These are my barbarians for assignment 3. I would like to get better at creating interesting poses to show off more of their personality, but I can definitely see how shapes play a pretty key role in communicating character!

Hey Joseph! I have personally tried A5, A4 and A3. In my experience A5 can be a bit limiting as it is a bit too small and doesn't have much room to capture flowy gesture & figure drawing. A3, can be good because it is quite large so there is lots of space to play with and you can fit quite a few drawings. My personal favourite though is A4, it is a happy size medium between the two, with enough space for gesture and figure drawing. I think the benefits of choosing A4 over A3 are that it is more transportable, it can help to kind of limit how much space you have (so as to not go overboard, but without being as limited as A5). I personally always have an A3 and A4 sketchbook on the go, with A3 being mainly for specifically larger pieces. I do all my gesture study on A4. As far as paper type, I think any standard art journal paper is good enough for pen and pencil, but if you experiment across mediums you will have different needs. But, this is all very personal and unique to everybody! You should definitely have a go at all sizes and paper type, and see if you can identify any limitations or challenges.. then you can develop a preference based on your own experience :) Hope this is helpful!

Disney Master study assignment.

Hey Jo! Overall this is a cool painting, but I have a couple of thoughts to share that might help :) 1. I think perhaps you could explore anatomy a little more, in this particular character her torso seems quite thinner than it should be. I find that remembering the rib cage is generally quite close in width to the pelvis can help with a balanced composition! 2. The purple and yellow are great colour choices as they compliment each other marvellously! The only issue with your colour choice that I can see is the purple of the shirt doesn't stand out from the purple behind it in the background. I think if you changed the purple of the background it could make your character stand out more than it currently does. Hope this is helpful!! Good work 🙌

Hey Crystal! I like this pose you have chosen to draw :) I agree that your original sketch looks better than your second, but only because it has a bit more fluidity In your second attempt I think maybe you lost some of the fluidity at the cost of creating a version that is a bit closer to the reference picture. I feel as though you are really on the right track with it, but that you could probably try to accentuate some parts of the pose - perhaps referring more to your looser gesture drawings than the original reference might help with choosing where to accentuate! You captured the movement of the gesture really well in your initial sketch! I hope this is helpful in some way! 🥰