[Volen]

Dude, how do you get your line drawing to be so incredibly accurate? I'm referring to the post before last. Is this transferred over from the photo or did you block it in yourself? I'm asking because that's my absolute nightmare, I always, always get things wrong in the line drawing and then end up with a poor rendering and also spend 10 times as much time trying to fix it with the painting.

[JakeB]

Volen - Well, it's not traced if that's what you mean. I find doing one rough sketch, and then doing a clean line drawing over that helps a lot. Means I don't have to get it right first time .

New stuff.

Gestures


Sketch thing


Quickish piece


Portrait

[Volen]

Can I please ask what method you use to position everything correctly? How do you measure? Do you use sight-size or do you do proportional measuring? I find I just get lost when I get to measure... I measure everything 15 times and I'm still off by enough to ruin the likeness. How do you do it?

[JakeB]

Volen - Yeah sure thing. I'll put together some screenshots, and post an explanation later today


So, new stuff.
Still life



Comp sketch


Genie in a beer bottle


(It was a slow day :/)

[JakeB]

Volen - totally forgot to do those screenshots, I'll post them up ASAP.


Hey hey, new stuff. Getting back into the swing of things I think. Seem to hit a bit of a roadblock after finishing a piece, not knowing what to do next and stuff. But yeah, s'all good now

Gestures


Wall studies


Armour Studies


Filigree studies


Character sketches


And the Lines for an illustration - Gonna start painting this today

[Volen]

Thanks Jake, please don't worry about it, whenever you remember I appreciate you taking the time to do these.
Can you tell me a bit about how you practice as well? I see your hours going up every day, but not only that, your progress has been phenomenal... how do you manage to practice for 10 hours a day and what do you do? what do you find most productive?
Thanks for taking the time, dude, I'm just stalking your sb and trying to catch up

[JakeB]

Volen - No worries man, I did a little thing for you, only as far as the lines, so you can see my set up. See below . I'm glad you think I'm improving though lol, it's kind of hard to see from my side sometimes.
So, regarding the 10 hours a day. That's something that will come with time, if you stick to it. I don't make it every day, but atm I try to average 60 hours a week. Gives me a little bit of wiggle room, and I can take a day off. It's not tooo tough for me seeing as this is all I do lol. The main thing is to be consistent. If you don't draw everyday atm, try and draw for at least 2 hours every day for the next couple of weeks. If you already draw every day, just try to increase the time slowly. It'll get easier . But there's no point in doing one 14 hour day, and then not working for a week.
And what do I do? Well, it depends what I'm trying to achieve for the most part. With the illustration I'm doing atm, (again, see below) I'll work on it until I get to something I can't do, or I've never drawn before (like the doors and walls above). Then I'll go away, gather some reference, and study from that. Before working on my piece again, with newly acquired information. I'll do this a couple of times at each stage of the piece. So when I'm designing with lines, I'll do some design studies (with just rough lines) of whatever it is, and when I'm rendering stuff out, I'll do some more painted studies, looking at light, and colour.
Basically, the key thing is to study the thing your struggling with, and be as specific as possible. If you don't know what breastplates look like. There's not a lot of point to painting one breastplate really really well. You'd be better off doing really quick line studies of 20, and a longer study of the kind of metal you want to use, then combine them in your piece.
So yeah, that's about it. Haha, this turned into a bit of a lecture.
Key points though:
-Be consistent
-Work from imagination, and study the things that your struggling with
-Make your studies as specific as possible.
-Don't study "a face". Study the way sunlight reacts with a middle aged, male face when it's lit from the side. Or the proportions of an older man's face.
-Before each study, know what your trying to get from it, and focus on that.
-Oh and that reminds me. Make notes! It's so easy to just zone out and paint when you're studying , and I find that making notes helps me to focus. Just jot down things that you notice, then you can use them when you're working from imagination.
-Ah, and apply your studies. There's not a lot of point to studying a polar bear, then painting a woman. Focus your studies on the work you're doing, don't just do them for the sake of it.

Gonna link a few things you might find interesting on the subject as well.
Anthony Jones talked about it on his stream a couple of times. http://www.livestream.com/robotpencil
One called "how I study realism.." and one called "studying design" Check them out

If you haven't already, check out dave's youtube channel. Loadsa cool info
http://www.youtube.com/user/DaveRapoza

And Tim Ferris is the guy who got me to start breaking everything down as small as possible. He talks a lot about an idea called "meta-learning". Worth checking out if you're interested. I'll link a couple of things, it's been a while since I listened to them though, so not sure if they're the most relevant. But they'll be good, promise. He's got some interesting ideas you can apply to art.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gj3RskVvVLA
http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_ferriss..._anything.html

TL;DR - Work on the most specific thing possible, and do everything as quickly as possible. When you're learning, quantity can be as, if not more, important than quality. The guy who draws 200 quick faces, is going to be better at pulling a face out from imagination than the guy who spent 200 rendering one perfectly (at least initially). There's a point when you're studying when you stop learning useful info, and at least when you're starting out, I think that point is much earlier than people think.

And yes, there's definitely a place for long form studies. I love them, I think they help a ton. I just don't think enough people do quick stuff.

Lol, the TL;DR was long too. And, to be honest, what do I know? Just some thoughts. <3


And those screenshots.

So, I pull up my reference, and make another document at the same size, to work in.


Start by just blocking in lines, looking at proportions and stuff.


Flipping the canvas helps to see mistakes.


Blocking in some rough values. Not to match the reference so much, mainly to distinguish planes from each other.


Then I lower the opacity on the sketchy layer, and on a new layer, start some clean linework. Sometimes I'll roughly measure across with the mouse, but it's not very accurate, so most of the time I'm just eyeballing stuff.


Keep doing that, keep adjusting stuff, and you're good.


This isn't a great example, coz I kinda dicked it up, but you get the idea. Just practice practice practice man .


New stuff

Gestures


Colour Rough


And starting to render. Might finish this today, we'll see

[Volen]

Dude... thank you so very, very much, I wish I could give more than one `thanks` per post because this is definitely worth it... the only problem then is I wouldn't know when to stop
Thank you so much for taking the time to write all this, I've bookmarked every link you've put in your post and I'll be sure to check them all out... I'll probably start with Tim Ferris first thing tomorrow morning
I agree with pretty much everything you've said in your post, especially about the consistency factor and I like how systematic you are with your studies. I tend to rely only on memory, I don't really make notes, I just review the same thing multiple times and wish that repetition just drives it into my head. The only problem I find though, is that often times new information does not improve my drawing. I've studied anatomy for months, but find that often times I don't even draw stick figures correctly when I try to draw from imagination - I think this definitely relates to the point you make about quantity having its place with beginners, I definitely find that once I've drawn something I can sort of refer to it mentally, which leads me to think about introducing something like a daily 50 pose study... something like what you're doing
When it comes to measuring though, even though I see how you do it and I've watched many demos, I still can't do that. I take so long to measure and block everything out and still end up with inaccuracies. If I try to just wing it and not measure everything out - I end up with ridiculous proportions. If I measure everything 100 times, my drawing becomes mechanical and even then I still have things to iron out that I have not seen correctly. I do introduce some difficulties though, I always try to resize the drawing... I never draw the same size as my reference, I always try to use proportional measuring, I usually try to enlarge my drawing, I suppose this comes from the logic that we rarely draw things from real life actual size, but thinking of it now I think that portraits are more often than not drawn by using the sight size method... I think I might have been creating my own problem by trying to introduce difficulties that I won't have to bother with...

Thank you so much again for this and sorry for the long post, I really, really appreciate you taking the time to answer. It's really helpful to get someone else's perspective when you're learning on your own. Thank you very much, dude. Keep pushing it, I think your success is guaranteed.