doodles

 Wanted to draw some fun characters...for...fun!

The Skull from memory

 So to test what I wrote about yesterday, I challenged myself to drawing a page of skulls with no reference. I have drawn a few pages of skulls (not actually that many), and I wondered if I can draw it from memory.

And I as actually very surprised that I was able to! I mean, they are probably very inaccurate..but considering I've never really been able to draw skulls, I was happy with this :)

(HEADS LVL 5 EXP 10)

Studying The Figure (Video by David Finch)

 So this video was recommended to me by the YouTube algorithm, and as I was watching it, it realised his approach to learning is what I've been doing in my ARTacademy journey. But this is from an actual great artist, so check it out!  And if you need motivation to keep doing your studies, then start counting each page you fill as EXP! I think it's a great motivation to track your progress! 

In his video he is telling you how he studies from Bridgman. And the approach is :

1) first you start with the basic shapes / gesture. So in my own mapped out journey, this is the Loomis Mannikin by Loomis (but you can find this in many other places like How to Draw comics the Marvel way, FORCE drawing by Mattesi, etc..). 

2) You now start copying the poses in the figure drawing book that you are using, in his video it's Bridgman. In my mapped journey I had chosen Andrew Loomis, but also my chosen comic artist to study from. 

3) Now you also start copying the anatomy drawings from your figure drawing book. These are usually broken up into segments (arms, neck, torso, feet, etc..) So that's why I have different parts of the anatomy as their own challenges, for me the most expressive parts of the body are the hands and the head, at least for acting in storyboards / comics (The camera is rarely focussing on the lower part of the body :P )

And the most important step that he shows is to first copy the drawing, THEN draw it from memory. And do this over and over until you have made it yours. (my suggestion is 50 pages => LVL 5, but at least 10 pages => LVL 2)

ARTacademy : Report Card

Still continuing this strange experiment on myself, to level up my drawing skills. I've completed 3 badges in total now, and each badge represents 50 sketchbook pages of studies in a subject (Hands, Mannikin and Heads in this case). My studies are on my other blog here.

Here are the challenges broken down with the material I have been studying:

 

Below are the books that I referenced:

Below are the comics I am using for my artist studies of Buscema:

CGMA WEEK 8 : Colour Characters

 I remember at the end of the course the teacher was on holiday, so the lectures got pushed further, which overlapped then with my own holiday. So I didn't really get to put in much work at the end. But that's the way things go, it's hard to try and manage coursework on top of a job and life. Either way though, I had a ton of fun with this course, and I would recommend it for anybody who is interested in character design. 

On an interesting sidenote, I did all this work using Storyboard Pro. It has some really great drawing tools!

CGMA WEEK 6: Expressions Girl

 

CGMA WEEK 6: Expressions Male

 This was a fun exercise, to pose out some expressions while remaining on model.