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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.
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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.
LESSON NOTES
This exercise will help you avoid chicken scratch. Instead of uncertain pecking at the paper. We're going to draw each line with a focused and intentional path. Remember to draw from your shoulder, elbow and wrist. Avoid the fingers. When I tell you guys to simplify your lines, I'm usually referring to three types of lines, two curves and one straight.
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ASSIGNMENTS![]()
![@sketchenstein]()
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![Jon B]()
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![Alessio Rossi]()
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![@kurodore]()
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![@sketchenstein]()
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![Alex]()
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![Melanie Scearce]()
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![Alex]()
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![Inkhaurt]()
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![@sketchenstein]()
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![Kevin Riedel]()
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![Alex]()
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![@sketchenstein]()
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![Melanie Scearce]()
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![Jonah Jenkins]()
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![@hirosashii]()
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![Melanie Scearce]()
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![Darren]()
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![Melanie Scearce]()
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![Inkhaurt]()
Download the photo reference images and try to simplify them using CSI lines. Draw each line with a focused and intentional path.
Your pace should be quick, but not rushed.
For this exercise, we will just consider the individual segments of the contour of a shape.
Same instructions for level one and two. Just a difference in difficulty of reference. The level two photos have more fun little tidbits to tempt you to get into the details, but fight the urge and simplify.
Also, no shading in these please. This is not meant to be a portfolio piece.
CSI
C = C Curves
S = S Curves
I = Straights
If you'd like to have a chance to be included in the upcoming critique videos, you must submit your drawings below by February 16th.
Takes a lot of patience to deliberately decide, for every line, C S or I and then "ghost" the line a few times before you draw it.
I mean... At least you can tell what its meant to be which is an improvement!
Learnings for next time - REALLY have to be disciplined to stick to exclusively CSI and simplification. It's so easy to get sucked into details without thinking that arguably aren't that important at all.
It also took me ages! I'm so slow still
Paper this time rather than digital. Will try the boot next
Tried all the levels in different days before starting the 2 week challenge. these are my results (yea i gave up on the spine part of the skull lol and realized only when i finished that i totally forgot about a huge part of the shoe.....
Same, Just did 3rd try on snail though, trying to do the "ghosting" and be very deliberate. Kinda worked but feels unnatural as I have no confidence in my lines.
My attempt on smelly: Really feeling the progress 💪 probably should have kept it simpler but it was fun to try and add some details (like the spine). Massive growth from the snail till now!
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17h
This is a great level of simplification! Nice work 👍
Really happy with this one! I felt it was much easier than the boots, but maybe that’s because I now tried the envelope method. Coupled with an overhand grip for really thin, easy-to-erase lines, I’ve gotten maybe my best proportions ever!
I redrew the 3 CSI sketches I thought I could improve on after watching and learning from the demos and critique video.
i tried repeating my lines over and over to practice my flow and hand/arm movement, and I think I improved quite a lot. Though, I think I oversketched the pair of boots resulting in a messier look.
Drawing the snail was a breeze after learning that container/envelop trick from Stan, and other drawings felt a lot less intimidating after watching the demos.
i could have redrawn Skully, but I think I did alright in my first try thanks to the envelop trick which I applied after watching snail/boots demo. Plenty of skulls I could draw after future lessons.
i’m happy the most with the camel which I think I improved on considerably compared to my 1st try.
One thing I realized is that getting the right shape of envelop with the correct angles and proportional sectioning does all the heavy lifting to make the whole process smoother.
Absolutely having a blast following through this course 👌.
The Envelope... I gotta do'em again trying that strategy, seems fundamentally important pre-cursor to good proportions. btw - what are you drawing with? Great work.
Your lines look so good, they make me wonder "who is this person, drawing like this" :)
My attempt on the boots. This was a frustrating experience tbh. It took me close to 2 hours and I had to erase big chunks of it multiple times due to the proportions being off. I think I should have first simplified into REALLY simple shapes first, but I was so focused on CSI that I was already doing the contour using those lines.
Still I’m ultimately proud of how it turned out, and frustration is a good sign of learning something new :) Hope this time it sticks!
Ya, boots were frustrating for me as well, to the point I wasn't really enjoying the exerciese. But now a couple days later I think I'm gonna rally to try them again with more attention on making a good Envelope up front. Nice work, persistence.
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4d
It sounds like you learned a lot from this project! It looks great. You used a good mix of straights and curves here. Plotting out your proportions really loosely before you begin helps a lot. I like the envelope method, where you lay-in the very basic proportions with super light lines that eventually just fade out when you place your CSI lines. This beginning stage is the ideal stage to erase and move things around if you need to, because you'll be erasing a few minutes of work instead of a few hours of work.
Definitely went too far on the laces for the boots. I can also tell that my right boot is skewed downward and to the left rather than being perfectly aligned to the perspective. Definitely something to work on!
These boots truly were very difficult (as I think was intended for Level 1 students). I spent about 4.5 hours on this, all told. I'm sure I'll get gradually get faster, but I'm wondering if I'm spending maybe too much time. It's hard to gauge.
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4d
You will definitely get faster as you practice. You do want to try to work at a brisk pace to avoid overworking your lines, but you don't want to work faster than your thought process, which will lead to sloppy lines. It's a bit of a balancing act. Next time you do a drawing like this you could push yourself to work at a faster pace, as long as it feels like you can still make decisions at that pace.
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4d
You have a good eye! These have great flow. My favorite is the snail...big fan of the shapes in that one. Nice work!
After watching the demo for level 1 with the snail and boots, I decided to take the plunge and do level 2.
I think I did alright with Skully and I felt like I learned a lot especially from Stan’s method of drawing shape containers, and I managed to cut down on time even though I could have cut more than I spent trying to shade or be a perfectionist 😅.
But for some reason I struggled a lot with the camel which I thought at first would be easier to put down on paper than Skully, maybe because of the fur covering its form or cross-contours, or that the values aren’t clear to my eyes. The face of the camel was most challenging especially around the eye and mouth.
I also further experimented with line weight. Tapered lines are so satisfying when you draw them right 👌.
Anyways, here are my results. Procreate on iPad Pro 12.9:
