Town Hall Livestream with Stan Prokopenko

Hey Melanie! Great job on this! I really thought these were really awesome. I've been showing all of these to my friends and family. In terms of a critique, I'd start with simplifying your drawing a bit. Right now there's a decent impression of it being a person, but it doesn't feel like there's much going on in terms of form and structure. A good place to start would be adding some gesture to your drawing, and simplifying your lines. Right now it feel like you're drawing your anatomy as you see it, not as you understand it. At this stage in the drawing, you shouldn't be thinking about anatomy at all. The result is a bunch of independent pieces of the body that give the impression of what they're supposed to be, but don't fit together in the grand scheme of things. You should be thinking about rhythm and how the forms fit together as a whole. For example, if you take the lines you included for the rib cage, peck, and abdomen, you can simplify those into a single line. In the draw overs I've done below I tried to show how your drawing can be simplified into just a few lines. I've also done a side by side example on how I might exaggerate this pose to make it feel more dynamic. I'd recommend checking out @Stan Prokopenko's video Q&A – Gesture vs Contour and Scribbly Lines. In it he explains how gesture is all about simplifying what you're trying to draw into it's most basic form. Hope this helps! and thanks again for doing this drawing!

Hey Kadin! Really nice one lol. I've been telling everyone who did one of these this, but I've been showing my friends and family these. They're all getting a kick out of them. I really liked yours! Really funny to look at, and you did a decent job with the anatomy and proportions. What I would say is think about simplification more. Right now it feels like you're missing a lot of the gesture of the pose, and structure. It also feels like you're focusing a bit too much on the shading/ anatomy before having the fundamentals down. If you look at my example draw overs, you can see how I might simplify this drawing then use the simplification to find where to put in the shadows. If I were you, I'd check out @Stan Prokopenko's video, Structure Basics – Making Things Look 3D. In it he goes through how to use these simple concepts to create three dimensional drawings. Great job and I hope this helps

Hey Crystal! Nice drawing, and thanks for doing it. These have been getting chuckles out of my friends and family. A couple things about your drawing. The first thing I noticed is that it's long. If you take a measurement to the top of the head, to the mid point you can find the half way point. If you double that you can find the bottom of the drawing. On yours, it seems like the feet go well beyond where the bottom would be. If you do that, you'll be able to get a closer approximation on where the drawing will end. The next thing is gesture. I can tell you've been watching your structure lessons, because you're doing a good job following the planes on the body with those lines I see wrapping forms. The next step is to add some gesture to it. If you look at the center line on my draw over, you can see you can describe the body on a C curve. Same with the legs, arms, head, neck, and head. It's sort of hard to understand, I know it took me awhile. I'd recommend watching @Stan Prokopenko video Q&A – Gesture vs Contour and Scribbly Lines. In it he describes the difference between contour lines, and gesture. For me his video was very useful in understanding that concept. I've also included some images that might inspire you. A diagram of the Reilly method, the drawings of one of my teachers @Erik Gist and the drawings of an artist I admire, @Steve Huston. Hope this helps!

I think that the fact that you are asking yourself that, is enough to encourage you to seek more knowledge. I don’t think an artist has to suffer for their art at all.

lol

In my personal experience, it's because our artistic eye often grows faster than our skills - but that's natural, recognition is far easier than creation! As a beginner you don't even know what you don't know, but as an intermediate artist you've learned the ability to critique yourself and start seeing the vast amount of knowledge left that you could feasibly acquire. As to keeping up morale, I have fewer answers 😅 But key for me is that if I'm not enjoying something in art, I ask myself if it's because I'm uninterested, or just frustrated with the difficulty due to lack of knowledge/practice. If it's the first I change course, whether that be medium, style, subject, etc. If it's the second, I break down what my next step should be (sometimes it's simply asking for critique, if I don't know myself what I'm missing) and work on that skill before returning to what frustrated me. Hope that helps, would love to hear others' input also!

Hey choucader! Nice drawing! I've been showing all my friends and family these. What I'd say is to simplify your shadows and add more gesture to your drawing. Right now it feels like you put shadows where you thought they should go vs where they should go to help the forms read. I don't have time to do a draw over right this second, so I'll add some I did of others. If you want one, let me know and I'll do one. In the examples, you can see how simple the gesture is, and how much it pushes the energy of the pose. Once you have the gesture in, it's also a lot easier to find how the structure works and in turn how the shadows will go on the body. What I'd recommend is doing a draw over of your drawing. If you do, I'll go over and show you how I would do it. Hope this helps!