I just wanted to point out Marshall's beanie. It suits him! Very 'beatnik' with the dark gray beanie and the black shirt. :)

Has anyone had any luck printing out the downloadable graphs? Lines are too faint in default, I tried changing the contrast and switching the colors to black and white in a photo editor but have had no luck getting anything usable.

I found these very challenging, my brain has been broken 😆

I feel "mileage" is useful in any activity that you're trying to improve at. However, I don't think its the most efficient way to improve, at least on it's own. Your golf swing experience is actually a perfect example . Learning, practicing, and refining helped you so much more than just hitting thousands of balls would have. Learning and understanding the fundamentals will greatly help reduce the "luck factor" of success or failure when putting in that mileage. When you succeed, you'll know and understand why and try to reinforce those habits. When you fail, you'll be able to understand what you did incorrectly and can make adjustments and focus on improving. If the fundamentals are never learned or practiced then performing that task is going to be much more inconsistent. Success is going to feel a bit more reliant on luck and more difficult to replicate without the knowledge and understanding of how you achieved those results. Failures are going to feel worse without knowing what was done improperly or how to get improved results. Like you mentioned, you also risk reinforcing these bad habits through repetition. I'm learning that either way, success or failure, the answer seems to always circle back to "did I correctly perform the fundamentals?" For the gesture drawings, I'd advise don't go so fast to where you lose control but try to just get the gesture down using simple lines (CSI). Then, once you have an understanding of the process, you can challenge yourself by trying to do it quicker.

I think Proko talked about it in one of his classes (I think it's the gesture class in figure drawing) or the draftsmen podcast. Practice makes permanent. So if you draw lousily over and over again with wrong proportion, you'll just get really good at drawing lousily. Gesture is a slightly different thing though. It's difficult to nail the proportion in one minute, especially for beginners, and the point of gesture is not to have a precise drawing, but to get the spirit of the pose. I completely agree with your approach, and that's how I did mine too. Slow the time down, focus on expressing the figure with fewer strokes, rather than drawing really fast without thinking. And when the timer is up, use a different color pen/pencil to correct the proportion.

Here's my selection; didn't work out too well ...

I think I have less hair after trying these difficult poses. Fun to work through the problems, though. Keep up the great work, everyone.

I gave some of these a try. The example/pose5 where the model is bent over is really tough. My arms look too long. I worked on the spacing of my lines and creating more "flow" in my limbs instead of always drawing asymmetrical lines. I think they are starting to look ok. I love my arms in pose 1. Great stuff, Michael! Learned a lot from this video.

Hi Michael :) Do you use wrapping lines to imply volume? Or is this a thought for later? My references are often broad but I feel my gesture reduces the volume of muscle and fat dramatically, so I use wide wrapping lines for bellies or big Thighs. Thank you!

Difficult Poses Project!