Reddit reviews Dynamic Wrinkles and Drapery: Solutions for Drawing the Clothed Figure

Ah yes, this is frustrating. The thing about ink drawing, is that you must pay extremely close attention to line weight and contour at all times. Because you do not have color or value, you must be extremely creative in how you vary the two aforementioned elements.

First, lets take a look at how the old masters tackled this with ink. Here is Durer

See how he doesn't actually draw folds on the inside of the cloth, but merely takes a fine tip and draws parallel cross contour lines?

Here is a da Vinci
Do you see how much Durer learned from da Vinci? Very similar handling of the contours. What I recommend for you, is studying drapery more, so that you can more effectively predict where the big folds are going to be.

In all drapery, there are what I like to call major and minor folds. Major folds are the ones that define the form and cast the largest shadows, and the minor folds are all the other tiny ones in between. When inking, its all about picking and choosing a few major folds to give the illusion of cloth.

I prescribe this book to you. Hogarth was an ink artist as well, and while his drawings are always exaggerated, they make a lot of sense. Spend some time copying his work out of the book, and cloth should become second nature to ya.

This is one of my favorite books for things like this.

I should study wrinkles. I have a book about that, for Pete's sake, but never came around reading it.

I'm sorry I couldn't be more helpful than this.

Nice! I totally planned to come here and be like "Criticism welcome? Well your friends think you talk too much" but this is too dope of a painting to be a jerk. Overall I think you've done a tremendous job, if you're looking for some constructive criticism, I would take a closer look at how fabric moves - there are some great resources online you can reference (https://www.amazon.com/Dynamic-Wrinkles-Drapery-Solutions-Drawing/dp/0823015874). But really stellar job overall!

First thing, stop insulting your art. Especially if you want to do this as a profession and not a hobby. I know it's hard when you're first learning and especially when your eye develops over your ability to make things.

To quote Joseph Fink,
> Hey, if you're submitting anything to anyone for any reason, never preface it with "It's not very good, but here goes" or similar. Because here's the thing: If you don't think it's good, why are you asking anyone else to bother with it? Either stand behind it or don't. You may think it sounds endearingly humble. But if someone has hundreds of submissions and they see "this is not very good" from the artist then they'll say "oh, ok" and delete it. The artist should know, after all. Either stand behind your art enough to say "this is worth your time" or don't ask anyone to put any time into it.

It isn't humble and it doesn't come off that way to others, it comes off in lacking self confidence and being self pitying and it will really hurt you as an artist career wise and growth wise. I'm serious. Destroy this habit before it takes root right now.

Also, there is plenty you can ask for in tips on this. Study clothing folds and how it moves before jumping into the full outfit. Here is a free chapter on more realistic clothing and folds for free and if you have some money to spend Dynamic Wrinkles and Drapery is my personal favorite book on clothing. Don't work off mannequins on clothing because clothes will often lay on them somewhat unnaturally and stiff. When I was back in early drawing classes one of our first assignments was to draw clothes balled up on the floor to practice organic shapes and folds. Then we moved onto clothes on people, especially people in movement of some sort. Keep practicing on it, especially if you feel you need to improve.

I hope you feel better and your practice goes well this week. :)

Burne Hogarth's book Dynamic Wrinkles and Drapery is a good book on it. He explains the underlying concepts so you understand how fabric folds and creates wrinkles.