Page 263 of 506

Re: Munin´s art - free help/critique (please read first post

Posted: July 7th, 2011, 3:09:51 pm
by DarkRider
Yes that's still very good :) I like the pygmy's too :) The green is pretty. But I like the gold and black/grey. :)

Re: Munin´s art - free help/critique (please read first post

Posted: July 7th, 2011, 4:41:48 pm
by Munin
Oh, I love all of the pygmies..."Munin" is a raven with green wingtips though, thus the black-green pygmy colouring ;)

Re: Munin´s art - free help/critique (please read first post

Posted: July 9th, 2011, 8:05:48 pm
by ryer
Hey Munin! I'm back for some more pointers....
1. The more I draw/paint the more I realize how lacking I am in every aspect. How do you suggest I go about learning .. one thing by one (anatomy, then perspective, then .. etc)? or based on my weakest points? piece-by-piece approach? just everything at once? or is it just up to what I feel like is right? (whatever that is.. XD )

2. Figure drawing - is it important? what does it help you with? I've googled only to get vague answers like 'it helps you draw better..' And what is the difference between drawing from life vs from photos? I did both and didn't see much difference - but maybe because I only did 30sec - 5 min gesture-style drawings (of both types)? I tried figure drawing from photos for 2+ hours with no feeling that I was getting anywhere or learning something new. Should I figure draw at all? Should I not even bother figure drawing if it's from photos?

I know how people say 'just draw a lot' but I like to think about what I'm learning as I draw, I've only recently discovered that days of mindless drawing can be less effective than just a few minutes of a carefully planned study.

Thanks for any tips you can give me!


what is this O_O

Re: Munin´s art - free help/critique (please read first post

Posted: July 10th, 2011, 7:22:26 am
by Munin
ryer wrote:Hey Munin! I'm back for some more pointers....
1. The more I draw/paint the more I realize how lacking I am in every aspect. How do you suggest I go about learning .. one thing by one (anatomy, then perspective, then .. etc)? or based on my weakest points? piece-by-piece approach? just everything at once? or is it just up to what I feel like is right? (whatever that is.. XD )
That´s really hard to answer and very much dependent on how you personally like to work. I often feel the same way, so much still to learn that it threatens to overwhelm me and I don´t know where to start. I usually have the philosophy that it is indifferent with what I start as long as I do something. So I try to think up a project that captivates me enough to keep me going and that ideally adresses one or two problems that I need to work on. I would not recommend to tackle everything at once because that has the potential to end with a lot of frustration that demotivates more than it helps.
Having someone who sets you tasks and "forces" you to work helps immensely, at least for me, because it takes away the need to come up with creative things to do.
ryer wrote: 2. Figure drawing - is it important? what does it help you with? I've googled only to get vague answers like 'it helps you draw better..' And what is the difference between drawing from life vs from photos? I did both and didn't see much difference - but maybe because I only did 30sec - 5 min gesture-style drawings (of both types)? I tried figure drawing from photos for 2+ hours with no feeling that I was getting anywhere or learning something new. Should I figure draw at all? Should I not even bother figure drawing if it's from photos?

I know how people say 'just draw a lot' but I like to think about what I'm learning as I draw, I've only recently discovered that days of mindless drawing can be less effective than just a few minutes of a carefully planned study.

Thanks for any tips you can give me!
I am not sure I know exactly what you mean with figure drawing, so if my answer does not really make sense in regard to your question, that´s why ;)
I find it important because constant practice helps your skill of observation (if you do it right). I am not sure how much you know about the theory of "brain hand coordination" but I´ll just repeat what I have learned to be the most important aspect.
The brain needs to cope with lots and lots of information at every time. It only has limited space to process all of that information so it tries to reduce the amount of data as best as it can. To do that it saves "templates" of things it knows, situations etc. That means your brain has a template for "tree", "woman", "dog" that it puts in the place of any such thing you see. Thus it does not need to process the exact details of what you see and still has enough information to work with. That´s great for real life because that´s what allows you to learn complex tasks like reading without having to figure out every single letter everytime you look at a word but it is bad for artists. When you want to draw something specific the details are important, you have to force your brain to aknowledge that in that situation its template is insufficient and thus not to be used. Figure drawing helps you train that "switching" between "art-mode" and "everyday-mode" of your brain. It only works if you do it correctly though, many people just keep drawing and drawing and all they do is reproduce the templates, which is why mindless practice will not bring you forward as fast as really concentrated practice sessions.
The difference between drawing from real life and photos is easily explained: perspective and depth as well as movement.
On a photo perspective and depth as well as the exact "display window" are fixed, the thing does not move, nothing changes when you sit differently. Drawing from real life every change in your own position slightly changes your view on the object. If it is something that lives it will breathe, shift etc. changing tiny details in its appearance. That makes drawing from real life much, much more difficult.
I do not think it is unimportant to draw from photos, I am however a bit sceptic when it comes to those timers. It´s great when you are aiming for optimizing your speed while drawing but I think that the time limit makes you feel hectic and rushed and you do not pay as much attention (though otherwise that site looks great, I bookmarked it, thanks for the link).When pracitcing take as much time for each piece as you need until you feel you really know what you are doing. Then go and work on getting faster.
And don´t expect too much progress in too short a time. Sometimes one is stuck on a certain level for a while regardless of how much one works and at some point there´s that "click!" and suddenly everything makes sense and you just know what to do. Practice makes that point come faster but only if you don´t put too much pressure on yourself.
ryer wrote: what is this O_O
Damn cool? xD
My namesake is this Munin though: ;)

Re: Munin´s art - free help/critique (please read first post

Posted: July 10th, 2011, 2:59:33 pm
by Sharien
Hello,

I have a thread for this but I thought I could post here to get your adivic/critique on this work in progress.
image link
Currently most people have been saying that shading and lighting need fixed so can you suggest a way to fix this?

Re: Munin´s art - free help/critique (please read first post

Posted: July 10th, 2011, 3:50:40 pm
by Munin
Well, before you fix lighting/shading you need to fix the anatomy.
The body is very small, the head quite massive and both the limbs and the tail have strange angles/bumps that need to be smoothed.
The shading could be improved by upping the contrast a bit, that gives the creature more depth and definition. Further you need to define everything a bit better, right now it everything except for the markings and outlines is a bit fuzzy...there are places that could be shadows but look like you weren´t sure you are placing them right so it´s just a bit of dark colour put here and there.Define clearly where shadows and higlights are and use them to "mould" the body and muscles to give the viewers´eyes something to hold onto.
I wanted to redline your drawing to show you how to improve on anatomy but while I was at it I also added a new shading (and messed up my layers somewhere in the progress so please ignore the red parts and remnants of outlines here and there). It´s not overly refined or pretty but it should show what I mean. The whitisch parts on the back are not markings but light, similar to how it can be seen on dolphins underwater. I hope you don´t mind that I edited your pic, but it is always easier for me to show what I mean rather than try to explain it. Not sure I got the light direction right though...was the arrow or the yellow blob supposed to be the lightsource? I assumed light to be coming from above as that makes the most sense for a sea creature.
Spoiler
Image

Re: Munin´s art - free help/critique (please read first post

Posted: July 10th, 2011, 5:48:42 pm
by Munin
I am very sorry for the double post, I hope this will not be counted as illegal bumping but as I want to link this in my fist post I rather wanted to have it in a post on its own... :wat:
Someone asked how to draw a stormy sea a while back and because I have not painted something like that very often I decided to do a practice painting and create a step-by-step "tutorial" on how to do it. I might edit the description to make it a bit more detailed if anyone is interested, just let me know.

The whole pic has 4 different layers (from lowermost to uppermost): background, sky, rough colour waves, details

1) basic background, dark to medium tones, standard brush (about 100 px diameter) at 0% hardness, in this step the perspective is set by positioning the horizon

2) basic shape and position of the waves (rough colour waves layer), white/light blue-grey with a standard brush at 0% hardness

3) still basic shape and position of the wave and the same brush, adding in some dark tones to define the wave "base"

4) first details on the waves (details layer), small standard brush (3 px) at 100% hardness, adding in small white dots to represent spray and very light blue lines to better define the shape of the wave and the foam that will "run down" from the top of the wave

5) more details, same brush, this time a medium to light blue to add in the rough surface of the water at the base of the wave and white for some more foam, everything is either made up by small dots or scraggly random lines

6) same as before, more scraggly lines in different shades of light blue to white

7) adding in the waves in the background, same technique but not as detailed, a somewhat less hard brush can be used for the spray closer to the horizon

8) new layer for the sky, very soft brush with 0% hardness for the clouds, starting with a light grey at the horizon to make it easier to distinguish sky and ocean, then a medium grey for the clouds, afterwards a very dark grey for the shadows to give the clouds volume
Spoiler
ImageImage

Re: Munin´s art - free help/critique (please read first post

Posted: July 10th, 2011, 6:13:33 pm
by freakazoid
Pretty ocean. <3
Anyways, Munin, I'm beginning to sprite (i have a goodie thread where i offer sprites) and I can't seem to get the shading part down. And I'm terrible at drawing circles/spheres/round shapes. The goodies that I do in my thread aren't very large, examples can be found throughout the thread. Hope it's okay that I posted the link, if you want I can remove it and PM it to you instead. c:

Re: Munin´s art - free help/critique (please read first post

Posted: July 10th, 2011, 7:21:03 pm
by ryer
Thanks for the detailed answer Munin, you help so much as always XD I'm copying that entire post into my collection of helpful qoutes~

It's too bad there isn't a Hugin on this site. (Yeah I checked after that link you gave me lol)

Great ocean tut by the way - I can never draw water without an exact reference -facepalm-

Re: Munin´s art - free help/critique (please read first post

Posted: July 11th, 2011, 4:22:22 am
by Munin
Yellowfang wrote:Pretty ocean. <3
Anyways, Munin, I'm beginning to sprite (i have a goodie thread where i offer sprites) and I can't seem to get the shading part down. And I'm terrible at drawing circles/spheres/round shapes. The goodies that I do in my thread aren't very large, examples can be found throughout the thread. Hope it's okay that I posted the link, if you want I can remove it and PM it to you instead. c:
Those sprites are quite tiny, not sure how much shading one can really squeeze in.
I tried with one of them, a beverage canI think:
Image

The main thing is that most of your sprites do not have proper perspective and thus shading would look a bit strange as those two are linked. I am not sure though if that is really necessary...I mean with the little faces and simplification of things your sprites do not really look like they need to have realistic shading, it actually take away from their cuteness. Perhaps a mix between the shading and perspective I did and your style might work, you´d have to experiment with that.
If you want to do larger sprites in a more realistic style I would recommend you look at my tutorial (the link is in the first post of this thread). In it I explain basic shading, choosing a proper palette and give some examples for different textures :t-^_^:
ryer wrote:Thanks for the detailed answer Munin, you help so much as always XD I'm copying that entire post into my collection of helpful qoutes~

It's too bad there isn't a Hugin on this site. (Yeah I checked after that link you gave me lol)

Great ocean tut by the way - I can never draw water without an exact reference -facepalm-
Glad you think it´s helpful =)
There isn´t? I never checked that myself, I only know there is an Odin. :lol:

I did have several references that I looked at while painting, I haven´t painted waves often enough to know exactly what they look like without that. I don´t think it is necessary to be able to paint everything without a reference, that would take far too much specialization in my opinion. There are people who can for example paint horses perfectly, they don´t need a reference to get all the muscles right, can draw every pose from every perspective without thinking about it. But I want to see a person like that drawing a bird or a landscape and know that in 99% of all cases they would not be able to and especially not without a reference. :t-shrug: