Tag: Drawing websites

Spock drawing

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A few years ago I was on a website called Sketchfu which eventually closed

It had very simple tools to draw with but I enjoyed drawing all sorts of portraits, including Lord of the Rings characters. I put a lot of them on here a year ago. But my favourite is Spock from the original Star Trek series. He was not easy to draw but I think I got a good representation. The little pink face in the background was the icon for Sketchfu. I do miss it. It was a great site but it was difficult to communicate with the site owners even though I was a Moderator on there. I can’t believe how long it is since it closed.

Portraits

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I think I’m reasonably good at capturing people’s images when I paint and draw both traditionally and digitally. I also enjoy painting animals, and again I need to be accurate in representing them.

There are lots of books and videos to aid drawing and painting techniques. But the biggest thing that helps me is practice. Like anything else the more you do the better you get.

That said, having the book you are drawing in or canvas you at painting on placed at an upright position, either vertical or slightly sloping, helps with the resulting picture. If you draw on a horizontal surface thee picture can end up elongated or distorted. Similarly if you have a canvas in front of you too low down you can end up with a picture where the head may be to big, and thevlegd too small. It’s all a matter of positioning so you see the image equally.

I don’t tend to draw out first, I’m really terrible for starting with the eyes then working my way out! I guess I think the eyes hold the character. If you look at a face eyes are not always level. Because a face is symmetrical does not mean it completely matches on either side. Edgar Allen Poe was photographed, and when you take the two halves and multiply them into two new faces it could be two different men you are looking at…

Anyway it’s too early in the morning to be doing this…

X

P.S. the paintings here are distorted a bit because of the angles they were taken at. I have tried to straighten them up digitally but they are still a bit “off” I will try and get more photos if I can, but some belong to a relative who lives a fair distance away .

Horses

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Drawn on sketchfu

I have always drawn and painted animals. Horses are a particular favourite. So when I got onto the internet a few years ago I started drawing them on various sites.

Sketchfu was a website with simple drawing tools, but there was a great society there and you could get interesting results.

One thing I noticed when I look at these is that most of them face one way, head to the left , tail to the right. I seem to do the same if I draw a profile, they usually face left. I had a thought the its because I’m right handed? I wonder if left handed people draw right to left?

Horses are wonderful to draw and paint, sometimes they are so full of free spirit. I loved Shadowfax in thd Lord if the Rings. The thought of flying over the land on Pegasus would also be marvellous. Not forgetting unicorns which are a lovely mythical beast. I love the way they can have do many coat patterns. I think my favourites are grey.

So if you think you would like a horse painting get in touch. I might be able to help.

X

Digital portraits

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I’ve posted A few digital drawings here, and one website, now defunct, was called sketchfu where I drew many of them. (I found out today its domain name is up for sale!).

The tools at sketchfu were quite crude, only 5 or 6 sizes of pen, a colour picker and a colour palette together with a slider that allowed you to change the opacity. But it was surprising what results people could get. There were various little competitions and challenges to copy various pictures and portraits.

I did some of the challenges, and I drew some portraits. You could not draw as well as in Photoshop but they came out OK……

 

You might notice the final drawing here is meant to be of professor Stephen Hawking. This was drawn on my tablet in an app called sketcher free. I did it a few weeks ago following his death. Instead of a stylus I used my middle finger to draw on the tablet screen.

I cannot tell you how uncontrolled and disappointing this last drawing feels in relation to the previous ones. If anyone is aware of a good drawing website, please let me know!

Doodles in apps

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A few years ago I started drawing on my computer. I used a Wacom tablet and went on various web sites to draw. I remember names like wet canvas, floating ginko, 2draw , but my favourite was a site called Youdraw where you could only use two black pens and two white pens. They aimed to collect 500000 drawings. And I contributed several thousand!

The drawings at the bottom of the page are mostly from Youdraw. I manipulated colours and patterns in Photoshop, and enjoyed the results.

There are many more of these drawings on my old computer…but its upstairs and covered in dust at the moment. I need to get it into my head to get it repaired.

Along came another site called sketchfu. It was fun to use as it had simple colour palettes and no need to create layers.  The drawing of a sphere broken up into sections was done there….

But then…I got a tablet a couple of years ago for Christmas. …

It doesn’t have many apps, or much memory. After adding an SD card I discovered it had enough memory to download some free apps.

I’m currently using sketcher for galaxy (the nude and picture of two women), then ArtRage oils which is another free app (pigeon) and sketcher free (dancing figure).

Each has its own characteristics, so it’s good to do different things on different ones. I found using a stylus helped with lines, but have lost it and need to get a new one.

I also manipulate images in a couple if other free apps…picsart which allows you to edit and filter pictures, and layout which is linked to instagram.

if anyone can recommend other interesting apps that are free and don’t take up too much memory let me know.

 

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