Nice studies! - I would keep an extra eye on proportion. In your drawings you could make the bottom piece of the jar taller, and the box less deep. Judging from the photo, it seems to be a cube, so the depth is equal to the width. - On a cylinder, the end furthest from us should have a more open ellipse. -Draw through! -Have your camera perpendicual against the drawing when you photograph, so that we get to see it straight on, and not at an angle. Also, have it well lit, and avoid cast shadows. Hope this helps :)

I think these look pretty good. The structure is quite good and the anatomy looks pretty accurate. - Double check with perspective lines, to make sure that you get the convergence right (see paintover.) -In the top left it feels a bit like the sacrum is floating, like it's not clearly tucked into the pelvis. To place the sacrum correctly, it has helped me to find the articulate surfaces of the iliae first, and then fit the sacrum in between. - In the drawing to the right, the structure and shape of the sacrum doesn't look right to me. - I would study the size and placement of the acetabulum a bit more. -Try drawing the pelvis from imagination, to test your knowledge. Hope this helps :) Keep up the good work!

Hi @younchen, nice studies! The anatomy, shading and forms look pretty good! And nice shape design. - Try to be more aware of space. Before you start drawing, figure out which part of the body is closest to the viewer, and which one is furthest. In your 2nd drawing for example, I don't really feel that the left leg is diving into space. It feels a bit like everything in the drawing is on the same picture plane. Having a clear understanding of how things are oriented in space, allows you to communicate depth clearly. Use the tools at your disposal to communicate depth (size, placement, shape, soft/hard edges, wrapping the shading around the forms, directional hatching, value, etc.). -The underlying drawing isn't very strong. The overall shape of the leg doesn't correspond well to the reference (you tend to make it too straight), and the proportions are a bit off (you tend to elongate the leg). I think you would benefit from doing some drawings where you break down the leg into very simple shapes, and try to design them with gesture. Kinda similar to what you might see @Mike Mattesi doing. As a complement to your anatomy studies I would highly recommend practicing some timed figure drawing, where you get to focus on the figure as a whole. I think you would benefit from mimicking Glenn Vilppu's work. I like his approach of starting with a flow, then containing it with forms. He explains this at 21:00 in this Drawing Demo by Glenn Vilppu. If you do some figure drawings, feel free to tag me (@Jesper Axelsson), if you want some feedback :) Hope this helps :) Keep up the good work!

Hi @pmak22, nice work! Yeah, moving on to the next lesson sounds like a good idea👍 - I would keep an extra eye on the proportion and symmetry of the body. As you move down the body, keep the avarage proportions (Human Proportions – Average Figure) in the back of your head. In the first 3 drawings, the upper body feels a bit stretched out. Also note the symmetry from side to side. In the 4th drawing, you've made the shoulders of almost equal distance from the centerline, whereas in the reference, his right (our left) is closer to it (graphically) because it's receeding back in space, due to the torso being rotated. - Some of the crosscontours give me the feeling that you could work a bit on your boxes and cylinders. - Before you start drawing, try to figure out what part of the body is closest to the viewer and which one is furthest. This is something I'm trying to work on myself, and it really makes a difference in the clarity of space in my drawings. In the 4th drawing his right hand appears to be behind his right knee, when it's in front of in the photo. In the 2nd pose, her left foot is closest too us. You got the placement of the shapes correct in the drawing, but I don't really feel the space. It feels a bit flat, like her whole body is on the same plane. Being aware of the space allows you to communicate it. - I think you would benefit a lot from mimicking Glenn Vilppu's approach to figure drawing. I like how he strats with a flow, then contains it with forms. He explains this at 21:00 in Drawing Demo by Glenn Vilppu. Hope this helps :) Keep up the good work!

Wow, really nice! - I would keep an extra eye on the symmetry of the head. After laying in an ear on one side, for example, go to the ear on the other side, to make sure that they are symmetrical in space. Compare their distance to the center line. Do this before moving on to another feature. Flipping the drawings above will help you see the assymetry. - In the drawing to the right, you've made the back of the skull too small. There has to be room for the brain. You could think of the skull as a brain case, with a face (eye socekts, nose, cheeckbones, jaw) hanging off of it. Hope this helps :)

Hi @emirh, nice start! Good job looking for long rhythms. "Any advice on how to improve these?" Keep practicing! 💪😎👍. It's not strange that they look childish and shaky in the beginning. They'll become really nice looking with a lot of practice. - I think the main reason they look childish is because of the proportions. Proportion is something you'll always be working on. A good start is to familiarize yourself with the avarage proportions Human Proportions – Average Figure. As you move down the body in your gesture drawings, try to keep these proportion in the back of your head, while keeping gesture as your main focus. Keep an extra eye on the shape of the head. You tend to make it to long, and sometimes to short. Think of it as an upside down egg. To help with proportion, it might be useful to think of the body as a series of pieces put together; head, ribcage, hip, upper arm lower arm, upper leg lower leg. If the ribcage piece doesn't fit, you'll know that you've made the torso too short, for example. These shapes are connected by, and conform to, long rhythms passing through the body. - Make sure to follow along with Stan in his demonstrations. I like to follow this routine: 1. Try the pose myself, before looking at Stan's attempt. 2. Follow along with Stan 3. Retry the pose without looking at Stan's attempt. Trying to mimick his way of working. After having done one like this, I go to some other images I have access to, trying to bring with me the things I learned from Stan. After a few, I go back for another of Stan's, and repeat the process. - About line shakiness: Check out this video How to Hold and Control Your Pencil Hope this helps :) Keep up the good work! PS. I think you'll really appreaciate the Drawing Basics course.

Hi @Dylan Doster, nice work. These are looking pretty good. - I would study the attachments more. They feel a bit incosistent, as if the muscles were hanging loosely. Decide on exact points and try to hit those same points in every angle. In the 2nd drawing from the left in the bottom row for example, the abs originate too much to the left on the front plane of the ribcage. Before drawing the muscles, find the centerline of the rib cage and make sure the muscles attach correctly in relationship to it. One thing that helped me with the external oblique's origin was to imagine a line running through all the origin points and study were it is. - Try to make a more clean presentation of the work. If you're doing it digitally, save the work as an image and post that. It's good practice for presenting your work as a proffesional, plus makes it easier to critique. Hope this helps :) Keep up the good work!

Nice work! I can feel the weight and balance clearly in the drawings on the first page. I'm assuming the ones in the second page are unbalanced action poses. - These feel well drawn to me. I think what would improve them the most would be to improve the gesture. I'm currently focusing on gesture a lot, because I want to be able to draw like Heinrich Kley, and gesture seems to be the key. His work is filled with a strong sence of balance, weight and movement, it almost looks animated, and I've heard it's because he's so good at gesture. If improving your gesture sounds interesting, check out this post https://www.proko.com/s/fGiV. - Could you explain why the line running from the center of mass to the ground is diagonal in the two outer drawings of image 2, and not in the middle one? - I think I might suggest doing a short bootcamp where you practice placing feet on a ground plane. Or you could do it as a warm-up (gesture drawings, but the feet are taken into the mannequin stage). A clear groundplane is important for balance. In the drawing to the right in image 1, the understanding of balance seems to be there, based on you analytical lines, but the feet feel like they are slipping. - I would try to think more about/feel the weight more. I would say that weight is the primary concern. Balanced or in movement, is just a consequence of the weight and forces. With all that being said your understanding of weight seems to be strong enough, and if you feel the same, feel free to move on to the next lesson. Hope this helps :)

I think your mannequins look good. I'm assuming you've been spending a lot of time on the exercise, so move on to the next lesson! Staying on the same exercise for too long can really build up some frustration. Try to think of practicing fundamentals as something circular. Fundamentals of figure drawing will always be there to be worked on. They are fundamental. I recently got back inte gesture and strucure, but under a different approach and with all my understanding of anatomy, values, animation, shape design, behind me. Of course there are things missing in your drawings, and expect there to be in all exercises. Knowing how fast to move forward can be tricky, which is why you need help from others. It would be interesting to hear about your "schedule". Not necessarily what time of day you work, but how much time you have to spend on the figure drawing course in the week, and how many weeks you spend on each lesson in the course. If you share that I might be able to give a recommendation on how to structure your practice. Btw. What are your goals? What type of work do you want to be able to create? Do you want to be an animator? Plein-air painter? Figurative artist? Something else? Cheers!

Hi @Phattara Groodpan, thanks for doing these! I'm assuming it's my recommendation you're refering to. I looked through your more recent posts as well (anatomy studies and 30 sec gestures). My recommendations are still the same as in previous replies; taking the Drawing Basics course and working on gesture and form will help you the most. So it's great to see some gesture drawings. - I think you would benefit from doing some line exercises as warm-up. Practice drawing with your whole arm. There is a video about it in the Figure Drawing Fundamentals course How to Hold and Control Your Pencil. And there is a lot of content about it in the drawing basics course. - Your gesture drawings have nice simplification. In image two, drawing at the top, for example, I think you managed to capture to pose elegantly. But they are very shape and contour based and I would like to help you discover the flow passing through the body. This flow/gesture is one key to drawing from imagination. In your next set of drawings, imagine that there is a river flowing through the body. The lines you draw should be that river. If you want to see a video of someone doing something similar, check out this Drawing Demo by Glenn Vilppu. At 21:00 in the video he explains the process of first starting with a flow, then containing it with forms. You might also want to do a study of this drawing by Michelangelo https://i.pinimg.com/originals/21/86/5f/21865fe4ea3811d6cdad9a961d5d5ce3.jpg . When you do I think you'll notice how every line interacts with "the river". I attached some images from other critiques with examples of the river-stage. - If you have time, fill a page with boxes from imagination from different angles. And do the same with cylinders and spheres. I noticed some construction errors in some of your posts. Hope this helps :) Let me know if you have any questions!

Hi @qcy, nice drawing! I think there are a few issues combined that gives you the feeling of it being off: One is the placement and proportion. You came really close with the nose and lips, but the eyes are a little misplaced and misshaped. The left eye hangs a little low for example, making the head loose some structure. A good way to make sure that the structure is working before having drawn any details, is to start with a Loomis head How to Draw the Head from Any Angle. You did a pretty nice job grouping the darks, but you have some dark contour lines in the lights that break the illisuion of light. In the ear for example, you have dark lines showing it's shape, but in the photo, there are no dark lines. The edge of the ear, is the edge of a light shape. You could also soften some of the edges along the terminator (the line where a form moves into shadow), to signal the softness of the form. I would highly recommend taking the Drawing Basics course! It's still in the making, so if you keep up with the assignments, I think there's a chance that you'll get feedback from Stan himself. Your drawing reminded me so much of the second project in the course (Project - Simplify from Observation). I think taking it will answer many of your questions! Hope this helps :) Keep up the good work💪😎

Hej @Petra Brandström! Hi Petra! I think these look really nice! Gesture, structure and balance is looking pretty solid! - To improve these drawings, I think I would focus on gesture. I was made aware, contrary to what I thought, that my work was lacking gesture. After having studied some of Heinrich Kley's work, I realized that there is room for A LOT of gesture. In his drawings, it's like every line was part of a stream of water splashing through the body, connecting it and leading the eye. Try to think about this, especially in the limbs. You don't have to exaggerate the poses more, I think, but make sure that every line is part of "the river". - To clarify balance it might help to indicate the ground plane. - About your question: I think I would recommend starting with round forms, then make them more boxy afterwards. Since boxes are so specific they can be a bit hard to handle in the early stages. I found it useful to practice drawing the ribcage as a box, since that skill is a good tool to have for clear perspective, but the actual form of the ribcage is more like an egg. Look at this sketch by Raphael and see how he starts with round forms https://media.britishmuseum.org/media/Repository/Documents/2014_10/1_6/89707534_49f8_4387_b010_a3b700640e57/mid_00030014_001.jpg You'll notice animators starting the same way, I think. I think you'll appreciate this Drawing Demo by Glenn Vilppu. Maybe try to mimick his way of drawing. At 21:00 he explains the process of starting with a flow, then fleshing it out with volumes. Hope this helps :)

Hi @silentmoonss, I think these look really nice! If you're going through the figure drawing course, move on to the next lesson👍. I think you might be overthinking things. This lesson is about posing the overall masses of the torso (the next lesson will be the same thing but with the whole body). You don't have to worry about the exact placement of things. The thing you should be looking for is the relationship between the masses: proportion & symmetry, gesture and form. When I took the course a few years ago, I had the same type of questions, worrying about how to place things exactly. I carried with me that enthusiasm into my anatomy studies. But I've recently been guided to work more on the bigger picture, currently practicing gesture and form. I thought anatomy was what would make my art good, but I've found that that's not the main thing. - To satisfy some of your curiosity about anatomy, such as the size of the ribcage and how the pelvis interacts with the leg, find some reference of a real skeleton (or purchase the Skelly App https://www.proko.com/skellyapp ) and draw from it. Then try posing it from imagination. Keep things simple, focus on the gesture and major forms. Study how the parts relate to eachother and fit together. Watch this video with David Colman The Ape Skeleton, and work on the human skeleton with a similar mindset. DON'T GET CARRIED AWAY WITH DETAILS. Then continue with the figure drawing course, keeping your new won knowledge in the back of your head. - Highly recommend checking out this Drawing Demo by Glenn Vilppu and mimick his approach to drawing the figure. Mimicking a skilled artist's work can bring good habits and inform you on what to focus on. - In a neutral standing pose, the hip is tipped forward, and the ribcage is tipped back. - You could make the upper box taller below, so that the distance between the boxes gets shorter. When doing your simple skeleton studies, note how close the bottom of the ribcage is to the top of the pelvis in a front view. Hope this helps :) Move along to the next lesson!

Nice! I haven't taken this course, but I'll look for some general drawing stuff that might be useful: - I think the two outer characters might be off balance. It might help to add a line that indicates what is vertical in the space your character is standing, so that you can tell if it's leaning too much one way or the other. you could also do an intuitive check and ask yourself "does it look like my character would fall? Which way? How would the character have to change pose in order to avoid this?". - It might help to indicate the ground plane. The feet of the middle character, appears to be on two different planes. - It would be cool if the loose parts such as drapery and hair, even more conformed to gravity. You might want to push it even. The middle characters skirt feels a bit like it's floating. So I guess the common theme is weight. Try to get a strong sense of weight in your next set of drawings. Hope this helps :)

Nice! I think you did a good job with the structure and edges. I feel like the forms are quite clearly defined. - When drawing an eye, i think it's a good idea to lightly indicate the entire eyeball in the early stages of the drawing, to make sure that you make it a sphere. In your drawing I get the feeling that the eyeball is slightly oval in form. - You might have made the part of the sclera that's in shadow too light. A helpful trick to get values right, is to squint at the refernce. If you do that, you might notice how the sclera in shadow, merges into a single shapes with the other darks. They are part of the same group. - You could also make the shadows darker, for a clearer read of what's in light and what's shadow. Hope this helps :)

Nice work! - I think I would try to work more inside out. You might want to check out this Drawing Demo by Glenn Vilppu and mimick his way of drawing. At 21:00 he explains the process of starting with a flow (as if there was a river flowing through the body), then fleshing out with volumes. So with that apporach, you're not really drawing the contours, but the contours end up as a result of the forms you draw. - This is related to the above: remember to draw through (drawing what's on the non visible side (lightly). In the drawing in the center of image 2, you'd probably want to track the arm wrapping around the torso, all the way back to the hidden shoulder. This is to make sure that everything flows together nicely and to make sure that you don't end up drawing a broken figure. Hope this helps :)

Cool! - The cranium on the loomis head you've drawn might be too small. Note how, the eye ends up on the side plane (the circle), when it should be on the front plane. Hope this helps :)

Hi @Andrei Kladov, nice sketch! I like how you managed to sculpt the face with hatching! Apart from this drawing, I also looked through your albums to figure out what advice to give. The main things I would recommend working on are gesture, structure and values. Your drawings could be less stiff, and the construction more solid. With a stronger understanding of values, you'll have an easier time rendering a portrait like this one. If you think practicing those things sounds like a good idea, you might want to try these exercises: - Gesture quicksketches. I would check out this Drawing Demo by Glenn Vilppu and try to mimick his way of working. At 21:00 he explains the process of starting with a flow, then fleshing it out with major forms. - Geometric forms. Practice drawing spheres, cylinders and boxes. You could think of these like vocabulary for the structure language. If you're confident with the individual words, building sentences will be easier. When you draw features, like the eyes for example, try to build them with forms. - Value studies as explained here https://www.proko.com/s/PX9q Make sure to get feedback on your work. Feel free to tag me if you post for any of these exercises💪 Hope this helps :)

Hi @Phattara Groodpan, nice studies! The accuracy of the anatomy looks pretty good. You seem to have included all the imprtant info. - I would try to strenghten the underdrawing, focusing on gesture and form. These feel a little stiff, and the major forms could be placed more strongly. You might want to follow this process: 1. Draw the flow (as if there was a river flowing through the body) 2. Flesh out the flow with simple forms 3. Draw the larger muscle groups; thinking of it kinda like chunks of clay on a sculpture, following the major forms and the flow. 4. Draw individual muscles. Same as the previous step but at a more detailded level. Hope this helps :)