my picture

The eyes look upside down because you inverted the flap of skin that normally folds down from the upper eyelid.

His chin looks like a funny lopsided apple.

I can see you are trying hard to get the values and the shading accurate. You did a decent job...so I think you can now lose the amateur outlines.

If you get the shading right, we will understand where the outlines are without you needing to artificially add them...it seems that drawing hard edged outlines are really just a cheap trick used by people who can't get the values right.

Sure, these boundaries can be crossed but you're not that good yet

thanks
hehe
well
thanks for the comments 'stuh'
i thoroughly enjoyed them
and i'll certainly consider your opinion



well i only got one reply to my post
so it looks like nobody really cares about my pictures
lol
but whatev
here's another couple,
if anybody would like to comment..







well cleary they're pretty basic
and a little out of proportion lol
[the naked girl's lower leg and foot, in particular]
they're also appearing to be rather large..
revealing all of their flaws,

but feel free to give me some helpful critisism anyway


thankyou
lovebloggo
goodbye

I like them very much. You have a natural capacity for drawing. And keep in mind that some of the "faults" add to the interest, i.e., not filling in the features of the girl's face--very interesting (below the belly button is less interesting). The overall composition of the baby picture is marvelous. I like the way Cobain's eyes protrude out toward us.
Congratulations. Keep it up.

Well thankyou very much

And by the way..
When I draw, I generally just copy a photo, or, more often, I'll just use it for certain features, and adapt what I draw, more towards my own liking.

Is this like..cheating?
And does it eliminate any scraps of decency/interest that they may possess?


thankyouandgoodbye

double post

The baby one is pretty good. Like JL said the composition is interesting, most people wouldn't have focused in so much on the face and that's more difficult also I think. My biggest gripe is that the hand does not look baby-ish enough, which I think is mostly due to the dark outlines once again that take away from the soft feel.

The female drawing has a lot of problems, though. First, the bottom half of her head is looking away from us and the top half is looking towards us. Creepy. I'm guessing you put the sunglasses in and avoided drawing the mouth simply because you couldn't make a natural looking face given the really wierd "angle." The hand in her left arm pit also looks very strange, there should be some more fingers visisble and I would expect them to be curving up not down...her arms look sort of like variable thickness tentacles! And the little chins in the elbows are too pronounced. Try to work some more on the shape of the arms, learn where the muscles are and how they should deform or study the photograph more carefully. The rib cage looks like something ghastly out of Alien. They seem to collapse too much in the center of her chest...are too pronounced, too wide, and shouldn't be noticed on her back side at all. The legs are disproportionately short, and the feet are too small. The knee is too smooth.

Keep at it. Don't take my negativity too hard.

Oh yeah one more thing -- you asked if copying photos was cheating. There's no such thing as cheating. If you were famous enough to have galleries, I wouldn't in good conscience advice you to put those in...but for now, it's learning, and copying photographs is the best way to start.

hmm
Well
Yeah
I agree
It's quite the imperfection lol
I also could've tried a little harder

And the naked lady actually doesn't have hands..
I was kind of angry when I drew her, so I attempted to make her creepyish looking or something, and needless to say, I overdid it lol. But whatever, I appreciate the comments. I've tried a couple of other drawings, without as heavy of an outline, and better proportions and stuff. And yeah, there wasn't a whole lot of improvement .

Another thing you can try for practice is trying to reproduce the sketches or paintings of other people. This is a great way to go about learning techniques.

New Pictures
Well to whomever may care, here's a few more that could be considered marginally more successful:





Native guy from National Geographic



This girl was from a magazine, I pretty much ignored everything below her neck, and just concentrated on the face.. eek.



aw.. it's a baby. ha ha.. well my mom liked it?



And..an eyeball..






And there ya go.
I don't know if they're any good, but feel free to comment on them.

And I was also wondering, to whomever reads this, if it's worth me trying to get better? I mean, is there any realistic potential for me to reach any level of decent 'artistic-ness'?


Anyway
thanks y'all
love bloggo

- thanks stuh

Bloggo, you DEFINITLY should continue. I would take drawing and painting classes if I were you (actually I do). Don't require anyone's permission. Your work validates itself. The man's hair is super; the girl is feminine (not an easy accomplishment); the baby's face is charming; and the eye is really looking at me. I think you should try to (assuming you are not already) ADD something to the photoworks--even artistic "faults". Remember, they are good to start with, just like an actual still life set up--don't just copy; create.
Forward.

These ones are much better.

The guy: looks pretty good. Your strokes don't look confident enough...it's clear that you drew over the lines many times...also with a pencil drawing I think it is unnecessary to attempt to do all the shading and everything by rubbing, not saying it's wrong to do that though.

Magazine girl: Wow, nice face You got the lips right. Proportions on everything but the face are horrendous, but the face itself is very well done. Biggest problem is that the upper nose looks a bit square due to the shading...but proportions of the facial features look very good.

Baby boy: The face on this boy is even better. There's an odd little bit of shading on the left side of the nose but it's hardly noticeable. Unfortunately the image as a whole does not stand up because you put so little effort into the background and the woman's back. This doesn't really matter because it's all for practice anyhow, but it's a shame because the baby boy looks so good. (The shape of the mom's shoulder, and the skin folds / arm pit are missing...clouds and water look bad.)

Eyeball: Well, it looks fine. But eye's are also extremely easy to draw like this. The hard part about eyes is not making something that looks like an eye, but getting them to match the expressions you see in real life!

Is it worth tryign to get better? Of course...

It takes a certain small level of intelligence to be an artist...but most humans have it. Beyond that, all you need to do is practice. Learning to draw is a task just like any other and you don't need a magic gift to be good at it. Some people will have natural abilities...but if ANYONE really puts in the effort, they can become amazing.

From your drawing style, I'm going to guess that you are about 16 years old (and a boy). Based on that judgement, I would say your artistic talent so far is definitely above average, but not good enough yet. But if you put in the practice, you could become extremely good.

I just wanna say, those drawings look awesome from my viewpoint, I kinda like the ribs and the fact that the lady has no hands in what i believe was the second or third picture posted. You definitly can't even think about ever quitting on drawing, potential is endless.

Well thanks guys
How awfully nice of you to comment
Again, I do indeed appreciate it..

And Stuh, I'm a GIRL and I'm 15, just so everybody knows ..

But anyway.
Thankyou very much

I'll try some more drawings, and if there's any improvements, I might post them for some more comments.


ThankyouLoveBloggo

the baby is by far the best

using a photo isn't cheating but neither is it the way to improve your drawing,

Instead of drawing from photos, draw from life - draw yourself in the mirror, your eye, your hand, things and people around you.

You've got something but it won't develop if you just copy someone else's 2D image into another 2D image. You need to look at transposing 3D into 2D for yourself and deal with the problems in your own way.

Vivien, I like very much the major negative shapes in both--especially the first-- pictures containing babies. Bloggo, I don't know if you intentionally made these negative shapes--viz., all that which is NOT the figures themselves. You might study them for their aesthetic value. They are, to my mind,what give the overall pictures a degree of beauty.

lol
well JL
maybe it's late
maybe I'm just not that bright
or maybe it's fancy 'art' language
but I'm not following this "negative shape" business that you speak of - [in your last post]..?

but thanks for the tips

If you read some books or take some classes you'll learn all about positive and negative shapes soon enough.

Positive and negative space is really a watercolor concept I think, because with waterolors you have to paint darker colors over lighter colors and you can't do it the other way around. So, there are now 2 ways to make a shape -- you could paint inside the shape, or you could paint around the outline of the shape (leaving the shape a lighter color). That's negative painting. Negative space is the space that you leave blank, or, more blank than the rest. You can extend the concept to other mediums but I still think it makes the most sense with watercolors.

I disagree with Vivian that you won't improve without drawing from life. That's simply nonsense, I'm sure you've already noticed improvements from copying 2D pictures. Any artisit will continue to improve drawing only from 2D, but the improvement function is diminishing over time. Any artist will also continue to improve from drawing from 3D, but the improvement function is much less steep in the beginning...I think that you will improve more from 2D at this point, but some time there will come a point when these lines intersect and beyond that point drawing from 3D will give you a faster rate of improvement.