that level, your drawings do actually work. The arm, the phone, the foot are actually depicted, and although they may not look too impressive, these objects are recognizable.

To advance, you need to find a way from looking at (and then drawing) objects, to looking at shapes. "The palm of the hand is roughly a square, the upper line of the square is curved upwards, the fingertips end in a triangular formation, although the individual tips clearly end in half-circles, the recess between the fingers go from that curved line on top of the palm to the tips in almost parallel lines. The thumb doesn't start at the top of the palm like the other fingers, instead it is attached to the side, and its shape is almost that of a rhombus with rounded edges..."

...which is totally easier said then done, as changing how you see things is hard to explain. I'll give my go-to recommendations of beginner tutorials, proko.com, and drawabox.com . Also it might be helpful to start with drawing very simple objects, like boxes or cups. Manmade things, which aren't much different from basic geometric shapes. Or look around you, and find interesting shapes, that can be reduced to geometry.

You could also print out stuff, and try to draw over the printouts, but not by following the outlines in detail, but by trying to cover the object with as few, as simple geometric shapes, as you can.