Hello everyone! My name is Mun and I am a beginner at drawing and would like eventually be a hobbyist who's very good at environmental drawings. I was wondering if you have any advice on what to study or maybe a roadmap for that goal, it would be much appreciated. What I'm asking for is just a general idea on what fundamentals/courses to go through and what's their right order.. I'm currently taking the perspective course with Marshall Vandruff. Thank you :) ((P.S. I do draw digitally and want to build a strong foundation without getting into 3D)) Attached is a WIP I'm currently working on.

Hey guys, recently I posted some of my figure practice for feedback (I appreciate all of the feedback very much, big thank you to all the people who helped me out). The feedback I saw the most was that my figures were stiff and lacked any form of gesture. To be transparent, gesture isn't something that I have practiced and studied a whole lot as I simply just haven't prioritized it much if at all. Clearly I need to prioritize gesture more. So, that leads me to this question, how often and how much should I practice gesture? Where is gesture on the hierarchy of things I should study/practice? And when I do study gesture how exactly should I go about studying it?

I'm currently on the Measuring Proportions project on the Drawing Basics course. When making a measurement using the sighting method with a pencil, how do I transfer that measurement onto the paper?

Hi again! I recently made a 'Beginner Drawing Club' on Discord, currently there are four of us in the group and we're looking for a few more interested beginners who just started (or are about to start) Proko's Drawing Basics course. If you would like to join, just let me know and I will send you the link. Bye 🙂

Hey guys, these are some figures I have practiced recently. Each figure took me roughly 20 minutes each. With the figures I didn't worry so much about having each contour and line being exact to the reference. Instead I worried more about having accurate proportions, angles, gesture, etc as I draw more stylized anyway. I figured I may as well practice drawing similar to how I actually draw. These studies were also meant to get me confident with posing the body at various angels and positions. I plan to eventually take Stan's figure drawing course, and I am also currently studying anatomy on the side. Let me know anything I could improve and general impressions.

Hi, I’m following lessons on line quality and trying to draw in a fluid, confident way. Here are some of my sketches, based on photos (with some reinterpretation). What do you think? Any advice?

Hello out there, I am very new to drawing, currently doing the beginners course, and I am a little unsure about the paper I use. I bought this online and was a bit surprised by the roughness of the paper, but I got used to it, and kind of like it as well (It is acid-free, 100g/sm). In the attached drawing you can see that especially the thicker, heavier lines are very rough and coarse, and I don't know if that helps or not. For comparison I added an image of the regular paper I use for other stuff. I guess it ultimately just depends on what I like most, but I would still be interested if there are any suggestions for paper, or what kind of paper is used by other artists, beginners and professionals? Thanks.

Hello everyone!! I have started the Drawing basics course to learn drawing. After the pear exercise, I have tried the portrait exercise. If you can give me feedback, i really appreciate It!! Thanks.

Hi everyone, I’m completely new to drawing, hoping this course will help build a good foundation, anyway this is my first attempt of assignment 1 and 2(I found level 2 deceptively difficult!) I’d love some helpful feedback!

These are my torso box practices, I was wondering if there are any significant errors? Critiques are much appreciated.

Hi there! I started CSI boots task then I realized that especially shoelaces is a nightmare for me. Then I stopped and went to demo video... Found out that dividing laces into smaller part on drawing lines made it better. What I realized after second try is that lots of overlapping laces made me want to bump line contrast to make it more readable. It started to be (I feel) chicken scratch mode. How to do it correctly? I'd love to have a few detailed critiques for future reference.

My attempt for the Measuring Proportions project. I used landmarks in determining distance, size, and alingment. As I got into the smaller details I used smaller landmarks such as the ear for measuring. For the really small details I just eye balled it. Let me know what y'all think.

So I did about half of the proko class about 2 years ago, and then stopped. I was a bit frustrated because i found that my ability to do perspective was really poor. I really did not enjoy focusing on other areas, it was just very unsatisfying to draw when my perspective and proportions were not working well. So rather than continue on other areas (lines, values, etc) i just stopped for a while to focus on that. I did drawabox for a while, and that was helpful. But I didn't finish that either. It did get a little monotonous, and so I stopped. I also felt like at some point i wasn't making any new progress which was a bit frustrating/ i continued to draw casually, really trying to focus on perspective and construction. I think I got a little better, where now i can usually draw from an image and I have a decent "muscle memory" around perspective whereas i didn't before. i'm thinking of just restarting the proko class from the beginning. I still find it extremely difficutl to draw from real life, and nearly impossible to draw from imagination. Would love any thoughts or feedback

My drawing from memory, and drawing from a different angle practice. I'd love to have a few detailed critiques for future reference.

Hello! These are my attempts at the Simplify to CSI Projects for Level 1 of the Drawing Basics course. I did these a couple of weeks ago, but forgot to upload them for some feedback. The first image is before I watched the demo, while the second image is from after. Personally, I like my lines better in the first image, because I think the second time around I put down a lot more searching lines that are pretty messy. Feedback is appreciated!

The night is darkest just before the dawn... Apparently, haha.

... I'm back at it. And struggling! Though, I expected as much. The knowledge is still there, but I'm missing a lot of things I used to take for granted : hand-eye coordination, the mental stamina necessary for observing-copying-comparing-adjusting (rinse and repeat every few seconds), control over strokes (pressure/angle/direction), and intuition (all the spontaneous decisions made every seconds that rely on experience from hundreds of hours of practice). Anyway, here are some figure drawing sketches from a recent 4 days intensive workshop. My eyes and my arms got tired really fast, but I tried my best and I had a lot of fun.

Let me tell you a story. The other day I conceived of a battle royal for my various pencils. I wanted to try to collect a few small drawings all on one or two pages and compare side-by-side what each pencil brand/softness was best at. Simple enough, right? As I've said before, I like me a dark, soft pencil, and so I commenced to drawing some portraits off Pinterest with similar lighting in an attempt to locate my truly darkest graphite pencil. It was meant to be fun. And it was at first. A nice change of pace. No pressure sketching... Or so I thought. I actually discovered that the Conte 6b graphite stick is perhaps the darkest pure graphite utensil I own, and that the General's Kimberly 9xxb was a rival for darkness but perhaps not graphite at all. It feels like a carbon pencil to me, so... ruled out of the race! Interesting indeed! And very informative for my never-ending pursuit of the darkest graphite to replicate my love of charcoal pencils but, well, in graphite. John Garfield was a breeze. Too easy. Gary Cooper... super-duper! James Dean came out like I could draw with my eyes closed. But it was soon into the Mongomery Clift drawing I noticed something happening. All my confidence weirdly shattered after just a few minutes. I realized the accuracy that usually comes easy for me just wasn't there. Odd. I couldn't see any proper angles. I had to measure. I haven't measured a face in ages. Couldn't figure out how to make the head big enough. Couldn't place the eyes, nose, mouth... My knowledge seemed to evaporate. I. Just. Couldn't. Draw. And the more I drew, the more I felt a sense of dread. Frustration. Horror, even. Am I regressing?! Athletes know about something called the yips. The psychological phenomenon where a skill you are highly practiced at suddenly becomes inaccessible to you. For some reason you seem to forget everything you've practiced and became so good at, and then the more you chase it, the worse it gets. Well, friends, this happened to me with good old Monty. I just... couldn't do it. I got off kilter and now I feel infected. I wheedled on that little thumbnail for hours (not the point at all of this experiment) before I came up with something that I didn't want to burn. But the worst was yet to come. I shook it off. So what? This stuff happens. Never bothered me too much. I went into my next drawing session the next day, confident as usual, and eager to combine my newfound knowledge of my tools into a sort of mega-portrait of... er... Ethan Hawke... using all my graphite pencils to just play. Except I picked up my Staedtler Lead Holder and froze. "Come on, just draw! Don't think!" I told myself. I tried. I failed. I started by making the head way to short and way to wide. Okay, fixed it... I thought. Nope. Still wrong. Okay, well try placing the features and using that to compare skull shape. Except I can't see them. No matter how hard I try, my vision is shot. I might as well be drawing a Mr. Potato Head. Even with a ruler, proportional divider, T-squre, and triangle I can't mange a decent likeness to save my life. So, I got mad. I threw all the aids away, grabbed a stick of compressed charcoal and just started wailing on it, resolving that if it's going to be a bad drawing, it might as well express something in being so. The process involved a lot of erasing and redrawing and mixing graphite in there and redrawing over it and scribbling and erasing again. Making marks that replicated my mood. Dark and frustrated and, of course, totally inaccurate and bordering on amateur hour. The energy of that anger was kind of wild, though. Kind of freeing to just let go and create something different. I don't really ever draw that way. I like my portraits to look like the person I'm drawing. Just the way I think it ought to be. But it was exhilarating. Like ripping off a band-aid. Painful and demanding, and sort of satisfying. Pretty soon I tuckered myself out. These are the results of that ride. You can see my progression from controlled to unhinged haha. The point is... There's a lot of beginners who experience "regression" and get mortified. I'm here to let you know everyone has problems with drawing. Problems they think they shouldn't have but get anyway. Me? I'm a fairly experienced portrait artist now, and I couldn't draw an accurate face right now if my life depended on it. And that's okay, isn't it? Even though I haven't drawn since finishing this dubious Ethan Hawke (more like a mutant Ethan Hawke combined with Jamie Hyneman haha), I plan on grabbing it and going at it again tonight. Maybe I'll be more careful, or maybe I'll go crazy again. Who knows? It's all just part of the journey of creating. Sometimes, things just don't go our way. Honestly, I kind of like what came out. This kind of barely contained pseudo-realism is pretty popular in galleries around my city, I think. Hmm... Makes one consider screwing up more often haha. Anyway. Take care. Just remember, we're all struggling together. Make something cool out of that struggle!