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Founder of Proko, artist and teacher of drawing, painting, and anatomy. I try to make my lessons fun and ultra packed with information.
LESSON NOTES
Join the premium course to see how I would approach the level 1 “Learning to Sketch from observation” project!
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Alright guys, now that you’ve had some time to work on your level 1 “Learning to Sketch from observation” project. Ill show you how I would approach the sketches.
One thing I've been struggling with the most is seeing how to thumb connects together with the rest of the palm, even after watching the demo and seeing it I don't understand how to determine what the connect is.
Here’s a go I had using a red pencil and it does feel better to use it for sketches and whatnot
I've made a few attempts at this, I really struggled seeing the flow of the hand at first but I think I finally got the idea of it after watching stans demo a few times after my first couple attempts
I drew the vr girls again after the demo.
The first photo is me starting with me drawing from the head, whilst the second one started with me drawing from the torso. I do think the girl is leaning from the left compared to my first attempt.
In the first photo, the vr girl's left hand is noticeably small and that was because I wasn't paying much attention to it.
There aren't many sketch lines as I thought i would, maybe I knew what I was doing?
I think I'll move on from the vr girl into other drawings.
If there's anything I can learn from this, please let me know.
Here's my second attempt at the VR girl after watching Stan's demo. He made a comment about focusing on lines as opposed to focusing on gesture and movement which I focused on in this second attempt. I feel it made it a big difference along with focusing on the big ideas first and blocking things out more consistently.
excited how well the boy came out!! I totally misunderstood the lesson the 1st time around so I decided to try again with a couple of pictures that I'd been wanting to draw but feeling intimidated by. I did the girl first, she was a lot harder - but still felt freeing not to worry about exact placement of lines/proportions, etc so felt a lot better drawing her. The boy I guess was easier but still - I maybe added more detail then was necessary but I was able to draw him so quickly (for me at least) that I decided to add in additional details and really enjoyed it! Feeling encouraged
Hello, I have focused more on the lines. I didn't focus too much on the proportions because I think he kind of told me to do in that way. Any advice?
Not sure if I went too simple on some of these? First time I tried the assigned drawings I was trying to recreate the image too much.
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2mo
This is a perfect level of simplicity and clarity! You're not getting bogged down by the smaller details that don't define the form, like each individual feather. Don't be afraid to experiment with your lines a bit more. I think that might touch on what you referenced about trying to recreate the image too much. I don't see many searching lines here; try to loosen up just a bit, stay light with your initial lines, and try to find the best line, focusing on the flow of the shapes rather than the contours. Don't worry so much about being messy -- looking at these drawings, which are super neat and clean, I don't think you'll get too out of control. Just keep in mind your CSI lines and try to fit each line you put down into one of those categories.
Did all three during my lunchbreak so I went pretty quick on those.
Overall I was a bit torn between taking the time to really nail down proportions vs being a bit looser/quicker in my approach because it was supposed to be a sketch.
Feedbacks welcome :3
I'm still a bit confused, what's the difference between the previous project (using CSI lines for contours) and this project (sketching)? Is it that the other was focused on approximation and clean lines, and this one is just focused on getting the general idea?
When should we use contouring vs. sketching? These seem very similar to me... Like when should we focus on contouring over sketching and vice versa?
Hey Michael ! I'll try to answer from my knowledge/exp but keep in mind I'm also a student and not an instructor so those are two cents ^^
I think you're very right about this exercice and CSI being very similar, this one is basically an extension of the CSI method lesson from where I stand, maybe with more focus on identifying the flow/rhythms in the reference and really hammering down the confident lines you should aim for.
When it comes to sketching vs. contouring, I'd say sketching is something you'll do almost every time when starting a new drawing, trying to nail down proportions, big shapes, flow, etc...
Contouring on the other hand, is NOT something you'll keep doing as you progress in your art journey and was purely a teaching method and I'll tell you a bit about why imo.
First of all, contouring requires a reference you'll be copying, so it can't be applied to drawing from imagination as opposed to sketching which is a preliminary step artists do when starting a piece.
Secondly, contouring invites you to look at your reference as a 2D shape and identifying the contour of that shape you're seeing. In the future, you'll aim to leave that "2D approach" behind in favor of thinking your references in 3D, the basic shapes that compose them, how they relate to each other in space, etc... This approach is much more flexible as if you can simplify anything to basic 3D shapes (cube, cylinder, etc...) and reuse that simple structure to draw the same object from different angles.
(As the same object can have wildly different contours depending on the angle you're looking at it, I believe you can see the limitations contouring bring)
Hope that helps !
Tried these quick sketches of owls - Are these an appropriate example of the sketching technique that Stan is wanting us to cultivate or these are too chaotic and something more orderly but not as neat as a finished outline is what he had in mind?
