Hey MJ, I agree with @Simon L about the background, and the overly soft brush work. I would add a few specific things that I noticed. The drawing has some proportion issues, some of which it looks like you fixed in the painting stage. I did a quick sketch over your drawing, without the reference, but just what I think looks correct. You'll see I made the leg longer, defined the lower leg, and added mass to the head and thinned out the neck. Also, the chest you drew doesn't relate to the rest of the torso, in other words, it looks disconnected to the rest of the body. The rendering problem I noticed has to do with how you draw the core shadow. When you make it the sharp of an edge, it really flattens out the form. I did a quick painting of the arm to show you how adding transitions in and out of the core shadow helps turn the form in a more convincing way. I hope this helps :)

Hi, nice work! I'm not competent enough in anatomy to feedback on that, I can however give some thoughts about the digital drawing. The main issue for me is that the texture in the background is in focus, whereas the character isn't. Also, be careful when using a textured brush over parts that are blended, now there's sort of islands of sharpness in the drawing (where the textured brush has been used). Don't blend/smudge everything, that's when you get that "digital" feel to it, instead, commit to values and planes and blend in the transitions. PS I blurred the background, see how the eye is drawn to the character and not to the right side of the picture :)

Hi all, This is my first post here so i want to express my gratitude for this amazing site that gave me the charge and the hope to improve my drawings.  I started the figure drawing foundamental course few month ago and despite of my slow progress i feel that something is going better from the first attempts, so i want to share some of my works on gestures. At the moment i'm trying to solve many problems (Messy lines, Proportion, Foreshortening, Twisting) so i hope in your critics and suggestions.

Hey Christopher! Nice work on completing some gesture drawings. One suggestion I might make is to use a darker pencil next time or maybe scan your images in. As they are, it is a bit difficult to see the drawings, in my opinion. Another suggestion I might make is to simplify your lines. Try to confidently use as few lines as necessary to describe the figure and resist the temptation to go back in over the lines over and over again. A confident line that is a little bit off usually looks better than many scratchy lines. Hope this helps!

Lots of useful replies here already but thought I'd throw in my two cents. When I start to hit a rut, it usually helps me to think about why I want to be better at art and drawing in the first place. What is your goal with your art? I usually find that by meditating on why I want to be an artist combined with setting small goals - for example, do a portrait sketch every day this week or sketch for 15min every morning after a hot beverage - I start to feel motivated again and get back into the routine of things.

Unfortunately for me, I'm a Mac user. However, this seems like it would be super useful for gesture drawing sessions and any short timed work. Thanks for your efforts to explain how to set this up!

I don't have Stan's portrait course but do have a bit of experience drawing portraits. If realistic portraits are what you are going for, a good way to tell if you are on track is to overlay your drawing onto the reference image in photoshop or similar software and reduce the opacity of your drawing (if done traditionally.) You will be able to see areas where your proportions or shapes are different from the reference image and make changes accordingly. I know for me, drawing portraits was very challenging and tricky at first. Not to say I'm a master now, but what helped me to improve the most after learning the basic methods of drawing the face was to practice a lot. And by a lot, I mean I've drawn around 3500 faces. I know it's said often, but drawing more will help you train your eye to observe the shapes and structures of the face, eye, mouth, ect until it almost becomes intuitive. Hope this helps!

Similar to what was already mentioned, working through the course a week at a time is overall a decent plan. Of course, if you feel like you are struggling to apply the concepts in a lesson, maybe slow down and take a few extra days on it. Doing gestures often, or even every day is a good way to warm up and improve. Here's a link to a video Stan talks about how to use his courses. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFB7deiL-3s&list=PLVeITADsnvo783qR_sIreWZOIhPwjhJdb&index=4&ab_channel=Draftsmen Hope this helps!

Overall, it looks to me as you understand the idea behind 30sec gestures. I would say the best way to improve from here would be to do a whole lot of them, as in hundreds or thousands. This will help you build up your mileage and lead to improvements.