Project - Simple Animal Portraits

9.3K
Course In Progress

Project - Simple Animal Portraits

9.3K
Course In Progress

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!

Newest
Ssss 13
18h
fue un proyecto divertido, y me di cuenta de que debo explorar y pensar más sobre las formas que utilizo
Mason Stroud
I definitely need to explore and push shapes more. A really fun exercise though!
Yevhen Syrchin
that was really fun! I would be happy for criticism 🤓
Melanie Scearce
These are looking great! You're definitely on the right track. Keep going with more explorations -- test out different shapes and proportions -- notice how the adjustments change the personality of the animals. The more quick sketches you can do for this assignment the better!
@pmirko
5d
watching the streaming while doing the rooster helped me out a lot, it was actually easy and fun to desing 2 version in like 10 minutes....
Radu Rentea
Here is my first attempt at drawing these animals before watching the demonstration video. I'll describe them in the order I drew them. The buffalo was easiest because I had a photo reference - I could quickly identify and draw the basic shapes. The hippo was more challenging. I had trouble breaking its form into simple shapes, so I started by drawing some details first to help me understand which parts were most important to capture. The rooster was the most difficult of all, but eventually I found some key lines that came together to create shapes. I feel like I didn't follow the assignment perfectly with the hippo and rooster - instead of using only complete shapes, I sometimes used lines that connected different shapes together. These lines and shapes together created the final form.
@pmirko
5d
really really struggled with the buffalo....tried a rounded more relaistic version, tried a boxy one and at the end i've made one with like 5 flowy lines without giving me the time to think....not sure i've found anything in here....
@pmirko
6d
this is my 2 hippo 2 ways: soft and sharp. couldn't put the ref image because the browser refused and says i've reached 10 mb of space with 3 jpeg, not sure what's happening...
@alysialynn
This is my attempt at the animal portraits project. I chose the hippo, but I'm going to do the others too for practice. I feel like I'm pretty far behind the rest of you.
Shou
9d
And lvl2. This one wasn’t easy but I’m still proud of some of them (not the prairie dog it’s certified nightmare fuel, don’t look at them for too long they’re freaks). I think for the first two I was a bit too focused on the shape of the head, I tried to make it more global in the other ones. It was interesting to see how much personality different shapes can give. Critiques welcome. (references right below)
Dennis Yeary
honestly they are not bad. thought you might want to work on giving them necks.
Melanie Scearce
These are excellent! I love how you played with the shapes, especially in the bat and sheep designs.
Shou
9d
Nvm I only have two pics you’ll have to imagine the rest…
Shou
9d
I went in scared that it was going to be a hard one but actually it was quite fun. You can see some experimentations on the left side and on the right, the design I went with. I’m pretty happy with how some turned out :D I’ll post my references below. Critiques are welcome. (Shall post lvl2 in a minute)
Shou
9d
@matterweave
Super new going through all of this, but I liked the chicken so much I tried to stretch into the level 2 stuff. First pic was the first attempt for the level 1 exercise, then tried some basic tweaking all the shape language stuff with circles and triangles.
Martha Muniz
Great shape explorations! Love how different each one is from one another.
Kyle
13d
This project was a lot of fun! I love how you can make the sketches accurate or distort them to look cartoony. The buffalo was definitely the hardest to simplify down but I’m happy with how it came out!
Jens Messmer
Level 1 animals plus additional animals with references and some variations with different basic shapes.
Pale Night
13d
Some very, very quick sketches on this project. I tried to exaggerate the type of shapes used for each animal, in order to convey a bit of vibe or personality.
Pale Night
13d
Some more quick animal sketches - a yawning cat, a curious ostrich, and a small, chonky bird.
Rachel Dawn Owens
These have a ton of personality! The eyes going in two different directions while he chews some grass makes the cow look very cow-like. The hippo’s tongue and whiskers are nice touches too.
@bovine_designs
Any critique is appreciated! This assignment was tough, especially the hippo. I overthought the complexity of shapes trying to understand them in 3D space.
Tyre Blackshire
This one was harder than I thought it would be. I added Weezing since most Pokémon are made up of basic shapes.
@mwalker
19d
Some images were pretty straight forward and others were a nightmare. I’m beginning to understand the statement that drawing is more thinking than putting pencil to paper.
Rachel Dawn Owens
I love the way you drew the flat planes on these. That elephant head looks like it’s made out of origami paper. It’s really cool. The fox is a little flat. If you killed the two tangents on its back, it might look more dimensional.
Alex Smith
20d
This one was much harder than I expected. It was tough to break a picture down into shapes and not end up just copying the image (or making it unrecognizably simple). I totally flopped on the hippo, so I'll give that another try after watching the demo/critiques, but I think the buffalo turned out okay!
Melanie Scearce
I really love the buffalo drawing 😁 and I think your chicken designs look really cool! Especially the second one. The design itself is strong, so I tried out a couple of ways to make it even stronger using overlapping, which is what makes your design successful in the first place. Hope this helps. You are on the right track and doing some more experimentation can lead you to some really solid designs!
Jeffrey Powers
This was the hardest lesson so far. Not focused on accuracy but just on creating the animal based on basic shapes.
Rachel Dawn Owens
These are really fun! I dig how you the hippo looks like a 3d box.
@osrour
21d
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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.
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