Are there situations/subject matter that you cannot draw as orthos? The hand example is a good one - since the fingers are not ever really in a parallel alignment in hand poses, there will always be parts within the hand that are oblique view…and therefore in perspective/three axes…? I guess the room with lots of objects rotated randomly to each other would be another example. How would you approach these when trying to understand the object before jumping into putting into perspective?

Really nice explanations. I get a sense that you introduce an accessible approach in parallel to the more complex considerations like weight distribution, body language/ emotional representation and customization of poses. My attempts at gesture have always felt clueless due to lack of a systematic approach, lack of anatomical knowledge and so on….so really appreciate this lesson….i should have watched it before attempting the project!

Some gesture master studies of Moebius’ Blueberry characters. Number 4 was most successful. I was most frustrated with my line quality. Your lines are so much more elegant and flowing Michael!

As a geologist by profession, this assignment was close to my heart. Some great tips by Philip in there and this was a neat exercise for practicing forms, designing on the fly and making things look 3D….lots of little learning clicks as you just draw. These are my final efforts inked over pencil with lots of erased poor designs and dead ends….lost the construction unfortunately. Some discussion in the video and notes on cracks, how they originate and how they are distributed….I’ll have to bite my tongue and spare you the details but to be honest, expert knowledge of subject matter kind of gets in the way…you get distracted by non-visually meaningful logic busts that would only matter to another boffin 😂

recreation of the ‘standard’ plus played around a bit to see how different proportion and angle ideas would look

Great explanation Michael, I definitely draw hands too short, legs too long, butt too high and so on. Would it help with gesture to know at least some basic anatomy of muscles and bones or are these big ideas, as you say, enough for this course? Guess we’ll pick up some anatomy along the way - really cool how easily you drew that arm. Cheers.

This was as fun as it was challenging! I really tried to focus on simplification with the markers. Working through multiple iterations of the comp really reinforced shapes and designs so moving on to the larger thumb I felt more confident about the start of the sketch. Going to keep 3 value markers handy from here on out!

Level 1 only for this project unfortunately….ironic since it is a rare, luxuriously long project deadline! Anyway, I may have overfocused on various crops, but this and inserting ‘story’ suggesting value shapes into the background was the most fun aspect. Blow ups are my two favorites.

Sneaking in a 2nd attempt just before the submission deadline. I rushed through the blobs phase on first attempt to get to boxes, but this meant some randomness in the result. Spent more time on the blobs here and really tried to pre-visualise what view each blob would represent…so more intention. Not sure I succeeded in getting more consistency - different scale vs different views vs different degrees of intended foreshortening seems to be too much to maintain consistent proportionality of the different forms to each other. Also got a bit out of my depth trying to put a sphere in the box for the head…guess that lesson is a bit further down the line 😁

Had some long overdue home DIY before I could start this project. Fixing a leaky bathroom tap led to a cosmic resignation that the replacement valve cartridge was as good as anything to draw. Pretty dry subject matter (sorry). Studied it for a few minutes then copied Peter Han process in demo of steam train and started with an ortho to eyeball up the proportions of different sections. Then simplified to 4 forms, then a blob. Next, drew a load of blobs in different orientations. Cross contours were used as markers for the tops of each different form as a rough proportion guide. Thought about different degrees of foreshortening whilst blobbing these out. Converted to boxes with a messy pencil phase, then stuck some tracing paper over and inked with some line weight variation. Finished with some ellipses in boxes practice from the Drawing Basics course to create the lowermost form (1). Learned a few things… i) Overlapping forms create an appearance of offset from centre. Saw Peter Han do this with the cow guard of the steam train, I understood why, but only once I saw him do it. I’d never have done that if I’d been drawing cos I would not have known to. Constructing forces it to happen. ii) After drawing the ortho and simplifying to four boxes, there was zero need to revert back to the object itself - which was both revelatory and practical…cos it’s round and does not sit still on my sloping desk. Again, constructing means you just needed to draw some boxes. iii) I used a fat, blunt, soft lead mechanical pencil for the messy blob to boxes part. At first I thought I should switch to a hard, fine point pencil due to the smudgey mess…but actually the blunt soft lead meant I felt much looser and the lines were more forgiving so it was way easier to construct. iv) some viewing angles produce boring drawings! v) Hard to be perfectly consistent with proportions for all orientations done free hand but guess that is not the point here. After I finished the blobs, I could not be sure that they were gonna be at all useful but they actually were. Trust the blobs! (But ignore the bits that don’t perfectly match the subject)