how do I improve my pencil/ink drawing, as an intermediate artist?
– Difficult textures/surfaces. You’ll need to look at examples. Everyone will do something different. If you’re trying to accurately render something true to life, look at Trompe-l’œil and their techniques. But don’t forget that you’re always trying to communicate something in your drawing, and sometimes realism isn’t the best for that. There are lots of techniques and you need to develop an eye for choosing what serves you best at what time. – Covering large areas with a consistent tone Use a softer lead for large areas, and smudge it. You’re going to get varying tones unless you’re insane about it, so plan it accordingly. Start very light and go darker, only re-applying in places you need it. Keep the composition of the image in mind — generally you want the large flat areas to have some interest, so perhaps a gradient would be better, and that’s something you can more easily control, too. Use as light a touch as you can to avoid lines, (the softer lead will help of course) and in c
From my P.O.V., drawing without a model is only possible if you study the rudimentary 3D forms of the body so that you can draw them in any position that you can imagine. Allow yourself you simplify the shapes until you can draw them convincingly. Then, build more subtle interactions onto that frame. I’ve seen lots of people try to clean-up animation drawings by putting all their effort into details of line quality without first devising a convincing construction of the character. The result is never very useful. My current favourite author is Gottfried Bammes (not the very best of his books but still pretty useful). It’s all an ongoing process. When you’re drawing from life, don’t just copy. Study things like how a weight shift effects the angle of the hips differently when the feet are placed close together, as compared to far apart. Put a couple of pieces of dowel inside a sock and study how ben
Don’t start smudging, it is just a cheap, amateurish shortcut that will make your drawings look like crap. Find me a drawing from a respected draughtsman of any period of art history that features HB pencil smudged over a piece of paper. It is the hallmark of the work of people that can’t really draw. How can I improve my pencil drawings from an intermediate/advanced level? If you are serious about improving your drawings my advice to you is to take up silverpoint. When people think of beautiful drawings of a truly high calibre the image that pops into their heads (Da Vinci, Holbein, Durer, Raphael) certainly look like pencil, but the tonal control, delicacy and detail of these works is all down to silverpoint. It is a revelation, and actually quite hard to explain to someone who hasn’t used it. Although the results look similar to the untrained eye, the difference between using silverpoint and pencil is as great as the difference between a pencil and a tin of spraypaint. Some of the p
