Hey everyone, For this exercise I continued to draw starting with silhouette instead of construction. When life drawing I normally use construction lines/a wire frame so I wasn't as confident when doing this exercise and I think it shows by the scratchy/searching lines throughout. That said, I do think each drawing is better than the one before in some way and I got a lot out of the exercise! And because I kept to 20min per drawing, for the second and third pass I went in straight with pen because I noticed when doing the first drawing it took too much time drawing in pencil then going over my lines in ink. This is something I definitely need to practice, both approaching with silhouette and using pen from the start but it does feel kinda nice and more spontaneous not always using an underdrawing. I'd love to hear what you all think!

Can you describe more about the line vs curve alternation to increase the visual appeal, and how to use it?

Last year, I started started a habit of redoing some of my life drawing sketches either the same day or a day or so after the session. My focus thus far has been mostly on improving my recall of human anatomy in a variety of poses or exploring gesture. This series thus far has me thinking more about how I might also think about stylization and design. I also appreciated seeing the subtle pay offs that come with focusing on each iteration for 20 minutes.

Eliza, it’s actually kind of a relief to hear that you got bad advice/criticism when you were at school as well. I remember a couple of things that teachers said when I was younger that stung at the time and stuck with me for years; one being a teacher who was snobby and dismissive about me using comics as inspiration rather than fine artists (he suggested Hieronymus Bosch, who I’ve just never been bothered about). Then there was another teacher who looked at a piece I was doing and said “But what are you trying to say?!” — I of course had no idea at the time but psychologically, it heaped a ton of pressure on and after that, I always thought that anything I produced had to have some deep philosophical meaning behind it! That one comment absolutely slammed the brakes on my creativity after that even though the guy probably thought he was helping me to develop. I think teachers can often be unaware that when you’re young, an unthinking or careless comment from them can have an outsize effect and can really affect how we think about our art, probably because if you’re a ‘creative kid’ then art can be an awfully large part of your identity. Anyway, to any Proko staff who might come across this comment, this subject could make a good subject for a Draftsmen episode; “Terrible art advice you got at school” — it’ll be like free therapy for a lot of people! 😂