Lin
added comment inHow to Draw Cylinders and Ellipses
5d
When you draw an ellipse/minor axis first, how do you correctly then construct the plane around it? There are no clues this way around. This is the most common way and I don’t understand how to do it so I can then check the back one.
20d
Michael, I've only been drawing for 7 months now but it hasn't been easy. Very little remains from each practice session even after 6-8 hrs of daily practice through these months (it's the way of art, isn't it, with it being a marathon not a sprint). However, what I've learned from you has instantly stuck to me and I am just so grateful. You explain things succinctly and well, and it just resonates with me - so I wanted to say thank you so much. :D
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6mo
Thanks for the video Stan. Every time I watch a video of you doing / talking about your process for using rhythms for gesture drawing I gain more insight to ways of thinking of, and going about tackling, your method for rhythms and gestures. After watching this video I feel like I have a lot of room to explore using longer rhythm lines.
I watch Michael Mattesi’s Force Fridays every week, and he has a different method for thinking about rhythms which concentrates on the rhythms of the forces of motion and gravity that move through the body, instead of drawing longer rhythm lines. In his case, the longer rhythm lines would be the imaginary lines that connect the lines that you draw, flowing that force from the one line to the apex curve of the next opposing sides line. So I had to adjust to the way that you go about it. I really like Mattesi’s Force method, but, at the moment, I find your method works in a way that is easier for me to get things more consistently “accurate,” when drawing from a reference. I feel like I am getting better results this way. Although I do find that when drawing using, more, your type of rhythm lines, I am still trying to think about how the Force would flow through it. I am convinced that there is some way to incorporate both of your two methods into one hybrid version of the two, and that that method will end up working the best for me. Right now my brain is a bit caught in between.
I also wanted to thank you for your kind words about my comments. That was really nice to hear. It meant a lot. I always worry when I give feedback that I may be incorrect, or just think something is supposed to be done one way, when there are actually other ways, that I don’t know about, that are as equally valid a way of doing something. I don’t want to steer someone away from something that is just different from the way I understand it, but is not “wrong.” But at the same time when I feel like I might be able to help someone, I feel like I don’t want to not try to do that. You have encouraged me to keep trying to be of help, even though I am still just learning myself. I find it actually helps me understand some things more when I take the time to try and explain it, because I really have to think about it first.
Lin
6mo
For some reason my browser doesn't let me visit comments that are some far down the page so I will say it under this video. Thank you again for your critique on my stuff, Steven, it really made my day. :D
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6mo
Thanks Stan, I'll keep doing them! And I'll make sure my feet rhythms are up to standard! Honestly it just gets more fun once you get better at it, so for me it's not such a struggle anymore to sit and do quick-sketch! Can't wait to fail at drawing cubes and cylinders next, oh boy! :)
6mo
Thank you, Stan, it feels so strange to be called advanced when only 2 months ago I was first trying to understand beans and tapered lines and boxes and 3D space. XD I have been practicing and hopefully some of the proportion issues have and will continue to get better. Thank you Steven Wolf as well, you always help us with excellent critiques. 😊
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7mo
Asked for help
Hey Stan, something that always helped me in school was always asking the teacher what a certain concept or lesson was trying to eventually teach me to be able to do to help me visualize the concept of the lesson better. It can feel discouraging at times when i practice I don't feel like i'm seeing the eventual arrival location of the practice. If you, or anyone else could help me comprehend what you would say the "major" long term effect of the lesson is all about that would really help me out. Please excuse me if i am coming off as rude, i have a bad habit of seeing the trees instead of the forest.
7mo
I think the major long term effect is to inject the feeling of life in your art. It's very easy to learn in a way that makes stiff art a habit because the brain has some default settings that work against us. For me, the default settings were - (1) sauseigitis in my shapes, (2) inability to depart from symmetrical curves which made shapes feel dead, (3) inability to forshorten curves correctly, if at all. So my biggest fear beginning was creating art that feels boring, dead.
The lessons feel kind of like building blocks to undo these brain settings, for me. We started with pairing lines in a way that creates the feeling of life (in rudimentary shapes like fish and seals, which are so prone to sausageitis/dead shapes), then called out live/dead shapes for what they are, and now we're applying these concepts to the human body forms.
For me, pairing the curved lines for the fish broke my brain. It was refusing to not make them symmetrical. -.- Even now it hates it, I practice fish for warmups sometimes, not anatomically correct fish by any means, to make it just a little easier. It still is like pulling teeth, but less so. I joke with my friends that art is sometimes the Formless Mother from Elden Ring because it requires wounds to progress.
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7mo
hi y'all, HELP PLEASE. Where are level 1 people supposed to quit? I missed where the stopping point is. Here's 3 hrs & 2 tries & I can't find the forrest OR the trees! I haven't missed any lessons, done all the assignments, draw on my own, etc & this is way beyond me. Don't get me wrong, I want to learn how to draw people, but this is crazy. What am I doing wrong? Thank y'all for all the help
7mo
Also a newb, so this is just how I would do it (not saying it is correct). I do a combination of blocking the outside form like Stan does and using plumb lines/ghosting to measure constantly between objects because otherwise my proportions get really bad.
I would approach this one like this:
1. Decide what your overall rhythms are, first. For me, I see an S rhythm across the arms, a C from her forehead to her groin, or even her torso/leg, a long I for her leg. She's very stretched on the right side and very crunched on the left. Try figure out what parts of her body seem to have some sort of force acting on them. Yours might be different ones.
2. In very light pencil or digital pen:
a) do the head as a simple circle, with just an arrow/triangle that shows the chin underside, and a line down the neck to the point where everything seems to converge (the little point between her clavicles).
b) pause drawing and use the head to measure things. Her top arm is 2 and a half heads up, her bottom is 3 and a half heads down.
c) Start using CSI to draw the rhythm for the arms (S), torso (Cs), legs (Is), and a Reilly rhythm for the shoulders to the groin. Use a LOT of plumb lines to gauge where things go, ghosting, and very light lines. For example a plumb line from the top of her head goes to one shoulder. A vertical plumb line from the end of her bottom hand (thumb) goes up to the beginning of the wrist for her top hand.
Once I have the blocking and rhythms down, I try to do a semblance of the shapes like the legs and calves, because I don't know anatomy yet. XD I noticed that symmetrical curves look horrible, like Mike Mattesi said, there's no dynamism. I try to vary straights and curves, or curves that are not symmetrical to see dynamism. I do find from my own experiments that anything symmetrical goes to die. So even though I don't know anatomy I try to keep to this rule in my shapes.
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7mo
Asked for help
Here is my submission. I tried to apply some of the things we've learned so far, sorry if I made a mess!! D: This one was difficult but very fun.
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7mo
Found this picture here and really liked the hair color so I tried to do the Loomis method on her:
7mo
I'm struggling a lot with rhythms for stretched limbs where it's a series of subtle bumps but no very discernible bend. A flowing curved line completely obliterates any semblance of the object itself while addingany detail ruins the flow. How would you guys deal with this arm and this leg here? One curve? Two? Straight lines?
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7mo
For a moment I thought Stan added a lesson to Figure Drawing Fundamentals course. LOL.
7mo
I have no idea if you read these @Mike Mattesi but you speak to my soul!!! The moment I saw your work, it was like...coming home somehow. I've always wanted to draw flesh with force, I just didn't know how to express it, or how to find resources that fully encapsulated what I had in my mind, that mix of graceful gestural fluidity combined with the solidity of flesh, of meat. Thank you for your invaluable work, I got your book from our library and if I do ok with it I will for sure purchase your courses. <3
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8mo
Thank you for the critique! It is so unbelievably encouraging and means a lot that my linework/tapering efforts are paying off!! :D :D I have neuropathy with dual splints, so good linework is both a struggle and an aspiration. I was really surprised to see you mention Vilppu because I felt an instant kinship with him in the way he approaches gesture. I've not studied him in-depth, but I've watched one of his videos (with plans to look at more); since we approach problems kind of similarly I've tried my best to take his advice on to eradicate my gesture sausageitis. 😅
8mo
I am facing a challenge: my sketches after the demo are more static than before the demo.
The reason I believe is that I used CSI and a "quick sketches" mindset before the demo and used short "scratchy" lines after the demo to try to replicate the interesting shapes Stan creates. Unfortunately - mine don't render as good as his. I feel like I can either draw movement with very basic shapes or static drawings with interesting shapes.
Any tips on how to avoid making the confident CSI lines look static when adding the detailed shapes?
Thanks!
8mo
This happens to me when I draw along. I draw along with Stan to learn familiarity with something (e.g. a deltoid), so I can then focus on flow, gesture, and line relationships when I draw them later. Drawing along doesn't lead to pretty drawings during and immediately after because it's something new and it needs to sediment in my head. Once that does, I can pay more attention to flow, gesture and line relationships. It;s likely because these shapes are so new to you that you're juggling very much at once. That's why practice is so important - for myself, the less I juggle (such as being more comfortable with a shape) the more I can give my all to something else, like flow. Once we stop being complete newbies, it will hopfully become easier because we're juggling less and putting more blocks into the intuition side.
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8mo
The beans felt really hard at first but they got a lot easier by the end. I found forshortening the most enjoyable, whether it's because I was more comfortable with beans by then or something else, I'm not sure. I thought it would be the worst part for sure! Twists are the most challenging for me.
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8mo
Finished analysing and learning from the ones shown! Here is my 2 day progress; the first are so bad looking back. 😅 Now it's time to do on my own; I bought Sekaa's album specially for this. The most annoying part is spotting perspective errors and not knowing how to fix them yet...but practicing more poses tends to answers past questions along the way.
8mo
Asked for help
I found a few sharks and an orca to try before getting to draw the seals provided. Got the references attached as well!
8mo
Asked for help
I'm level 1 but doing and submitting my seals below made me want to try my own character from imagination as they have such cool shapes. I tend to not know what I'm drawing until the lines are already down, and am trying to correct that habit by adding to my visual library and practicing. His name is Ambrose!
8mo
Asked for help
Ahh, my first time doing this. Nervous :X, but here goes! Because I am a beginner and don't have much of a visual library I find it really hard to do gesture as action lines on a blank canvas. I skew the gesture lines (making a line overly long or bending incorrectly) and I can't seem to connect a form on top of it to bend at the right places and so on. I end up using forms as a crutch to move myself through the gesture and establish the action lines at the end. I worry about having too many searching lines as my brain is searching a lot right now via forms. Hopefully it is not the wrong way to do it.
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