This week, practice drawing the bean from the pose photos at proko.com/poses. It shouldn’t take you more than 30 seconds to a minute for each pose. Look for tilting, leaning, twisting, and foreshortening. Exaggerate the motion and draw the two volumes, the skin in between, and the centerline.

Post your work and participate.

ladyfae

22h

What do you guys think…

Samuel Sanjaya

Doing bean assignment again, I hope I can get some feedbacks..

Anna Sch

16d

I came back to the bean exercise and compared it to my results from last year. Left is old. Right is new.

Bubble Gum

19d

I think I get the hang of twisting poses now. I will try to incorporate these into gesture drawings tomorrow

Bubble Gum

19d

Some twisting poses I did today. I may get the overlap of some beans wrong & for Pose 9 I hope I did not exaggerate the bean too much

Anna Sch

19d

hi there :) i think you can try to show more movement with the center line. for example in #2 i would make the center line look down (direction of the belly button) and then twist it to the side to show the twist of the torso. i hope that was helpful

Show all replies (3)

Bubble Gum

19d

Full pages

Bubble Gum

21d

I'm having trouble visualizing the bean of these poses. Can you tell me if I did these right or how should I fix them? Thank you

Harry Vederchi

20d

Hey ! Good job starting the bean : if you can master it, trust me your gestures will massively improve. My advice would be to push the angle between the two masses (for example, the last one is too stiff. look at the picture, the body is much more bended than in your drawing)

Show all replies (3)

Bubble Gum

21d

Some additional beans

feras_a_alghareeb

24d

Here are some of my recent bean drawings, could I please have some critique? I'd also like to know if it's time to move on to the next lesson.

supes

1mo

Bean Practices I sketched as a warm-up.

Samuel Sanjaya

2mo

i tried to do the beans again as a warmup. I hope i can get some critiques and feedbacks

joaz

2mo

I've done a handful more pages than this, but I wasn't writing down which pose I was using, so I decided to do some more, and write down the numbers for the pictures. Done digitally.

Grace Mounce

2mo

Hi, everybody! So, I drew some beans after watching the videos and practicing. Would somebody please give me a little feedback on how I'm doing? I'm particularly wondering if I'm tilting the whole bean enough (am I just putting one ball on top of the other?), and if I'm just drawing the same bean over and over with only slight variations (I watched the bean critique video, and Stan gave this feedback to an artist named Margo. Since watching it, I've been suspicious that I'm doing the same thing.) Thank you for taking a look! Best wishes to everyone who's moving on in the figure course! Sincerely, Grace edit: for a few of the poses, I drew the bean from the same pose twice because I felt like there was something I could have done differently after finishing the first time. All of these took about a minute.

Benjamin Green

2mo

I think these look pretty good. Here's some advice I have for you. It's not that you want to picture two stacking balls, but you're using this exercise to improve your gesture drawing and observation. I think how you approach each figure is situational. In some cases, it may help to draw in the line of action to capture the whole movement from the get go. In others, you draw the ball, then you will draw the connecting contour line and wrap it back into itself to really show that pinch. It is situational in the way you see it. Also, most of the time you'll want to avoid the snowman effect, which is having the overlap show on both sides. In some drawings it is completely appropriate (I see one in particular you've posted here). Really pay attention to the centerline of the figure to try to interpret which way the masses are bending and twisting. Hope that helps.

Show all replies (1)

Samuel Sanjaya

3mo

this is my bean assignment. i particularly had difficulties in twisting the form. Looking forward to some critiques and feedbacks !

Vera

3mo

Hello everyone. Here are some beans I did. Advice and critiques are welcomed. References are from line-of-action.com

Jesper Axelsson

2mo

Hi @Vera, I think these look pretty good! The posing looks quite correct compared with the the reference. - In the last drawing, image 4, I would make the upper part of the bean narrower, to better represent the proportions of the torso. In the same drawing, I'm assuming you're drawing through (drawing what's not visible) on the ribcage part of the bean. Is that correct? - I think you would benefit from working on your dexterity with linework. Line is one tool we have to communicate. By varying the lines, we can communicate certain things. Maybe you choose to make the contour of a form darker when it's overlapping another, for example. The Drawing Basics course has a lot of information about line, and I think you'd really appreciate taking it as a complement to the figure drawing course. Hope this helps :) Keep up the good work!

Show all replies (2)

Crimson The Kitsune

3mo

17/3/2023 Following along with Proko this time around, did pretty badly in my opinion with the lines and how messy they are. Criticisms for messy lines are appreciated.

Crimson The Kitsune

3mo

13/3/2023 Trying a new pose and going with my own attempt first before following along with Proko. I’ll do it the next day. Criticisms are welcomed.

Crimson The Kitsune

3mo

11/3/2023 Last day of drawing this first example of the bean, I’m on my third week btw. Last week is coming up soon!

Crimson The Kitsune

3mo

8/3/2023 Feeling a lot better with this attempt, I think my lines are a lot less messy than the first sketch the other day. Can’t wait to continue tmrw.

Crimson The Kitsune

3mo

7/3/2023 i will say this it was one of the worst practice sessions I had while drawing the bean, my Line Confidence was at an all time low. Criticisms are very welcomed today.

Crimson The Kitsune

3mo

For some reason I couldn’t post this in the free examples of Proko doing the Tilt, Foreshortening, Tilt & Twist.

hiflow

3mo

Bean! Damn it, I forgot to exaggerate. Guess I'll have to do some more beans.

hiflow

3mo

more beans

Show all replies (1)

Crimson The Kitsune

3mo

28/2/2023 Using @Johnathan’s example of using a gesture line, then drawing the bean on top of it. I have to say I really like this approach and I think it shows in my sketches! criticism is welcomed!

Grace Mounce

3mo

I admire your enthusiasm! :D

Gift Cards

Gift card for art students to use on anything in the Proko store

About instructor

go to profile

Stan Prokopenko

Founder of Proko, artist and teacher of drawing, painting, and anatomy. I try to make my lessons fun and ultra packed with information.