I think the main problem that I can see is really visible on the 5 minute drawing. You're focusing too much on the contour lines and that is getting in your way of describing the form propperly. I'd recomend you to search and apply the Reilly's method so you can practice seeing the flow of the body instead of the contourlines. Proko channel have great videos about this subject, lectured by Tim Gula.
The other thing, learn anatomy too, so you know when something is off. For beginners I'd suggest Loomis's or Michael Hampton's books. I personally think that Hampton's will suit you the best because of the boxie aspect will help you to see the volume.
I can't see your arquive, if there's any. Two good tutorials that I think explain shade really well is the Proko's and the one of Marco Bucci, also from Youtube. After watching the explanation, you just have to practice it. You won't get it in the first try, it takes several drawings to understand what to do with your hand once you already understand the theory in your mind.
One book I also recomend is "Color and Light: The guide for the realist painter by James Gurney". In this book the author talks about many atmospheric phenomena and the way that light behaves. Like the reason why the things fade at the distance, and the way that dark objects and dark shadows (under daylight with a blue sky) gets bluish at the distance "faster" than does the clear and white objects. There are many interesting stuff and it's very usefull when you're trying to organize the value scale on your enviroments and thying to figure out the colors too.
It's a very nice work, and you're right considering 4 mounths is not that long, evolution takes time! My advice is drop the eraser, draw with a pen if you have to.
You have to force your brain to make the decisions. You already have the limited time set to push you forward, but the safety provided by the eraser is keeping this limited time from making it's job. Don't worry, it's gonna be a real mess, but it's part of the process. So make many mistakes, but don't erase them, let them there staring at you so you try working on them the next time you practice. And remember, the less you erase the more you do with this 5 minutes.
And of course, studying anatomy helps to build the confidence to make this decisions.
Knowing the amount of time you spent on each drawing would help me to critque what you did giving you more justice. They look really nice but I don't know for example if the drawing of the man is with lighter values because you need to improve your value skills (studying from black & white picture would help in this case because there would be no color distracting you from the values) or you simply had no time to make the darkening cuz you made the study in like 20/30 minutes. Don't know if you're already able to keep going and pollish this a little more or this is you're current maximum level.
Anyway, for me seems a nice job, but since you're a beginner and I don't have much information my advice is just for you to keep going. Build your foundation learning all the fundamentals, one at a time not in any particular order.
- Shapes and Forms
- Color
- Values
- Basic Anatomy
- Perspective
- Composition
- Shading
Jeshua Turpo
edited this post on November 7, 2020 5:06pm.
