Head and Hands

I figured it was time to start moving beyond just doing gesture quicksketch. These were two minute drawings, with the goal being to avoid drawing over too much and not erase if possible.

I can recognize a couple source images, so you’re definitely getting some likeness.

For the faces maybe think a bit about your grey fill and the white spaces. It doesn’t look like you’re doing a flood fill which is good. There’s usually spots on faces where a bit of white will describe things better than a black line. Play around with it, because you’re already leaving interesting white spots. Maybe try filling the canvas with the grey so you can draw on it in both your dark and light color.

For the hands, think about line weights. The brush you’re using can do thin lines, but for finger details it’s coming out much heavier or blobbier and I don’t think that’s what you are aiming for. You’re getting really expressive lines in beards, and somehow losing that with fingers, and I don’t know what the right answer is.

In some drawings you use line variation and in others you don't. This could be due to the time constraint, I don't know. But your most dynamic looking drawings have that variation, at least in my opinion. I really like your overall style though. The way you simplify things is very effective, and the details you choose to include in your drawings add to the mood of each piece.

Could you clarify what you mean by line variation?

Some drawing tools have a pretty consistent line. Think pencils with a sharp point, fineliners, fountain pen with a ball nib, sharp wax crayon and so forth. There’s also a lot of digital brushes in that consistent style.

A reed pen, an edged fountain pen, those “calligraphy” felt tip pens, these tools have line variations from the shape. There’s digital tools that work similarly too.

Then there’s stuff like a physical brush where the shape can change. Maybe it’s got stiff hairs, maybe it’s soft but the physical shape changes on you and can get really wonky. There’s digital brushes that try for these effects but you probably can’t get them all in one digital brush.

The brush you used for beards is doing the middle style of line variation I think, and it’s very expressive. I think you’re using that same brush for most “ink” lines, and for small scale stuff the variations get lost.

oh well I think the reason is pretty simple then, beards are just easier to draw quickly - I can just kind of scribble them out - whereas I have to slow down and actually consider the fingers more carefully

You are doing pretty much everything right in my opinion, the only critique i can give is to try shading it and getting it more realistic unless that is your style.

On the one hand, yeah hands take more thinking. On the other hand for some of us beards take even more thinking :D

Basically you’ve got some really nice hands in the set, where the lines have a similar fun feeling to your faces. The holding hands pose, the extended pointer finger and curled fingers pose, the hand holding a plant stem... those all have good lines. I really like them.

I don’t know what will best help you keep that feeling and get it more often. I can think of tons of ideas, but in my experience it’s very hard to tell what effects come from a brush and what effects come from a good night’s sleep between practice sessions.

I really like those, would work perfect for some comic book. try creating some characters and making scenes out of those