Proko - Project - Gestural Torso Boxes

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Project - Gestural Torso Boxes

Stan Prokopenko

in Drawing Basics

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Drawing BasicsFull course (185 lessons)

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You’ll learn the most important foundational concepts for drawing anything and soon you’ll be drawing pictures out of your imagination or from reference.

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About instructor

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.

assignments 383 submissions

Blobs to boxes really helped with this exercise!

DOWNLOADS

zip

reference-images.zip

45 MB

mp4

project-gestural-torso-boxes.mp4

748 MB

txt

project-gestural-torso-boxes-transcription-english.txt

19 kB

txt

project-gestural-torso-boxes-transcription-spanish.txt

22 kB

file

project-gestural-torso-boxes-captions-english.vtt

35 kB

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project-gestural-torso-boxes-captions-spanish.vtt

36 kB

ASSIGNMENTS

Level 1

Imagine the body with the limbs, arms, legs, and neck removed, focusing on the boxy area from the shoulders down to the hips.

The goal is to turn, twist, and lean this box to mimic poses. You can also bloat certain areas to represent the rib cage or hips. This exercise helps to practice intuitively drawing dynamic forms in perspective. Draw these simplified torso boxes from your imagination. Believe it or not, doing this from photos can actually be more challenging because of the anatomy that can be distracting and hard to interpret.

Fill multiple pages with these simplified forms.
Aim for at least 20 different torso boxes.
Experiment with various angles, twists, and poses.
If you struggle with certain poses, try them again with slight variations.

Level 2

I've attached some photos for you to work with, that you could find in the downloads tab. You'll notice each photo is numbered. Please label your drawings with the corresponding photo you're drawing to help me and the community give you a critique. Otherwise it would be very difficult to know which box matches each photo.

Draw the same dynamic torso boxes from the photos. Focus on interpreting the overall shape and gesture rather than copying anatomical shapes. The goal is to capture the essence of the pose in a simplified form.

Exaggeration

If you'd like to make it even more challenging, you can exaggerate the pose. Exaggeration can make your poses more dynamic and interesting. To exaggerate effectively imagine a baseline or neutral pose, observe how the actual pose differs from it, and push those differences further. Be careful not to overdo it. Subtle exaggerations often work best, maintaining believability while enhancing the dynamism of the pose.

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Deadline - submit by July 9, 2024 for a chance to be in the critique video!

Estel

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This was challenging, I love drawing figures, but my understanding of plane changes is minimal.

Chuck Ludwig Reina

•

These look great. You'll be amazed how quick you can integrate this idea into your own figure drawings and how much solidity it will add.

Darren

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Petar Ristic

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13d

Boxes on boxes on boxes (with a twist). Lv 2 was fun to problem solve. I'm not sure if I got each one right, but thought it was easy to fall in the trap of simplifying too much, when often there was a lot of twist in shoulders or hips (which could be missed), and at times some foreshortening which adds to complexity.

Alexandre Frazao

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23d

This gets funky really fast.

Benjamin Gustafsson

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1mo

Holy moly, this was difficult(!). I found it really hard to connect the upper part with the lower, or to be confident with the transitions between upper and lower

Ash

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1mo

These look amazing!

Camilo Pachon

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1mo

Very dynamic! Love the line weight. Keep it up! :)

@kotka

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1mo

I was not happy with how my first set of these turned out. They were either too stiff or too exaggerated. I couldn't find a harmonious middle ground. I watched the demo and redid them and it was a lot better. Exercises like this really make me second-guess, I know there can be different solutions to each pose but sometimes the brain just wants to make a fart instead.

@acorn9

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1mo

Alrighty then! Here we go with some gestural boxes. These were way more boxes than gesture, but you gotta start somewhere. Interesting to see (when comparing mine to others) just how many similar shapes there are.

Ronald Moss Jr

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1mo

gunk

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2mo

Attempts for both L1 and L2. Using the overhand grip helped a lot with staying loose and executing gestural lines. The torso boxes were initially very hard to see from the reference photos, but drawing a quick gesture of each one made it a lot easier to determine what they'd look like (and it was good extra practice on top)! For the most part I started with a blob/bean for the torso, found the turning edge and angle of the hip bone & shoulders, then connecting them all to create a box. I couldn't do that with the extremely foreshortened torsos, and instead I found myself starting with a rough box in perspective and twisting/pinching it afterwards. Foreshortening is really hard, and it's really difficult to express it with even just a single box with no distortion whatsoever.

Rynhardt van Vuuren

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2mo

Level 2 - These were pretty difficult and taxing, didn't do as many as the level 1's though.

Melanie Scearce

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2mo

These look awesome! You nailed it. What did you find most challenging?

Simone Couture

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2mo

Patrick Alexander Büchi

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2mo

A few level one torso boxes.

Rynhardt van Vuuren

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2mo

Level 1 Torso Boxes. I will do Level 2 soon...

Melanie Scearce

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2mo

These have some fun distortions going on. I really like 10 & 16!

Clément Douziech

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3mo

Level 1 and 2 attempts but I felt that both of them were difficut. For the level one I don't really know what gesture to make and for level 2 I don't really know how to make the torso box a minimum accurate. I will watch the demo again and the critics that should help quite a bit I think.