LESSON 6

Great progress from everyone. It really helps to post your drawings. It gives your eyes a new way of seeing them, making corrections easier.

-David Omar

LESSON 4 by WICKS (David Omar)

Ouch, this one was tough. I kept underestimating the angle. I kept downplaying it. I blame it on my exposure to the current lifeless cartoon on TV, heh.

Many tries later I got pretty close. Well, the angle part. Still struggling with inking the oval. Just look at the lower back of the head, yuck!

I noticed that Preston's oval was 2 half circle brush strokes that connected. That explains the thick and thin of it. Anyone else see this, or am I imagining it?

Critiques and tips welcomed.

-David Omar

Lesson 4

Hey fellas, sorry I didn't post sooner, I had a little trouble with my scanner, but its working fine now. I'll try and finish up my lesson 5 one and post it as soon as possible.
Ohh, and I couldn't help but caricature the egg guy myself. This just makes me laugh.

Lesson 4 Patrick

UPDATE: I did some more and inked the best one. The corner of his mouth needs a li'l fixin'


I want to make a quick announcement that after 14 years of waiting, the beloved Rocko's modern life is now officially out on DVD! I hope you grew up on it, but if not don't worry because you'll probably appreciate it a lot more now, since it is about being a young adult. Extremely clever, hilariously irreverent and beautifully animated. It was overshadowed by Ren & Stimpy, but it is just as good in most respects. Nick sure knew what it was doing back then.



(first post)

This is actually my 5th try for this lesson. Don't be fooled; it's not as accurate is it might look, I'm very unhappy with how the face looks in general. I'm gonna try more this weekend

Lesson 5 by Jeremy

First of all, I have to thank whoever suggested drawing within a window box (I think it was Gabriele but not sure). It made drawing my initial oval much easier, which ultimately lead to a better end result. This attempt at Lesson 5 is by no means perfect, but it is still much better than any of my previous first attempts. I also have to thank everyone who suggested we draw "big". I'm used to drawing relatively close to the size of the image I'm copying, but drawing bigger helped out a great deal.

I apologize for the delay in posts. I let work get the better of me for the past few weeks so I've been a little slack. Hope everyone is enjoying this blog as much as I am. I can already see that people are making progress and that there are some really talented artists out there.

Take care everybody, and good luck.

Lesson 4 & 5 by Hammerson

Two lessons for the price of one :)
Left: construction, Center: cleaned-up pencil version, Right: comparison

These are my best attempts so far, but I don't consider them as the last word on both lessons. Again, I made a mistake with the upper lip, similar to the one I've done on the lesson 3.



Lesson 5 was particularly hard to do, and it's important to realize in both examples that the egghead character doesn't have the features simply painted over his face. These are the real "fleshy" features, and they must stick out to give a solid 3D feeling to the viewer from every possible angle.

Lesson 4 by Caleb

final sketch


overlay


ink of sketch

It's cool to see more posts!

Preston Blair Lesson 5

Here's my lesson 5.

This was the hardest so far.

On the last two i will admit to some lightboxing ( cheating ). Although i didn't rely on it completely, i used it to see what was going on because i find lines become very abstract after a while and its difficult to eyeball scale and shape!

Hope everyone else does well and gives me some tips!


All i can say is try messing with the angles and perhaps break this up into segments and perfect those if you have the time. I also tried using the box and including an angled centre line in CG. It kinda helps.

Lesson 3b by Nicolas

Hello, again. This is my latest Lesson 3 egghead. After my previous attempt, I wanted to fix a couple things, like the nose and lip, and also make the head a little longer.

This is the overlay where I've noticed a few mistakes.

Afterwards, I used red pencil to go over the corrected areas.

Also, Gabriele suggested that I also use red to tighten rough lines, so I'll give it a shot.

Critiques and tips are welcome.

Lesson 3 by Hammerson

Left: pencil sketch with construction
Center: cleaned-up pencil version (no inking)
Right: Comparison with PB original



So, again I'm showing the last two attempts. First one has an accurate egghead shape. Also, the eyebrows, nose and mouth are very close. All the other features are more or less in the wrong place or of wrong size (the eyes, teeth, upper cheek line, etc.)

The second attempt corrects nearly all of those mistakes, but also introduces a new one: the upper lip is too curved on the corners, and the shape doesn't match with the original. It should be drawn instead with just slight curves and a straight line. The perfect drawing would be a combination of both attempts, but that's cheating :)

I must work more on emphasising the "meaty" aspect of the character (I think it's still lacking in my attempts, to a certain degree).

UPDATE: I tried to ink my last attempt with Illustrator (few rough spots are corrected in Photoshop).

Lesson 3 by Nicolas

This is my  final attempt at Lesson 3. The biggest challenge was trying to capture the right angle, but I think it turned out okay. 

(Original)

(Overlay)

All other attempts.

Critiques are welcome.

Tip!

Hey guys,

I often find that when i'm looking to use a book that boasts teaching perfect drawing principles, most often that not, its all about copying.

There's nothing wrong with copying and a great deal can be learned from it, but to really think on your feet and draw from a rich knowledge i believe in experience and constructive thinking.

We can draw preston till we're blue in the face ( or fingers, which ever comes first ), but i think we should also experiment with his lessons and recreate the principles instead of JUST following the basic drawings.

I have found some artists out there that really inspire me to think when i draw and among the many, Mike Mattesi' s books have really stood out.

I'm quite sure a handful of your at least has heard of his books on force drawing and even realised for yourselves just how much life drawing can improve your drawings ( yes Richard Williams, we read that chapter ).

So, here are what the book covers look like, there are two and i have yet to read the second one, but i'm about a chapter into the first and i thought it'd be cruel not to mention how awesome these books are.


Also as a special treat, i have a link and password to download them for free, so if you're interested please email me as i fear uploading this questionable content might infringe on the integrety of this great blog!

P.S: I was thinking of doing an article about some of my favourite artists and why they inspire me, but i think it'd be awesome if we all got into that and tapped into the awesome and different inspiration that made us all come together here...

Let me know what you think,

Gabriele.

LESSON 5

Be aware that the first egg shape has guide lines that don't match the final.  It's been a constant  since we started the angle lessons.  The positive is that you have to work harder to figure out where everything goes, which will help train your eyes quicker.

-David Omar

Lesson 2 (Cleaner lines) by Nicolas Martinez

I've recently completed lesson 2.

I redrew the egghead with cleaner lines. I don't have Photoshop, Illustrator, or a Wacom tablet, so I just did it the old fashioned way.

Critiques are welcome.

Lesson 2 by Nicolas Martinez

Here's my crack at Lesson 2. Things went pretty smoothly.

1st attempt

2nd attempt

Both original drawings, with little notes.

Critiques are welcome.

My previous lessons

Lesson 1

Lesson 1 continued

Lesson 1 by Nicolas Martinez (continued)

Hi. Here are some more Egghead attempts. Sometimes, I would draw little note on details (like wrinkles, mouth shapes, how eyes curve, etc.) after every attempt. And that improved my work quite effectively.

4th attempt.

5th attempt.

All 5 original drawings.

LESSON 3 by Wicks for Candlesticks

A little late.  I tried correcting last pencil attempt in the inks.  Still working on my steady hand. Inking the oval is getting a little easier, if you use that white arrow in Illustrator to mess with the curves.  I'm not good at the technical terms, but you can now check out Mitch's tutorial on Illustrator (located in our links).  It really helps with the techie parts of inking in that program.  Thanks Mitch!

Tips and critiques appreciated.

David Omar

Lesson 1 by Nicolas Martinez

Howdy, Y'all. I've attempted Lesson 1 with the first egghead guy. I made three attempts on one sheet of paper and made the notes/experiments/improvements as I went along.

1st attempt

2nd attempt.

3rd attempt

All 3 original drawings.

Lesson 4b by Gabriele Gabba

Here's my update, i'm pretty happy with the overlay, i seemed to have fixed most of the issues with the mouth, i'm afraid i didn't extend the bottom of the jaw down far enough, i think this is just my eye messing with me or the fact that when i draw my squares they aren't perfect...

Comments?

Great inking tutorial by Mitch

Hey guys, if you haven't seen it, Mitch Leeuwe posted quite an amazing tutorial on inking in Illustrator. Very insightful and practical. It should definitely be put in our links column. Here's a link to it - INKS

Lesson 3 by Caleb

Looks like my center line was off, which threw off some of the details. Drawing in red/blue/black and checking it each time with each color is teaching me a lot.

If anyone is lost on this blog, here's the lessons so far:

Lesson 1
Lesson 2
Lesson 3
Lesson 4

More faces

Hey everyone,

I'm happy to see how successful this community blog has become :)

(Updated) Nicolas Martinez with his lessons.

(This is an updated version of my recent post. You can now view the large images in this post.)

Hi everybody.

My name is Nicolas Martinez, and I'm new to this blog. 

I've been doing a couple Preston Blair lessons by myself and posting them on Deviantart. Just recently, Hammerson told me about this blog, and suggest that I join. Sure enough, I contacted David Omar, and here I am.

Here are my most recent lessons, along with a select bunch of older ones. I think a few look okay, but may need some work.

My most recent one:

Lesson 2 by Hammerson

This one was hard to do right, and it took me several attempts to get a really good grasp of the shape and the angle. In this example, it is very important to preserve the illusion of a fully rounded egg shape. In my first attempts, I had the tendency to cut off the bottom half (back of the head), so the whole character looked more like a mask instead of the egg. Here are the best two attempts (construction, cleaned-up pencil and comparison with PB original):

Nicolas Martinez with his lessons.

Hi everybody.

My name is Nicolas Martinez, and I'm new to this blog. 

I've been doing a couple Preston Blair lessons by myself and posting them on Deviantart. Just recently, Hammerson told me about this blog, and suggest that I join. Sure enough, I contacted David Omar, and here I am.

Here are my most recent lessons, along with a select bunch of older ones. I think a few look okay, but may need some work.

(note) I'm not sure how to make the pics full-size by clicking on them. 

My most recent drawing: