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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.
DOWNLOADS
project-simple-animal-portraits.mp4
183 MB
project-simple-animal-portraits-transcript-english.txt
5 kB
project-simple-animal-portraits-transcript-spanish.txt
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project-simple-animal-portraits-captions-english.srt
8 kB
project-simple-animal-portraits-captions-spanish.srt
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ASSIGNMENTS![]()
![@locksmith]()
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![@locksmith]()
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![@etin]()
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![Rich Acosta]()
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![blendraw]()
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![João Rudge]()
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![Selle 16]()
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![@kotka]()
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![Patrick Bosworth]()
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![Márta Kovács]()
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![@jgroeschl]()
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![Juan Albarracin]()
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![Ronald Moss Jr]()
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![Rachel Dawn Owens]()
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![@akd]()
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![Melanie Scearce]()
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![Ry]()
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![Márta Kovács]()
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![Rio]()
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![Márta Kovács]()
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![Jack Shepherd]()
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![Ilana Eisenhart]()
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![Chuck Ludwig Reina]()
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![@syeaple]()
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!
I was thinking about splitting the portraits into both non-overlapping 2d shapes and others into overlapping 3d shapes. I know the latter one was more the focus but somehow I needed to process them in both ways when I tried to decide how to turn them into shapes, and which shapes to use. I was at first worried about using shapes that are too complicated but I later relaxed a bit. The first attempts turned into some sort of cubism exercise for me, which wasn't the point I think.
Slowly I was able to play with proportions more. At first I was a bit stuck on the original proportions too much, until I think I started to get the idea. Round shapes seem easier to stretch around without losing too much likeness and turning it into a different animal altogether, like the bunny.
After watching the next videos, I think I get now what the idea is. Overlapping, but mostly paper cutout -shapes rather than fully 3d.
Hello! Here are my level 1 drawings done before looking at the demo. Had many questions while working on some of them, of course often not quite sure what to keep as a simple enough shape. After checking out the demo I think it's clearer :)
OK, tbh I'm hoping I did this right. I tried to not use forms at all and literally just use simple shapes. I intentionally didn't worry about proportions or making them match the reference pictures at all. They came out looking silly, but I expected that. I love doing the projects before watching the demo/critique to see how close I was, mindset-wise.
Here are my drawings. I took some time for this task to really understand the different shapes and their significance. I think the lions turned out pretty well.
some feedback would be great :)
Really happy with my final result. Very simple, some personality and the chance to put to use some line weight. I let some of my studies aro7nd the final piece .
Outline on Level 1, Shading around Level 2.
I thought it would be funny to tilt the entire head of the buffalo and keep it's lower jaw straight for lvl 2 compared to lvl 1 where just the jaw is tilted... maybe not that funny..
Any critique and feedback on my attempt will be greatly appreciated :)
Man, this was hard. I have actually never done anything like this before. It took over ten shiba faces to become more brave and start exploring and I still feel like my results were a bit timid. I decided early on to go from the most angular and basic to more softened and distorted versions. I also thought about the great variety of dog faces even among the same breed. Some of these almost look like cats.
I have discovered I have a really hard time moving away from what stuff look like. My mind is so set on looking at proportions and producing likeness that inventing cartoon characters and modifying shapes to extremes is the toughest assignment yet. Any tips on how to improve apart from doing more of this assigment daily?
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4d
These are great explorations! It takes some time to start moving away from drawing the thing in front of you, and start designing your version of it. "Design, don't copy" is a great mantra from @Rachel Dawn Owens that helps keep me in the exploratory zone. By your third page of iterations I can see you starting to break away from the reference, I LOVE the third Sheeb on the top row with the teeny eyes! You're on the right track! By observing the proportions, and studying the likeness, you start to internalize the shapes present in the reference, so it's easier to apply some design principles to your shapes. Try varying the sizes of your shapes, find a balance of small/medium/large, maybe exaggerate the features, like a HUGE smile/tongue, teeny-tiny eyes, and a medium nose, or make the snoot the biggest feature because it's super close to us, and the other features fade back behind it, or focus on the eyes and make them the prominent feature, and make the body and head smaller to exaggerate. Remember these are explorations, and try to have fun with them. Keep up the good work!
Sorry for the low quality photo. Looking at how others did this assignment I think I might have over simplified it...anyways I'll try again after watching the demo. Critiques are appreciated!
I honestly think this one was a harder challenge for me. Every other lesson I was SO focused on details that I ended up taking far too long on each assignment.
This time, I made it mandatory that I utilized KISS, and spent less than 8-10 minutes on each drawing.
Actually following rules of no shading etc.. XD
I struggled a lot, this looks awful, BUT I stuck to the goal and got the entire assignment done in about 20 minutes using the most basic shapes I could.
Thanks for pushing me Stan, this class is great :)
did a full sketch page with these, i'm most proud of the orb shaped chicken and the lil foxes at the top (do not ask me why the buffalo ended up how it did though).
For some reason I was unable to upload the pictures of the actual Hippo, cow and rooster. But I tried identify the shapes as best as I could.
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13d
These are super fun drawings! Keep making more of a these. I like what you got so far!
** Before the demo **
Here are some of the drawings for this project. It was fun to work on, also I tried to draw with an overhand grip to make it a bit more challenging.
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15d
Nice shape exploration!
Feel like I'm not getting this, especially compared to all the other submissions. Also feel like i forgot everything about how to make good lines and don't know if I should just restart that section.
hi, i felt the same regarding the lines while doing this project, but then i realized I forgot to do my warmups... maybe you did them, my point is that I don't think you have to restart the whole section, maybe just watch where Stan explains the main things, and then do some practice. Hope that helps:)
Forgive the lighting, took these pics at work. I Misunderstood original instructions and originally did full-bodied shape design for the hippo, stayed exclusively to the head with the other two options. My realistic chickens proportions are off but oh well. I wanted to understand the face better and I did, so. I feel I did ok but I wanna push my shape design further, theres parts of the body I ended up ignoring when there was so many more variations I could make. Will be doing this excersize more.
wow the chickens look amazing and the hippos are just adorable! Love how the different shapes give them personality...great job!
This project felt way harder than expected. It's not just drawing the shapes that was hard, it was uniting them to make an appealing and legit animal. I definitely could've done better.
I found it difficult to simplify the animals into shapes. I will keep practicing because, even though I wasn’t too happy with the results, I enjoyed the challenge.
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17d
These look nice! And keep at it. Simplification is anything but simple. Some of the best artists in the world are the best because they've master the art of simplification. One thing I found help me is to stay loose with it. By being a little more sketchy when finding the shapes, they keep a real energy. Again, great work!
. Loved this assignment. Distilling an: animal down to its essential elements is challenging. -
