$159
Bundle discount Each additional course part in your cart adds 3% off all courses, up to 15% off.
Full course
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.
$159
Give a gift
Give a gift card for art students to use on anything in the Proko store.
Or gift this course:
Founder of Proko, artist and teacher of drawing, painting, and anatomy. I try to make my lessons fun and ultra packed with information.
DOWNLOADS
project-simple-animal-portraits.mp4
183 MB
project-simple-animal-portraits-transcript-english.txt
5 kB
project-simple-animal-portraits-transcript-spanish.txt
5 kB
project-simple-animal-portraits-captions-english.srt
8 kB
project-simple-animal-portraits-captions-spanish.srt
8 kB
ASSIGNMENTS![]()
![@hannahfathi]()
![]()
![Chuck Ludwig Reina]()
![]()
![@kurodore]()
![]()
![Ben Kraske]()
![]()
![@erinbentley]()
![]()
![Scott Mooers]()
![]()
![Kevin Gasanli]()
![]()
![@hannahfathi]()
![]()
![Patrick Bosworth]()
![]()
![@tilbury]()
![]()
![Kevin Gasanli]()
![]()
![J K]()
![]()
![J K]()
![]()
![Chuck Ludwig Reina]()
![]()
![Brenna McCrea]()
![]()
![Chuck Ludwig Reina]()
![]()
![Nickdulis]()
![]()
![Noah Denney]()
![]()
![Melanie Scearce]()
![]()
![Myra Lemmond]()
![]()
![Melanie Scearce]()
![]()
![rheannon]()
![]()
![Ben Kraske]()
![]()
![@gabriel138]()
![]()
![Ben Kraske]()
Deadline: Submit your assignments by 06/15/2023 for a chance to be featured in the next critique video!
Level 1:
Create animal portraits using basic shapes. Try to simplify the animal using 10 shapes or less. Keep your shapes organic and simple. Simple shapes could be stretched, bloated, indented, or curved to capture personality. Don't worry about perfect proportions. Instead, focus on creating cool, simple designs. No details or shading! Use the three reference photos I provided and find 5 to 10 more.
Level 2:
Take Level 1 assignment and push them further. Play with your basic shapes and size relationships to give the animals different personalities. Don't hesitate to experiment and look for additional references to understand your subject better. Now, go have fun!
Before and after (full page) demo. The turned head of the buffalo was tough to simplify, I think drawing it head on like the demo made it a lot easier
•
6h
Nice work! It's awesome to see the before and after. It's cool seeing how much you can do with simple shapes!
Feel like I did better on the camel than the chicken. Also sorry if the lines are hard to see.
@Ben Kraske
@Chuck Ludwig Reina
•
1d
Nice work! On your deer drawing, it looks like you lean into using circles and rounder shapes to build it up, but as I look at the deer's head, I see a more rectangular base. I'd experiment a bit with using some more variety of shapes to see what might feel better designed. Let your shapes be more organic while still simple, like in the description for the project. Curves, angles, indents, bloating, and other things can give some interest on your shapes and help give your animals personality! Keep up the great work :)
I had a lot of fun with this but only when I realized sort of how to do it! The first picture I think is before watching the demo, the others after watching the demo. It was hard making the deer not look like a kangaroo sometimes haha.
Here are my attempts at the assignment. I tried the buffalo on my own, then watched to demos for everything after. I'm going to be honest I struggled with level 2, it's just not something I'm used to doing.
Here is another attempt at the simplification exercise. I think this one was harder, since the whole body required more shapes, which forced me to constrain myself even more than if I only did the head.
•
2d
Great sketches!
References for water buffalo, rooster, and hippo, are those provided by the course. Additional references are shown for my cat, and a creature from another planet.
I still find it really difficult to draw confident lines that are also accurate lines. My lines always end up looking very scratchy or very searchy.
Here are my first few attempts. After watching the critique video I noticed that I did a lot of mistakes (mostly for the meerkat), so I will redo this exercise tomorrow.
Some of the mistakes I did:
- Forgetting to break the whole thing into many small shapes and focusing too much on the contours. I should put down shapes on top of each other like paper cutouts instead of morphing contours.
- Not closing lines into full shapes
- Varying the design by thinking about the whole animal (proportions, expression, personality, etc) instead of how to vary the individual shapes (like making one more dominant than the other). A mistake since this chapter is more about shapes than character design.
This is my second post for this assignment (the references I used) since there is a 20 photo limit for each post
Hello everyone! I enjoyed this project. I think I can do better the more I practice. I will post the references I used after this one since there is a 20 photo limit
•
6d
Nice work! You did a good job of simplifying all these critters in to simple shapes. Keep it up!
•
6d
Nice! Well done with your shapes. I particularly like the hippo!
This was kinda hard not gonna lie. 10 shapes were kinda limiting. My biggest weakness seems to be able to design good, interesting shapes. Especially if I want to go wild for lvl 2.
I also wanted to try and apply it to human faces while watching the 2hour livestream. Providing that picture too. Some were from imagination but most from reference. Wasnt exactly following the assignment when it came to human portraits. It was more of a "lets try simplify into more basic shapes" approach.
Dang I feel like I jumped back to square one with this XD I think the demos will clarify what im not getting, cause Im struggling to see the shapes in the heads
•
12d
I like to think of this project like a cut paper project of sorts. The layering helps me think in a 3D way although the shapes are just 2D. The forms that are closer to you overlap the forms that are further away, and the shape design is informed by how those forms connect to each other.
•
12d
You did a good job identifying the main forms in the sketch in the middle row. Those are some solid shapes. It's cool that you did a bunch of different iterations; I think you could get more variety with more experimentation with proportions- generally the faces follow the same measurement rule, which I copy and pasted over your sketches to show what I mean. Playing with those relationships while you experiment with different shape language will help you go in different directions that could be really interesting!
After watching the demo & critique videos, I realised I needed to redo this project but with full shapes. I also had a go using procreate for some which was a learning process all of its own
•
15d
Nice job applying what you learned from the demo! The overlaid full shapes really help to build the form of the animals. Great work!!
My simple animal portraits submission.
I noticed I leaned more towards round shapes.
•
15d
Nice work! It might be a fun exercise to draw these same animals again, but challenge yourself to use more rectangular, or triangular shapes to build the form. I see a lot of potential for some blocky animals in your choices here! :)
