The back story: I had an instructor, Mr. Missal, who says that all it takes to become an extremely skilled at drawing is to draw something every day for about 3 years (similar to the famous quote regarding 5,000 hours to be an expert at anything). That was always music to my ears as someone who has only been drawing since his senior year in high school and was always competing against fellow classmates (some of whom have been drawing longer than I've been alive). But I never really acted on it anywhere near as much as I should have. I have gotten better, but slowly, very slowly.
The Idea: I am going to spend at least 15 minutes every day drawing something (anything), and upload it to this blog regardless of how embarrassingly bad it is.
The Goals: To embarrass myself into getting better, quicker. To receive creative critiques. To encourage discussion on this blog. To foster an environment where people feel comfortable speaking freely.
So here is today's drawing of the day:
I used this image as reference: http://www.tortoisetrust.org/articles/snapper_1.jpg
If I don't receive any feedback at all on this I'm going to have to resort to doing something terrible.
In a drawing that has the weird angles like this one, shading and lines are key. It's hard to tell where some things begin and others end. I can't tell if its a retarded turtle, or a strange angle. Some background is better than no background, that will help establish some lines.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the feedback. Thank you for the feedback. Thank you for the feedback! I think that's the first honest critique I've received in a very long time. I'll keep the objects melding together problem in mind.
ReplyDeleteI think you chose a bad picture to start with... Looking at the photo it is hard to see it's eyes and you can't tell where it's head stops and shell begins. The open mouth is a cool shot, I would have just focused on sketching that to see how realistic you could make it.
ReplyDeleteI really liked the angle of the shot and the way it felt like the turtle's head was poking out at the viewer. It wasn't lit the best causing the issues you mentioned about not easily being able to tell where one form ends and another begins, but part of learning to be an expert at drawing is taking challenges like that and executing it flawlessly. Hopefully there will come a day when people won't realize that there were lighting issues causing accurate depiction to be difficult.
DeleteI feel that drawing only images that lend themselves to drawing is leaning on a crutch.