The Nose Knows

 

    Trying to squeezed-in some drawing before Christmas, so I decided to do Creamy again. This is the typical thing that Creamy does. Ever curious and obliviously preoccupied with whatever it is that interests her.  Everything seems interesting and warrants a closer investigation.  Never a dull moment for this canine.  If only she pays attention to me when I call her name.  The only thing that would break her sniffing trance is when I have some food.and she would want some.  

Shy Snowy

 

 I feel like drawing a dog again today. It's my sister's pet, Snowie. a fearful and shy dog but can be naughty, sneaky, and can jump really high with her hind legs when trying to catch my attention during feeding time. I sometimes call her kangaroo.

 

Thumper Sketch

      Just a quick sketch of one of my fave Disney character -- Thumper, the inspiration behind the design of my animated blue bunny icon.  I had fun animating this character for Bambi 2, way back when I was working at Disney Australia. It's been awhile since I drew this character, but because someone actually requested me for this sketch recently, and so I took the chance to revisit this character and did this sketch. 

 

Head Drawing - Marlon Brando

     Today's head drawing is the young Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire. He was not only very gorgeous in this film but his acting style was revolutionary at that time.  Drawing his likeness took me some time and was a bit tricky, because it can easily looked like a generic handsome face.   But it was fun just the same. 

Head Drawing - Al Pacino

   Today's head drawing is the young Al Pacino in his role as Michael Corleone, from the film classic The Godfather. 

Head Drawing - Michelle Pfeiffer

     Continuing with the head drawing practice using some drawing methods I've learned from the just concluded class, here's a drawing of Michelle Pfeiffer as Madame de Tourvel from the film Dangerous Liaisons. 

Head Drawing - Jeff Bridges

        This is my week 5 and final head drawing assignment. Rendering was the topic. It was about design and edges. I still have a long way to go in terms of polishing my rendering, but in the span of 5 weeks, I think I made quite a progress.  I enjoyed doing theses assignments that I will be continuing doing these head drawings for days to come. Till the next one....

Head Drawing - Stan Lee (28Dec1922 - 12Nov.2018) R.I.P.

       Today, I learned of Stan Lee's passing at the ripe old age of 95 years.     I wasn't a Marvel comic reader. I was more of a Dennis the Menace, Snoopy, Garfield comics reader. Even if I'm not much of a comic book reader these days, nevertheless, some of the best movies and series I've enjoyed for the past decade or so, had been the Marvel superheroes like the Iron Man, Captain America, Spiderman, and the Daredevil. They were all based on comicbook characters created by Stan Lee.

       When I was still starting out to become an animator many years ago, I was terrible with drawing humans.  In fact, I was terrible in drawing from imagination, a crucial skill an animator needs to be able to animate different characters effectively.  One of the books that helped me draw people from imagination was the book, How to Draw Comics The Marvel Way by Stan Lee and John Buscema.  Even if the book was tailored for comicbook artists, the fundamental lessons were very much applicable to a budding animator like me at that time. 

         And so, in a small way, I'd like to pay tribute to Stan Lee, with this drawing.  May he rest in peace.

 

Head Drawing - Alan Rickman (Updated)

      It's really important to have a good solid construction and correct proportion as the foundation, but that doesn't mean there won't be no changes along the way. This happened with this drawing. Shadow shapes were further refined and adjusted. The neck and shoulder proportions were also broadened.  But once the basic structure and the general shapes were laid-in, adding the details of eyes and mouth were like icing on the cake. 

Head Drawing - Bruce Willis (Updated)

     This week is the final week and the focus is rendering. Since I've done so many heads in the past 4 weeks, and most of  them are in different stages of completion, I decided to go back and finalized some of them. 

     Here's the updated version of my drawing of Bruce Willis, finally with eyes and mouth.

Head Drawing - Emily Blunt

    This drawing was also part of the week 4 assignment I submitted for the Head Drawing Class I'm taking.  Just like in my Hugh Jackman drawing, I'm showing here the drawing stages that I've learned from the class so far.

  

      It starts with the lay-in of the generic head from week 1. Then the Reilly method rhythm lines from this week's lesson were drawn on top of it. Those lines also served as planar and anatomical guides as well.  After that, the features and shadow shapes were added.  Followed by the adding of  dark tones on the shadow shapes. This stage was where most of my time was spent. Likeness was recognizable already at this point. After this stage, adding some light gradations was easier to figure out. The rest of the rendering was finished in a short time after that.

    

   

Next week would be the final week of the class and it would be about facial features and rendering. Watch out for my assignment postings of those here.

Head Drawing - Hugh Jackman

        So for the past few weeks, I had been taking a class that gradually introduced me to the Reilly Head method.  Having drawn a few head assignments where I learned to separate the shadow shapes from the light shapes, it's now much easier for me to grasp  the concept of the Reilly Head .  Those multiple lines, which can be confusing, represents the head planes, anatomical structure and rhythm lines.  Those lines really help in rendering the form.

    After learning the Reilly Head, those rhythm lines seem very obvious  whenever I look at faces now.

Head Drawing - Alan Rickman

        *** There's an updated version of this, see here.***

         After Bruce Willis, it's Alan Rickman in his  memorable role as Hans Gruber from the film Die Hard.  He's got a nice shadow shapes in this photo, that drawing his likeness became easier to capture. Although I wasn't quite sure when I first started with the basic head construction.  I skipped the outlining of some of the features and just went straight to sculpting with tones. It took me awhile but eventually I did manage to get his likeness.   I kept the values limited to three, with some hint of whites in some of the hotspots. Plus a light grey background to frame him nicely. Cool, huh?

Head Drawing - Bruce Willis

 ***There's an updated version of this, see here.***

    This was one of the head drawings for my week 3 assignment in the Head Drawing class I'm taking, rendered with 3 to 5 values only.  Still not concerned with the eyes and mouth, it's amazing how effective this method is in drawing the likeness based on the dark patterns of the head.

      I used the basic generic head construction I learned from week 1, and then  modified it according to Bruce Willis' head shape and proportion. Followed by the mapping of the dark shadow shapes, avoiding the eyes and mouth for now, using only three values, the paper's value for the light, mid-tone grey and the darkest dark.   To add some polish, some whites are added for the hotspots, and black background to frame the whole head.

Head Drawing No. 5 - Can You Tell Who This Is?

This is now my 5th head sketch, where I draw the likeness through shapes. Even without the eyes and nose, this face is easily recognizable.  This head drawing method made my previous portrait drawing using the grid system seem obsolete.   This method is all freehand, a more enjoyable method for me.

Head Drawing No. 4 - Can You Tell Who This Is?

        While the previous three head sketches (see here, here and here), had been a struggle and took each a day for me to finish, in this sketch I was able to do a quicker lay-in almost effortlessly.  This took less time that I was able to do two more head sketches after this,

       Could be that this head had a easily recognizable shapes, or  I'm getting used to this drawing method.  Either way, I delightfully realized that this method of constructing the head is effectively training me to focus on the general overall shapes first, ignoring the eyes and mouth for the meantime, while some likeness must be evident at this stage first, before proceeding to add the facial features and  final rendering.

          I'm liking my progress in this class thus far...
      

Head Drawing No. 3 - Can You Tell Who This Is?

     This week 2 assignment required  me to do twenty-five of these heads.  As with the previous two sketches, getting the right shapes took time. I was already doubting myself if I'll be able to do more than five at the rate I was going. I was only managing one head a day at that point.

     My first  and second head  sketches conformed to the generic head construction easily than this third one. Miscalculating the angle too much while laying-in the generic head was my problem. The top of the hair confused me with the perspective of it.   So I had to carefully observe the slight angle tilt of the head and try not to overdo it.

     Getting the right shapes also took a lot of time. A wrong shape easily destroy the likeness. In the end, I'm still not sure if  I achieved the likeness. What do you think?

Head Drawing No. 2 - Can You Tell Who This Is?

    Another one of my no-eyes-no-mouth head sketch.  As I mentioned in my previous post, this is the lay-in stage where I decide that if  I can't get the likeness at this point, going further won't help either.

   The more handsome the face is, the harder it is to get the likeness, It was suggested that getting an "uglier" face would be easier and lessen the pressure of trying to get it perfectly. I should have listen to that suggestion. Because this was such a struggle.  After  multiple starts and stops, erasing and revising, this is the closest to the likeness I was able to manage. 

   What do you think?

Head Drawing - Drawing Likeness Through Shapes

        In my last post, I mentioned taking a head drawing class, where in the first assignment, I learned to draw the proportions of a generic head in different angles.  The following week, using that generic head as the standard of measure, the lesson was about drawing the likeness of a famous face based on it's overall shape and silhouette.  Focusing only on the general shapes, the eyes and mouth were not drawn.  One should be able to tell whose likeness this is at this point. If not, there's no point in continuing.

        This was the first head of  twenty  I finished, which took me hours, if not more than a day, to get this to resemble my subject even remotely.    What do you think?

       

 

Back To Basics - Tedious Drawing Drills

     Two weeks ago, I started taking a short class in digital head drawing. First week's assignment was about proportion, using a modified Reilly head construction method. It's all about measuring, grids, and careful constructions. A very tedious type of drawing, but an important drill if one desires mastery of  drawing the human head from memory.

   

 

    But before I even began drawing these heads, I found that I was unable to do a good circle freehand.  The circle was important as it would serve as the basis of measurement for the whole head. Not a loosely-drawn circle but a well-proportioned ones drawn in a more controlled way. As an animator, it was taught and drilled into our heads to draw loosely from the shoulders and not the wrist to get that nice sweeping strokes you'll see in most of our drawings. This drawing habit made most of my drawings rough and loose. But in this instance, drawing a basic circle, unsurprisingly, became an endless struggle.   So for the first week, I did nothing else but draw circles until I managed to do it well enough before starting the assignment..

First few attempts in drawing circles.

Kept at it, but still loose and inaccurate

      

     I modified the way I draw the circle, that instead of one sweeping stroke, I drew point marks that served as guides to help keep the circles in correct proportion, then drew four shorter arcs to complete the shape.

Carefully-drawn circles

Surprisingly good results after a week

       After a week of this tediousness, I was quite pleased with my improvement. Tackling the first crucial step of the assignment wasn't  much of a struggle anymore after that.   One lesson learned that week, don't underestimate the effectiveness of those boring, tedious drawing drills. They're like eating veggies and working out.  I'm most always than not, surprised with how much improvement I managed to achieve in just a short time for doing such. 

Back To Basics - Izzy's Three Simple Rules of Light

 Unlike drawing, where lines are used to delineate shapes and forms, painting uses light and shadows to describe an object or surface.  Very basic idea it seems. But the challenge is to be able to visualize how light is affecting a surface correctly. It's a fundamental skill an artist needs to master, if being able to paint without copying from reference is the goal.   One amazing concept artist/illustrator who explained the concept of light and shadow really well is Izzy Medrano in his YouTube videos, which are found here & here.

My 3 Rules Of Light painting exercises toggled with Izzy's paint-over critques,  plus his red number indicators for his notes as enumerated below.

  He breaks down those fundamental principles in three simple rules, that seemed deceptively easy. This is how he  breaks it down: (Watch his full explanations from here and here)
1. Objects most perpendicular to the light gets the most light.
2  Light's power gets weaker on more distant objects.
3. If something solid is between your object and your light source, the object gets NO light.
  - Every object that is lit by the light source, itself becomes another light source.
  - The light being bounced cannot be as bright as the original light source.

  To completely understand Izzy's 3 simple rules, I did some painting studies, using black and white photo references. Then I analyzed the photo reference's lighting, by transferring the lighting info unto a light sphere, showing the direction of the light source.  Then apply those lighting information onto a completely new surface forms.   To determine if I did a good job, I submitted this study to Izzy in his Patreon page for his critique.

   
   He did some paint-overs and gave me a few notes, which  were very helpful.   Here are his notes: (Please refer to the images with numbers as indicated in red.)

1. Your light sphere is almost  directly overhead. The specular and hot spots on the cheeks and nose tell us that the light source is closer to us on this side of the picture plane.
2. There is no reflected light in your origin image.
3. The cat is half-lit according to the rules of the image with the same lighting as the image though the object shouldn't catch light the same way.  Reference would help you figure out your planes, so that you can tell which surfaces are more likely to face up to the light source. A cat doesn't have the same planes as a human does. So a cats nose can't cast a shadow like a persons, and that's why you have a big black streak on the second image's face.
4. These eyes look flat. The overall face needs more reference in the same way 3 does.

  With this exercise, it is humbling to say that my main difficulty was in visualizing correctly the many subtle planar shifts of the surface form, and how light would affect them correctly. Also, good references for my studies should have been used, to correctly understand and render the different subtle form and plane changes.  With these new insights, I need to do more of these and have them reviewed and critiqued again, which would help solidify those three simple rules of light into my brain, and then hopefully, would serve as a good foundation as I develop my skills to become an artist who is not a reference slave. 

  If any artist is interested in learning and understanding the logic of light and color, I highly recommend Izzy Medrano's tutorials that can be found in his Gumroad page.  And perhaps be a patron of his and get critiques of your work.  You can check him out in  his Patreon page.

  So, if you've watched and did the Izzy's 3 Simple Rules assignment practice also, how did you find the exercise? How did your study turned out?  Love to hear and see what you've done.

 

First Post for 2018 - Ianna's Portrait

 

 First up for the new year, it's human portraiture!  I have been shying away from drawing human portraits  for years because I find it harder to capture the likeness.  Those who know the person in the drawing would quickly tell me if  I succeeded or not.  Unlike animals, no one would complain. Haha...

Here's the portrait of my niece, Ianna. A gift for her 18th birthday.  Painting straight in color still intimidates me, so as a safety method and as always, I started painting in greyscale.   Making sure the value structure was right,   All the hard work was done at  this stage. Once I was satisfied with it, I then glazed-in the color on a top layer set in the color blend mode.  I used Clip Studio Paint Ex this time, which is very similar to Photoshop. 

So for this year, I'm thinking of expanding my artistic horizon and include humans in my drawings and paintings.  Might do some  of my fave celebrities.  Watch out for it!