Mike,

First I would like to thank you for the help and direction that this class has provided me. In all of the art classes I have taken in my life nobody has ever taught me techniques that would help me eliminate problems in my drawings. They have typically just pointed out the errors and told me that those areas needed more work. They kind of just stated the obvious with no real solution... So I think, with a lot more practice, I will be able to get much better results. So for that I say a great big thanks!

My question is from here what should I do? My plan was to go back and work on a lot of perspective and shading exercises and maybe apply that to some still life work to work on texture. What would you suggest/

Anyway, here is the updated drawing. I worked on the tire a little more and added Robbie. I definitely plan to work on him more as I am mortified with the way he looks right now. If you have any tips I would greatly appreciate it!

Thanks!
Scott -

Hi Scott,

There are some good points and some not too good ones here. I'm posting this back to you rotated and corrected, I believe, to tonally more resemble your original. It's what I'm looking at as I critique.

First, I have to say that the critique is based on how I would approach this drawing, but I recognise that it's not necessarily your way of doing things. For example, I'd be concentrating on detail and texture, where you might be aiming for a more general tonal representation of form. With that in mind, and starting top left...

The vertical boards of the old door have a lovely feeling of old weathered wood while still retaining their secondary position in the study. You've varied the width of the gap between the boards too - failing to do that is a common fault and results in the appearance of a drawn line rather than a gap. It's very unlikely two old warped boards would mirror each others edges.

The dark interior of the henhouse is sufficiently dark to give depth to the drawing and to simplify the drawing of Robbie, as you can make good use of edge highlighting to separate him fro the background. Do be aware though, that his rear end is deep inside the house. If you make his rear too light you will lose any sense of recession. The same applies to his legs and paws, where you would logically expect his rear paws to be more in the shade than his front ones.

Viewing your drawing at full scale, it would appear that you have shaded Robbie to represent his three-dimensional form. It works quite well. Here I would differ in my approach, as I would recreate his hair and use the darks and highlights to suggest that form. Your Robbie is rather devoid of any sense of hair texture. His screen-left leg is looking a bit wonky ) and don't be too concerned about his rather stark eye. He has a good dense pupil and sufficient white above it to create a bright white catchlight. All that is required is the toning down of his "white" iris, avoiding the highlight. A technique that works for me is to shade the iris slightly too dark and then to gently lighten some areas with Blu-Tack until a true sense of a rounded eyeball emerges. If the highlight is top right, refraction within the eyeball will lighten the bottom left quadrant. It's in that area that I find Blu-Tack very helpful, as I can progressively remove and replace graphite until the correct and subtle secondary highlight appears.

His face is looking a bit flat, but I don't think that will harm your drawing. I'm used to drawing dogs, so I know where the orbital ridge, his cheekbone and other features will appear, but they're not essential. It all depends on how great a sense of realism you want to achieve.

I noticed in your black areas that the tooth of your paper is causing white dots to appear. If you want to achieve a solid black or dark tone, try burnishing with a sharp HB - that should fill those holes and smooth out the softer trade.

The edges of the boards on the side of the henhouse possess a good sense of realism. And I'm glad to see you've retained the groove in the bottom board. I like little details like that - it's obviously a length of tongue-and-groove floorboard that someone has repaired the house with at some time. Not me, incidentally - the house was past repair so after I photographed it I regretfully had to push it onto a bonfire with my tractor.

The lightness of the boards of the wall should make drawing the hen easier - if you use relatively dark tones for her.

The slightly grainy texture of your shading of the wheel works well to suggest a lightly rusted surface. The ellipse is still not quite correct, but it's not far out.

Just continue as you are doing. Don't rush it - take it one small area at a rime, forget it's arising from a reference photo, and try to imagine that area in your mind. Ultimately, drawing from your mind will always inject a reality that copying what you see in a reference will never achieve.


I think such exercises will help you a lot. Try drawing something in perspective without a reference, choose a lighting direction and then shade it accordingly - much as you did with the house exercise. To succeed, you have to imagine the object in three-dimensions before you can work out where the light hits it and which areas are in shade. And, a little more advanced, which areas might be receiving light reflected from other planes of the object. You truly cannot draw successfully what you do not fully understand. That's why I keep plugging on about drawing from the mind

As you begin to be happy with the results, begin to introduce textures into your exercises. And finally, think the other way around - use those textures and their lighting to describe the three-dimensional form; the form that you previously suggested with your initial shading. Which brings me back to Robbie, where I would draw his hair and use its highlights to describe his three-dimensional form.

I put this drawing down for a while and plan on picking it back up in a couple of weeks. To stay busy I took your advice and finished my drawing of the brick wall without using a reference. Just drawing from my mind. I spent about 12 hours on this and wanted to get your critique... I hope you enjoyed the holidays and look forward to hearing from you soon!

Thanks!

Am I doing something wrong with the upload because it trashes the image. I think it lost like 96% of it pixels...

I use image-resizer before upload - will always have a good image size to upload

Thanks Raidor, I checked out the image resizer and it's really helpful! I can especially use it when we are traveling! thanks, I appreciate your helpfulness and generosity.
Shoenigman, your wall has character, probably because you "felt " it... good work.

Thanks for the link and kind words! That worked great...

How did I miss this, Scott?!!

I agree with Tannis, you "felt it" so it possesses a realism that copying never achieves.

Just a couple of points I'd like to make:

Sometimes less is more. There are flaws and features in the bricks that I find distracting because they are too emphasised. It's often better to push such features back so they become secondary - things to find as the eye travels around.

Second, I would have like to have seen you use two different techniques for the two textures. While it's obvious which is mortar and which is brick, you could have emphasised the difference. Your bricks are relatively smooth, which suggests that a grainier texture for the mortar would work well.

But what really works for me is your obvious three-dimensional mental image of each brick as you drew it. The lighting is consistent and I can very easily understand the three-dimensional form of every part of this drawing.