Drawing human forms can be daunting. It was for me when I started learning to draw. A drawing isn’t a one-and-done affair. Don’t worry about getting it right on the first try. You’re drawing a human shaped figure so start thinking about the most important parts of a person, usually that would be the head or the torso. Try starting with the head on one drawing and the torso on another. Once you have a starting point, branch out from there, from the head to the torso or the torso out to the head. Then work down the arms or the legs to the hands and feet. If you really feel completely lost then try turning your reference and paper upside down. Yes, rotate it 180 degrees and draw it inverted. It may seem silly but it was how I learned to start drawing. Inverting your reference can help since your brain won’t be processing it the same way. This is actually something I did for at least the first three months when I was learning to draw. As smart as we can be as people, our brains are little meat computers and don’t always work the way we’d like them to. Learning means experimentation and not every drawing you do will turn out beautifully. So don’t be afraid of doing it multiple times. Just make sure you analyze each one and note where you were correct and where you need more practice. Good luck!

I agree with M C. The style for the story isn't going to be the make-or-break for the artwork. You should experiment and thumbnail different styles and see what works for you and the piece. You can still make something amazing using an unconventional style for the story. I'd say, focus more on what parts of the story you want to bring to life.

i would like to say i am sry for my behavior. This post is kinda childish and just wrong. I am a very negative person and constantly clank down on myself and tbh i dont want to give upp but i am just frustrated with my lack of growth. I know i am not the only one that feels this way. And its tough for everyone not just me. I will not make this kind of post again. I dont know if i will continue to strive for improvement. once again i am sry for this post. from now on. if i am to post it will be to ask for feedback.

In my personal opinion, you’re hitting the point of burnout and you need to focus on taking a short break or doing something fun. Your comparisons are apples-to-oranges right now. If you’re going to compare you need to do it with similar mediums. Digital, especially finished work, isn’t going to compare to pencil and paper. Digital inking is going to be cleaner and look better than pencil on paper will in real life. I’d also be wary when you don’t see what references another artist is using for their pictures. Gesture is just a spoke in the wheel for creating better drawings. From what I see, your gesture is great. It’s fluid, expressive, and structural enough to get across the figure. But gesture alone isn’t going to compare one-to-one against finished digital work. If you’re going to compare your gesture to those videos, make sure you pause at the right time and compare your gesture to the under-drawing before the inking starts. From the shorts and videos I’ve watched, the under-drawings are messy with numerous overlapping lines and scribbled sections. Compared to that, your gesture is much better. But it won’t compare to the finished product at the end of the video. I found myself missing the forest for the trees and hyper focused on one thing at times. Missing the bigger picture that I wasn’t progressing because I was stuck in a rut when I needed to branch out. My advice would be to clear your head. Take a short rest. Reflect on why you decided to take up drawing to start with and what you want to accomplish.

The short answer: Art will never die. Humans were doing art since the first cavemen were scratching at the dirt and sand with sticks, arranging rocks, and painting on cave walls with animal blood and berry mash. Commercial art, however, is commercial first and foremost. It’s about making a profit. Commercial artists are going to have to change with the new technology. Cameras were a novelty until they weren’t. Digital art was a curiosity until it wasn’t. Generative AI will be the same. I think generative AI will always be 5 years away until it suddenly isn’t. Not-quite-there-yet until a new model or user front-end suddenly changes things for the average user. Since your friend worked in the industry, I’m sure the deep pockets of movie studios can acquire hardware well in excess of anything a normal person with a normal budget can for AI generation. One of nVIDIA’s 80GB AI cards costs around $37,000.00 USD. His predictions sound impossible, especially by the end of 2025, but a large staff with heavy-hitting equipment at a major studio can produce something far outside the range of one person with a local install running a 4GB card on their desktop. I think generative AI is in the future. I think it will just be too powerful and too useful to not use. Much like people say Photoshop is the industry standard so you’d better learn it if you want to work in the industry, generative could become the same. Commercial artists could end up learning how to use generative AI as the future standard and repaint or paint over AI work to clean it up.

Here are my 10 references and gestures drawn from them.

Is It 1 lesson a week?

Here's a sample of what I'm starting from gesture-wise. I learned gesture from Stan's Figure Drawing Fundamentals course a few years back by this point. I've been doing 20 -- 30 second poses and 20 -- 1 minute poses every day for the last three months. Consider these two pictures my 'before' this course. I hope to learn and improve a lot learning and applying the lessons from this course!

I was finally able to get through all of the extra assignments for week 1 color photos. Instead of using the color picker I had to paint a color swatch over the reference and tried to match color that way. The tennis balls with their greenish-yellow coloring gave me the most trouble. Is it better to commit and spend more time painting a study with incorrect colors or to spend time picking the correct colors? I assume better color picking with come with time but at this early stage I'm not sure what I should be spending more time on, color picking or replicating the reference?

My first three attempts for the first week's assignments. I used the color picker for these after my first two aborted attempts where all of my values where too bright. All took around an hour with Clip Studio Paint using Gouache.