Cleaned up Figures **digital painting added** 7/02/09

[yeticatcher]

I took some simple 1 minute poses from a previous life drawing session and cleaned them up as line art...











And here's one with tones added, just to see if I could do it.



-Tom

[iliana]

Very nice Tom! They're all beautiful.
The last one came out great!!:)

[bastian]

yeah those are really cool. you have a eye for beauty, nice!

[yeticatcher]

Hey, thanks bastian and iliana! I'm really appreciate your kindness.

-Tom

[h0ju]

I absolutely love the last 3. Dig up some more oldies!

[yeticatcher]

It was suggested that I do step-by-step process. Here's what I do, if you have a minute:

1. I scan the figure drawing (at 150dpi) into photoshop.


2. I change the black line into blue. I do this by loading the channel as a selection. I make a new layer and fill the selection with light blue.


3. After you've made your gesture drawing 'blue' and printed it out you build your forms over it in pencil using your knowledge of anatomy. Those of you practicing drawing from life will already have much of this knowledge at your disposal. Constructing basic cylinders helps and then placing the musculature forms to create volume...



4. I scan that new drawing (pencil over the blue rough) back into photoshop and dial out the blue rough using 'Hue/Saturate'. I edit the blue and cyan hues moving the Lightness slider all the way to the right until the blue becomes white, like the paper background. You now have the contsruction drawing to work from...



5. Scan it, make it blue...



6. Print it out and draw your cleaner line drawing over that, keeping in mind the volume that you've constructed. You can make the choices now to use a varied line weight to retain the volume...



Now you can see what choices I made in getting the volume with the varied line in this piece...



The Contsruction step would also be helpful if you wanted to render the piece to create light and shadow. I, myself bypass that extra step of construction to see how the use of line (even though the line isn't as tight as it could be) can help define volume on its own.

Here's what I posted in the Girls section:
http://www.sketchbooksessions.com/thedrawingboard/viewtopic.php?t=31808&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

I indeed skipped the step of construction that is important for those who are learning and I recommend using it in this exercise.

I print out the blue versions on a decent type of 20lb bond paper (bright white inkjet paper works ok), something with a bit of a 'tooth'. I draw over the blue rough line with an HB pencil for the clean lines.



It is a bunch of steps, but I hope it all makes sense. Give it a try.


-Yeti

[squim co]

yeticatcher thanks for the clear explaination of the steps you use, it makes a lot of sense and is a useful set of techniques. I never thought of that photoshop trick to remove the blue.

cheers

[sabe2003]

Looks like you are really understanding form. Keep posting!

[yeticatcher]

Thank you, Sabe. That's quite kind of you to offer such encouragement.

Squim: I'm glad you find it helpful to whatever degree!
-Tom

[yeticatcher]

Such an old thread to add to, but I thought it was an appropriate one for this piece instead of starting a new thread.

I used pretty much the same technique to clean up the the looser life drawing (please pardon the blurry digital photo of it, my scanner wasn't working at the time), only now I use a Cintiq instead of printing out on paper. Then I did my best as an exercise to work out volume, lighting and skin tone using photoshop. I'm working at improving my figurative painting with a little more realism. Using old figure drawings come in handy as a basis on which to start.







The models face didn't look anything like this final 'made up' girl, though she was attractive.

Have a happy & safe 4th of July folks!

-Tom