I wanted to try laying in a portrait of a random reference I found online. I knew that there were elements going wrong as I was drawing it like the shapes, angles, proportions but wanted more sets of eyes on it for specific feedback on it. I'm curious as to how I can improve my head lay-ins as I progress through my portrait learning! Thank you in advance :)

Hi Steven, I am a big fan of your work and content and I'm honored to ask you this! I started drawing a little over a year ago and have continued ever since. My skill has improved a lot more than I ever previously imagined and I love sitting down to practice. Seeing your content, I realize I struggle to commit to finished projects/pieces but now that I am on the verge of graduating, working full time as a software engineer, and with no real idea of what I truly want to do, I'm wondering two things: how should I balance my practice with projects and where do I go with my art from here? Thank you for all you do.

Hi Yang, I love gesture drawings. I hope one day I get to draw just as well. I have to ask you a question. I am trying to understand gestures and I keep at it without going further in the course. Is it a good idea to just do this and not move on, or do you recommend moving forward in the course of figure drawing and finish it and then come back to it?

Your sketches do look good but the issue I have is the gesture is a bit hard to read. It is not very clear on some of your doodles which direction the torso is bending and/or twisting. I would suggest to do more simplification excersizes? If you have the figure drawing fundamentals course, then maybe re watch the gesture lessons. Mike Mattesi FORCE book series is quite excellent too (If you are into gesture drawing, he is a treat to read) Anyhow, I hope it helps~

Hi Yang, those are looking really good, very nice sense of rhythm I do agree that your proportions are the weak spot. Looking at your drawings it appears you're kind of trying to do everything at once, which there's nothing wrong with and gives your drawings a look of confidence, but it's not the only way to draw. To help improve your intuitive sense of proportion you can bring back into that confident clean style, I recommend you do some practice where you keep your lines light initially, focus on just getting the proper placement and proportion of your shapes, then work back over that light scaffolding with your nice confident 'finished' lines. Also in general when it comes to studying anything, if you know something you drew is 'off' in some way, it is a great idea to simply draw the same pose multiple times to correct those mistakes and ingrain that knowledge. I can see you're doing this a bit, be sure to keep at it! And again, great work.