@dimiclaudeblaigan Asked For A Tutorial On How To Begin Drawing. Good News! If You Can Draw A Funky Looking

@dimiclaudeblaigan asked for a tutorial on how to begin drawing. Good news! If you can draw a funky looking stick man, you have already started!

I think that stick people are a great starting point for artists because of the things you can learn from them that will be important later on.

If you are able to draw a circle and a couple of lines, you can easily put together a stick person.

Congratulations! You have started to draw. :)

A stick person is a very minimal artistic representation of a real life person. It is simple yet recognizable, and is widely used in art, media, and signage.

But what can a stick person teach us about drawing people that look more like… well, people? Lets have a look!

By simply adding a few more lines, we can add a pair of eyes and a mouth. Maybe even a little triangle nose! Or half circles for ears. We can now draw a face, which provides a basis for all sorts of expressions.

These simple additions can allow us to explore the wide range of human emotion and individuality.

This may seem like the basics of the basics. But that is what we want! In order to get to the point where we are able to draw complex, elaborate representations of humans and objects, we will need to start with simple shapes like lines and circles and build our understanding from there.

For instance, lets give our stick person some cool new features, such as hands and feet. I chose little squiggly circles to represent hands, and triangles to represent feet.

We can go a step further and modify the body of the stick person to include shoulders, hips, elbows and knees. These parts of the human body are quite complex in real life But here, all we need to do is add a few simple lines and dots to our stick person.

The lines provide some additional structural elements to our stick person's body, which are the shoulders and the hips. The dots indicate the points of articulation - elbows and knees, the places where the arms and legs bend!

Now we can use our stick person to show us an even wider range of human movement, action, and expression.

Our little drawing of a human being is evolving! All it took was adding a few more lines and shapes here and there.

By elongating some of the existing lines and making the head an oval instead of a circle, we can give our stick person proportions that resemble that of a real life human.

By this point, we have managed to add more complexity to our stick person simply by using our ability to draw lines, circles, and other basic shapes!

These basic ideas are the building blocks that will enable us to create more complex shapes.

The next part may be a considerable step up if you are absolutely new to drawing, but I have decided to include it in order to show you how complex objects like the human body can be built from shapes that are a bit more complex than circles and lines.

For example. Two ovals and a rectangle can be combined to create a cylinder.

Six squares can be combined to create a cube, or a box. Here, each square is distorted slightly depending on which way the cube is facing.

Note that the back faces of the cube and the bottom of the cylinder are hidden. These shapes allow us to visualize that which should not normally visible.

A sphere from all perspectives can be represented by a circle. But we can make it more like a sphere by adding lighting and shadow if we so desire.

Cubes, cylinders, and spheres are examples of 'solid shapes' because they consist of 3 dimensions.

Lets see how these solid shapes can be used to compose the human body.

By stacking three cylindrical objects, we can create a torso. Two spheres have been added to form shoulders, while a smaller cylinder forms the neck.

An arm is an alternating sequence of spheres and cylinders connected together. Note that the hand has been simplified for this example.

We can apply these solid shapes to the rest of the body to give us a more recognizable representation of the human form. It doesn't even have to be perfect. And just like that, our stick figure now has a silhouette that is unmistakably a person!

In the above examples, notice that we kept the stick person at the beginning while building up the shapes and solids around it. This is because the stick person serves as a guide for positioning the body and its various parts -> also known as posing.

You can do the same thing to everyday objects! Here, I drew a wine glass by stacking these three dimensional solid shapes.

The cup and its contents are two ovoid shapes that were cut in half. The stem is a very thin cylinder shape. The base is a cylinder with a slightly wider bottom.

Solid shapes help inform us how objects and parts of the human body may appear from different perspectives.

For example, a sphere can be used to demonstrate how the human head appears when looking up or down, turned to the side, or tilted at an angle.

With these examples, I hope I have managed to convinced you that if you can draw a circle and a couple of lines, you can draw a person! You just have to train your eye to recognize the simple shapes within complex objects. Try it with everyday objects as well! Or even your favourite media! A drawing subject can be as simple or as complex as you envision it to be.

Once you have mastered that, there are many aspects of drawing you can explore from here that may require you to seek additional resources or a fellow artist's advice.

Last of all, remember that drawing is an iterative process. Even if you draw something correct the first time, you will need to draw it again and again to get it right all times! And by making small changes like the ones we explored in this tutorial, your drawings will gradually transform!

I hope what I've demonstrated here are enough to provide the basics of how to get started with drawing objects and people, and also to help refresh more experienced artists. :) Hopefully I didn't go too off topic with what was requested, and let me know if there are any more questions I can answer.

Cheers :3

Skip Google for Research

As Google has worked to overtake the internet, its search algorithm has not just gotten worse. It has been designed to prioritize advertisers and popular pages often times excluding pages and content that better matches your search terms

As a writer in need of information for my stories, I find this unacceptable. As a proponent of availability of information so the populace can actually educate itself, it is unforgivable.

Below is a concise list of useful research sites compiled by Edward Clark over on Facebook. I was familiar with some, but not all of these.

⁂

Google is so powerful that it “hides” other search systems from us. We just don’t know the existence of most of them. Meanwhile, there are still a huge number of excellent searchers in the world who specialize in books, science, other smart information. Keep a list of sites you never heard of.

www.refseek.com - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.

www.worldcat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.

https://link.springer.com - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.

www.bioline.org.br is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.

http://repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.

www.science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.

www.pdfdrive.com is the largest website for free download of books in PDF format. Claiming over 225 million names.

www.base-search.net is one of the most powerful researches on academic studies texts. More than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free

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kai525h

8 months ago

Hey, d'you want to hear a horrifying Episode Echoes theory?

y'know we've had a lore book entry stating varying encounters with the Vex on Nessus and how weird they're behaving - like a Guardian saying they swore one was making sandcastles etc. kind of weird and almost childlike. And other reports have talked about how the Vex are spontaneously changing, adapting, learning, in a way that is wholly new for them?

so... remember that fucking weird Swarmers lore from Lightfall?

The CloudArk and Neomuna in the early days was being attacked by the Vex though they didn't know then it was the Vex. They were approached by an Axis Mind named Aesop, which offered to help them in exchange for their loyalty. When they refused... the children's connection to the CloudArk was severed which presumably killed them?

It's a nursery rhyme, so isn't going to be 100% historically accurate - it could well be entirely allegorical.

But I can't help but think about the minds of the children and if they got stuck inside the Vex network rather than outright dying...

And some part of them is now inhabiting the Vex...

Actually thinking about it... the Swarmers nursery rhyme is essentially the story of the Pied Piper, who killed the rats in Hamelin, and when they refused the promised payment, lured the children away with music (often implied to be magical, so the children couldn't resist).

Kind of like the Conductor did with Saint...

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kai525h

3 months ago

study of my favourite ball

Destiny Architecture

I went on a whole ramble about the architecture of the various factions in Destiny and thought I'd share it here. I'm not an architect, so my knowledge is basic when it comes to technical things, but hopefully it is interesting!

They did a fantastic job with the architecture of the different factions and what it says about them.

The Red Legion and Caiatl's Ascendency are all pragmatic, organised military designs - fortifications, the round buildings with windows on each side linked by trenches. Watchtowers. In the Arms Dealer strike, you have areas where there are loads of vehicles meticulously organised. They are prepared for the long haul, dug into the planets they land on, and they are proud of their machinery, both literal and metaphorica - it's all on display, the pistons and furnaces and engines. There are service shafts and hangars! It's all very practical (and makes the Glykon even more unnerving because the passages and service shafts don't make any practical sense in the way that they connect!).

Calus on the other hand... the Leviathan has the same base in terms of doors and the like, you can recognise some of the same basics - like the shapes of the doors etc. but the pragmatic things are hidden away - they're reminiscent of the servant quarters in old British stately homes - you need them for the place to function! But the people in charge don't want to see them. Calus wants to be surrounded by gold and riches and luxury and not think about the things and people that make it possible. It's always been something that I've thought of when it comes to his empire – he acts like all of it was a place of luxury and hedonism and art, but like the Roman Empire that inspired the culture, that luxury is truly only available to a few people, and is only possible because a much greater number of people are working to provide the materials and labour. We don't really hear or see much about the people the Empire conquered beyond the Psions, but were they living in such luxury? Probably not.

The Eliskni architecture all feels very cobbled together and makeshift - there are visible seams and bolts, spots where colours don't match. It's makeshift, which suits their history as a people who have been forced to flee and exist on scavenging for a long time. And there's always a lot of nautical theming going on too - rigging and nets and hoisted awnings like sails. They feel like places made by people who are expecting to need to pack up and leave at any minute. Everything tends to be rounded, which is particularly obvious when you see the Devils in Rise of Iron - everything is more angular because of SIVA and the Rasputin influence, even the shanks. I'd love it if we could get a look at the original Riis architecture.

The Hive are very gothic architecture with a dash of Gaudi (take a look at the Sagrada Família for what I'm thinking). High chambered ceilings, flying buttresses, all the carved figures and motifs - except when you get closer you realise that it's also uncomfortably organic. And it's also decaying – once you get inside the dreadnaught especially you find it full of piles of festering debris, wormspore growing from the corpses of thralls. There are spaces where anything could jump out at you. It's like a civilisation mocking the grand architecture of other species by warping it into something rotten (and also very gothic literature as well - the grand imposing gothic mansion with the dark secret and unpleasant history). The names of the locations in the Dreadnaught often tie-in with the architecture since a lot of them are religious: the portico, basillica, the crypts, the Cathedral of Dusk. They are a species worshipping Oryx, the very real and tangible god.

The Moon under Crota has a similar style, but where the Dradnaught is organic, the areas under the surface of the moon (outside the Red Keep) are more technological - there are still the flying buttresses and supports, the spikes and and pillars around the Hellmouth, but they're blockier, less rounded, stone and metal rather than chitin.

Savathun's Throne World has similar architecture, and returns to the organic feel of the Dradnaught, but in blinding white and red rather than browns. It's similar to the Leviathan in a way – the public areas are much cleaner feeling, regal and filled with Light, but when you dig down you can find the same rot and debris as the Dreadnaught (thinking especially of the 2nd mission of the Witch Queen campaign). Where the Dreadnaught was a mockery of other species, the Throne World feels like it's trying to copy them – this is what Savathun thinks the Light is, look she's changed, really! But in the end, it's more like a coat of paint slapped over a wall with a bad mold problem. The names also switch from kind of Catholic, to more magical and alchemical - Apothacary, altars, temples etc.

The Awoken are really doing the whole fantasy elf thing in a lot of ways, but more with stone than woodland than in Tolkien when we see the Dreaming City. Everything fits in seamlessly with the landscape (which makes sense since it was essentially created with wish magic to be exactly what Mara wanted!). The buildings follow the lines of mountains, pathways carved into crystal caves, the bridge which has supports like the branches of trees like they've grown up from the ground. And there's nature everywhere! But it's not a natural environment. Even when it seems like you're in nature, it's very cultivated - like the garden of a stately home which wants 'wilderness' so has landscaped it. It's also deceptive in the way you go from the 'wilderness' to these very high fantasy buildings, and then as you walk you see these technological marvels like the Oracle Engine, just integrated into it. The Dreaming City is very much portraying an image and is a very finely tuned machine in itself. I kind of wonder what the other Awoken settlements beyond the Dreaming City and the Vestian outpost look like.

Clovis Bray facilities are very minimalist and very obviously designed to make you think 'lab' and 'high technology'. He really wants you to see his stuff and have you think 'this is the future' in a way that draws 70s sci-fi ideas of the future - the way all the sharp edges are rounded off, the bright blocks of colour, the way all of the technology is very conspicuously on display, the massive windows that make all the conveyors and machinery visible. He wants to show off his stuff, and also make everyone who works there know that they're being watched. There's also the huge open spaces and massive drops like Eternity and Creation, which are utterly impractical but also feel infinite and are designed to make you go wow.

You see similar architecture on Neomuna (since Clovis was involved with the colonisation efforts) but on a much more human scale. They have a lot of the same components – the pillars and display screens, the curved bases of the walls – but they're softened with plants and murals, places to sit and socialise. It's not a lab, it's a city where people live. And also it's Neptune, they are a long way from the sun, so everything is bright and vibrant to make up for that. I think you can also see a lot of influence from the Ishtar Collective locations on Venus in Neomuna - they also tend to have a lot of display screens and neon and lots of spots for plants to grow. And then you get outside of the City and see the Veil Containment bunker and see the concrete and metal pragmatism that underpins the city.

The Iron Temple/Vostok is a place that is trying very hard to be a medieval castle with all of the statues and bonfires and the whole aesthetic of the Iron Lords. The statues of the Iron Lords all bear axes and swords. But when you look at it, you can see the very Soviet brutalist foundation of the place. So much of it is blocky concrete - the walls are squared off and unornamented, the observatory is concrete and metal. Every time I go in to where Tyra stands, I'm surprised that the pillar she's standing by is not round, because it's very easy to buy into the illusion they're projecting. There's also the concrete pillar that serves as vault and lights up when you approach - it has the technology, but like the Dreaming City, it's integrated into the landscape. Unlike the dreaming City, they really don't want to show you it.

Raputin's bunkers are just fantastic design in so many ways. They have a very clear shape (you can see the shape of a door and know immediately that this is something Warmind related), everything tends to be at right-angles. It's all very pragmatic and logically laid out. There is definitely technology there, and it's not really trying to hide, but it isn't showing off like Clovis does. Where Clovis is 70's aspirational sci-fi design, Rasputin architecture has a very Cold War vibe to it - none of the technology is flashy - it's chunky terminals running the most basic looking command line UI. It's thick cables and pipes and probably a million redundancies. The kind of tech which is designed to be found in a few centuries and still be reasonably functional. Also unhackable unless you are physically present. Rasputin is an AI so advanced that he can out-think the Vex, but his facilities are built to have the resilience of a Nokia 3310 phone, and are inspired by bunkers designed to survive nuclear war.

(I also think it's not accidental that the Warsats are made up of many angular shapes, especially triangles, trying to be a sphere, considering the whole motif of the pyramids vs the Traveller)

Pyramid Architecture is really really trying to pull off the sword logic 'pared down to remove anything extraneous' and present the idea of a universe united as one in its final shape... and is failing miserably at that. At first glance it's all straight clean lines, black stone, leaning towards brutalist, but they just can't keep it up – they're full of pillars serving no purpose, statues, coloured stone insets. Rhulk's pyramid is full of artwork painted onto the walls. There's so much symbolism built into them. They're incredibly ornate! Because as much as the Witness wants everyone to believe that it is one united force with one specific goal, it kind of isn't. It's made up of many many individuals. Even if those individuals that made it up all agreed on the final shape, it's nearly impossible to get one person to have a 100% consistent view of the universe, let alone hundreds! And especially in the Witness' pyramid ship in Root of Nightmares, you get the impression it's something of a mausoleum for its species and the other species its destroyed. There's lots of coffin-shaped and sized objects in there, and relics hidden away. It isn't as clean and focused as it would like the universe to think.

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kai525h

2 months ago