Figures and a question on the drawing process
4yr
Marcin
Hey! I've been trying to learn the figure for a few months now and have never had my scribbles looked at by other partakers of the arts. Would love to hear what you guys thought about a few Gesture/Figure drawings and have any suggestions on how to continue improving.
The first two pages I tried focusing on the structure and shapes. On the last page I tried making something pretty looking in a few minutes. I don't think the last one came out all that great.
Was also wondering if you guys like to do a multiple sketches before you make a finished drawing or do you jump right into it. Maybe, draw all the layers on top of each other (i.e. shading on top of a drawing of the structure on top of a gesture drawing) or is you're drawing process completely different when working on something you want looking complete.
Done on A4 paper with 0.5mm HB lead
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4yr
I love how you are using angles of the overall pose in the first two images. That is great! I do think they need a bit more flow and one thing that interrupts the flow is a sketchy line. I'd bet they would look way more gestural and rhythmic if the line was smoother and less sketchy.
To me it looks like on your last page may be you focused too much on the contour vs thinking about gesture and structure first. I still find myself jumping too fast into contour on figures. I try to follow a step wise system though. If I'm a good boy I will first isolate what is important like the gesture (feeling and body language of pose) then more structure like the landmarks and mother forms (boxes and cylinders). I think of it like being a sculptor and first building the wire frame of the figure and bending it for the gesture of the pose. I first draw the armature of the figure (gesture drawing) then build the structure further and the basic shapes and their motion or flow (bending, stretching and twisting). Attached image is just an example of a sculptor's armature and it looks similar to our drawing gestures... all those beautiful CSI lines
Appreciate the input! Definitely have to work on my line quality. I'm having a hard time understanding what you mean by the contour vs structure. Don't you use contours to define the structure? Or by contour do you mean more the silhouette and finished lines?
Hey Marcin,
Its good to see you looking to get better at figure drawing. I thought I would show you a process that will work for you. You have the parts already in place, but you have to put them in the right order. Just know, that all the hard work happens in the gesture/structure part of the drawing. That's where you work out your gesture, structure and proportions, which is something you need to work on. I don't have the reference you worked from, but I took one of your drawings and did a draw over to show you what I mean. I hope this helps you, keep drawing :)
Nice work @Marcin! I think the first 2 have good form and look pretty good. I think you lost focus on form on the 3rd one and maybe started drawing more by contour. Overall, I think you are doing fine. You can do 'layers' to build up a finished drawing if you do your gestural work very light. I think a lot of people work that way. You can often see some of the underlying gesture below the finished work. It really depends on what style you are going for. I actually like the style of having a partially finished drawing that is mainly gestural. Keep it up!
