Trying to learn

One of the many areas of drawing that still confounds me is perspective. I understand the concept of it and I've drawn things in perspective before in my drawing classes, but I feel like I haven't fully grasped the application of it. The idea of drawing landscapes, buildings, scenery, and backgrounds terrifies me, even though I know I will have to get used to drawing them if I want to do concept art. A few weeks ago I bought this book, Perspective Without Pain by Phil Metzger, and I just started to go through it today. I've only gotten through the first few pages and some of the exercises. So far, it seems to be very informative. Hopefully it will help me feel more comfortable with perspective.

I was inspired by Mind Candy Man's sketchbook on Conceptart.org to make it a goal of mine to draw for at least an hour each day, or read a bit from one of the many art books I own that are collecting dust. If I ever want to improve at a steady rate, I need to devote more time to drawing and learning the fundamentals.

I've decided to post the hand, feet, and arm drawings I had to do last week for homework in Life Drawing. We also had to draw some legs, but mine came out pretty crappy, so I won't post them heheh.

New drawings yay!

Here are the drawings from yesterday for my Life Drawing Class. A few 10 minute gestures and then a longer drawing that lasted about an hour and a half (I think).

I'm not that happy with my gestures. I almost feel like I've regressed in some ways. I like how my last drawing came out, but I'm bothered by how much of it was done by my professor. He fixed the background for me, did a good bit of the highlights and some of the shadows. And the face looks odd to me.

Last week the model couldn't make it, so we did some studies of a few of Nicolai Fechin's portrait drawings.

The last one isn't quite finished as you can see. The first one frustrated me to no end. I just could not capture the essence of the original or get the shading right.

Ah well. I'll be posting again next week with some more drawings.

La dee da.

Here is a self-portrait I finished about an hour ago.

I kind of like the way it turned out, but it still looks like it could use some more refining. The eye on the right looks kind of messed up too =/ I only spent a little over an hour on this, so it could use some extra work into it.