Agro is Learning How to Draw: The Blog

[Sethera]

I'll call them Dae.

But seriously, they're not bad. I also like #2's jawline.

[Aix]

[6:43:33 PM] Aikushi Seijuurou: sethera is a more diligent instructor than i

[6:44:04 PM] Aikushi Seijuurou: anyway your eyes have greatly improved and they became consistent

[6:44:23 PM] Aikushi Seijuurou: your jaw is too square atm, it doesn't look good

[6:44:43 PM] Aikushi Seijuurou: your front on face isn't wide enough (er was looking at that third last one)

[6:46:20 PM] Aikushi Seijuurou: try drawing eyes without pupils though, pupils tend to make them look better, but you want them to already be able to look good before adding pupils

 

also your neck thing isn't good atm, especially because it's way too defined, but also because your lines aren't well done.

 

sethera explained what i wanted to say about the hair stuff

[Agro]

Short update since I didn't spend much time on it today.

 

First off, here's the 5 heads from yesterday with minor changes, including the width of the middle head, the poof of hair on the top of the far right bust, and shading on the irises, among other things. Now without black blocking because ughhhhh.

 

I was going to leave it at that for the day and just mark what I did wrong in summary, but then I instead went back in to further edit the center head's jawline and cheeks whick led me to this:

Right now, besides the constant chin issues, is that the ear positions are bugging me out. It shouldn't be that hard to figure out though.

 

I'll keep working on it.

[Agro]

Is this an update?

 

 

this is just a little animation I had to make for class. It's okay and I thought I might as well share it.

 

Just a little bit of touch up and trying to diverge the two characters I've been putting together. I'll start with where I left off last update:

So I'm still in love with the 3/4 angle on these three, but the front-on is really shaping up. I only did a little bit of editing on all 3 chins and the middle bust's cheeks and neck, as well as adding in eye hue, because eh, why not? The hardest part of anatomy right now going from bust to bust is probably just that the heads are never always at the same angle. I guess I'll work on that. Mouth probably needs to be moved up, or the nose is too small. I'm betting on the prior, though the latter might be what's off on this next one:

So about a week ago I had told you that I was splitting off from where I had been since it was starting to resemble the second of the two characters that I have been developing. The prior, younger and smoother in design and the second, a little older and more jagged. So I picked up where I had left off before the split by editing two of the straight-on busts from 2 Wednesdays ago, and made them not look like sheet. I hardened the chin and cheek lines, lowered the ears and eyebrows and messed around a bit with the hairstyle until I got the one closest to what I had imagined the character to have.

 

I gotta say I actually think it turned out great, but I'm still thinking that the nose is too small (I was going to make it larger, but hadn't the time to redraw it and resizing it artificially was going to make it look bad aka blurry). The proportions definitely seem different from the other character as well just by looking at how high the eyes are on each head, but I'm wondering (if anyone wanted to give input) whether that's because one has they eyes at the wrong level or if the difference would still be small enough to fit within the margin of genetic difference. Hard to say for me. Something seems a little off. Definitely need to fix up that nose, though. Drawing it from a side angle made that intensely obvious.

 

That's it for today, but I'm happy to have finally started on the second character.

 

I'll keep working on it.

[Sethera]

I'd suggest moving the eyes up, since proportionally, they're actually a little higher than the exact middle of the head. Try looking at pictures of skulls and you'll see what I mean. One helpful thing with the eyes and nose I like to do is that between them, they form an upside-down equilateral triangle. So yeah, that helps.

 

Also I really suggest, if you haven't viewed the anatomy tutorials I linked you, to at least look at skulls and study them. It's best if you can study an actual skull, which you can usually find in art or science departments. They'll usually let you study them, as long as you don't get really weird (Alas, poor Yorick).

 

I'd say move the mouth up more, remembering that mouths look lower on the face cuz of lips, but they're actually higher up there.

 

And yeah, make your nose bigger. If you're going realistic, make it a bit longer and definitely make it wider, unless he has a naturally arrow-thin nose. I blame anime for making super small noses and making people automatically draw them small. Again, look at skulls and see how wide the nose portion is. One thing I struggled with when first learning how to draw was to make my noses big enough. Even models with thin noses have thicker noses, proportionally, than this character does.

 

You may think drawing out the full nose like that is "ugly" or something, but the trick is in learning how to not make it so. Which you can generally figure out by observing real-life noses. Notice they're not all hard lines, but soft curves, which people generally find attractive, and that it kind of "sinks" into the face around the middle. Noses are actually a good way to figure out how you want your drawing style to go, and also keep in mind people have different kinds of noses! There are people with more prominent noses, some with button noses, others might be more crooked, etc.

 

For more direct advice:

Note: I used the chin as a reference point. Also don't forget the nose extends a bit past the nasal cavity and that we don't actually grin that widely irl cuz we have lips and skin that covers that so yeah.

And I'll finish with another set of tutorials:

http://smirtouille.deviantart.com/art/Quick-Facial-Anatomy-Tips-280459260

http://smirtouille.deviantart.com/art/Quick-Facial-Anatomy-Tips-II-403328415

[Agro]

Very small update today seeing as I did not spend much extra time in the lab and did not entirely like what I came out with.

 

So I took some– emphasis on this word– advice from Sethera's last post and used a skull as reference to edit the two front-facing busts from yesterday. I widened the noses and raised the mouths. I tested out raising the eyes, but it sucked so I'm sticking with this for now :^)

 

I then edited 3 3/4 shots  from the same post that I had previously edited the front-on shot and hate all of them. For some reason I lowered the eyebrows on them, and that doesn't help. Hair is a little off on the far left as well. I just don't like them. I should have worked more from the front-on shot, using that as a basis, but I didn't.

 

 

I also did some editing on the other character, specifically the side shots, but that came out even worse and so now you got nothing.

 

That's it for today. It was a bad drawing day.

 

I'll keep working on it, though.

[Agro]

Well let's wrap-up short and bad update week with this post.

 

[spoiler=First! Life drawing class with a much different model]

 

 

 

Secondly, I changed up the face a bit.

 

Moved the nose down, but I think I may have moved it a bit TOO far. Widened the neck and messed with the jawline. I still have clearly no idea wtf I'm doing when I try to draw this same character in a 3/4 view...

 

And that's it.

 

I'll keep working on it, though.

[Agro]

AND THEN A WEEK LATER HE APPEARS

 

I'd only done small changes this past week, and I didn't really progress all that far to be honest, but I got a few more faces in there. Not much to say.

 

The noses might still be a liiiiittle too low here, but I tried my hand at 2 3/4 images and messed with his eye color a little bit on the left. Ears may or may not be a little too small. Actually that might be the biggest issue at the moment. idk

 

Been working on the middle face. Clearly too thin, and the head itself is definitely smaller than the other two so it's been even more of a challenge to try to figure out exactly what I'm doing here. idk again

 

I'll keep working on it, still.

[Toffee.]

Agro, you should totally draw the poses of the Ginyu Force.

I mean, you did one of them in the life drawing image, so why not? O,o

[Agro]

SUP bastards

 

 

I've been drawing real off and off and on and off the past few months, since i haven't had access to the cintiqs I used when I was taking classes. So I've been using a little wacom tablet that I don't know how to use all that well. These are actually the first two things I've drawn, with the top one from maybe a month or two ago and the latter from tonight (I also tried doing the color-the-lines thing too just to see what it would look like.

 

I'm struggling a bit to draw using an indirect drawing tablet but I kind of like how these turned out. I really want to start working towards drawing different facial structures since I've never really figured out how to draw a specific person or character and that's been killing me.

[Agro]

Just going to include this without putting it in the OP

 

[cr47t]

These are good, Agro. I don't know what else to say besides keep it up because I'm looking forward to what you have to show us next.

[Agro]

I randomly tried using a gradient and it actually looked pretty good so I may try playing with it more in the future.

 

 

Still trying to nail down facial structure, especially making it differ from person to person. Avery in my mind looks a little younger or more innocent for their age, so I'm trying to play around with what might make the real difference. Friend suggested eyes. I assume she meant make them bigger, but I haven't heard back from her. At least I got the saucy look from this bust.

 

[spoiler=Oh and here's a hot undercut that I didn't develop past the base shape and that's so out of character that I'll never use it but so aesthetically pleasing that I'm dying]

 

 

[.Rai]

Since you wanted me to comment c:

 

The progress is cool. Lots of obvious improvement. I'd try doing some studies of noses and mouths. Simple lines suffice, but don't necessarily have any character to them. There's stuff to think about stylistically (and getting your own style out of something is really important), but that's for after one nails down the anatomy.