#240212 Practice / study drawings. RSB sketchbook. HB mechanical pencil. Various refs. among them Loomis, Woodward and Michael Hampton.

So i've been practicing drawing (almost) daily for the last 2 years or so. But I lack focus and structure. After listening to the draftmen podcast (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=od1xbX2ESP8). I've decided to bring in more structure. The podcast mentions this Redit post (https://www.reddit.com/r/learnart/comments/dapk62/from_the_guy_who_made_the_most_comprehensive_list/) with a full curriculum. My challenge will be to follow this curriculum as close as possible. I've created this topic mostly to keep myself accountable. But i will post created work regulary, and any feedback/ critique from you guys is greatly appreciated! Some personal info: -39 years old -fulltime job outside art -On average i have 1 hour each day to practise (a bit more in the weekends) -Not a native English speaker, so please forgive me the grammar and spelling mistakes :) The first unit is figure drawing. I've already followed Stan's figure drawing course before, so im revisiting the course. Here are some 2 minute and 30 second gesture drawings (drawn in Procreate). Please let me know what you think of them.

Hi there, I'm making a Sketchbook/Drawing Diary so that I can see my progress this year if I really improve. I will mostly post insects, animals, vehicles and maybe some human anatomy to improve my visual library. I will try my best to post everyday so that I wont procrastinate.

I have an exercise I’ve been doing with some friends in a private forum that I thought would be useful here.  It’s a kind of simplified masters study, where we break down the work of our favorite artists into boxes and cylinders.  Check out Drawabox.com to get up to speed on the theory that underpins form. Understanding convergence and how circles work in perspective is very important. On the site, when you get to the 250 box challenge, and 250 cylinder challenge, I would suggest doing at least part of the studies in the form of this figure analysis exercise. Doing so will help you apply the procedural knowledge (the how) you learn there, to the contextual knowledge (the when) you’ll need to incorporate the lessons into your own work. If you struggle with drawing simple forms correctly, this exercise can help. They only take a few minutes to do and are good exercises that can help you get the most out of your other studies that assume this knowledge as a foundation. I’ll post a few to get us started. Post any exercises in the replies. Also, feel free to post your own favorite artists for the rest of us to analyze. Different artists have a variety of proportional approaches to the figure, and it’s worth studying the differences. 

Where are you guys? Post your artwork in Pen and Ink here, I Will be pleased to know your work as a fellow student of this beautiful yet demanding medium! Here some of my studies:

Hello all, I've been inspired by @Geert-Jan's thread and I want to do the same! I am going to follow the Reddit post that he mentioned and finally start to take this seriously. I am very excited to get going and will be posting my daily drawings. Any feedback is greatly appreciated!

I create this topic to share my daily sketches (apart from assignments drawings). This will be a motivation for me to have a daily practice and to fill my sketchbooks. Critiques are welcome. Thank you very much!

Hi, So this topic will just be some sort of sketchbook where i regularly post figure drawings and head studies. My goal is to master the human figure, and i'm convinced that one can achieve this through smart studies and repetition. Also, this might help me staying motivated. Thanks and good drawing. p.s: Sorry for the spelling mistakes, English isn't my first language.

Hi folks, this are some of my exercises of the @Court Jones course

I'm doing Proko's Portrait course, trying to go in open minded with no assumptions but it's proving tricky. So far I have just covered the videos on the Loomis method. Are the drawing exercises meant to be done of random heads (minus features) from your imagination, say, just a featureless head pointing in random directions? That might be where I am going wrong. I think I find the size/shape of the chin tricky as well. I know my drawings aren't great, they'll need repetition. I would just appreciate being told anything glaringly obvious, with respect to the course that I am following. Lastly, is it ok if I keep updating this thread as I progress through the course?

I started the Proko portrait course approximately 2 years ago. I feel I’ve made great progress since then and am still working on it. Here’s my latest. I initially found that drawing heads was very difficult, and the course was helpful in breaking things down in a way I could understand.

Hi, I’ve recently returned to drawing and have been practicing my portrait lay-ins. I’m completely self taught and have never benefited from the critiques of other artists. I want to move onto rendering some finished pieces but don’t think I have the basics pinned down just yet Any help or advice you guys have would be massively appreciated cheers 😁

Hello good friends! I figured (pun intended) I'd share my most recent figure drawing practices as my first post on Proko 2.0! These were all done during the past 6 months, and for the most part are between 2 - 5 minutes. I'd like to hear what you guys think I can improve on and if possible to also see your own! Thanks in advance, and have a great one :)

Hey there! This is my first post I decided to do some skull studies and I was wondering if you guys see anything I could improve overall in my work?

I've been learning the fundamentals online for about a year now, and there is a ton of information out there to get to grips with - one thing that comes up time and time again is these two conflicting pieces of advice; 1. Do it right - don't worry about speed, that comes with time - just focus on doing whatever you're doing correctly - if you don't do this, you will just develop a lot of bad habits 2. Do it a lot - don't worry about quality, that comes with time - just focus on iterations and failing a lot - if you don't do this, you will get stuck and never progress This drives me crazy! I ping back and forth between these two ideas in my practice - enjoying the quality of my work when I take my time (but getting frustrated at how long it takes), and enjoying the quantity of ouput when working quickly (but getting frustrated at how much of it is terrible) Does anyone else struggle with this?

A quick portrait study in charcoal.

Hello students and gurus :) I think over the years, my number one problem was an inconsistent timetable. Soooo to keep it short, I'm trying to draw even a tiny little bit every day. To that end, I decided to open this doodlepad in hopes that it keeps me going. Some of these are from imagination, some from references, timed or not. For the references, I made an app a short while ago. If you know line-of-action/quickposes, it's similar to those, but it's a desktop app and uses Pexel's photograph database instead. I have a short presentation of it here https://www.proko.com/community/topics/pexelsqd-a-quick-draw-picture-slideshow-app. You can grab the app from https://github.com/razcore-art/godot-pexelsqd. Hope it helps! If you do get it you'll need to register for an account with Pexels and grab yourself an API-KEY. So here we are, wish me luck! :)

Hi all, leaving a trace in this newborn platform.. Here are a bunch of figure drawing practice and study of @Lane Brown 's style and approach which i really adore ;) I did them a year ago during the challenge event of "Figuary" (held annually in February, hosted by lovelifedrawing.com and models provided by CroquisCafe) Comments & Constructive critiques are always appreciated! Thanks. also, lets connect in this new platform

Hi! I did this portrait study of a friend with sanguine and I would like to get some critique.

I started this digital portrait of my boyfriend months ago, but could never figure out how to finish it! Any idea how to stop it looking like a floating head, and make it look more finished? I wasn't working from a photo, so I was making up the angle of the shoulders, which I like, but can't figure out where the shirt should go. Not sure a shirt would add much anyway! Any suggestions, or critiques on the drawing would be appreciated!

Here's a recent piece I'm calling done for now. I may tweak a few things in the future, but it's been off the easel long enough I might as well post it :D For this one, I let go of a lot of time constraints I've historically put on myself. I just kept pushing it as far as I could go. It's pretty small—the whole portrait is maybe 3 inches (7.6cm) tall. The pencil included in the second image is for scale. The size made it really tricky! Not sure I'll do a portrait this tiny again...

Been studying fundamentals slowly but surely! I used to be an artist who only knew how to paint through observation but never touched fundamental stuff!

Last few portraits I've been drawing feel kind of off and I cant put my finger on why exactly. They have an almost uncanny valley feel to them and my eyes seem to be pushed away from the face. Here's my latest one, would love some pointers on what I should be focusing on.

Hi everyone! This will be first time posting on the Proko forums and I'm excited to be participating. Recently I've started using basic Reilly rhythms in my quicksketch and I just wanted some constructive feedback on how I'm doing. I know I still struggle with proportions (e..g torso too wide, legs too big) but I was wondering if anyone had good advice on how I can improve my work. Thank you in advance and happy drawing!

Hi, I'm going through Joseph Todorovitch’s course “From Paper To Canvas”, and did this drawing in 5+ hours. It has unfinished parts, but I chose to stop here. Any feedback appreciated :) I’m happy because I took the time to squint to compare the edge types, and I managed to not abandon ship; as I started to fill in the background and lights, the value structure got weak, but I think I managed to fix it. The part I’m most confident about is the torso. In the head and arms I got confused, unsure what to prioritize, and I started to make more ambigous marks. In the lesson I think Joseph mentions how he goes through the body in rounds: he brings the head up to a certain level, then he continues down to give the rest of the body the same treatment. Then he cycles; bringing up the head, then going down. When I reached the stage where I had to fix the value structure, it felt more natural to me to fix all the big things first, before jumping into the cycle and add the next level of detail to the head. This is what led to the confusion I mentioned above: I wasn’t sure what to prioritize and this led to me making weaker statements. Do you think I’m following a good process? Thanks in advance!

Here I will be uploading new drawings everyday made in 30 min. I read that Darek Zabroki used to do this so im gonna encourage you all to do it. Fell free to post if you want and also give feedback, we are here to learn and have fun.

Here are a few gesture drawing sessions I've done recently. I have really been trying to practice my line with some simple exercises during warm ups. The 1-2 minute poses in these life drawing videos get a little hectic! Any and all critiques on these are welcome! Thanks for looking!

Various tips to help students learn how to draw. Ive been making a bunch of these over the last several months.

@Nanna Skytte and I have decided to take the plunge and start learning perspective, and if possible to play, and make it as much fun as we can. I’m feeling a bit nervous - the reframe for that is ‘excitement’, isn’t it 😅 - so setting this up to invite others to join us, beginners to take the emotional risk of diving in to something new, and those of you more experienced folks to play along and help out, if you feel so inspired. Hopefully the community and accountability will push us all to our next level of awesomeness 🦋.

Hello! I was hoping to get some feedback on these drawings. These are from my homework for a local figure drawing course I am taking. They are 2min, 5min, and 10 min gesture/figure drawings. I feel like I am not focusing on the right things when I am doing these.... I just do not know what it is I am focusing on and what I am ignoring. I do not have the reference photos but I do have the link to the video I used. Thank you in advance https://youtu.be/Sb6n5rWtv04

Hi, I'm approaching the figure drawing fundamentals course a veeery slow way. I'm intending to really really learn each step before progressing to the next. So I've now spent about two weeks doing 30 second gesture drawings, only. If anyone could be so kind as to help with a bit of feedback I would be very grateful. My own feeling is that I'm a bit afraid of connecting the lines, there's quite a lot of open ends. Also I think that I should make a point of always add the hands and feet, cause now I shy away from them. Thank you for looking! :) /Simon

Hi, these are the three dragons I drew from imagination and using a palette similar to Heartstone. However, I don’t think I captured the magic of the style. Any suggestions to make it looks better? Thanks in advance!

So following on from completing the 100 heads challenge - which was really useful! - I've discovered a guided self-learn 'course' which I've started, to give my learning better structure and focus. Module 2 involves figure drawing through doing the Figuary challenge (Love Life Drawing), so here I go! While drawing people isn't my favourite area of interest, I think it's important because people are important parts of composition and story in most forms of art and I want to be able to add them when needed on a solid base of understanding, plus this will inform drawing other things anyway. I've done lesson one and here's my attempts at the Croquis Cafe poses aligned to Day 1 (1min -> 2min -> 5min poses). I'm not going to post up each day as to not spam the thread, but this is me making the commitment to myself and hopefully I'll post up in 28 days time with a review, with perhaps some posts along the way with insights.

Some gesture drawings I've done over the last two weeks. Reference from Croquis Café

Hi! I've been learning balance for about 3 days. Here are some things I've learned. I would appreciate any feedback, and please fill in the gaps of my limited knowledge. I mainly struggled with creating action poses, so I'll mainly talk about that. Action poses are usually unbalanced. It usually consists of one leg (or support) being up and the weight of the person being moved forward to around the leg. Walking and running are just controlled falls where we fall for a little bit and then catch ourselves. The main component of action poses I've noticed is the lean and tilt of the upper body. In my studies, you'll notice that most of the poses have some sort of tilt to them which makes it look more like an action pose. Without the tilt, it looks kind of balanced. Making the person lean forward will move the center of gravity which makes it easier to make it unbalanced. Also, for finding the center of gravity, I saw a video by Ahmed Aldoori where he found it by creating an oval/circle for the main mass (pelvis, ribcage, head) and found the center of that circle. It helped me alot. The video was a recent RefWed. I hope this will help someone! Thanks for any feedback!

Just a few quick portraits (some of them stylized) that I wanted to share. I've always been more of a painter than a drawer so I'm pushing myself to get better at it. References from earthsworld on instagram and pinterest.

I attended art school many years ago but have never progressed in my drawing skills beyond "ok". About 18 years ago I did what I considered, at the time, my best drawing and then suddenly stopped. I'm determined to actually get good. I started out with Stan's basic portrait drawing video course. My very first attempts were pretty awful. In the video on "Drawing the head from any angle" Stan says, "No go draw 100 heads" which I took literally. I didn't really see any progress until I got to around the 50th head, which is where these are in the chronology. I'm happy with the progress but I'm still struggling. I'm looking for some feedback on what I'm not "seeing" and where to go next. The things I struggle with the most are the 3/4 view and drawing the far-side eye and the near-side cheek. Getting that depth seems to elude me. I won't even mention shading/hatching.

Here’s some anatomy studies and fun stuff I’ve been working on over the past few days. The anatomy is mostly from the Proko lower back lessons. I’ve really been making an effort to draw more from imagination, it’s absolutely getting easier, better, and funner! the inklings are from last night haha. 💯I find that drawing something fun I really like or am interested in at the moment from imagination is really more effective and zone-inducing than trying to force it. It’s really great practice iterating on similar characters with different poses, details, expressions and all that. Thoughts and crits would be appreciated!!

First and for all, sorry for the rough sketch and grammar. I would like to ask is that even possible for an object to have different vanishing point length? I find this problem when i start drawing object with different vanishing point length. Question is do i need to maintain the same vanishing point length or not? There are two example there. Example 1: I find the first object vanishing point and the length of it. I copy the first length and drag it to different vanishing point for my second object. Example 2: I find the first object vanishing point and the length of it. However, I draw different vanishing point and different length for it. May i know which one is correct? Or none of it is correct. If so please guide me or teach me. I really want to learn and know it. Many thanks in advance :)

I've gone through the gesture, bean and robobean part of proko's figure fundamentals course, and thought I was doing reasonably well. However, now that I'm trying the mannequinization part, I feel like it's way, way way worse than it should be, to the point where I'm feeling a bit guilty as I go through each one, like I'm committing a crime against art or something :O These three are the ones I've made so far, with the one with the exercise ball taking about half an hour, and the other two about 15 or 20 minutes each. I feel like I had each separate part moderately well sorted, but putting them together is another thing entirely. Thank you very much for your feedback and help!! EDIT: I thought I'd added the images, but I hadn't.

Hi, Here's a drawing I did a while ago of a plaster cast. I'm just looking for an overall critique on my drawing. Thanks!

Hey Everyone, So I am trying to engage in the community a bit more. I have a critique/help request. I am wanting to improve my line quality. I go back through my sketchbooks and everything is so messy! I'm wondering if any of you have had trouble with this or have some advice? I am trying to tighten up and be more 'intentional' by using INK and doing longer studies (2 - 3 - 5 mins instead of 45sec and 1mins) but I still end up all loosey-goosey. I'm thinking I will re watch the gesture videos and practice my 'S' and 'C' curves. Anyway, any ideas? Also, do you think I'm good enough to start trying to give some critiques? I want to be more involved in the community but I'm a bit of a hermit ahaha. Look forward to hearing from anyone, I'm tired of grappling with this on my own. Cheers, Tom

This is a digital painting I created as a portrait study; as a hobbyist with no formal training, any feedback would be appreciated! In particular, something seems off the more I zoom out, but I can't put my finger on it when I zoom back in. Original photo attached for reference. (The original photographer is "c_byn", and the model is Olga Alberti)

I havent been drawing since 8 months because an injury in my hand, now i seem okay but feel like my motivation was crushed... how do you people get back into drawing? i dont see how im going to get the motivation i had before.

Here are some of my latest sketches, would love to see all of yours, and get some feedback on where to improve.

These are a couple illustrations from my ebook “An Artist’s X-Ray Vision: The Male Figure” that takes photo references and then shows the lines, rhythms, forms, and structures that artists can “see” that the layman might not be able to. https://andrewjosephkeith.company.site/An-Artist%E2%80%99s-X-Ray-Vision-p309653019

Hello everyone! Fellow drawing basics student here. The question of this post is in the title - “Why do you want to learn how to draw?” I’m curious to discover what kind of reasons people might have. You can be as concise or as detailed as you want. Looking forward to your responses!

I have collected my knowledge of practicing fundamentals and blew it into this piece. A tree. I am not 100% satisfied with it. I cannot put a finger on it. But something is missing there. What do you guys think? Thanks

Can anyone recommend a good perspective course or book that includes assignments? I have Marshall's lectures, and a few other books, but I'm rotten at actually practicing any of it without assignments (and I'm super lazy at creating my own). Are there any good courses out there that have assignments built in to them? (also something that starts a little more simply/fun than Robertson's How to Draw).

Been trying to do more portraits and keeping in mind the basic form/anatomy of the face.been also trying to learn to blend more

Here’s some quicksketch drawings I've been working on over the past few weeks or so, these are the more successful ones, but there are certainly some real messed up ones that are pretty wonky. The pen sketches might be 1-2 min, but the rest are probably around 5 min or more. I think I need to slow down and tone down the aggressive pointy quality that tends to happen here, probably due to impatience or feeling to rushed. I need to pay more attention to the legs... Thoughts and crits would of course be greatly appreciated!! I’ve been working through the live model stream sessions with Glenn vilppu on NMA, which have been awesome. 

Really love the gestural movement that is created by the arrangement of these high key shapes in this Sargent painting. Sometimes it’s as simple as finding a really good S-curve.

Hi! I am looking for critique on these two drawings of the head. I studied the head with the Loomis and Reilly method for a few months, then moved to the planes of the head and studied that for a few months too. Now I am trying to also loosen up a bit and do them more intuitively, still thinking of the whole structure and perspective. My biggest problem is always the cheekbone area. Sometimes it is really hard for me to see the exact transitions between the planes there. And I have a question. When is the right time to dive into shading? Can I also be studying shading while I am still working on structure/perspective and the planes of the head at the same time? Or is it better to keep them separate? Thank you for your feedback and advice!

I am trying to improve a little in gesture. Would appreciate some critique on those:) 30 sec to 3-4min top to bottom: (I've duplicated the layer so that the lines are easier to see)

Hi there! I recently started my first few figure drawing classes with a real model, this is my first go at drawing a woman. I'd love some critique and feedback on what I need to work on and learn more. I'm still in the process of doing the anatomy course so, that's one thing I'm trying to improve at but any advice is welcome

I have been practicing drawing faces for 6 month now. These are some of the latest sketches I've made. I have been more careful on putting the features in the right place, and conveying tone. I appriciate the critique. reference: https://mubi.com/es/cast/samuel-l-jackson - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6K6maB_MxU&t=2032s https://co.pinterest.com/pin/365284219782726791/ https://co.pinterest.com/pin/231442868336069393/ http://industriasdelcine.com/2020/09/04/los-mayores-exitos-de-alfred-hitchcock-en-taquilla/ one is missing but I couldn't find the link .-.

Hey everyone, I’ve compiled a stack of fun drawings and studies and wanted to post them, I think ill keep updating this new thread. I’d appreciate any crits or thoughts, since there are likely many things I miss that an outside opinion would be helpful in addressing! I’m looking to build skills for storyboarding so my next focus is going to be on an NMA course: Bill Perkins visual storytelling, I’ve started it and it’s totally awesome, really want to get serious at staying with it. I’ve been trying to implement more shadows and tones since that’s something I need to work on and tend to avoid, so thoughts on that would be great! I’ve just been trying to keep it simple with the lasso fill tool with 2 or 3 values, focusing on the shapes.  For the figure drawings my focus has mostly been on defining and simplifying anatomy, trying to implement more tone and shadows, and of course trying to get as solid of a gesture and construction as I can. I’d appreciate any thoughts thanks.

Hi! Long time no see! Here's a bunch of figure drawing studies I did. Mainly focused on 1 minute and 2 minute gesture studies but also on 5 minute structure studies and I also tried some gesture with foreshortening. I experimented a bit and tried out a fineliner instead of a pencil with some of these. Some gestures have too many pointy angles in them and are a bit stiff I think but I'm trying my best in making them as flowy and simple as possible. Any tips and feedback will be very appreciated! Thank you!

Hi all, Just finished this drawing for my son of his favourite stuffed toy. Although I am happy with how it turned out considering this is my first step into fur or fake fur I was just wandering if anyone had any advice that I could use next time. Let's just say my daughter got jealous and has now demanded that she have one of her favourite toys immortalized by daddy 🤣. Any advice is greatly appreciated

I recently experimented with this style of rendering and it is still new to me, I tried to render a bot from my older sketch with a soft square brush instead of round brushes. I need feedback so I can render better next time. Any feedback is highly appreciated!

it would be amazing if someone can suggest me one

Hi, Here is a quick portrait drawing I did from a photograph, any critique would be welcome.

Hey everyone, so I am tired of studying in a vacuum. If someone could please critique the crap out of these - that would be awesome (pleasepleaseplease). 2 min poses. Gesture/figure studies. Side note **Do you ever find you're just going through the motions as opposed to feeling alive and interested in what you are drawing? This post is an attempt to keep the "awake and intentional" study part of my brain sharp.?**

I visited Nationalmuseum in Stockholm today, and did a study of a sculpture by Johan Tobias Sergel, focusing on the thorax, which caught my attention. I did it for fun, but any feedback appreciated :) The first photo of the sculpture is from the point of view I had when drawing.

Doing some one point Perspective practice based on an example by @David Finch I think he actually did a Youtube video for it too. Followed the original a bit loosely and moved the light source, but it was definitely fun to go through this image and remake it. I also discovered just how little I really know what buildings look like.

I just can't seem to find a video or blog that goes right back to the start... I can understand tubes of paint, I can understand paintbrushes, but I just can't work out what I should be painting on, what primers are for, whether to stretch or not stretch, when to use linseed oil or Gamsol or all these other additive things - how long things are going to take to dry - can I leave it for a couple of days and just go back to it if its not dry, do I need and easel, should it be upright or can it be flat, am I going to poison myself with fumes if I get it wrong... just a few things I'm not sure about... any help would be greatly appreciated... Jo

Hello guys! What's up? First i want to thank the people who gave me great support and wrote down their experiences. I'm glad I can be talking to people who are really willing to help! :'D Anyway, I want to share these sketches I made. One was a test I did in transforming the gesture into a mere sketch showing what I know about anatomy and the other a sketch I made (of myself?) showing a little bit of my style. I want to know what I need to study next to be able to make beautiful illustrations in the future :')) I'm looking forward to hearing your opinions ;)

Throughout my art journey, I've always learnt passively, mostly through observing other artists, and experimenting. However more recently, I've been taking a more active approach to learning. Through reading books and watching other artists on youtube. The first area I've decided to read up on is lighting and shading. I've been using toned paper to pay extra attention to where I'm dropping my highlights. I would love to hear your feedback for my most recent piece. Not just on lighting and shading, but also on any other areas I should focus on improving :) Also any resources and book recommendations are more than welcome. I've started on reading Burne Hogarth's Dynamic Light and Shade.

Several folks have recently posted questions that skirt around the subject of, or have asked directly about the use of tracing in illustration, painting, and when learning to draw. It reminded me of something that I'd read a few years ago that had been posted on the Muddy Colors website. Greg Manchess, a wonderful painter and illustrator (go on, look him up) wrote these following thoughts on the subject of tracing as a tool. It's fascinating reading and I'm sure he wouldn't mind my reposting it here for all our benefits: "When I was hired for my first studio job, I refused to use any kind of projection, any kind of tracing whatsoever. Then as I watched the hours tick away while my other better, faster colleagues were covering far richer ground, I decided to use it. But I promised myself to learn from it. I would master it and use it to inform my skills. "I found it a fascinating teacher. 1. Memorize "First off, I used tracing to learn anatomy. By tracing, I could actually feel how an arm foreshortened. I could see what length the line was that was needed to foreshorten it. I could understand how eyes, noses, hands looked at difficult angles. "I used it to train my drawing skills and improve them. No, it didn’t happen right away. Like anything else, it took time. Yet I sped up, my drawings improved, and I began to keep up with the guys around me who chuckled to themselves at my naïveté. "In life drawing classes we work from the model, sitting before us. But what happens when they’re not there? What most art schools fail to tell you is that you’re supposed to be memorizing. Memorize anatomy? What kind of alchemy is this? Most instructors think you learn anatomy by simply drawing the model. Uh huh. 2. Draw, don’t trace. "When I draw, I remember that using the point of the pencil is boring if all the line weight is the same. Same for tracing. I use the side of the lead, roll it, angle it, vary it for shadow lines, hair, folds, trees, etc. I get different line weight by varying the pressure on the pencil. Ultimately, you’re doing a drawing. SO DRAW. 3. Edit detail.  "Forget about tracing every little subtle light shift, or shadow, every tree branch or eyelash. Forget about drawing every strand of hair. Draw for shape, draw for tone. Generalize the reference for the most part. It’s a guide. 4. It’s a guide. "When you trace under something like an Artograph, drive yourself to get good enough to draw with it. It’s not about tracing the image exactly. It’s about using the image as a guide to correct proportions and delineate shadows, depth, line, and contrast. Give it your own technique, otherwise your work looks lifeless, pedestrian, lame. It’ll look like you traced it. Exaggerate. Use fluid lines. Any ol’ goof can follow lines. Draw with it. 5. Use your own photography. "Shoot what you need. Best that way. The internet is full of pictures you need for reference, but I use them only as reference to draw from. I still need to make the sketch my own. Whenever you can, buy the reference you need. Better for everyone that way. 6. Distortion Happens.  "No photograph records life exactly. Photos adjust the image from three dimensions to two. It’s already distorted. But you have to know when it’s telling you a lie about reality. Do not believe that photographs are real or telling you about reality. They do not. You must learn to recognize when they do and don’t and be able to compensate. Besides, it’s a GUIDE. 7. Perfect the composition.  "First, I design the composition with thumbnails. Then I use reference to draw separate elements of a complex composition on separate slips of tracing paper. I move the sheets around until the composition is refined, perfected. It’s a composition guide. Artists have been using this since the Dawn of Illustration. Today, you’ll likely do this by cutting and pasting the reference together on the computer. It’s the same thing. 8. Use it sparingly.  "As I trained with tracing, I used it less and less. It instantly improved my drawing skills, especially drawing from my head. It improved my memorization skills, but I had to focus on it. The next time you draw from life, you’ll understand what you learned from tracing. The next time you trace, you’ll understand more from your life drawing. Back and forth, back and forth. --What? Did you think there was a straight line to skill? C’mon. 9. Nothing is cheating.  "If I hear another artist talk about being a purist and only drawing from the model, I’m gonna burst. That’s just part of the training. Honestly, get over it. Now, today. If your grandma's hurt because you trace photos, tell her to get over it, too. I do whatever it takes to get the idea to the canvas because it all changes from there. If Leonardo could’ve used today’s technology, you bet your sweet maxilla he would’ve. Sorry, but there’s no “cheating” in the art field. Anybody who says you're cheating, you have my permission to, umm, enlighten them. At this point in mankind’s search for Art, all is fair game. " Let’s see where you, where we all, can go from here."

Here’s a couple more as I learn mannequinizations for more comic book style stuff.

I wanted to attempt some bravery by using pens and blue pencil to study certain things like textures and hands since I can't really rub them out! I've been using Peter hans books and some Bridgman (cart before the horse 😂) as studies for these sheets. Anybody have any advice for stronger confidence in just line drawing? Especially with things like applying things like shine on metal!

Hello everyone! So, I've been practicing 3 Point perspective and this is the result, any feedback is much appreciated. 

One thing I struggle with and would like help with to improve is my line weight and variation. I've heard various artist's mention the importance of varying line width in drawings, and I love seeing it in drawings of others. However I don't know the "rules" of when to vary my line thickness especially in the outline. In a lot of my drawings I tend to outline too much (see the attached portrait of a guy for example) which tends to give it a stylized look. The other drawing of a horse is from today where I try to vary the line thickness of the outline, but I'm mostly randomly varying the line thickness. For the core-shadows I think I know how it works (sharp plain change= thinner core shadow, gradual plain change=thicker/softer core shadow). Does anybody want to share their tips, or point me to a good resource on this? Thanks

I plan to start this course around January. Can you recommend any good books to accompany the course? Does it make sense to use Figure Drawing from Loomis? or maybe "force: Dynamic Life Drawing" from? What was your experience? For instance Stan recommends following books in his list. See the image for the books I am thinking about. (full list: https://www.proko.com/books). I have no idea what is the order that I should go over them, how relevant they are when I just start and so on.

Hi, lately I have been trying to figure out how to use the trois crayons (three chalk) approach. The images show a drawing I used as reference and my attempt. Sadly I cannot remember the original artist of the reference image. It is unclear to me, how to decide, which areas to consider as cool (black) and which areas to consider as warm (sanguine). Is there any approach or rule that has been particularly successful? For example: "Always keep the cast shadows and core shadows cool and form shadows warm." I couldn't figure out any logic like that behind the choice of colour temperature in the reference drawing. Any inside or thought on that topic is appreciated. Thanks in advance. - Philipp

Feel free to critique. :)

Hey everyone! My name is Gabriel Barros and I'm a comic book artist. I'm always trying to get better at drawing and decided this year to study the fundamentals using as a base the 'Art Curriculum' that's been posted around the art community (the one curated my Modern Day James). So, I thought of making this space a kind of a journal, with my daily studies. I'm totally open to feedback and criticism, although I may not have time to reply everyday. So, thats it. Thanks for this space, really!

Hi everybody I would like to share with you my progression. I decided to start drawing five month ago. I studied by myself first with my favorite artists (Todd Mcfarlane, Sergio Toppi, Jean Baptiste Andreae, Moebius, juan Gimenez, Jerome Opeña and many more... i took recently some lessons with a professor and I am absolutly passionate with the draw now. Here my last work of this month, what do you think ? Do you have any artists to share here ? Love to discover new things ! (Sorry for my english i am French) All the best for you all !

I am complete beginner and new to the world of drawing and painting. I guess there are many more unlike me and suffering the same problem that is finding a course for complete beginners. Can someone help me with finding a course that teaches how to actually start ?

I’m a beginner, and I’m scared to post my bad art, so I thought I’d start with my easiest stuff. I’ve been drawing random stuff around my house, and this is the best so far. This is kind of an experiment. Any thoughts? I have a bunch of awful stuff i want feedback on, but I’ve never shared with anyone, so I thought it would be good to start with something I think came out ok.

So this is supposed to be my attempt at drawing Jenifer Aniston. This was a quick doodle so I don't really expect anything much. But Lately, I have been struggling with proportions. The people I draw or paint don't look like who they are supposed to be. I was hoping that someone with an experienced eye could tell me what could be done to make this right and what I can do to practice getting better at making recognizable people.

Hey all! Just wanted to share a recent figure drawing from my studies at Grand Central Atelier. Graphite on paper.

Hello! I have been practicing timed gesture drawings regularly but I'm not sure how I can improve and I have never received critique on them before so I am looking forward to getting any insight that anyone is willing to share with me! Thank you :) I have attached recent samples of some quick gestures (1, 2 and 5 min) The ones with two colours, I added the light blue after completion to try to see how I could improve or correct the original red gesture. I'm not sure if this is a good method of checking/critiquing myself.

Hey everyone ! Here are my latest attempts at Mannequinization of the body ! I come to you, once again, to ask for advice ! Where do you think i can improve ? I know a have a tendency to over-complicate things (The first picture (Yoni29) is a proof of that, i got a little carried away with muscles) but i tried to get back to simple shapes afterwhile (Pic 6) I still struggle with the space between the ribcage and the pelvis (I think i spread them too far from each other (Pic 7)) And overall, I struggle with the angle of the pelvis on some of the poses. Anyway, do you guys have any advice on those problems, or do you see anything else that needs fixing ? Thank you all ! ( Again sorry for the pics quality, i'll try to scan them next time ! )

It has been 3 weeks I started drawing figures. Am I improving? I am using graphite on A4 printing paper.. These are 5-10 min drawing

Quite a bit of time ago, I've started trying learning to draw. I found proko's figure drawing foundamentals's playlist and it was really a gift from heaven. However at some point I hit a wall during mannequinization: My gesture wasn't really good and in the end I was more likely to ignore it during forms construction rather than actually making good use of it (you should still be able to find my other post here somewhere). Then life has got busy and I haven't had a chance to touch my drawing tablet for quite a while but today I finally managed to and planning to start over learning to draw (both by using proko's videos and ctrl+paint). This time, however, I do not want rely on poor basics and therefor have decided to seek for help in regards of my gesture drawings. I've posted a few gesture drawings I made after rewatching the "Gesture drawing video" (one is made before and after seeing the pose on the step by step video, one is only before watching the same pose on the video). When I used to try and get gesture down, almost would always rely on contours so this once I tried to focus on the motion as much as I could so sorry if they seem a little bad.

Critiques and feedbacks are much appreciated.

Here is a drawing I did of a plaster cast the other day. Any critiques would be welcome! Edit: Proportion check GIF

Hey guys, I’ve built up a backlog of drawings and thought I needed to share them!! These are some of my recent figure drawings studies, right now I’m taking Scott Eaton’s anatomy class which has been great, but intense and lots of information no joke. I can already spot some anatomy mistakes in some of these drawings, but it’s certainly improving! Of course I would highly appreciate any and thoughts and crits.  As you’ll see I’ve been experimenting with warming up with some automatic drawing or whatever you call it, making scribbles without thinking about anything but making the lines flow, that just happens naturally, I’m striving to think as little as possible. it’s been super cool, I think it’s excellent training for building the intuitive subconscious side, and it loosens me up. 

Hey there! Creating good looking, attractive characters has always been a struggle for me. Are there any specific things to look out for while trying to achieve that? Right now I'm working on this pinup style image and I already feel like it's losing it's character, and starting to look more and more bland. Are there any ways to avoid that? Also can someone with decent storytelling skills give me some ideas on what to put in the background to make this picture more fun? Thank you! :)

For those who don't know me, I decided to take a new artistic path. After rethinking a lot about my art style, getting frustrated seeing the artists on Instagram and getting too inspired by the artists on ArtStation, I decided that I wanted to radically change my art style. I'm currently doing gesture drawings, I have some knowledge in proportion and anatomy (because I've drawn manga for many years), but you know when you feel the urge to make a more complete drawing but refuse to do it because you want to change your style? Yeah, that's my problem and I wanted your help :') Any advice is welcome ;')

This is kind of a hard question to formulate but basically: How can you be satisfied with art that's not necessarily 'technically impressive'? I see so many artists with a large following who make beautifully rendered paintings, illustrations, and portraits but I know that is not the kind of art I want to make, I don't find joy in painting or rendering out pieces like those and a lot of the fun for me is in the sketching and concept phase; its why I find it hard to draw comics and find it really fun to do quick concepts of character designs, but there is that small part of me that feels kinda shy I guess that I know that I cant make those kinds of highly rendered pieces. I feel like I am afraid people might not take my abilities or artwork seriously enough because of the style of my work.

If anyone would like some references for drawing the simplified head here are some images of this simplified head sculpture that I did for the Portrait Sculpting course here on Proko. There's a video with more references from different angles and different lighting on my YT channel here https://youtu.be/nWFJ2HxVMBA Enjoy!

I've wanted to paint/draw more images with more details in reasonable scale and believable fashion. I restarted doing some photo studies and found I'm quite rusty now... But it certainly helps to get me in the motion so yeah it's a good thing while I'm sort of in a "art block". My aim is to create some images for myself that would make me want to "discover" things in it, so in paintings, I might need to try push details a lot and see what I end up with. The first image here is what I did on paper with a 0.1 rotring, and tried to push some (more than my normal) amount of details into it and see if the image holds up. It's a bit weird to do so in lines because it can easily mess up contrast and value. I may need to actually do some painting tries. This time I adapted some texture look from Ian Sidaway http://iansidawaydrawing.blogspot.com, which I somewhat like. Reference images are from Flickr, with original author names on top of each image.

Hi everyone! Recently I finished this value study based on this photo by Sean Archer. I was pretty happy in the beginning, but now something feels off, and I don’t know what it is. Also, I was trying to imitate the painting on the third image (by Naranbaatar Ganbold) but I didn’t even get close. What are the main differences between the two paintings? What makes that painting so cool to look at? I would love to hear your thoughts!

Hi everyone! Here are a few illustrations that I would like to get critique, please.  First, there is a couple of studies of the illustrator Jose Garcia’s work (plus his work own illustrations for reference). I simplified a lot my versions but still I was trying to capture the essence of his style. In addition, there is an own interpretation of the character Jinx based on a digital artwork I found online. With this one I have been a little less careful with my lines, once I got the proportions close to the artwork. For reference, I attach also my first portrait (John Snow) that I did few months ago when I resumed drawing, to compare.  In general I am happy with the evolution and I am integrating a lot of the concepts I am learning here. But still I find my work messy and chaotic. I would appreciate a lot some feedback about line quality, hatching, etc, please. What can I improve and focus on the next projects? Thanks a lot in advance!!

Figure drawing in black Faber-Castell Polychromos after a photo of Natalia Majewska from Kan Muftic's "Figure Drawing for Concept Artists". I will add an image of the lay in and an image of the final drawing without any digital processing. Any advice, critique or comment on the drawing would help a lot. Thanks in advance.

Hi, I've created this tool that you can use to teach yourself shading. It automatically generates a primitive in the chosen lighting situation with the chosen material (plastic, metal, clay), then gives you the position of the light source to let you train your ability to visualize lighting and then put it down onto a canvas. It gives you grades — overall and in the different sections (core, highlight, etc) — and allows you to analyze how you did. The tool also has a live, automatic improvement graph, and it has a cyclical timer that works like the one on sketchdaily, allowing you to pick the time and get into the rhythm. In the hundred hours I've spent programming and testing this tool, I've definitely improved and I can visualize shading un-shaded objects much better. I'm happy to answer questions if you have any. https://code-flame.itch.io/shadeform

Hi, this is a recent master copy study of Master Sin Jong Hun. While I get criticized because I make it look way to similar to the original whenever I post my study online, I had to admit that I learned a lot just from this 1 study. I am not a landscape painter and I currently learning how to create my own landscape from imagination. However, doing this study make me believe that I could achieve this level of detail someday in the future. I followed Hun’s workflows, and I learnt about the composition, the technical aspects, the texture, the details, how to do trees, mountains, grass, flowers, and houses. I started to understand how the atmospheric perspective and how the color changes with it. It is incredible dissecting the artwork and understanding how the master do it. I highly recommend artist who is working on landscape to study this piece and other detailed master works.

Hi, Here are a few Architectural drawings I've done over the past few months, any critique would be welcome.