DrawWithMike.net

JayS wrote: Mon Jan 09, 2023 9:18 pm Arthur, We all need to think really hard about climate change. A report by 60 minutes says that the abundance of wildlife has fallen 94% since 1970. I was alive in 1970. Won't be in 2049. I'll be extinct.

Damn right I shall say ... ;/

JayS wrote: Mon Jan 09, 2023 9:31 pm A note to other forum members...I will be following Mike's guidelines as specified in his hair videos. In as much as I value Mike's feedback I want yours as well. I thank you for your thoughts.

I am following
Good luck

JayS wrote: Mon Jan 09, 2023 9:31 pm I've gone through your tutorials on drawing hair. I've decided to start over. The three videos are tremendous. They really help me understand what I didn't do to Wooden Wolf. So now it is on to hairy wolf.

I'm glad they helped. Incidentally, I'm bogged down on Part 3. I think I'm trying to cram in everything I couldn't fit into the others... and it seriously needs to be sorted out and trimmed. So, don't hold your breath, but it is progressing.

Wooden Wolf: There are two ways of looking at any wolf. You can see it as being a solid three-dimensional form and concentrate on that. Or you can see it as being hairy and more importantly realise that it's the highlights and shadows in the hair that tell us what the three-dimensional form is. That's something that took me quite a while and more than a few "wooden" drawings before I had worked out what I should have been drawing.

Wooden wolf was about 14"X16" in size. Because it is easier to draw larger, I decided to go 22"X28". This will give me more room to work.

Well, it will but.... The problem with going bigger is that... Let me put it this way: if you double the size, you quadruple the area. And the amount of detail required is probably twice that again.

The first thing I did was to identify areas of the wolf that have different hair values. In keeping with your advice on the videos, I will work each defined area, which are really small areas. I want to work slowly, so this may take a month.

Time doesn't matter. It never does. It needs the time required to successfully complete it. As you've gone larger, you really do need to beak it down into small manageable parts, so I'm in full agreement with that.

I look forward to your thoughts as I progress.

Don't worry - you'll get them

Argue! I thought I'd posted the reference...

I'm bogged down on Part 3

Didn't you just spend part 1 discussing boundaries and how boundaries give limits to how you can create hair? You clearly have the answer. One boundary at a time.
Do you care how many parts you have?

I've been shoveling snow. Just got the driveway cleared and the snowplow gifted me with another two feet of wet stuff. He didn't respect my boundaries.
I have an edge boundary question...When looking at the reference I see that many of the dark hair areas define the anatomy of the wolf. But these boundaries do not have one edge that is relatively straight. It is almost as though the ends of the hair are sharply pointing two directions. Is it best to draw an imaginary line down the center of the area and work from the middle out or work jagged boundary lines across the dark hair from side to side?

Arthur,
Thanks for your thoughts. I'm not sure that my question was very clear. I think that technique and intuition go together. I'm not sure but I'm beginning to believe that there are techniques that are not intuitive but produce the results we see. I sometimes get lost and have a hard time remembering how I did some things. Returning to the technique as a starting point helps my memory. More importantly I more consistently, get the results I want. The thing about Mike's tutorials is that he reveals stuff I would not consciously be aware of, such as depth in drawing around hair. The other thing that comes to mind is my references are not always really clear so I have to create something I can't see. In this way the art becomes superior to the reference.

I'm very like you then.
I'm doing something, then later I'm co fused of how did I achieve it, what simply makes me surprised that this is really my work, lol, as sometimes it looks better than I thought it is, lol...
I've got a feeling sometimes, that my strokes happening unconsciously, making the things on its own without me
My hand is making strokes, and these strokes discovering patterns to follow, then the patterns becoming shapes, and so on...
And yes.
Technique is very important, everybody knows it.
Without Technique things won't look just right, yes, we could possibly mimic it, but by correct technique we can achieve perfection.
I think I’m sort of combine intuition + technique as you said JayS
But while making an art, I'm most probably being unconscious of the technique I'm applying?
I don't know, I might be wrong
And yes.
Wile watching other artists, tutorials like Mike is recording, we are learning to see things we wouldn't be aware otherwise...
You doing good job and great effort will pay off for sure!

I have an edge boundary question... When looking at the reference, I see that many of the dark hair areas define the anatomy of the wolf. But these boundaries do not have one edge that is relatively straight. It is almost as though the ends of the hair are sharply pointing in two directions. Is it best to draw an imaginary line down the center of the area and work from the middle out, or work jagged boundary lines across the dark hair from side to side?

I'm not entirely certain what you mean, so what I'm about to say might not fit your question.

By "dark hair" do you mean physically dark-coloured hair, or the hair that's angled, so it's in shade? If you mean the dark-coloured hair: first, don't treat that as one big drawing break. There are probably layers within it that will permit you to break it up into longitudinal sections. Also, I'd stop the dark hair short of its final length. Then draw the next section of lighter hair. And finally, extend the dark over the top of the light hair, as that requires positive and not negative drawing.

While I'm writing this, I'm looking at your reference, over-sharpened, slightly adjusted for darker values, and twice the size you see it here... and I still can't fully understand what I'm seeing. And below it, it's crazily over-sharpened, which helps a bit... but not much.

Personally, I'd search online for similar photos, and then use those to supply any data missing from this one. They will at least help you to better understand this wolf.

Regarding the light hair in the shade: there is at least one area where it's pointing skywards. At the top of the hip, I'm certain we're looking at the underside of that hair, which is why it's not receiving full light. And that hair is curving up the hip from the body above. OK, I could be wrong... but that's where other photos will help. I sincerely believe you cannot realistically draw what you don't understand. Guessing never seems to work.

I'm going to have to stop there, because we've got a terrible gale going on outside and I need to go out to check for damage.

Speaking of Gale, was there any damage? I hope not.

This post is a tiny bit of hair on the wolf. I thought I should post progress. I have a couple of concerns. First, I don't seem to get the darkest blacks from a 2B. Certainly, a 5B is darker. But I wonder if the darkness comes with layering?

Second, as you can see in the drawing it is divided into may small areas. Some of the areas are separated by thick dark lines of many hairs and some are hardly noticeable. I'm trying to blend these smaller areas into a larger whole by being certain that the hair is all headed in the same direction. Layering seems to help join different areas together.

Third, I'm sometimes getting lost in the complexity of the small areas and struggling to find the larger area that the small area fits within. The tail is an example where part is clearly defined by dark hair at the edges and toward the tip the edge is poorly defined. I'm trying to solve this problem by spending a lot of time looking at the reference to see where the tail really goes and where the dimension of the shoulder joins the neck. Sometimes this is defined by line but often by the musculature and curve of the body, there are also areas where the differences are defined by the value differences within the hair. And finally, there are areas where the short hair is almost non-existent adjoining long hair areas. It all needs sorting (an English expression, I'm told).