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Michael
•
3mo
added comment inHow to Shade a Drawing
Asked for help
After a very long time, here are my shaded figures - both in charcoal on newsprint. I followed along with Stan drawing Yoni, and definitely understood the process by the time I was doing my own attempt. However I often jumped from shadow mapping to details and vice versa. I would say that my own attempt took me 10+ hours to finish with much of that spent measuring (my arm was sore for days from holding up the pencil...). One thing I found was that the charcoal powder I used didn't seem to go very dark at all, darkest being the lower half of the figure. My linework and pencil holding technique need work - lines often didn't turn out the way I wanted them to.
When doing my own attempt I realised (perhaps too late) that you really don't need much to indicate something, Stan does mention this in one of the lessons but I think it can go much further. I looked into Lane Brown's work with much softer edges and tone, and I think that gave me the will to finish the drawing.
I'll go into Stan's portrait course next before the anatomy course, but I want to pump out as many figures as I can! I'm not sure I'll do another fully rendered figure for a long time though (quantity over quality)...
Thanks to all the instructors including @Rachel Dawn Owens, @Jesper Axelsson and @Melanie Scearce for your feedback!
•
3mo
This. Is. Incredible.
These are awesome drawings!
Moving too quickly into detail is perfectly ok. All you need is more mileage. You’re right that you should strive for quantity of drawings to get better.
You learn the most in the first hour of a drawing.
Learning to sit on a drawing for 10+ hours is also a valuable skill.
Think of it like your max lift if you were a weightlifter.
Its good to know how far you can go with a drawing and it looks like you can go very far.
This is great, I love how you rendered these.
Heres a demo of about how I go about it.
It’s like I’m bringing the drawing into focus.
I start light and fuzzy and sharpen the focus as I go, waiting for the end to add the darkest marks.
Good luck and keep going 👍
Michael
•
6mo
Asked for help
So, these took a really long time (probably more than an hour each). Some poses were easy to get the gesture for (like the first example), and others were not so easy (last example). I could definitely keep going with more drawings, but I feel like I haven't made visible progress. I had real difficulties with the shoulder/upper torso, as I just couldn't figure out the perspective of the box and how it goes into the arm. Throughout I tried to keep in mind to soften some of the forms like the torso and pelvis. Still had fun with these (most of the time!) but I've still got a lot of mannequins ahead of me.
•
6mo
These are looking great! It ok to draw slow while you’re learning. I notice your drawings are improving too.
The last one seems the most confident and smooth to me.
I made this quick drawover of your first sketch to hopefully help you out.
If the drawing feels a little overwhelming, it’s good to simplify things more. For the torso, a bean shape is the most simple to me.
You can establish the weight and balance with a bean and build the structure on top.
Your drawings are solid though. I noticed the first one felt a bit stiff, so I added more gesture. But that’s all.
Keep it up!
Michael
•
7mo
Asked for help
Here's my attempt at the Robo Bean. Didn't use charcoal like I did for the Landmarks submission as it just got too messy, so I hope this is better! I have put the drawings/references side by side in order. Had particular difficulty with twisting and foreshortening when following along with Stan's examples, so I included some here. As always critique is most welcomed :)
•
7mo
Great work! I think you did a good job finding the twists in these poses. I think especially for the poses where the model is bending backwards, you can push the squash and stretch of the ribcage against the pelvis even more by looking at the angles of the bottom of the ribcage and the top of the pelvis. These are beautiful studies, keep up the good work!
Michael
•
7mo
Asked for help
Here are my few landmark attempts. Struggled to find the scapula on the back reference. Any feedback is very much appreciated!
Michael
•
10mo
Asked for help
This excercise definitely took a long time. I found that the less dynamic the pose, the harder it was to make them look 3D. After looking at LOTS of examples, getting the gesture down and many more attempts at the drawings here, here they are! I have also gotten good practice drawing cubes and cylinders by themselves, although applying them to organic forms is a very hard task. Want to revisit this task later on as well. Critique much welcomed :)
Michael
•
11mo
Asked for help
Some beans :)
Really had trouble with twists - I would add in twist lines for most poses even though they were only slightly twisting. Once I got the hang of it, only my line quality held me back. Would appreciate feedback!
They look good! I've been working on these too. The bend and stretch is easy to see in yours. The center lines feel like they're accurate and convey a spine really well. I had trouble with twists, but I think you did great! Line quality looks best on the first image, but neither are lacking. Everything has nice flow. Well done!
Michael
•
1yr
Asked for help
Hi everyone, here's a sample of my 2 minute gestures. Loved doing these, but I'd really like some feedback on how to improve! Thanks :)
Hey there!
I really like how you're using simple, smooth-looking lines for your gestures! They look very clean and easy to read.
I can see that you're drawing some of the contours of the body though, which seems to be adding a little bit of stiffness with the pose and awkwardness with the proportions. For gesture drawings specifically, I'd recommend shortening the time from two minutes to about a minute to start off with. This forces you to focus on the movement and gesture of the pose rather than the contours. I try to make the my gestures 30 seconds for the reason, since I know myself to get super bogged down in details if I give myself any longer than that.
I also notice that you sometimes push the pose and that's great!! More of that too, please!
Great job so far, keep up the great work!
•
1yr
Hi @hermitsketcher, nice drawings! Good rhythms!
- What are your art goals? What type of work do you want to create? Feel free to share examples, by artists that you admire.
Knowing your goals might help me guide you better, since if you want to do animation for example, there is a certain focus on gesture, whereas if you want to do Florence Academy type drawing for example, you might have optical accuracy as your main focus.
- To improve your gesture drawings, I would try to be more clear about where the weight is. Before you start to draw, ask what part is carrying most of the weight. Feel the pose, imagine striking it yourself. You might even want to get up and try the pose yourself to actually feel it (assuming that the pose is safe to strike XD). Capturing the gesture is a lot about feeling the pose yourself. I attached a slide with some tips on weight. In short: weight causes things to bend. How much it bends depends on how heavy the weight is and how strong the thing is.
- The proportions could be improved on. Thinking of the body as built out of clear pieces, with certain proportions could help. You've drawn from the same model here, so the proportions of the pieces won't change from pose to pose. In the bottom right drawing you've made the torso much longer, suggesting that you were now drawing from a model with different proportions.
It goes a long way to note, that the halfway point of the body is at, about, the crotch.
Considering the bilateral symmetry of the body is also important. The corresponding parts, such as the upper arms, have the same size, only mirrored. Getting this right is important, and something I struggle with.
In short, start to be curious about proportion! Don't stress over it. It could get in the way of your focus on gesture. But start to be curious about it and ask yourself questions like "which one is thickest, the upper leg or the upper arm?" "Where does the leg attach to the hip?" "What's the angle between these points?" "How long is an arm in relationship to the torso?" "How many heads down from the chin is the belly button?" etc.
I hope this helps :) Keep up the good work!
