@reiohan
Earth
Aspiring artist trying to get better at drawing and painting people.
Yiming Wu
added comment inFigure Practice Based on Steve Huston's Book
3yr
I really liked how you changed the angle of view in your drawing, this shows proficiency! Nicely done!
@reiohan
3yr
Thanks!
Excellent work! I’m really happy to see how much you were able to pull from Steve Huston’s book (I found it quite unhelpful myself). The cross-countours definitely are the strongest part of these drawings, and I would love to see you try doing some simpler/quicker gesture drawings to practice that skill more. Since your sense for proportion appears to be very good, I would like to reccommend studying bridgman’s books as a good next step for you. Your accuracy and gestural sense are both excellent, but there is very little in your drawings about the way anatomical forms connect and shift in perspective. Study Bridgman, and your forms will surely become excellent!
3yr
I think I see what you mean. The perspective of forms and how they connect is pretty vague in these drawings for the most part. I will definitely do more quicksketch practice and try studying from Bridgman. Thanks for the feedback!
Really beautiful drawings! What do you think of the book? I've been meaning to get a copy!
3yr
Thank you! I think it's a great book to have in your collection if you like Steve Huston's work. His figure drawing demos/lectures on YouTube give a good sample of the things he focuses on in the book. It emphasizes valuable principles and techniques for understanding and drawing gesture, structure, and lighting information. For people who haven't gone through any figure drawing books or courses before though I would probably recommend going through the Proko figure drawing material first as I think it explains things in a more accessible way.
These are great! I love the rendering, can you share how you render in photoshop? Coming from a traditional background I find it pretty challenging. Btw Steve Huston is a great inspiration for me too, I love referencing his work and book.
3yr
Thanks! For these I used somewhat soft textured brushes with the flow turned down to like 20-30% on a layer above the line drawing. You can do the same with the eraser tool. This makes it easier to gradually build up tone and minimize the unnatural looking overlaps of semi-transparent marks you tend to get when you try to paint quickly with the hard round brush on default settings. Trying a bunch of different brushes and experimenting with flow settings may help you find a rendering process that you like more. Yeah though, Steve's demos are great to watch and follow along with as well.
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3yr
Hi andypandi. I like that you are thinking about your intent very clearly in these drawings and doing lots of iterations to try to learn from previous attempts. The limbs and torso in all of these drawings have a dynamic curviness to them which gives the figure life and personality so that's great to see.
I think that thinking of the gesture in a 3 dimensional sense, as well as a 2 dimensional sense, might open up some more useful options for exaggeration. For example, the way you have the torso leaning back extra far to the viewer's right changes the physical balance of the figure quite a bit from how it is in the reference. An alternative or additional option would be to indicate or exaggerate more heavily the way that the torso is tilting back toward the viewer in space.
I also think the twist is an important part of this pose. You showed this a little bit with the rhythms of the chest in some of your drawings but I think emphasizing it more with overlaps as I did in my draw-over might be a good idea.
It seems like these drawings are mostly focused on gesture so rhythms and flow are more important at this stage than structure but having some awareness of the simplified volumes of the body and their position in space in a given reference might help you design the gesture in a way that supports the balance and architectural integrity of the figure more.
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Figure Practice Based on Steve Huston's Book3yr
I did these drawings to practice what I learned in the first 5 chapters of Steve Huston's Figure Drawing for Artists book. This meant trying to convey the character of the gesture and forms I saw in the references in a simplified way with lines and some basic indications of light and shadow. In the drawing of Yoni I also tried using a different camera angle.
I spent around 3-4 hours on each of these. I think a lot of the slowness had to do with trying to figure out the proportions and a good method for shorthand rendering in Photoshop.
I've been practicing figure drawing basics and other fundamentals for around 3 years. Some artists I would like to take influence from in terms of figure work include Steve Huston and John Asaro.
Any critique is much appreciated.
