Draw-a-box has a discord already if you want to join that. It’s available on their web page above the log-in button along with the other social media links. If you’re planning on creating your own discord you should probably make a post in Art Lounge when you do.

I’ve been trying to get back into drawing in notebooks after picking up Drawabox again and found that what helped me best was doing reference mashing. After collecting a bunch of references of poses and characters that interest me I’d sit down and draw two of them for reference/practice. Then I’ll take those two pictures and try and merge them taking elements from both. It’s helped me get back to drawing outside of just exercises and warm-ups for the last two weeks.

I found myself making many of the errors that Stan talked about in his gesture videos before reading a suggestion by another user on the forums who mentioned skipping the timer and focusing on line economy. You could try re-watching Stan’s videos and then taking a pose and doing the bare minimum for lines. Circle for the head, single lines for the limbs, and then only a few lines for the important parts of the torso. Draw slowly and focus on making solid/flowing CSI lines. Try that for a few pages or sessions and then increase your amount of lines. Circle for the head, a line or two for the neck if needed, two strokes for each limb, and then more lines for the torso but still focusing on flow and staying away from only contour. Also, don’t be afraid of exaggerating the pose which is something I struggled with at first. Those are some things that have helped me recently.

There’s something about the facial expression that I can’t put my finger on. It’s like he’s more bored or disinterested than anything else. Seems out of place while he’s being attacking and the log bridge has collapsed beneath him. Otherwise, very good work!

My first thought on this was to put cross contours on an object you’re familiar with and then do a rotation with it so you’d draw it at several angles as you rotate it toward your view. I found an article on Love Life Drawing on this topic that includes that. https://www.lovelifedrawing.com/powerful-exercises-in-foreshortening/ I hope this is what you’re looking for and it helps you out.

Hello David, If you’re completely new to drawing I’d suggest starting with DrawABox and a couple of books first before jumping into Proko’s stuff. DrawABox is free and the first couple of lessons are good for drawing fundamentals and simple shapes as well as thinking about drawing in 3D space. It’s available at drawabox.com. The book I started learning drawing with was Betty Edwards’s Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. If you don’t have any experience drawing the book has some great stuff to get you started. It introduces you to blind contour drawing exercise and drawing reference images upside-down to get past your symbol system and look at drawings as a collection of separate elements. I’d also recommend Andrew Loomis’ Fun with a Pencil. It also helps ease you into constructive drawing and building things from simple shapes. All of Loomis’ books are good but that one is made for easing beginners into drawing. If you’re just looking for a Proko course recommendation I’d recommend Mitch Leeuwe’s How to Draw Animal Characters. It covers the basics of construction drawing for animals and anthropomorphic characters. Think cartoon rabbits, raccoons, squirrels, and characters with more human form and posture. Best of luck!

From what I understand gesture, the bean, robo-bean, and mannequinization are all related to one another at the end. Gesture is the emotion or energy of a pose, the bean is the simplest way to represent the orientation of the two major masses of the torso, the robo-bean is a way to provide structure to the bean, and that leads into mannequinization which provides structure for the entire body and a way to generalize the body so you can work on drawing the human body in any pose from any angle. The bean and robo-bean are more stepping stones on the way to mannequinization than separate things. Gesture is the energy so your drawings don’t look stiff and boring and mannequization is the structure you’re looking to apply to the gestural flow of the pose. I hope that’s correct and helps you out.

This course looks really good, but is there any reason to purchase it before march 3rd?