$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![]()
![Krock]()
![]()
![Nickdulis]()
![]()
![Noah Denney]()
![]()
![Melanie Scearce]()
![]()
![Myra Lemmond]()
![]()
![Melanie Scearce]()
![]()
![rheannon]()
![]()
![Ben Kraske]()
![]()
![@gabriel138]()
![]()
![Ben Kraske]()
![]()
![Fern]()
![]()
![John Oz]()
![]()
![Jon B]()
![]()
![Rob Simmons]()
![]()
![KSENIIA]()
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'm not sure if I understand on simplifying with drawing shapes. I drew the hippos body and head as one long rectangle, but I feel that the jaw doesn't look right. I dont understand in practice on how to break it down into shapes.
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
•
2d
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.
•
2d
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
•
4d
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.
•
5d
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! :)
I had a lot of fun with this assignment, but I also found it challenging to simplify to only 10 shapes. As I did more animals and after I watched the demos and the critiques, I did better at keeping things simple. I'm level one but I just had to try some modifications, which was so fun! I would love some feedback on what to specifically work on if anyone sees something. Thank you!
There was five more images but I can only upload twenty images. Don't know if I am drawing the objects correctly. There's definitely errors on the cat and the buffalo. Think I need to simplify more like I did on the other drawings I couldn't upload but wanted to know others' thoughts rather than me staring at it for too long.
Still find it really hard to just loose sketch without reaching for an eraser. Also had to rush line in/line weight this AM (will go back later) yet but I'm really happy I finally managed to apply some of the concepts.
I will reattempt and move further away from designed shapes and more to realism as a second attempt which I think was more the point of the exercise? I wasn't sure.
Only been drawing a few weeks so i found this exercise really REALLY tough. Attempted. Failed and floundered. Watched the livestream, and tried to research some references to help things 'click'.
If anyone has seen the awesome 'Hey Duggee' you'll know they push simplified shape animals to the extreme.
I dug through images to get some inspiration. I copied one or two to start to warmup, but then tried to loosen up and just apply the ideas of core shape choices more loosely. Ive tried to label the 2 or 3 here that are copies, not trying to pass them off as my own (1 lion, 1 buffalo, and a duck I think).
Then once I'd got some confidence I tried to create / iterate by myself.
Yes, I know they are bad! BUT for *me* it's a massive step after I flopped so hard on the first attempt!
Here I used some initial reference photos but also just played with shapes on some other paper until I found something that 'felt' like a particular animal, the promoted it to sketch book to explore further.
The wolf and dog were both just things that fell out of experimenting (i know nothing or gesture yet so I imagine I could really make the dog 'point' more if I flipped the neck angle to continue that strong directional feel
The 'ooh' monkey and square bear are my favourites I think. May take these and blow up and detail neatly.
Some are more detailed than they should be but you can hopefully see the core shapes I used originally to overlay
Most of the references I picked didn’t break down into simpler shapes as obviously as the 3 he picked. Well, I tried.
My first dog looks kind of like a bear, as does my Tasmanian Devil and wombat. The wallaby looks demonic.
Not sure why I did the hatching on those few.
I find drawing on circle basis way easier than on triangle and square ones :// anyway, it was very fun and helped me a bit with expressing my ideas via shapes
