Workshop participation thread for Trapper Zoid

This is my introductory post, partly to provide a bit of background about my drawing and partly to see if the replies are working!

I'm a software engineer by training but I'm also wanting to learn how to be a better artist, in part to provide better graphics for my games. I'm mainly interested in cartoony or abstract style graphics which fit the style of games I like to make, which I've been practicing recently by scribbling on paper or using vector art in Inkscape. However I'm pretty terrible at realistic drawing so I'd like to work on that as it will make be a better artist in general and I believe it will help even with simple cartoon style art. I'm not entirely sure what this workshop will entail but I'm willing to give it a go as an impetus to get practicing again.

Sorry about the delay on this; I'm an assignment behind. But here's a few examples of some drawing I did prior to this workshop.

As I wrote in my first post, most of I what I draw is cartoon art. Mostly I either draw little cartoons for practice or just for fun, or I draw concept art for game ideas or comics. My usual practice these days is to roughly sketch something to use as a base for an Inkscape vector drawing, so I don't particularly mind errors or rough drawing. Some of these Inkscape images you can see in my journal.

Here's a recent sample of my cartoon draft work. These are samples of the character for "Ice Slider", the game I'm presently working on (click image for larger version):



Sorry it's a bit smudged - I did some post-processing on this image to make it appropriate for importation into Inkscape for use as a drawing guide, and since I already had this one scanned in I didn't want to fish out the original and scan it in again.

One of those images I turned into this piece of vector art for my journal (and my present avatar). I noticed just as I posted it in my journal back then that I'd stuffed the reflection - I've stupidly put it where the shadow would go in defiance of the usual laws of optics. But it's a good example of the sort of art I like to draw:



However cartoons have a different method for drawing; they're basically about coming up with a set of rules for turning simple geometric primitives into more complex figures. I sifted through my collection of pencil drawings but while I have a huge amount of cartoony drawings of different types I don't have that many real-life drawings. The best I can do is a self-portrait I drew roughly a year ago (click for larger image):



The main flaw there is that this doesn't really look that much like me - it looks more like the ACT federal police mugshot of the Gungahlin Slasher. However despite that I suspect my realistic drawing skills have deteriorated a bit since then.

I'll try to whip together something for the first proper assignment tonight.

Quote: Original post by Trapper Zoid
The main flaw there is that this doesn't really look that much like me - it looks more like the ACT federal police mugshot of the Gungahlin Slasher.

That actually had me laughing out loud, and gasping for breath! [smile]

You'll be much better by the end of the workshop. In the meantime, nice vector art! I've been meaning to learn Inkscape... or Illustrator, if I get it soon enough.

Quote: Original post by Oluseyi
You'll be much better by the end of the workshop. In the meantime, nice vector art! I've been meaning to learn Inkscape... or Illustrator, if I get it soon enough.

I'd like to try Illustrator or Flash too; although Inkscape is a fine piece of free software I'd like to see how much easier it is to make vector art with a commercial grade tool.

Anyway, back to the drawing. Sorry about the delay; I didn't get round to doing the assignment yesterday. Here's the first one of the assignments for this week, entitled "Bowl with Onion and Stapler".

You can click on all the hand drawn drawings for a larger version.

First a reference picture of this fine artistic masterpiece:




Here's my first attempt at drawing the bowl freehand. It started out a bit awkward and I never really felt right drawing this - possibly due to my posture in drawing at my desk; I had my clipboard gripped with my right hand up against my right knee as I drew with my left hand. I also didn't get the scale of the onion and the stapler right with respect to the bowl: something which I never got the hang of with subsequent drawings:



I decided to draw a second version really quickly as a contrast to my first attempt, but it probably was a little too quick. It's pretty terrible and not very detailed due to the high speed I threw this one out:



Wanting to try again, I did a third attempt where I tried to concentrate a bit harder (I also took off my headphones to see if no music made a difference). I think I got the spacing a bit better, but I didn't put quite as much detail into this one as the first. I also have no idea how to make a pencilled onion look right - it's much harder than I thought.



I noticed when I was drawing the third version that I was drawing from my wrist rather than my elbow or shoulder or however it is that it was recommended to draw from. This might have been to do with the weird position I was sitting it in order to draw and see the bowl at the same time, but I also tend to draw with my wrist a lot when sketching rough drafts of cartoon vector art - that's why I usually fit 8 characters to a page like in the Ice Slider sketch above. I also have a terrible pencil grip, probably due to my left-handedness, where I grip the pencil at an almost perpendicular angle from the paper.

So for my final attempt I tried moving my arm purely from the elbow, but the result was not particularly good. It felt really weird; plus I've been having a bit of upper arm pain in my shoulder for some reason so it wasn't that comfortable. Here's my fourth bowl sketch:



Frankly I don't think any of these are that great. I'll have a look at redrawing a classic magazine cover later this week, but I suspect that will be extremely challenging. I have some examples drawn in the Art Deco style that I particularly like, but doing those ones would be cheating the purpose of the exercise so I guess I'll pick one of the more realistic ones for my next attempt at artistic butchery.

Despite the fact that the human arm is naturally better at drawing curves freehand than it is at drawing lines, drawing complete ellipses or circles is surprisingly hard. I tried a few drawings with round objects myself, then shelved them and went with more rectilinear objects. Try that; it might give you a confidence boost to know you're better than these drawings suggest.

The other tip I'll give you is to look not at the objects you're drawing, but at the spaces created between the objects (this is called negative space). I took the liberty of doing a quick pencil sketch of the bowl, onion and stapler:



Notice the big area to the right of the onion, with the odd shape? Notice the area under the stapler lever, to the left of the onion, but inside the bowl?

Anyway, I had fun doing that, so I went ahead and did some hatching on the sketch:



Enjoy!

There's a big error in my stapler. Can you find it?

Quote: Original post by Oluseyi
There's a big error in my stapler. Can you find it?

Is it that the top of the stapler is skewed in your drawing; the grip on the head of the stapler looks a bit slanted. But I really like the shading; I hope we get to practice that sometime in the workshop eventually.

Regarding negative space, is that a method for perceiving the structure of the scene? Do you sketch the space rather than the objects themselves? It sounds an interesting approach so I'd like to give that a try with another sketch.

Quote: Original post by Trapper Zoid
Is it that the top of the stapler is skewed in your drawing; the grip on the head of the stapler looks a bit slanted.

No, that's the small error. The big error is that the staple pin tray isn't in the drawing! My drawn stapler wouldn't work because it can't carry any staples. [smile]

Quote: But I really like the shading; I hope we get to practice that sometime in the workshop eventually.

Absolutely. It comes later, though.

Quote: Regarding negative space, is that a method for perceiving the structure of the scene? Do you sketch the space rather than the objects themselves? It sounds an interesting approach so I'd like to give that a try with another sketch.

Negative space is a powerful and very useful technique for maintaining correct proportions between objects, thus producing correct scene composition. Try it on your next sketch. In fact, go ahead and do another initial sketch, but choose more rectilinear objects (or do the same scene again if you really want, but I recommend a fresh start).