25 minutes digital sketch ^^

Okay, so it's the first day after of doing figure drawing/ gesture drawing the correct way! It's really really hard to quit my bad habit of copying the bumps of the body instead of doing everything like I'm supposed to - capturing the pose with simple lines and worrying only about movement rather than detail... It's a control freak's biggest nightmare and it's pretty hard to get used to drawing a figure in just a few spaghetti - like lines... Here are some sketches from to day to not make this thread completely empty... Any comments about how I'm doing so far? Any help would be appreciated!

I feel like I'm doing a better job at thinking through the anatomy as I draw. Observation alone can be deceptive.

Hello there ! My recommendations are the followig: I'd suggest you start by drawing the mannequin several times to get familiar with the shapes and their proportions 👉 You sould copy / study / redraw each of the poses in this plate from the famous artists course : https://bit.ly/3bMt3pH The Practice consists of draw them from the reference plate 3- 4 or 5 times until you understand it and can draw it quickly, like in 30 or 20 minutes. After that, you can try to draw them from imagination, same thing until you're confortable enough them. Then you try drawing the mannequin in different poses from photo references. Later you do the same method of practice but with simplified skeleton, then simplified anatomy plates. Even the you should start practicing with simpler poses than this one.. Anyway, that's how I learned drawing realistic figures and I was impressed at the speed at which I made progress, I also am thankful to feedbacks I got from my art instructor, and from proko Facebook groups (before this forum didnt exist ) which helped me improve quickly. I encourage you to post each of your practices here, I'd be happy to give you feedback (just tag me). With time , you'll also be better at reviewing your own work when comparing it to the reference. Best of luck !

Hi there! I'd appreciate any critique of my "2 min" gesture sketches. Thanks in advance! :)

Nice to read you =) For me, I'd say my art parents are mainly Frank Frazetta and Gil Elvgren I keep the artworks that inspire me most in this pinterest boar: https://www.pinterest.com/dudtsdodom/art-goals/ that is an evolving board where I add what inspires me most / what I'd like to e able to do .. How about you?

Hey Dudts, I like your painting, it has nice gesture. The one thing I see is that your pose feels out of balance. Even though the body may be in motion, which would work, with the body covered in clothes and being obscured, it feels out of balance. I did a quick sketch to show you what I mean and what you could do to put the figure in balance. I hope this helps :)

YES you definitely made a lot of progress ! How did you you train?

Start by reading and copying the plates of loomis book : Drawing the Head and Hands Also I recommend you see the proko videos where he speaks about the basics : https://www.proko.com/course-lesson/how-to-draw-the-head-from-any-angle/assignments Take notes

Masterful !

Here's my attempt. I haven't watched the solution videos yet, but I feel like I'm messing up the ones seen from the back.

sorry for the mess, any feedback is appreciated

- this is not a good reference - I feel you should be more assertive and accurate with the shapes : head, neck , hair - also with the shapes of the shading - the face features arent so bad but there's a problem with their placement My recommendations is that befor this type of study: - practice the loomis head - practice and memorise the reily rythms for the head - redraw from reference but only do the shapes and lines, master that before trying to shade - practice drawing and shading 3d shapes : sphere - cube - then more complex geometrical shapes - practice simplifying organic shapes into simpler geometric shapes: this will help you transfer the shading skills into shading organic shapes Hope this helps Good day !, Ghada.

- practice everyday =) - get feedback on the work - have friends that also want to improve their art fast Reach out if you would like to chat further, I'd be happy to share what i learned from my experience in art training - my Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/dudts_draws/

sketched this today, any critiques please!?

Day 01 - Rewatching Proko's Figure Drawing Fundamentals series, and doing timed gesture sessions. Looks like Croquis Cafe is now paid, what a bummer.(I mean, they should totally charge, their work is amazing, but I don't have the money right now). Anyone know a good alternative with timed sessions? Anyway, here are the photos of today's studies.

Hi Ghada, First, everything you're experiencing is universal; we're all human. We ALL have to battle with distraction and procrastination every day. The good news is that with practice and patience you will get better at achieving deep focus for longer periods of time. The following are some practical tools that worked wonders for me in conquering distraction and procrastination. A lot of the wisdom I'll be sharing comes from the book Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and The Art of Impossible by Steven Kotler and Willpower by Roy Baumeister. Lots of practical tools in each book and both backed up with decades of study and research. PRACTICAL TOOL #1 Your energy and willpower are deeply connected. Our ability to focus, make good decisions and avoid distraction takes willpower. Our will power deteriorates over the day as our energy fades. This is why most people who are trying to lose weight succumb to snacking at the end of the night. Their energy is low so their willpower is low. I experience this all the time. If I haven't gotten a good night of sleep or if I'm working at the end of the day I'm much more likely to get distracted and procrastinate. To help prevent this, analyze your day and determine at what point you have the most energy. For most people this is early in the morning. Once you've figured out when that is, try and schedule your art time then. You will have much more willpower to avoid instagram, facebook, etc... PRACTICAL TOOL #2 When changing a habit the beginning is always the hardest. This is the time to use any means necessary to help you get started. I find it helpful to not just rely on one tool but to employ multiple tools at once to guarantee success. Leveraging technology with something likehttps://freedom.to can be one of those tools. You can use it to lock down apps on your phone, tablet or computer that you find distracting during your focus time. You're basically pre-committing to focus time and setting yourself up for success. Scheduling your focus time on your calendar and guarding that time can also help a ton. Also using that calendar to keep a streak alive is super motivating. Don't break the streak! PRACTICAL TOOL #3 Bad habits are insidious and seem to happen overnight but in actuality they take a long time to manifest. The same is true with good habits. They take a long time to put in place. It has taken me years to build a daily art habit that has lasted for 9 years straight. I was able to get this far by starting small and building upon past success. Start with 20 or 30 minutes of focus time and plan it every single day, even weekends and holidays. Every. Single. Day. The best way to build a habit is through consistent incremental progress. Once you've gone a month or more at 20-30 minutes then you can begin to increase. But keep 20-30 minutes as your minimum for the super hard days. Hard days are inevitable, but you can still fall back on your minimum and celebrate progress. PRACTICAL TOOL #4 Focus on progress not goals or finished work. If you want to make skill acquisition inevitable and completion guaranteed then focus on daily progress. I've helped many artists over the years with this simple mindset change. An artist will not do any work in a day because they don't have enough time to finish something. Then those days start piling up. Soon, they've gone a week or a month without doing anything at all. But, if they would have just put in 30 minutes of work on that drawing, or painting they would have already finished it and more. Any amazing painting, drawing or digital creation you see took years to build the skills and weeks or months to complete. I'm not talking about putting in 4 hours of art time every day, even the greatest out there find that impossible to sustain. Finding an amount of time that you can consistently put in every single day is where true lasting progress happens. Consistency and longevity will beat out any mad dash. Focus on what you can accomplish today in the time you have. Put a red X on the calendar and celebrate that you showed up and did your best for that day, then do it the next day, and the next... I hope those 4 tools help. If you're skeptical about these working, which I hope you are, please checkout my website chrisbeaven.com. I started back in January 2013 and made a commitment to do art every single day for the rest of my life and used these same practical tools to set a daily minimum of 30 minutes. After 9 years and countless bad days, even a kidney transplant, I've kept my promise to myself. Through as little as 30 minutes a day I've created some art that I'm deeply proud of and just recently I had a solo show at a local gallery. Let me know if you have any more questions by replying here or emailing me directly chris@createquest.net. Thanks for reading!