Photography and other creative stuff.

[Carlwashere]

I've been drawing another rose. (And a bunch of drawings of people, but that's irrelevant because I'm slowly getting better at those.)

Anyway, I'm going to do this one completely with graphite. I got some charcoal pencils also, But I'm going to use those as a background for a portrait I'm drawing.
Spring break has given me some MUCH needed time for what I want to do, and sadly it's all going to end soon. Keep moving on, I guess. 
I'm working on 5 drawings pretty simultaneously right now, all at different stages too. The rose and one other picture are around the same stage of completion I guess you could call it. But I'm certain that this rose will be finished far before any of the others. Because all the other ones I'm working on right now are all portraits. XD
They take forever, but I'm determined not to rush this time. So I'm taking my time. And it has been well more than worth it. Much more detailed than the drawings I've posted here. Longer yes, but its more than made up by the dramatic change in quality.
   
But back on this rose, I really like flowers. Kind of an effeminate thing about me I guess. I'm going to take my time on this one also. I'm not in a rush, which makes me wonder why I always act like a have a due date on these things. It's for myself and no one else. So I don't why I feel like someone is pushing my back. Anyway, enough babbling. I'm going to get back to this petal. The one that's just getting started. Oh, and the backgrounds supposed to be like that. With the dark spots every now and then. 

[caffeinated.joy]

I have yet more advice. Save the background shading for last and don't do it all one shade of grey or one direction. You can get good texture and depth by changing the direction of your pencil and changing the depth of black.  It will also give the illusion that the rose isn't just floating in an empty space but is actually set somewhere with shape behind it. Generally, what I do is contrast it against the foreground. For example, if I'm shading in the background behind an area that's light, I'll make that area darker and vice versa. The darkness or lightness of my foreground will determine the darkness or lightness of my background. What I really need to do is borrow my mother's scanner and scan in some artwork to show what I mean, if this doesn't make sense. Experiment with it and see what looks better. I don't do a solid background, per se, as much as I do a very close and rather haphazard cross-hatch.

Sometimes, though, it will work for you to fade your foreground into the background in some spots (make them the same colour), especially if you want to give the appearance of your subject coming out of the shadow (or light).

I really think you have a lot of potential Carl. I love seeing what you experiment with. There's a certain freshness to it I like.

When I was in school (both high school and college), my drawing instructor used to get us doing blind contour drawing. It's meant to improve getting your hand to work in coordination with what you are seeing, and to prevent you from falling into the trap of over thinking every line you put down. You learn to draw what you see rather that what you think you should see, if that makes sense. There's a ton of stuff on google. Some say it's OK to look at the paper to place your pencil back down when you have to lift and reposition it, but I'm of the teaching that you don't look until you're done. I still do it from time to time.

Ugh, sorry for the long essay. LOL. I love art and love passing on what I know. If it gets too much, do tell me and I'll just keep it to myself.

[Carlwashere]

No problem. Any advice helps, and your advice is pointing me in the right direction anyway right?
I went from my regular writing pencil and printer paper to a very respectable set of tools, If it wasn't for your advice I'd still be confused as to why I can't make this as dark as I want it too be.

I get what you mean about the background/foreground thing. It helps it pop out more. Which is always good. 
I'm hoping for a high contrast on this picture, (i.e, the darkest part of the rose is lighter then the lightest part of the background)
But I don't want to make the background too dark too fast. It's much easier to darken then lighten, I learned that pretty fast. 

Blind contour drawing, I remember doing stuff like that. It's one part of art that my color blindness has helped me. Because of my partial color blindness, I'm apparently more sensitive to shapes than most. I'm very good with outlines, in my opinion. The way I do my outlines, when I'm not gridding, is pretty much following a line it's whole path. The way I do it works great for roses and such, because they have hard lines with subtle shading inside of it.
When I started this drawing, I had that high contrast idea set in my mind. So originally, I planned to use the softest side of the scale, 7-9B for the background, and H & F for the rose. Trying this out on a different sheet, even with the H&F grades, it was still to dark for my liking. I figured I would have to shade the rose mainly with graphite picked up with blenders. I usually start with the subject first, but because I didn't want to touch it with a pencil, I ended up doing the background first, so I could have something for the stump to pick up you know? But I think I should of used a different paper to pick graphite off of. 
So far, this picture is exclusively 9B. I'm going to try and make myself use less pressure on the pencil. I'm trying to avoid pressure changing, instead going for the same pressure but staying longer where I want it darker. Hopefully that makes sense.

My papers are too large for my scanner, which explains the dark shadow along the paper. I need a bigger scanner.
I haves tons of papers that aren't even used for drawings. They're covered in pretty much just scribbles. Includes a lot of me trying erasing techniques, different ways of using the pencil, different shading styles.

Here's one of many little scribble sheets. I like to call them that. 
The two things in the upper left are me trying to figure out how I'm going to go about shading hair. The one in the grid looks much nicer than what I would have done if I just kept drawing. You can see me messing with ways on how to blend two colored pencils together, and a lot of me just trying to keep pressure consistent. I drew left to right, you can see the pressure equalized a lot toward the middle of the picture. The smudgy little marks near the color pencil were applied with a blender, to see if I could shade the rose in that way. I'm thinking that's the way I'm going to move on with this rose.

[caffeinated.joy]

Being aware of the pressure you're using is good, but using 9B exclusively might make your drawing look muddy, especially because it's such a soft lead. Instead, I would use a harder lead for lighter shading and a softer lead for darker.

Another exercise you might have fun with is negative space drawing. We did that a lot in college. The goal is to become aware of the space around an object and doesn't just help you become more aware, again, of drawing what you see rather than what you think you should see, but helps you with composition. This is a good site about it but there are lots of sources on the internet.

[Carlwashere]

Lol, no, no. You misunderstood me about the 9B. So far all I've used is the 9B, I do plan on using more than that grade. 
I was just saying that's all I used so far, that's all.
I like working with negative space, I've been wanting to work with sillouettes (sp?) lately, but there's only how much time I have. When I was taking art classes, which I stopped for the first time this year due to schedule constraints, I always worked on the background first. Pretty stupid of me, but I always ended up with nice backgrounds and subjects rushed as the due date approached. Maybe it's this mentality that makes me work like I do. Regardless, ever since I moved art from
my classes to my freetime, I've been much happier about it. I mean, when I took classes I would be happy if I simply finished before the due date. Of course, my art teahers were never strict with due dates, but that feeling of falling behind is still there. Even now, I still have the urge to time myself. I'm really trying to work against that. Now, my priorities are shifting toward quality, instead of number of works produced. I think it's a good choice, I just have to get past my short attention span now.

[Carlwashere]

I hope it's okay to DP on this thread since I have an update.

I'm figuring that I won't have as much time to work on this as I wanted. With school back at full speed and homework eating up my afternoon (I'm supposed to be doing ALG2 HW right now)
Anyway, with that all back, I don't think I'll have much time to work on this, might as well show how far I've gotten. It's actually a bit farther than this, but this is the latest scan I have. If I turn on my scanner it will be pretty obvious I'm not working as I should. Especially since it's almost 10:30.
Most of the progress was done on my last day of spring break. None at all today. School. PSSH.  

Quite a bit has changed since this scan, I've fixed some highlights, lightened some areas just a hair.
Still moving on the background, adding more contrast to it as I use it as a double purpose for my source for blending. I'm petal hopping. Most of the petals are blender applied with H lead finalizing tones and reaching the hard cut edges.
I've got an interesting plan for the background Joy, don't be disappointed that it's all in one direction so far. I've saved up charcoal from my pencils (that stuff gets everywhere) and I'm trying out different effects on a separate sheet.  

EDIT: It wasn't until the end of the week, but I finally got time to work on this. Progress is being made. 

Looks only like a tiny bit of progress. But it's progress, and I'm over the most detailed oriented part of the rose. Fixing the shading on the petals around the center right now. I'm really happy how the center turned out. Took quite a bit of time, but the detail is extremely nice. It's the part of it that I was pretty worried about. So I'm pretty happy how it's going. I might actually finish this drawing. 

[Ruffnut]

Instead of drawing the comics I'm supposed to, I drew this! what can I say, they are awesome :3

http://kyletheartist.deviantart.com/art/You-re-Crazy-162409395

[Carlwashere]

lol. Its the twins! XD
I thought they were awesome in the movie. How'd you draw this? Was it like completely in photoshop?

[Ruffnut]

pencil sketch, scanning(or in my case taking a picture, because I lack scanner) and then photoshop. SO for majority, yes it is complitely photoshop.

Glad you like them, they were my fave :3

[Zombie Cakes]

I suppose I could post one of my drawings too...seeing as how I enjoy drawing more than my photos ._.;

Most recent thing I did >> about 3 days worth of Photoshop and doodling in class <_<

One of my Sims, also buuuut....that is not important ^^;

[Carlwashere]

That's pretty fricken sweet.   
5 Stars! 

[Zombie Cakes]

Thank you, appreciate it greatly 

[Ruffnut]

Sweet mother...That is awesome! Now that picture will always come to mind when I play Wolfenstein XD

[caffeinated.joy]

Some pics I took of the bearded irises in my garden. I love my garden! LOL

[Katie]

Those are really good pictures!