Workshop participation thread for Servant of the Lord

I have just graduated from Highschool, and am as of yet unemployed. I'm am a newcomer to programming, but I suppose that's a bit irelevant to this workgroup. At 16 years of age, I am quite willing to admit I am completely horrible at art, freehand or digital. Which is rather amusing, becuase everyone else in my family, and I have a huge family, can draw really well.

I normally don't draw much at all, but when I do, I usually just draw maps of worlds I create. I recently started learning art from a book, but haven't gotten far. Hopefully this art group will encourage(I.E. 'force') me to draw more often. Not having any art to show, I drew a tree to guage my art skills. It's not off of a actual tree, just something I drew without a visual guide.



So, as you can see, I've got alot to learn. Hopefully this is where I will be able to learn it.
Oh, and you can call me Jacob or Jake if you like.

Here's the first assignment: I drew my radio and the rolling filecabinet it rests on.



Sorry about the huge sizes, I'll resize them to be smaller next time before uploading. Oh, and I digitally altered the picture slightly, to cut off some extra whitespace, and to make the date and my name clearer, but the picture is unaltered.

I've seen that good perspective is the difference between a good drawing and not so good drawing. I've also experienced that for non natuarally talented people (like me), mastering perspective can be hard and may take lots and lots of pens.

I would suggest for you the same thing I said for Zerd (you can see my response here). I go better detail into my thinking there, but I'll summarize here as well:

Take confidence in your lines. Move your pencil a little faster, let your subconcious handle the how of moving the pencil. You've been moving a pencil most of your life, you should have an instinct for it.

Concentrate on where you want a line or curve to start, and where you want it to end. Your hand should know how to get there in a clean stroke.

That should help remove the jitter from your lines, which alone will make your art seem more confident, and thus better.

How would you go about that, Numsgil? Faster strokes would seem to become more unsteady/crooked, and harder strokes would darken what shouldn't be darkened.

I'm trying to do that 'move your pencil with your arm, not your wrist' but instinctively do the finer details with my wrist. Any ideas how I can put this into practice better?

Going faster means the natural wobble of your hand is more likely to be spread out over the length of the line, which will make it look less squiggly. When your hand moves very slowly, those wobbles get packed into a very tiny length of line. On the other hand, moving faster gives you less control over where your line ends up going.

Maybe faster isn't the answer. I tend to think of it like riding a bike. It's really hard to ride going 1 or 2 miles an hour (say, when you're trying to ride next to someone who's walking). When people first learn to ride a bike, one of the major hurdles to overcome is going fast enough to let the gyroscopic tendencies of the bike take over the problem of balance. But I don't know if there are gyroscopic properties to drawing ;)

Try drawing some "straight" lines and some curves (maybe sine curves) over, say, 5 inches of paper. Draw some in a half seconds, draw some in 10 seconds, and draw some in between. That should let us and you have a good look at how your hand is naturally moving, your amount of wobble, etc., and if moving faster or slower has any effect at all. make sure to record how fast each of the lines were drawn.

It should also help you remember to move your arm, not your wrist (that's why I'm saying 5 inches. Your wrist shouldn't be able to swivel that much). You could also try a wrist brace. They sell them at most drugstores.

Quote: Original post by Servant of the Lord
I'm trying to do that 'move your pencil with your arm, not your wrist' but instinctively do the finer details with my wrist. Any ideas how I can put this into practice better?

Keep in mind that your lines don't have to be perfect. Take a look at this series of sketch drawings from a class, and read the instructor's comments (it's his blog, which is awesome, by the way). Loosen up a bit and don't worry about getting the drawing "right" so much as about getting the process right.