[John Novello]

Day 7

Did a portrait, it’s ok. The bristol is really fun to work on.

[John Novello]

Day 6

Nothing to say about this one other than that it looks very much like extreme discount off-brand Steve Huston. Also I need to get a new phone, the graininess is clearly from my camera, not the paper.

[John Novello]

Day 5

Decided to do some more focused studies, a torso and two arms. There are some extremely dubious things about them (that right arm on the torso, eughh), and they look less impressive than the previous studies, especially that first one which is retrospect looks OK. Still, they were more effective for learning, and I feel like I actually made some progress with edges today. I really liked using this toned paper and pastel pencil, though! Im going to find a color combo that I like and start doing that more regularly. Also, the edges on that arm on the upper right are pretty good. In fact, they’re about exactly what I want from my edges.

[John Novello]

Day 4

This one is straight up unfinished, not just that “halfway done aesthetic” that the other ones had, despite my taking the full 3 hours here. I suppose I really would need about six-seven hours to do a full figure like this. Not being able to complete this drawing on time made me realize that doing this kind of thing, meaning full figure drawings, really is impeding my progress with edges. I can’t even get to the point where I can practice the edges I need to!

I’m going to start doing just torsos and arms, no reason to include anything below the waist or above the neck. That’s where the soft edges I’m looking for are, anyway.

 

[John Novello]

Day 3

Not again! Poor Rajiv, look how I massacred my boy! :'( Took me ~2 hrs, really phoned this one in. I genuinely didn’t want to stop and draw figures today, which is rare. I was having so much fun doing head studies on this ancient piece of parchment paper I found lying around. It’s bad. Really bad. Nothing else to say about it.

I’m moving to bristol, or maybe laid paper, for day 4. I love drawing on this paper but it’s inexplicably grainy on camera.

[John Novello]

Here’s day 2’s drawing, took the full 3 hours this time. It’s terrible! I’ll probably give poor Rajeev here another shot, he really deserves to be portrayed better than this. The only thing that isn’t nightmarish from a shape perspective is the face. Circular shape design always makes me happy! I’ve noticed that this paper gives a sort of grainy texture on camera, which is unfortunate, and that it’s very time consuming to remove the texture in the shadows. I think I’ll just keep leaving them textured, despite it being a really incorrect use of texture, which should imo exist primarily in the midtones. There’s no sense of visual hierarchy here, which really isn’t a problem in this case, considering the purpose of these studies. As for the soft edges in the light, this one actually has worse edgework than the last; what a disaster! TBF I think this isn’t a result of me not understanding what to do, just being technically and mechanically incapable of applying what I know I should do.

[John Novello]

Hey thank you for the crit Christopher, and I appreciate the compliment, but I don’t think there’s anything here to be jealous of! Just the relatively mediocre results of a few years of practice. The forearm is definitely too short, and the shoulder being improperly placed doesn’t help with that either, because it boxes in rest of the arm. As for incorporating lost edges or focusing on the thickness of line, I’ll do those in the future, but only once I can consistently make good edges in the light. Should only be…a few hundred more hours of practice. 😉

[John Novello]

First figure, she came out looking pretty dubious from a construction standpoint. There are some very “”interesting”” things going on with that shoulder, the forward facing leg is too short, and while I did get some nice S curves in there, the pose is really lacking power from a shape design perspective, especially in that arm. You should feel the weight of her whole body in her arms, and you don’t. Aside from the construction issues, the edgework in the light, which is what my primary focus is on, is pretty poor. There are a couple places in there where I feel like I’m close to “getting it” so to speak, but mostly the supposed-to-be-firm edges look either too hard or too soft. Overall, not really an acceptable outcome for the two hours I put in to it, but it’s not bad enough that I’m overly embarrassed about it.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by John Novello.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by John Novello. Reason: grammar

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