Discuss your experience and learning resources on fundamentals and what you think they are.Draftmanship and line qualityconstructionProportionsperspectivelight shading/edges/values etc.PD: try not to start shit talking about DaB or Dynamic Sketching, not because I defend them particularly, but because once people start that they go on and on and on and stop talking about anything else in the thread all together... just talk about fundies in general...
I think most of what people call "fundamentals" are a spook. Sometimes putting a name to a thing stops us from seeing what it simply is. The goal of categorizing "fundamentals" seems to be clarity and simplification, but I believe it has the opposite effect more often - confusion, complication, muddling. You can't study line quality in isolation! Same goes for proportion, perspective, and even anatomy. For a "fundamental" to have stick-ability, it has to be subordinate to the art you are currently making.And I think the tendency to want to separate, name, and categorize fundamentals into distinct entities to be studied in isolation, at length, partially explains why some beginners never get anywhere.Now someone will probably call me a faggot or a no-draw at this point, or nitpick me in ten different ways. But this has been my honest experience with the fundamentals. I never got jack-shit from studying anatomy without a specific DRAWING in mind, and I can't even fathom what line quality means outside the context of a specific drawing.
>>7906575but I've done a billion studies of the artsist I like and still my line quality sucks, my proportions are off, and can't even start doing tiny details like texture and stuff, what would you undertand and practise to improve then?
>>7906575I disagree about anatomy being useless outside of specific drawings. Knowing what goes where and more importantly having extensively practiced it by copying something like Bridgman will improve your understanding of the human form. And if you want to draw characters which is a common goal then studying anatomy is a must (but not to the autistic degree of learning every bone and muscle since we're artists not surgeons). The other fundamentals are pure bullshit though. Drawing 500 cubes will only teach you how to draw cubes and drawing parallel straight lines will only teach you to draw them and leave you unable to apply this in actual line work. In short just draw what you want to be drawing since the start. If even Michelangelo gave the "just draw" advice then there's surely merit to it
>>7906579My process has not fundamentally changed since I started. I've only elaborated on it and become more skillful and consistent with it. But the core of it has been>idea>[brainstorming: find references for idea; explore potential and extent of idea]>test idea by sketching>if sketch successful: develop sketch into complete drawing>if sketch unsuccessful: identify problem areas and study them, maybe simplify the idea or move on to something more manageable as wellGradually, this process has made me strong. The bracketed part is something I added to my process more and more as I got better. I can't understate how important the reference and brainstorming is for making really good drawings. But the rest of it has been what I've done since the beginning. I never studied anything without a purpose, a specific drawing in mind. You NEED ideas that you want to draw RIGHT NOW.If something fails as it often will, you just study and move on. Eventually, if you do this long enough, you are able to solve problems that used to be difficult for you, almost by accident.
>>7906575Calling it a spook is really fucking thick, man. You don't have a different name for the collection of things that you seem to not want to separate from each other.What we have here is a set of interdependent concepts from which you can eventually construct a full theory. The minimum set isn't fixed but it isn't a single thing either. Therefore the foundational set of things is a plural.You at least have form and perspective on the basis that perspective is equivalent to transform, and while forms have transforms, transforms do not have forms.You cannot study these things independent from one another, but that isn't evidence that they're the same thing. A fundamental is like a pant. It literally does not exist as a singular.
>>7906597It is fine to name concepts. And then after naming, you should forget that and making interesting drawings. You should always be trying to make your drawings more interesting in whatever way is relevant and resonant. Talking about line quality and draftsmanship just confuses the issue.
>>7906585let me show you an OC I did after combining many references of things I like: goth dark girls with dark hair, gothic dress made of shiny latex or leather, slim/thin bodies with long legs...My inking is still messy as fuck, and I've done maaaaany like this one, I just, don't know how to identify it and correct it, it always on this level, also didn't planned right the shiny parts or the dark parts of the dress, still gotta design interesting shapes for shadow or shiny areas. What else?
Draw simpler. You're doing way too much, goth fashion is hard as fuck to draw. Like I said, if something is above your artistic pay grade, you study and simplify the problem simultaneously. Maybe you draw your OC as a cartoon, you treat the dress and hair as a flat graphic shape. You need to be able to do this because you will not be able to draw a lot of things well for a long time, and if you can make shit look visually good anyway, you know you're onto something.Not saying it's easy to draw cartoons, it's a different beast. Just saying that if you are going to improve at art, you have to learn to think abstractly and simply.
>>7906620>>7906611
Is it bad to line mannequins over drawings/photos in order to try and understand construction and perspective?I'm talking about tracing the skeleton/mannequin but NOT continuing to build or draw with that, just the tracing deconstruction itself as an isolated exercise.I'm a total beg so I find even doing this quite difficult, hence my feeling that it could benefit me and improve my observation. Or will doing this just build bad habits?
>>7906858This will build bad habits. If you want to improve your observational skills, here's what you can do:>observe, then hide the photo/drawing and draw the subject from memory>take out the drawing/photo and do blind and continuous contours, then do gesture studies >use the envelope method>trace the outline of the subject>break the subject down into shapes and formsWhen it comes to improving at drawing human bodies, you need to study clothed bodies, skeletons, and outline the body. You should also be doing basic construction of forms and break down individual body parts into simple forms.
>>7906620same with doing studies when I'm not inventing and I'm just copying and trying to understand what's interesting to me, I think I know what catches my intention and what curves makes it interesting, just that my end result is still messy and not professional looking
Do Tom Fox and Hampton target the same topic or are they both considered different categories as in e.g. Anatomy vs. Figure drawing?
>>7906575There is a reason the bauhaus curriculum was represented in a circle like this instead of a pyramid and progression through disciplines was based on applied work in projects, the fundamentals of art are an interdependent system.Along the OP topic, what would a similar graphic look like if it focused on solely drawing fundamentals?
