
drawingdodo
added comment inDemo - Line Master Studies - Jeff Watts
19d
This was the best exercise for me so far! Really cool to actually study other people's amazing artwork, and try to understand their decisions.
All the original artwork is by Ignatius Tan, if you want you can check him out here! https://www.artstation.com/muju
5mo
Proportions are so off. LOL.
But I had so much fun doing this!

drawingdodo
19d
Great work examining a piece and deconstructing the line weight!
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19d
Could you show us the original for reference (as well as credit to the original artist), or is this an original piece?
In this case, I am studying the art of Jose Garcia, one of my favorite contemporary illustrators. I chose him because I am very attracted by his use of lines, which I think is perfect for this exercise. I tried to be as clean as possible while keeping everything learned in the rest of this course.
PS - I struggle with taking pictures of my sketchbook. I usually take it under my desk lamp, and I find it challenging to get the correct illumination (sometimes too bright when the light hits directly, or in shadow cast by the phone, etc.) Do you have any advice?
19d
Great artist to follow for this exercise, his line work is awesome!
For advice regarding the drawing itself, I think you should have maybe a bit of a darker range, for example near the upper neck, that helps make the face pop out a bit more in the original, which might be a bit lacking in your piece. Still a great looking piece, hope you had fun!
As for taking pictures, I think you should try to find an angle that gives the biggest amount of even light. Maybe, having a lamp and pointing it upwards to not create too many cast shadows. Then, when you have the photo on the PC, you should give it a pass in an image editing software, and calibrate the curves to increase the contrast to where you feel it should be. You can see Stan actually doing it several times for some of the photos he grabs from here! You don't need Photoshop for this, there are a lot of free options to do this (Krita is a full blown drawing software, but you can also do a great deal of image adjustments there, for example).
Keep it up!
Hey, @Canyon Braff! I agree with @sharksidian, drawing from life is often a great practice for most artists.
But, since you objectively mentioned you want to improve your skill of drawing from imagination, I’m afraid that just sight copying images should not get you as far as you’d like. While copying is a great way to practice our skills of observation (and that is a valid goal as well), I believe that the best practice we can invest in to improve on drawing without reference is… to practice drawing without reference.
For example, let’s say you want to spend a few minutes practicing drawing a female figure wearing a dress. Instead of just grabbing a photo and copying what you see, you could try this: imagine the pose, sketch the gesture and basic forms of the figure, then try to construct the dress on top of it, figuring out how things would work regarding form, weight, tension, wrinkles, compressions, gravity, texture, overlaps, folds… and then, when you find yourself stuck in some part of the drawing, you can take a peek at photo references to get a visual clue of that specific part - but, then, keep on working as independently as possible from copying the reference. In other words, see if you can use references as a “cheat-sheet” to help you solve drawing problems more so than something to just mimic entirely.
Of course, for this kind of imagination/memory practice to turn out successful, “theory” and previous knowledge of the fundamentals serve as a solid ground to stand on. In the example I described above, it would be essential to be familiar with the basics of figure drawing (gesture, the Bean, the mannequin, balance, proportions, a bit of perspective and anatomy) and the basics of how drapery works (tension points, gravity, folds, wrinkles, materials).
But don’t worry if this sounds like too much right now - since you mention you’re on a “beginner/intermediate” level, perhaps you haven’t studied all those topics yet, and it might be too soon to expect your practice of drawing from imagination to rely on so many different bits of information. So, if that’s the case, just be patient and keep studying and doing exercises and free practices while also remaining aware that, as you progress in your journey and get more confident with your basic skills, you might want to gradually experiment letting go of copying in order to head towards your goal of being able to draw from imagination.
Hope this helps!
1mo
This is fantastic feedback, I'm not the original poster, but this helped me as well!
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Very interesting in how dull, thick light lines still feel so much lighter than sharp, thick dark lines. The difference in perception is more noticeable than I thought, great video!
2mo
Asked for help
Since I don't have a printer, I did the assignment digitally and I have to say that I miss the adrenaline rush of being able to undo mistakes with digital work. I found the assignment quite challenging especially in terms of defining the shadows especially at the bottom.
2mo
Before and after demo
After demo tried to make a focus on internal details, but I don't feel that it turned out good
1mo
Good experiment though! But yeah, I also prefer the one of the left. Perhaps it is because there are more parts of high contrast, so it almost looks like the drawing is fighting for your attention, whereas in the first the outer contour serves to guide the viewer inward, and there, due to lower intensity in contrast, there is a "resting place" for the viewer's eyes, perhaps!
1mo
Just thought I mentioned something! I'm not sure if this is something I'm imagining, but I have a feeling like your lines could still be even more confident, and I think that speed might be a factor. Perhaps you're trying the lines too slow, or the page might be too small for the broadest strokes?
Hope this helps, and I'm glad you're having fun, page skating is a really cool exercise!
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I had a great time with this….helped me really focus on drawing and creating and gave me the push I always seem to need to finish and not give up when it seems daunting to me.
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Sloths are hilarious, so I really enjoyed studying more about them. Loved to hear some feedback on where to improve even more!
Lost the original reference I had for the rhino, but tried to do this again, this time with the knowledge learnt from the critique. Worried less about proportions, and tried to be more loose and confident with the lines, I quite liked the result!
Hi community! After watching Stan's demo and critique I wanted to try sketching again to try to put into practice what he mentions in the videos, especially the thinking of forms instead of contours and trying to find some rhythm and flow which I struggled a bit during the project. Any advice or feedback is very much appreciated. Thanks!
I think this was one of the best lessons of the entire course so far! The importance of the mindset of making mistakes is so critical, and studying with exploration in mind is something I haven't done in a long time. I'll do the whole two lessons projects again, with different images, and apply what I learned from this!
Asked for help
Tried doing an entirely different pose from the references. Inspiration comes from my cat being a dork with a string on her tail. Images are of a river otter!
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Did this one off of my pet Guinea pig.
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What to say ... Drawing by imagination is a huge weakness for me. I find it insanely hard. I had tried to draw some monkeys with references before the cats, but that was catastrophic, lol.
I need to work on that.
2mo
That's what we're here for, to learn! Hope this didn't de-motivate you to continue drawing from imagination, it's a complicated skill, but one that improves with deliberate practice!
Asked for help
Here's my attempt! First image is just small thumbnails trying to get some dynamic interesting poses, and then the second image is the final sketch, with the original thumbnail. Still ended up changing quite a bit in terms of posing and proportion, which leads me to believe I've rushed the initial sketching step a bit. I also feel like I should have spent more time thinking about the proportions first, using straighter lines, and then passing to the final curves.
Overall this was quite challenging, especially because of the amount of fur in the animal. I think I should have went something with more easily readable shapes.
Appreciate a critique if anyone is interested in providing!
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Asked for help
Here are my attempts at the three drawings. I would really like some feedback here, specifically about line weight. I feel like I'm being either too uniform, or not intentional enough about which lines to highlight.
Still this was great fun!
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Asked for help
I think my searching lines got a bit too messy on these—as evidenced by how I basically drew the hand twice, one on top of the other. I think that messiness largely stems from making my lines too dark too early. I'd put down a light line, realize it was wrong, and then, in going to correct it, put down a dark line that was also wrong. I'm definitely going to redo these, but I figured I should post them for the sake of faithfully documenting my only pre-demo attempt.
2mo
Yup, I agree with what you said! Try to keep the "loose sketch" part relatively light, and only start to apply more pressure when you feel like you got a good idea of where the line should go to