I thought I had lost my mind again when I looked back up at the video while drawing and all of a sudden there were all these hand construction drawings on the sheet. Nope. Just an edit. Anyway, a couple more things clicked for me in this lesson. The biggest thing: The landmarks are as you have said, places where the bones are visible through the skin, right? So when doing the tilts and masses the obvious thing is that they are great indicators of the angles of the masses and to some degree the extent of the mass. BUT WAIT! THERE's MORE! I kept getting stuck on contour when doing the gesture, something that has always been an issue for me when doing FORCE gesture a la Mike Mattesi. But suddenly, after having to go back and fix some of the earlier stages, to really lock in the idea of using the pencil/stylus as a sculptural tool, it suddenly clicked! When thinking about the perspective of the arms and legs, and using boxes and cylinders, these landmarks, like the edge of the ulna and the distal end of the radius for example, these dictate the extent of the form we'll use to tack the anatomy onto. So keeping the forms in 1 and 2 point perspective, not tapering to show depth but using 'above/below; towards/away' thinking, instead, we set ourselves up really nicely for that. I was always drawing the forms much wider or larger than they needed to be. MY BRAIN KEPT TRICKING MY HAND! It wanted to get to the drawing of the model, and stick with the abstractions that will serve the overall final result much better than trying to go straight at the model as a model. I hope that makes sense.

Finally got some time and focus to complete this, drawing along, and here are the results. Near the end of the last construction, SMH talks about starting anatomy too early without a solid foundation of construction. MAN OH MAN DO I RELATE! I have some examples of single drawings that'd take me hours to complete because I lacked solid construction below and that's on me. I RUSHED to the Anatomy due to time pressure I placed on myself, given my personal situation and it always takes longer. As I move forward and practice this, I think it will be so much easier to add the anatomy and drapery to this rather than spend all my energy and interest in a drawing on just getting it to look convincing.

I just noticed that Stan's lower half disappears in the black band of the The quintessential tidbits for me: 1) Start with the mid, remove the lights, add the darks. 2) "Key" the image! Is it overall light or overall dark? If it's high-key, an overall light image, What is the lightest value, then decide where in relation to that is the mid and dark? If low key (overall dark), start with the darkest value and put the others in relation to that. 3) This whole exercise is about grouping the values into a clear structure that captures the important information. So we have to interpret what the groups are, and that can be subjective, especially as Stan points out with the Sarolla painting. 2 Value and we need to keep the context clearly readable: silhouettes, of the subjects should be clear. 3 Values, the same, but now we can add more information, more context! A little fun at the end. quick n dirty

Love what you said about the cheating part Stan. I tattoo for a living, and this is a big part of the industry ever since IPads came out. Lots of tattooers rely on these simple quick cheats, but have no idea how to draw. They’re fantastic to save time and be efficient, but too many people rely on them as a crutch to carry them, and not a tool to help them.

@Stan Prokopenko Hey! So to get rid of the slight gradation, there's no need to create a new transition point. Instead, just drag that already existing back colour handle alllllll the way over to the right, and nestle it up against the white, as far as it will go without taking over the white Value handle. Annnnnd BOOM! What's happening is that the range of goes from 5 to 95% of the distance between the two handles, so there's always that 5% that will exist between the two values. By moving the black colour handle all the way over to be as close to the white one, it makes the range of values it's compressing into between the white and black soooo small, that that 5%, is %5 of something super small. Imperceptible! (In Vizzini's voice of course.) If you want 3 values, you do have to make another handle for the mid-tone (I used 50% neutral grey), but by doing the same this as above, and moving the black over to the grey, you get the same effect. Since there will still be that 5% of the range that's given over to the blended edge, but as there is also much less of a contrast between the 50% grey and the pure white, it doesn't make a big impact on our perception. Hope that helps! Your friend Josh, (AKA @The.Y.Method)

This is an amazing evolution of all the work I've been doing with Mike Matessi over the last few years. I just never really made the connection that you've so excellently shown re gesture. There are as many forms of gesture as there are schools of thought on learning to SEE what we're looking at. His method of seeing forces flowing through the subject is an excellent way to learn to see the body as a machine. His voice is constantly in my head here: Force follows function, so that really helps when setting up the gesture and to push it, and exaggerate the angles to make things read more clearly. Your process makes his process make more sense and vice versa. Here's a screen shot of the draw-alongs and notes from them.

Annoying me? Nah. The insights are excellent and the view into your process is super helpful. So, can I assume then, that from stage 5, if you're going to costume the figure, you don't necessarily need to get to anatomy? I say this because I can imagine that when there are costumes that don't completely cover a portion of the body, say the upper body, you're gonna need to add the anatomy (or as much of it as you need/want to)?

@Michael Hampton I like this version of the map a bit better than Loomis' version for proportion. Simpler and easier to remember. A couple questions on the legs: (I know they weren't covered and it's not about skeleton properly) Loomis puts the width of the lower legs at the calves at about a head wide. Where would you place the ankle bones? Loomis doesn't seem to explicitly say but looks like around 1/3 up from the heels. would you say the same for these? Quick question about the base of the neck in front and back view. I noticed that the back of the neck in front view isn't as high as it is the back view. Was that just an oversight? Should the first subdivision of the second segment of the body be divided into halves twice to get the back edge or is the back view incorrectly placed and should be lower at that first halving like in the front view?

This tree is wonderful, Tom! I've been practicing drawing tree lately, largely from reference and field guides, which give examples of different trees, their silhouettes, growth patterns, leaves, flowers, and fruit. I noticed many areas where this drawing is succeeding. For example, the line weight is doing a great job of conveying what parts of the tree are in front of the others, especially the branches, trunk, and leaf edges in the masses of foliage nearest the viewer. Here are a couple thoughts on how to grow even stronger drawing trees! I love the serpentine forms wrapping around the trunk, as well as the roots, but they strike me as too similar in size and shape, almost parallel to one another. Try varying the thickness of these masses and their direction for greater viewer interest. Study the roots of old Dawn Redwoods (Metasequoia glyptostroboides) for examples of this phenomenon. Another idea to try is to include some openings or gaps between the roots or hollows in the tree trunk, which Dawn Redwoods showcase well too. A similar problem may be happening with the foliage masses. The overall round shape for them is great, as many trees do have that general form, but we can make the foliage much more interesting and realistic if we cut into those forms to create complex edges to the silhouette of the tree. For example, trees usually grow in a genetically determined pattern unique to each species, but the unique circumstances of their growth, like storms, wind, frost, location, sun, insect predation, disease, shade, and more force the tree to adapt to the specific conditions of its location, leading each individual tree to grow differently. I think one of the aspiring artists below offered a similar insight with the idea of turning the tree into a character, which I agree with. Play around with the edges of the leaf masses. See what happens when a branch juts outward with a cluster of leaves, breaking the overall silhouette and try making gaps in the foliage around the edges and within the larger over masses of the foliage: shapes within shapes within shapes! Experiment with the patterns and get lost in them. If you do work from reference, please don't feel you need to capture exactly the pattern of branches and leaves. Just shoot for expressing the general feel of the tree, and let your imagination take over! I attached reference photos I took of a Norway Maple (Acer platanoides) and Red Maple (Acer rubrum) below you can use to see how the leaf masses work. Another source you might like to check out is J.D. Harding's On Drawing Trees and Nature. This manual is from the Victorian period, so the language is definitely old-fashioned, but I've found it helpful as a guide while studying trees. I hope these thoughts are helpful for you on your art journey!

I considered this one for my own studies and yeah it is pretty great. That last part of the video where you talk about the lightness of the spear before the hadn't and then darkened again behind the hand is interesting because lighting wise, I would assume that behind the rider, the shaft would be lighter and in front darker, but logic can't get in the way of making a clear read of the image and it might not work if the "real" lighting were used instead.