Project - Simple Animal Portraits

Lesson by

Stan Prokopenko

inDrawing Basics

9.8K

Assignments 1.3K

Downloads 8

Project - Simple Animal Portraits

Lesson by

Stan Prokopenko

in Drawing Basics

9.8K

Assignments 1.3K

Downloads 8

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!

@schmal

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the order is a bit messy. II think my first attempts contain too many floating shapes. What do you think? Is there anything I missed else?

Melanie Scearce

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18m

I think you nailed this assignment 👍 Great line quality in these.

Aubrey Hannah

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I practiced drawing the three provided reference photos plus five extra references I pulled from Unsplash. Critiques are very welcome, as this was a very challenging assignment!

Melanie Scearce

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I like that you went through and wrote notes to your strengths and weaknesses here! I agree overall that you should strive for more simple, closed shapes. Think about each shape as a paper cut-out. How can you overlap, insert, and otherwise manipulate each shape to create interesting designs that speak to the character of each animal? You did a great job with that concept with your hippo drawing.

Dylan Jagiello

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Dylan Jagiello

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At first I didn't like this exercise but learning how to simplify the big shapes really help me to find my flow

Dylan Jagiello

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Level-2 Shape assignment, wasn't sure how "realistic" I should draw them so I just freely drew what came to mind without too much concern with how "good" it looked.

Dylan Jagiello

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Level 1 Shape assignment

Maris

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I think my shapes are off. Would love some tips on how to improve!

@christalynn

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Fun project. I know I didn’t strictly follow the rules though.

Melanie Scearce

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Love the rooster drawings! Keep it up 👍

Lynda Wallach

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Michał Staniszewski

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Monkey was good for this task

@mangosandtangos

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10d

@hobodios

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11d

I tried to do level 2 and found it extremely hard at first but at the end I think I kinda learned how to do it (3rd image). Of course I'm still very bad and I'd like to get some feedback and maybe tips on how I can explore my shapes more.

@sosoph

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11d

Hi :). After watching the demos, I feel like I understand the assignment a lot more. So, I tried it again. :)

Merry Lee Sharin

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13d

Drawing Basics- Shapes- Simple Animal Portraits. Materials Fail- Thought I'd try the "red pencil" technique for my background shapes- but after I shaped out the water buffalo on the left, I discovered my "colored pencil" is really a "wax pencil" for marking glass, metal etc. So my red lines are WAY too dark, which made it challenging to control pencil line quality and still have it show up over the red. Off to the dollar store tomorrow for colored pencils. I re-drew what my "basic shapes" were off to the right of each pencil sketch. I still feel like I'm never confident what exactly we're supposed to do for the assignments. I don't like to "cheat", so I just submit my projects and THEN watch the Demo (and mutter, "Oh NOW I get it.").

Melanie Scearce

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12d

I think that's the best way to do things. You're more invested in the lessons learned that way :) I like that you took your basic shapes to finished drawings, way to go above and beyond. You want to think of your shapes as paper cutouts -- if you exploded them out they should be all closed shapes that accurately describe (in a simplified way) the form. Layering and wedging shapes in interesting ways can help you get a better sense of the form when you take it to the next step and make the finished drawing. Even though it's a 2D image we still should still consider the structure.

@hobodios

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13d

This is what I did first, I'd like to get some feedback because I feel like I'm struggling a lot with breaking everything down into 2D shapes (because I tend to make them 3D). I'll keep practicing until I feel comfortable!

Merry Lee Sharin

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13d

I really like your rooster! I also felt that was the easiest to draw- maybe because the water buffalo is so ungainly in real life, it also makes it hard to make the drawing look "nice"

Jannes Lauwers

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15d

Did my lv 1, this is before I watched the demo or the critique. I don't think I'm quite getting it yet. I just keep losing the actual look of the animals when I try to cut them down into simple shapes and they simply start looking like a random assortement of shapes overlaid on one another very quickly?

Slava

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19d

This was so fun, lol Would like to ask for help and feedback on my camel explorations, because I feel like I have most fun and successful ones here as well as most often did I feel like I lose camel-ness in the process Thank you!

Melanie Scearce

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19d

I think it's good that you lost the camel-ness in some of these -- it's part of the exploration and you're figuring out what works and what doesn't. I would recommend that you pick some of the successful ones and think about what makes them successful, what you like about each of them. Then do some more iterations, really trying to stick to using only closed shapes. I really love how you're playing with the proportions on the last image. Really cool stuff, keep it up!

@doodleibu

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20d

Level 1, I feel some of these could be simplified more so I'll give this another shot after watching demos. References downloaded from pexels.

Elijah R

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24d

There is something about shapes I think I’m clearly misunderstanding. I feel my shapes are either too complex or just not shapes at all. Either that or the animal looks deformed.

Axel Gyllenstierna

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24d

I think these look great! I had the same problem. One thing Stan mentioned was thinking of the shapes as "paper cutouts". This helped me when trying to vision the 2D shapes underneath. Also, containing the shapes can help make them less complex. For instance, you have a lot of "open shapes" in the red page of the second page.