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About instructor
Founder of Proko, artist and teacher of drawing, painting, and anatomy. I try to make my lessons fun and ultra packed with information.
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ASSIGNMENTS![]()
![Enrique B.]()
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![Chuck Ludwig Reina]()
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![gunk]()
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![Melanie Scearce]()
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![Pat]()
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![@pablo_dispatch]()
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![@brimarie]()
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![Travis Rossi]()
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![Davide]()
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![Tim]()
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![Logan Keller]()
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![@appa93]()
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![Ash]()
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![Jason O'Toole]()
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![Melanie Scearce]()
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![Gasaal Nglia]()
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![Patrick Bosworth]()
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![Bubbles]()
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![@jfd]()
Download the photo reference images of seals and sea lions.
Level 1 - Draw from Reference
Draw their gesture and design dynamic shapes using the concepts from this lesson and the previous lesson.
Remember that gesture is not the contour, so don't just copy the outlines. Look for the movement and energy throughout the shapes. Use your whole arm and use the looser sketch line that we learned about.
Level 2 - Draw from Memory or Imagination
Start with the level 1 project and after 5 to 10 poses, turn the page, put away all the reference photos and do more drawings from imagination or from memory.
You can try to invent your own poses and design those shapes to be dynamic. Or you can try to remember the poses you already drew and use those as inspiration. Try to push and design with a focus on drawing dynamic shapes. It doesn't matter how accurate you get to the original photo, it's more about designing the shapes to look dynamic and interesting.
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Deadline for submissions to be included in the video critique is next Thursday (8/24/23)
* Because of the large amount of reference images, it would help a lot of you include the reference you used for each drawing. I'm more likely to select your submission for the critique. Thank you!
I was struggling at first trying to get the flow and also I felt kinda stiff at the beginning, but the more I tried I felt like I was getting there, I still need to practice a lot, any feedback is appreciated
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5d
Nice work. I can see you loosing up as you go, I think!
When I start drawing, I sometimes just fill an entire page with big circles and squiggles to get my arm loosed up, and also to help me think about drawing from my shoulder and elbow more, and not only using my wrist and fingers. This helps me jump right into the fun stuff faster!
I think that, combined with a slightly less hard pressure on the paper, and you will really start seeing your work come to life.
Cheers!
Here’s my attempts at L1 (blue) and L2 (orange), after watching the demo.
I feel like I’m still having a lot of trouble ‘feeling’ the gesture of the subject, although drawing seals did help practice executing long curves.
I tried applying this gesture principle to objects as well. It definitely makes the object look more lively, but in turn a lot more cartoony too. I’m unsure about how much gesture I can/should actually apply to inanimate objects to make them look more stable than cartoony. Or gesture works differently in objects compared to seals?
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6d
Your seals look perfect! Stay the course, seeing the gesture and rhythms will become more intuitive with practice. That being said, I think you're 100% on the right track!
It's cool that you brought up the idea of inanimate object/shapes; that subject is coming up later in this course. Using gesture like this comes in to play when you want to anthropomorphize objects, or create a cartoonish effect, but also when you start to mess around perspective. You can preview that lesson here to get a head start since you seem interested: https://www.proko.com/course-lesson/gestural-perspective. But yes, I would say that I think of gesture differently when it comes to animate and inanimate objects. Gesture being the energetic connection between parts. It's hard for me to think of how I could apply gesture to a computer mouse without making it a character, but I really like your explorations above. Cool stuff!
Well, this has taken a few days but I thoroughly enjoyed sketching the seals. I did pages one and two before watching the critique and they were all done with the references.
Here's my submission for both levels, I tried to focus on the gesture and keeping the shapes asymmetric. The green ones are from imagination
I didn't include all the seals I drew because there are so many!! I really liked this project; it was a lot of fun. My earlier ones were a bit rough, but I felt myself get better as I did more and more. Drawing from imagination was hard. What Stan said about relying on reference really resonated with me, as I primarily draw from reference. Although with time, I feel like I got better at drawing seals from imagination too (my anatomy is probably off, but at least it looks like a seal!).
They all turned out great, but I especially like the ones from your imagination. My favorite is the sleeping seal!
Level 1 and 2 assignments. Looking forward to watch the demo, I’d like to push the shapes to be more dynamic but that seems easier said than done.
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10d
These are terrific!
I was on this for quite a while. Partly because I didn't find much time to draw throughout 2025. Partially because I wasn't sure I was really getting it.
I sometimes catch myself fretting on the details, and it makes me worry that I'm losing focus on the overall gesture.
Here are my attempts at dynamic sea puppers. This project was a nice change up from the pain of realizing how bad I am at measuring and transposing proportions.
This is what I did. Thanks for any feedback. I noticed a lot of people put details but I thought that was outside the scope of the assignment. Sorry I can't put reference beside
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20d
yeah the yawning ones are the best! I see you added a hat in one lol
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20d
These are awesome. I especially like the yelling / yawning one.
I really struggled with drawing from memory/imagination, but it’s good to attempt these things
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20d
These look great! There is a lot of character in them.
I really enjoyed this assignment, and I'll probably keep doing these as exercises going forward!
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21d
It's a good exercise to keep in rotation. These have great flow, nice work!
This _was_ fun! Also just the fact that a single attempt took ~5 minutes made it so much easier to not worry about messing it up!
(The photo with 4 versions of the same seal was me trying to understand what made the first one feel so melty, not sure I figured it out though)
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23d
Nice work! I really love the 3rd page with 4 versions of the same seal, you made some subtle shifts in the shape design and they all read clearly and uniquely! I really love that top left seal too, great simplification in the head and features! Keep it up!
LEVEL 1. I did ALL THE 40 SEALS back in November, it took me SO MUCH TIME, it was crazy.
Now I’m going to redo a couple and attempt LEVEL 2 :)
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24d
These are awesome. I can't wait to see what you come up with for level 2!
I really like this kind of assignment. Treated a bit more like a croquis session, but concentrated on trying to get a balance of everything in each.
Did a bunch of them and a few from memory/imagination. Blue ones are after watching the demo. Fun exercise.
