Gesture drawings - critiques please!
4yr
Smithies
Hello, here are some gesture drawings I did today from figuary day 25 (I'm very slow). I think my main issue I need to work on is line quality. I have so many sloppy wrong lines all over the place, but otherwise struggle to get anything down in the time! Is there anything else that you can see that I should be focusing on improving? Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated!
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@ranma
4yr
Hey ! I think your line quality is pretty cool ! I agree with the others comments saying you don’t have to worry about line quality and you can get more loose ! I think I read that an exercise to get looser would be to try to use one line only for each side of the arm and leg so that you are forced to prioritize a very few lines and to not care about accuracy as much as looseness. Like for example in your second page, I think the top right character could have only one C line for the top of the leg to the left, instead of two lines. (i am a learning student too ! I hope i don’t say anything wrong lol) also Proko and Marshall made a video on line quality ! https://youtu.be/AlmR-WKdi3c Even if I am personally not advanced enough to really have to care about line quality right now, I do enjoy making 10 min warmups from the exercises of Rendering in Pen and Ink by Arthur Guptill (drawing horizontals and verticals and varying the pressure on the pen) and also from the first lesson of drawabox (superimposed lines, ghosted lines, etc). anyways, really cool drawings ! Hope you have a good day !
Smithies
4yr
Thank you! I think I'm going to try doing some in pen and see if that does anything :)
Demetrio Cran
Hello. I also took the Figuary challenge (in my profile you can see some drawings from it). Therefore, I am familiar with the poses. I can tell you that you did a great job! I think you should try to change your tool, from the mark you did, I guess you are using a pencil with a normal conical point and you held it with the tripod grip. You should try the overhand grip and to expose about one inch of lead, as Stan shows in one of his videos. If you are in the mood, here is a blog post of mine about this topic https://demetriocran.wordpress.com/2021/01/23/mark-making-with-pencils-and-alike-using-the-whole-arm/
Smithies
4yr
Definitely use a conical point! I need to learn how to cut the pencil down like that. My pencil is about an inch long too so that probably doesn't help! Thanks for your feedback :)
sudip tamang
U just have to put a lot of practicing hours into this...try to copy from other artists and practice on your self later...by the way these are also good...keep up the good work
Smithies
4yr
So true! I am trying to use Reilly rhythms at the moment. I can kind of find what I think are the right lines from the front, but struggle with sides/backs/seated/supine poses so much!
James Doane
In my opinion, I would not worry too much about line quality at this point. Keep the pencil moving and be loose as you draw. As you improve, your lines will become more intentional and cleaner. By keeping loose and letting your pencil 'move freely' you are training to be intuitive and your drawing ability will improve as a result. Nice work and keep going!!
Smithies
4yr
Thanks for the feedback! I find it really hard to find the right balance between being free and being accurate!
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