Artists show your work!

Cafe Society
101

Well, I promised, so here goes. I’m not mentioning everyone, I plead lack of time and knowledge of stuff like jewelry and computer design – if I miss you, or I’m unfavourable, please don’t hate me! But feel free to be as biting about my own stuff as you want.

**Sam Lowry **:
Neither abstracts nor naïve art are to my taste particularly, so maybe I’m not the best judge - but these don’t move me much.

lissener:
You have I think a real flair for graphic design, and I really like the “hot seat”.

Argent Towers:
I’m not a big fan of the doodly-cartoony style of drawing, so again I’m not the best judge; but if I were you I’d do so more life drawing - it would improve your use of this style.

Maastricht:
Heh, even if they are 5-minute party favours, I love the silhouettes!

fessie:
Very nice life drawings! I think you have a good eye; myself, I’d want to do something with ‘em rather than just draw from life – but that is just me.

**OpalCat **:
Very impressive technical chops – better maybe than any in this thread - but somehow they leave me cold. I dunno why exactly – maybe to my eye they just have that look of being University ‘projects’ about them.

Renee:
I must admit most of these abstracts are not to my taste – some seem to me mere exercises. However, you obviously can paint, and I very much like those abstracts which are abstracted from natural forms, such as “Seaweed 1”.

BurnMeUp:
Love the pictures, particularly “Monastary at Glendalough” and “Pacific Beach – Washington”. Very moody and evocative. You have a great eye!

nashiitashii:
Not really fair to post stuff by the person you live with, particularly when it is so very, very awesome; and awesome it is, very much to my taste!

…

There, I’ve done my duty. At least in part.

102

Not entirely sure what you mean by “life drawing.” Could you elaborate? (An honest question.)

Something like this comic, for example - I try to make the dimensions of the scenery, like the wooden moldings and door and window frames, and things like that, seem realistic even though they are drawn in an unrealistic style (I’m not sure that makes it very clear…I’m trying to put into words what I mean, but I can’t really do it right.) I mean, the style of that comic is very stylized and not at all like “real life” but the proportions of things, and the textures of objects and things like that, are still fairly consistent, right? I guess that’s what I try to maintain, consistency, even if it’s an unrealistic style.

Something like this, for instance, is highly unrealistic and very cartoony (it’s also about five years old.)

This one, on the other hand, is fairly recent, and it is my most focused attempt to date at “realistic” style, or as you might say, “life drawing.” I admit there are still some problems with the guys’ body proportions and especially the size of the head - they still look like cartoons - but besides that, the details like the textures of the men’s clothing, the guns, the belts and little objects that they have strapped to themselves like the cigarette pack in the guy’s sleeve and the radio microphone on the guy on the left - I tried to make that stuff look “real.” I also tried to get the look of the sky in the background to look more real.

Would you consider that an improvement, in terms of realism, over the cartoon-looking stuff?

103

“Life drawing” refers to working from live, nude models.

It’s generally completely separate from drawing cartoon figures, although there are artists who do both - such as this guy, whose work you might enjoy.

I guess you could say Michelangelo could do both, he’s a bit of a rare case though ;).

104

No, sorry, I don’t work from a pattern. That is, all my patterns are in my head; I find I can only express them in yarn, not on paper. But I could try to explain it to you if you want to give it a go.

105

In art-speak, it means drawing something that is actually sitting in front of you as you draw it.

I recommend this too. I drew exclusively from imagination for years before I tried much life drawing; I figured it would be boring. When I finally took a college art class and tried it, it was frustrating at first, but I was really shocked at how fun it was once I got going. It somehow felt more like playing soccer than like drawing.

Edited to add: Correction, apparently the term refers specifically to drawing a human model. Whatever. I’m no art professor.

106

Thanks Malthus; I can see why you would say that. :slight_smile:
That rarely works for me, although when I was in high school I was given a plastic skull to draw and managed to place it in an attic through my imagination alone.

107

Thanks. I should try to make a few Tshirt designs and sell them. The trouble lies in the startup cost . . .

108

Argent, what you’d probably hear if this were a ballsout critique like I endured weekly in art school is that your drawings are “not very well observed.” This can be a weakness, or a strength. It’s a strength if your style transcends subject matter. You see this balance in what is variously called primitiveart, naiveart, and the Chicago School. To be successful in this area, I think, you have to be an artist whose need to express something outweighs your attention to practical detail.

“Not very well observed” is a weakness, however, when (and obviously, there are artists who are exceptions to this) the subject matter is more important to you than the idea behind it. VAST oversimplification of course.

So I think you have a couple different roads ahead of you: pay more attention, take some life drawing classes, and become better at observing what you are drawing. Or, take a lot of acid and just draw what comes out. (Kidding of course.) It might be interesting to focus on the parts of a drawing you find the most interesting: like the wood textures, for example. And really, really obsess on them, until they take over the picture. Or obsess on some other aspect of the drawing, see what you can pull out of it.

It’s clear you have the enthusiasm; I don’t think you’ve found your “voice” yet though.

109

I really appreciate the constructive criticism but I really fail to see how there is any comparison between that third image that I linked to (This one) and those “primitive art” pictures. I mean, if you don’t like the style, that’s one thing, or if you think the composition is lacking that’s another, but I put so much detail into that drawing - I tried so hard to capture the little details. The wrinkles and folds in the guys’ clothes. The texture and patterns of their fabric. The belts, knives, guns, glasses, and other little objects. I tried to make the guys’ hair and mustache look realistic. I’m sorry to sound like I’m being argumentative but I don’t see any detail at all in those paintings you linked to. They look like something a child could have drawn. They don’t have any attention to the little details of real-life objects, that I have tried very, very, very hard to put into my drawings even if the style is unrealistic, the human figures are not proportional, or the composition is weak.

Look, I’m fully willing to accept that my art might not be very emotionally expressive, or even very interesting at all, but I’ve always thought that my technique was pretty good - use of shading, shadows, contrast, texture in clothing and on wood, attention to detail of objects - especially for someone with no artistic training whatsoever. Do you take issue with the technique also, or is it just the “expression” of the art that you don’t like?

110

Dude, you can’t defend your art with logic. If you want to reject criticism, that’s your right, but you can’t really *debate *it.

111

(I added in the last lines of that previous post before you posted that - just FYI.)

I might not be able to debate whether or not my art is “good” but surely you’re not going to tell me that those “primitive art” pieces are equal in technique and attention to detail than the drawing of mine that I’m talking about?

I’m not rejecting your criticism at all, I think it’s very reasonable. But I’m not talking about the ideas, I’m talking about the technique. The specific way that the lines on the page, that have been drawn with the pencil or pen, appear to the eye. Not the meaning of the drawing, just the aesthetics of it.

I brought up a lot of very, very specific things about the details of my drawing. What do you think about that? Please, I want your opinion, not just two sentences.

112

Oh, he posts on here as Acid Lamp. I just got to the thread first. He should be in here in a minute or two. If you’d like, you can purchase his art. We could use the money. :wink:

113

Argent:

You can’t expect someone to give you an entire art education on a discussion board. If you’re serious about your art, then pursue it seriously: take some classes, draw from life, try different things. Look at a LOT of other drawings. Copy other drawings; feel how they’re constructed. This won’t take long; if you live say 70 more years, this will only take 70 of them. Eventually you’ll have enough such observation/learning/whatever under your belt that you’ll look back at these drawings and go, OH, so THAT’S what lissener meant. (One hint: obviously the attention to detail in your drawing is different from the ones I link to, which should suggest that it wasn’t the attention to detail I was attempting to draw your attention to.)

114

I’ll give you a critique. Frankly, your at reminds me a bit Geof Darrow, who illustrates in a similar detailed manner. The difference however lies in the technical observations. You obviously have difficulty with hands and perspective. While this is a common condition among untrained draftsmen, it nonetheless is a major stumbling point between what many would refer to as “good” art, and “doodling”. You DO put a lot of work into your images, but time or effort alone will not earn you accolades from the artistic community which can be fickle at the best of times. Try taking some time to work on your technicals, it will grant you a great deal of personal reward to be able to properly express yourself.

115

You’re right, I suck at hands. It’s always been a big stumbling block for me. I really want to perfect hands, but as much as I practice it I can never seem to get it right.

ETA - I looked up Geof Darrow and his art is pretty great, so I take that as a compliment, I suppose. I would love to be able to draw stuff like this. But the one thing I’ve never really tried doing in any significant way, is color.

116

Then you haven’t practiced enough.

117

Try imagining then as 3-d blocks of wood. The palm is a flat square shape, the fingers, small elongated cubes, etc. You seem to be able to render buildings with some accuracy, so try drawing some “puppet hands”. Start out by doing them flat, as you would see if you held your hand out in front of your face. Once you understand that, then try more complicated gestures.

It isn’t easy. While I can sculpt a hand in any contortion you can imagine, I still have great difficulty in rendering them on paper at times.

118

Thanks; yeah, half my clients want backgrounds, the other half wants 'em “clean” it seems.

The backgrounds are a mix; the one with the Coelophysis chasing the dragonfly has a background that’s pretty much entirely photographic. The one of the green T.rex in the woods, on the other hand, has tree trunks that were photographic, but all of the rest of the foliage and lighting and whatnot are painted. I really want to take some time to refine my landscape painting skills so as not to rely on photographs as much.

119

Argent Towers - you seem to me to be sort of stuck at the stage where you draw something as a shape (outline) and then fill in what is inside it. The end result never has the feel of something solid. Try getting some soft charcoals and draw with them. Try to see the object and its value (light/dark) and put that down on the paper, rather than seeing its shape and putting that whole shape down first. Just some thoughts.

120

I won’t comment on your dimensional work since I am not into dimensional at all. I really like your painting, but I think your ink technique is particularly good. Maybe you think of them just as sketches and studies, but I am going to suggest that you take them more seriously and do more of them.

I particularly like how your fill lines do whatever the flop they want, but the resulting shade is always consistent and how you subtly manage to maintain the defining lines even in tight spots such as the edge of the side of the nose.

Anyways, I like it and I hope to see more the next time this thread comes around.