Sorry for the delay, guys! This is such a busy time of year... (:
vrt and I will be coming around to do individual critique, but right now there's something I wanted to make clear to everyone.
Okay, I'm seeing a really big issue with almost everyone's lineart sketches. I really want you guys to work on defining the shapes within the shapes. This will help with a lot of trouble I see you guys having with symmetry and proportion. I made a more in-depth walkthrough to sort of make things clearer, and hopefully it will help. C:
- Step 1: We're going to draw a human. We start out with a basic skeleton, like so:
Traditional media users: make sure to sketch very, very lightly!
Obviously, it's not an actual skeleton. But there's an indication of a head, and lines marking the spine, shoulders, hips, and ground plane (feet). Sometimes, I also mark out two very small notches in the spine: one halfway between the shoulders and hips, and one halfway between the hips and feet. These would indicate the waist/bellybutton/elbows (the human elbows generally match up to the waist) and knees.
In this example, I'll be doing just a simple, face-front standing pose -- but this basic skeleton works for all poses, as well as all objects and creatures (human or otherwise). Think of it as a map marking out where you plan to go with the sketch. It's so much easier to see how your proportions and balances are, during this phase.
I'm just covering basic sketching here, but if you'd like to know more about human proportions in general, check out Andrew Loomis. Here are a few general proportion guides from his books (mild nudity?): Proportions 1
- Proportions 2
- Proportions 3
. As you can see, these guides use the length of the head as a unit of measurement. Once you learn the generalities of these guides, you can begin to stretch and play with them a bit.
- Step 2: Defining the basic shapes...
Traditional media users: keep it light!
Now we go into further detail, mapping out the different parts of our figure. Circles mark the joints -- shoulders, knees, and wrists. This is going to be a female, so there's a nice curvy figure going on. As you practice, you begin to get a feel for the shapes of things, and how to break complex shapes such as the human form into simple shapes like circles and ovals.
See how my shapes begin to define the figure, without getting distracted by so much detail? Here I can see that my figure is leaning slightly off of my center balance line -- so that's something I need to fix. If I had just jumped right into detailing, going from the head down, I would have missed it -- or if I did notice, it would have been far too late. Here, I have ample time to fix things up before moving on with the sketch.
- Step 3: Detailing the sketch...
Ah, there we go.. now we can start sketching in the real figure, clothing, hair, face, etc! I still want to see those underlying shapes, beneath! It may not look very pretty, but sketches aren't supposed to! (:
Traditional media users: now is when you can go in with progressively darker lines. (:
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Okay! I hope that helped a little. c: As I said earlier, vrt and I will come around with individual critique in just a moment. I just wanted to post this little tutorial, first.
Keep up the great work, guys! I'm quite impressed by what I've seen, so far! c:
