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DanniellaJ

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Malin, I always appreciate your comments, you shouldn't have to ask. I for one have found them really useful and they've encouraged me to study more :oops: no point in having a site to help one another if you can't be honest (y)
 

skullianz

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Is it ok if I comment or not? Feels like I've been too picky here on the site when commenting drawings. I'm used to that - both in giving and taking - since drawing is my profession, but I don't want anyone here to feel I'm too hard on them. Therefore I ask you first now :)

If you or anyone else here thinks I'm too hard, tell me to shut up!
I think we are all on here because we want to learn and sugar coating what you think about someone's work isn't going to do them any favours in the long run, if there is something wrong or off about a picture you should feel able to say so, how else will we learn where we are going wrong?
 

skullianz

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pen-a4 Motive : valentine day dinner with girl :D
some nice shading which is always difficult when working in a restrictive medium like pen, I'm not sure the orbit of the skull looks right though it has an odd shape which doesn't fit with the other side of her face to me.
 

MalligaMallan

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pen-a4 Motive : valentine day dinner with girl :D

First of all, the hand is really very good which we all know is usually one of the trickiest parts of the body. Especially the upper part of hand, the knuckles and the area around, is very good. The lower part of fingers are ok but look a bit to round in shapes. And the nail, which is very apparent being in the front and in the middle of the drawing, looks wrong.
Face part and skull part looks good, but the shading kind of has the same "cloudy" shading that tattoos often seem to get when the tattooers is unexperienced. When this happens when you draw, I assume you just didn't get it time enough, since it's quite easy to avoid when drawing. Unless it's intentional, and I don't think is.
Hair is good.
Body is not good. And the position of the head and the body together doesn't look right. I don't know where you got the motif from, but an advice is if you wish to improve on drawing bodies is to practice by taking courses in - in Sweden we call it kroki, does this word exist in english? Life drawing google says, but I'm talking about specifically drawing/sketching bodies.
Whatever you draw you learn loads more if you look at the real thing instead of looking at pictures. Just saying. If you want to draw an apple, buy an apple, don't look at a picture. Also, when you do draw from a pic after having practiced life drawing it usually is easier to draw from a pic when you have to. If you have drawn an apple from a real apple, you understand what it looks like and can understand the lines and shades on the apple better when drawing from a pic.
The knife is ok but you could work on it more.
Having seen other pics you've done I know what your standard can be. Don't stop drawing on a picture til you have reached that level, every time :)
Drawing things from fantasy though, like dreams or monsters or other things, is a bit different of course.
Over all it is a good start, you just have to keep on and not stop too soon :)
 
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fylfot

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Hand and human side of head superb, especially done with a biro!
 

D0d020

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Thanks for extensive explanation , model is from this foto
 

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MalligaMallan

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Good to your source. When looking at your drawing and everything from the photo is there, but it still doesn't look right. That's often the problem when drawing from a photo. Is difficult to see and understand the often not very distinct shadows that yet are important to make the shape if things.
Do you draw people live sometimes? Would be nice to see :) And you can then take a photo of the person in the position to show here, for us to compare. If you would like :)
 

DanniellaJ

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Another rose related image :rolleyes: was busting to use my new promarkers, quickly drew this up, wish I'd spent more time on the handle now as it makes it look a little shoddy. My light / dark areas are a little all over the place but I enjoyed using my new pens :love: looking forward to practicing more with these.
 

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MalligaMallan

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Nooo not shoddy! A wonderful piece! As always in traditionals eventual "shoddiness" is no problem, you just have to make sure you worked with it enough. The problem with the crown you did wasn't that it wasn't perfect, the problem was that the faults were wrong faults (my god, I'm a bit tired, this sounds strange).

This piece looks well worked and the faults look right :) The only thing I would think of is the black lining, maybe they could be a bit thicker?

Seems to be really nice markers!
 

DanniellaJ

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Lol, don't worry I understand where you are coming from ;) thanks for the nice comments, I like the rose element but I think the dagger could be more solid and the shading a little lighter? Maybe one day I'll create a piece I like :LOL: all good practice I suppose. I recommend the pro markers, they're magic :love:
 

MalligaMallan

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I don't know what you mean by solid, but I agree about the shading. Or highlighting it.

You should be satisfied already! :)
But that_is_a tricky part....usually when I'm finally satisfied I'm so tired of the piece I don't want to look at it :LOL:
 
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pKJ1a5v.jpg


well here is my terrible effort, lol cant draw for shi* but practice makes perfect right :S
 

DanniellaJ

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I can only mirror what's already been said, just keep practicing at every opportunity! One exercise that helps is grabbing some lined paper and drawing over the lines, this'll help with straighter lines :) another one is drawing circles until you literally cannot look at them. This'll help with curves and circles obviously :)
 

DanniellaJ

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Was on a first aiders course today (and for 2 days more woohoo), and seeing as its round the corner from my flat, I got some decent draw time in :love: here's today's. Trying out some different styles.
 

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MalligaMallan

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Actually I like it a lot :) It has a good finish and I like it because it's quite a different motif. Inspired by the first aiders course? ;) Perhaps not the kind of girls face someone would want tattoed, but as I said I like it.

Looks good with the thick lines too.
 

DanniellaJ

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I'm not quite sure how she ended up that way; I used an old war poster as a reference for the style and just went from there. I've been looking at a lot of Han Shinko work lately, which I think has inspired this piece also! Check him out if you haven't already - I love the simplicity in his style, it reminds me of a less crude version of old skool Russian criminal tattoos!
 

MalligaMallan

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I see what you mean! Very much that style in your drawing. No didn't know about him, checked him out now. Nice style, I imagine it's a style that suits your drawing. And very popular!
 

DanniellaJ

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I do love it :love: but will keep exploring different styles too, trying to land on something of my own is probably my biggest struggle :cry: I am considering classes atm, as feel I could benefit from them.
 

MalligaMallan

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I was just thinking about that, I know you want to explore different styles. Classes could be a good idea. You benefit not only from the courses, but from your classmates as well. Can''t be that difficult to find one in London. What kind of course are you thinking of? I'm just curious :)
 

DanniellaJ

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There are tonnes of classes in London! Some are horrendously expensive, but fortunately there is an adult college local to me :) I was thinking life drawing & portraits as a full day class to ease into a classroom again, and there is an improvers course over 10 weeks for drawing & watercolours. The latter is more expensive and is evenings only, I just need to try and manage work / life / money / gym and practicing around it :confused:
 

MalligaMallan

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Life drawing and portraits sounds perfect as you'd like to practice more on realistic drawing. If you have the possibility to go full day classes I think that would give you more than evening classes. So there are no day time watercolour courses?

I'm afraid I don't have any tips on study books o_O Hopefully someone else here has? I've never liked looking in books about drawing/painting and such much. Not that it's not good! It's just me, I don't get much out of it.
 

DanniellaJ

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No day courses for watercolour at the moment :( hopefully they'll be something nearby soon!
I have the same annoyance with books to be honest, I find I pick up things easier when I watch something in a class or video! I'm going to try and finishing "drawing on the right side of the brain" for the moment and get the classes in! Hopefully that'll help! :)
 

MalligaMallan

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No day courses for watercolour at the moment :( hopefully they'll be something nearby soon!
I have the same annoyance with books to be honest, I find I pick up things easier when I watch something in a class or video! I'm going to try and finishing "drawing on the right side of the brain" for the moment and get the classes in! Hopefully that'll help! :)

Exactly, that's how I prefer to pick up things too. And googling, not the least! Now that I want too learn the techniques of tattooing I look A LOT on ig and screenshoot pics so I can enlarge them and look real close at what technique they use for ie shading...and reading A LOT of threads all over. And here on the forum of course! I think one problem with books may be that they usually are written by one person. They get to one sided. Kind of. And the subject - drawing/painting - maybe is hard to describe in a book. I find tattooing much more interesting to read about. You know, all these pdf files one can download, they are very good.

The title of that book sounds interesting though!
 

DanniellaJ

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Can't really follow that :LOL: but here's today's time playing with pencils :oops:
 

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MalligaMallan

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But that's a nice rose, improvement in your realistic drawing! I do know color pencils are really difficult to make an even surface with (I hate them for that :mad:) but is that something you could work on perhaps? I don't know if there are different kinds of papers to use. I haven't really tried it out for a long time. Sometimes one can see drawings that are almost impossible to believe they actually are made with color pencils. I don't understand hhow they do it.
 

DanniellaJ

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But that's a nice rose, improvement in your realistic drawing! I do know color pencils are really difficult to make an even surface with (I hate them for that :mad:) but is that something you could work on perhaps? I don't know if there are different kinds of papers to use. I haven't really tried it out for a long time. Sometimes one can see drawings that are almost impossible to believe they actually are made with color pencils. I don't understand hhow they do it.

I wish I knew all the secrets :cry: the pencils are cheap faber castells; I really want to get my hands on some inktense ones soon! I've seen some amazing drawings from using just pencils, the skill level is phenomenal!
 

MalligaMallan

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Ah inktense! I've had that kind of pencils! Really nice. That's probably the way to go to get that nice even result.
 

MalligaMallan

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That's good Kirsty, just keep going :) I'm thinking your paper looks like these cheaper kind that actually is quite hard to draw on? In my opinion. There are other kinds that are not that expensive, but made to sketch and draw on.

http://bit.ly/1LTjmh6 Like these for example.
 

MalligaMallan

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View attachment 14797
Rough sketch done as part of a potential sleeve design this would sit at the top of the arm/shoulder area faded down to clouds

Wow love it! Love that your'e doing a drawing like this. Makes me think you're at a stage where it's more important that you just keep on doing what you do and take steps forward, if that makes sense. Especially after reading what you wrote in the thread about Niki Norberg. Picking may just let you down? I think that sometimes it's important not to be thinking to much about perfection, but rather to dare. If I would say something, it is that if you want to make pieces like this it's rater important to really get opportunity to study what bodies look like. That's difficult to do from photos or just by looking at people around you (who normally have clothes on). If you have the possibility to take a life drawing course that could be something to think of. And I'm saying that to encourage you to keep on, because I really liked this piece.

I guess all top tattoo artists (or all tattoo artists no matter what level) use photos when tattooing realistic bodies, but even then it usually is important to have studied bodies for real to understand what you see in a photo. Why shades are where they are and so on. The more cartoonlike tattooed pieces is a different matter, I'm thinking of those beautiful ladies, mermaids and stuff, they I guess are drawn more from fantasy (and looking at pics). But still, it really helps to have studied bodies.

In my project there are bodies in the pictures and I will hire models for drawing those, that's the only way to make them look the way I want. I wouldn't be able to draw them from my mind.
 

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