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Kevin C
•
1yr
Recent self portrait I did for self portrait day. Was pretty happy with this one.
Kevin C
•
2yr
Asked for help
A few of my landmark drawings. Enjoyed this one and definitely got more in the swing of things the more drawings I did (posted here from oldest to most recent). I definitely found the landmarks of the back the hardest to visualize. I would draw the PSIS, the delt and then being like "uhh ok, hard to see from here." Though I tried.
•
2yr
Looking good, there's a big improvement from the oldest to the most recent--so good work :)
For the back, after already having placed the ribcage, spine, and PSIS, what helps me the most is to start off with the scapulae, as this serves as a key landmark for the major muscles of the back, like the trapezius, erector spinae, and placement/connections to the arm. Placing the scapula first also gives you information about how the muscles will stretch or compress against it.
Also, continue to look out for the rhythms of the body's structure, as the body has a natural asymmetrical ebb-and-flow rhythm throughout. Even looking at it for a more general gesture, the way the figure is posed will often have some compression and stretch occurring, so being aware of it is helpful information to both your initial lay-in and the form of the muscles on the body as they respond to the motion.
Hope this helps!
•
2yr
Hi @Kevin C, nice drawings! The boxes and cylinders look pretty good, and I think you did a good job simplifying the animals😎👍
- I would recommend considering the ground plane as well. This will anchor the animals more, and it will help you with placing the feet.
- The boxes and cylinders could be even stronger, so keep playing with them.
BOXES
Most of the time the edges are converging, but in the paws of the lion, the edges of the boxes are diverging.
Try drawing some more single boxes. Draw through (lightly), as if they were made out of glass, for an extra level of structure control (and challenge 😎) and try to make the convergence even better. You could extend your lines beyond the boarders of your box, with a ruler, as a way to check if the edges seem to go to the same point. Only extending them a little bit, not all the way to the vanishing point, is often enough to spot errors.
I would also encourage you to do some more drawings where you play with placing the primitives in the same space, as in the top left of image 1. Add a ground plane. Keep in mind what edges are parallel. If they are rotated back in space, then they should share vanishing point.
Think of which planes are level to the ground, and if you have two boxes rotated the same way, only with different placement in the space, they will share vanishing points.
CYLINDERS
I attached two slides with cylinder tips. You get most things right, but the shape and openness of the ellipses could be improved on sometimes.
I hope this helps :)
Kevin C
•
2yr
Asked for help
Submitting some of my beans. Some I tried to do pretty quickly. Some I tried to take my time with and thing of "as a finished piece" like Stan said in one of his critiques. Overall, pretty happy with these. Fun to do as warm-ups. Apologies, switched sketchbooks halfway through, so the last two are on gray paper.
•
2yr
Looking good👍
You might appreciate using the bean in some gesture quicksketches, so that you get to put it into the context of telling the story of a pose
- You might benefit from doing this Warmup - Mushrooms to build more confidence in drawing round forms.
Cheers!
Kevin C
•
2yr
Asked for help
Hello! Would greatly appreciate a critique. Attached some of my better ones here. Honestly feeling quite down on myself about these. Believe it or not, I would say I’m actually quite good at portrait drawing where i spend hours taking careful measurements and proportions, so these timed figures are kind of kicking my butt.
To critique myself first: I feel like my proportions are just bad. Like i said, don’t do much figure work (hence the course), so I feel like my mental model of how long any given limb or section should be is totally off. I know that’s not the point of these drawings, but I feel like it’s dragging down the gesture of everything, specifically in the limbs. I feel like they’re constantly either too thin or too wide.
I also feel like my lines are too hesitant and I suffer from going over the same line multiple times. Some of my better two minute poses were when I committed myself to only doing one line and just taking what I get (such as my ones in pen here).
Very hard to strike the balance of proportion and fluidity on such a tight timetable. Would love to hear a critique. Hoping that my sense of proportion will get better as I move on with the course, thus increasing my sense of gesture. But as of now, feeling a bit deflated.
•
2yr
Hey, @Kevin C! I can imagine how contrasting it must feel for you to do these timed gesture quick sketches since you’re more used to carefully measured portraits.
I like to think of gesture and proportions as separate things because it makes it easier for me to juggle them in a drawing. I think it can be comforting to know that we don’t have to nail proportions in a gesture sketch - flow and “life” should be the priority. If we are to take a gesture drawing and develop it further, we can always adjust proportions later. Of course, over (a lot of) time and practice, as we level up our skills and get more and more familiar with the process, better proportions are likely to find their way into even the quicker sketches, but, generally, it’s totally okay if the proportions go off several times when we’re sketching, especially while we’re learning to focus on gesture.
I think your work look good! One thing I’d recommend is to experiment more with exaggeration. Consider what’s the main idea of each pose (Tilting? Leaning? Twisting? Gravity? Some other type of force or stretch?) Then, on each sketch, try and push the idea further: enhance the twist, or make the leaning more intense, or look for a way to emphasize the weight or force involved in that motion.
If doing timed gestures is too much pressure for you right now, try a few quick sketches without any time constraints. Take as long as you need to analyze the pose and figure out the motion and how to represent it in just a few lines. Then, draw every line mindfully, with full awareness of your arm movements and of the marks you’re producing. Try to find a comfortable speed, not too fast or too slow. It’s okay if each drawing takes much more than 1 or 2 minutes in this kind of practice, just make sure you’re really focusing on the gesture, and not on other aspects of the drawing such as measuring, contours, anatomy or details. Then, when you’re ready, you can try the timed gestures again.
Also, don’t worry if you need to go over the same line various times or if the drawing comes out “messy” - several seasoned artists have “messy” lines in early stages of their sketches, and it can take years of deliberate practice to get to a point of being able to do very clean quick sketches like Stan does. If having cleaner lines is really important for you, just keep this goal in the back of your mind as a long-term achievement so you can slowly and deliberately direct your practices towards that skill.
Hope this helps! If you have any other comments or questions, please feel free to let me know.
Best of luck!
Hi Kevin, I am not sure if you are struggling with the same as I do. When I watch gestures of good drawers the fluidity of the drawings is that what's most striking to me. IMH the most important concept/part of proko's video starts at 13:20. The better gesture drawings you made follow this concept picture 4/6. If think that if you build the legs/arms with 4 curves with opposite curves (the flow) see 14:03 I think you get what you are looking for...
