[RobertSeal-Coon]

Keep it up man.  I didn’t do the beginners’ course…  Perhaps I should have.  It looks like fun and useful too.

[RobertSeal-Coon]

Hey man,

Sorry to hear you’re feeling frustrated.   When you say that you don’t think that you can become good, you should look back at even the images on this thread, it’s clear to me that you’re improving loads.

I think as Alec says, maybe try to be a bit free for a while – don’t be too strict with working through courses.  Maybe try to find an artist that you like and copy some of their stuff for a while.  I was feeling a bit irritated with drawing and I’ve always wanted to try oil painting, so I just gave it a go and I absolutely love it.  Maybe try using a medium you haven’t tried before.

Hope to see you post again soon and hope you had an awesome time in Rome.

[RobertSeal-Coon]

So I’m continuing working through by Greuze book and I’m starting to feel really quite happy with my head drawing (at least when copying from someone better than me).  It’s such a useful exercise to see how other artists approach the problems that you have when drawing from life or photo.

Her head ended up a bit short, but I’m still happy with it.  It really helped to notice how thick the eyelids are.  I’ll now remind myself that there are three steps back to the eyeball – first the brow, then the eyelid, then the eyeball itself.

Finally, been trying my hand at the oil painting course by Bill Perkins.  Trying to really lock in the tonal stuff.  Still find it tricky, but I really enjoy it.  It’s quite liberating really.  I feel nervous when I start a drawing, but I love how you can correct again and again in oil painting.  Oddly, it’s quite forgiving.

[RobertSeal-Coon]

Haha – I have a sketchbook full of drawings that look exactly the same as that from when I did the beginning head drawing course.  I thought for a second you’d got hold of it!  Love the rendering exercise above too.

[RobertSeal-Coon]

Hi Nathan,

Really like the shadows in the latest especially in the skull and in the paint tube on its side.  The core shadows look perfect to me.  How long does it take you to do something like the skull drawing?

[RobertSeal-Coon]

Hey nhughes, thanks very much.  Really appreciate the comments.  It’s great to hear this stuff, it keeps me going at it (not that I’m needy or anything…)

Been slacking a bit, but here are a couple of my latest:

[RobertSeal-Coon]

Thank you Alex, that’s really good to hear.  I’d love to see what you post.  I’ve not been drawing enough recently – going to have to post soon.

[RobertSeal-Coon]

Hi, still having this problem.  Posted something to my sketchbook yesterday morning and it’s still not showing.  I see that none of the sketchbooks show an update in over two weeks – I guess this problem is affecting others also.

[RobertSeal-Coon]

Hey man,

Good start.  Not sure if the perspective is from the photo of the page, but the mugs from the side view look a little twisted.  One of the things that I find helpful is to think in terms of what part is parallel with what.  For example, even though they are round, if you imagine a line between the outer edges of the opening at the top and the outer edges of the base, then they should be parallel.  It’s always amazing how much a slight difference can make things look a bit off.

Hope you don’t mind the critique, I find them helpful.

Keep posting!

[RobertSeal-Coon]

so it’s been a while since I posted.  Still working on heads.  This time I’ve been working from some of the old masters works rather than from photo, I find it’s really helping to see how other (better) artists have dealt with the same problems.

First one is after a drawing by Hans Holbein:

I was watching a video by Glenn Vilppu and he started showing drawings by an artist I had never heard of called Greuze.  One extremely painful trip to abebooks.com later and I now have all the references I could want:

[RobertSeal-Coon]

Not sure about “Minor Level”, but Bill Perkins describes the Major Key and Minor Key in his video on Colour Theory 1: Value.

Basically (from what I understood):

• Major Key refers to the proportion of light to dark in a picture.  Therefore a high Major Key will have more light areas than dark areas, medium will be balanced and low will have more dark than light
• Minor Key refers to the contrast of the lights and darks that exist in a picture, regardless of their quantity.  Therefore a high Minor Key will have a high contrast (lights will be very different to darks), medium will move them closer and low will move them closer still, meaning that either the darks that exist are pale or the lights that exist are dark.

Then you can combine the two, for example a high Major Key with low Minor Key will mean a picture that is mostly light, but the darks that are there will not contrast greatly with those lights.

I may have misunderstood, but this was my take home.  It may be good for you to watch the video as I’m sure that he will describe it better than me!

[RobertSeal-Coon]

Stunning studies.  I love the hand studies.  These forums are really good for inspiring me to work harder.

[RobertSeal-Coon]

Hey man – nice daredevil.  It’s inspiring how hard you’re working on these forums…  Need to post again.

[RobertSeal-Coon]

Hi Svetlana, I like the first one especially – it’s very sensitive.  I haven’t yet dared try to draw my three year old son as I’m sure I’ll mess it up.  Do you have a fear of doing hands and feet?  I quite often just leave them out because of how hard they are, but am trying not to as I won’t get better at them that way.  The other thing I’d say is that the legs are quite straight.  I watched the painting video by John Asaro – Painting a Female Nude recently and he was almost militant about making sure that the body curves it in the first few videos.  His paintings are not really my thing, but I found that part to be very interesting.

Just a tip, you can add multiple pictures to one post by inserting each image one at a time without submitting.

I saw that you had a second sketchbook here too.  The coloured portrait there is brilliant.

I look forward to seeing more!

[RobertSeal-Coon]

Thanks Deanyosla, appreciate the compliment.  Here’s the next batch.  Started doing some studies on mouths and then eyes started giving me trouble.  I guess that I only have room in my head for a finite number of features at any one time.

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