Yoni Figure Drawing Timelapse
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Figure Drawing Fundamentals

Figure Drawing Demo

Yoni Figure Drawing Timelapse

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Martin M
October 13th 2023 - I took two reference photos from "theposearchives" on twitter. Would love some feedback. Doing assignments and watching demo's afterwards was super helpful for spotting mistakes and improving my drawings. But now after finishing the course I feel like I could really use some feedback or tips to improve. Thanks!
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Marco Sordi
2023/11/27. Good evening everybody. Here's my latest illustration. I'd like to have your help in order to improve it. There are many mistakes I suppose. Please let me know everything you find or you think is wrong or can be fixed. Thanks a lot an good night!
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Samuel Sanjaya
a quick sketch and a longer figure drawing. I squished her head too much, It's because I draw too big and realize it too late.
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Jesper Axelsson
Hi @Samuel Sanjaya, nice drawings! I think you're doing a good job describing the forms! - I think you need to work on proportion and weight. PROPORTION As mentioned you describe the forms pretty well, but the proportions are often off, making your drawings loose some likeness and a lot of realism. I have some ideas for how to help you with this but first, I'd like to see what your process for drawing the figure is at the moment. Please do a few more drawings like the ones in the first image, and take screenshots of your process. If you have the time feel free to capture your process of a longer drawing like the one in image 2. WEIGHT There is rhythm in your figures, but they are lacking weight and tension, which makes the story of the pose less clear. This is something I'm focusing on in my drawings so maybe that's why I notice. In the bottom left drawing of image one, for example, the story of the pose is that he's leaning against a bat, putting most of his weight there, which causes his arm to tense, and the shoulder is being pushed up. But I'm not really feeling that in your drawing. Do some figure sketches where you focus on communicating the weight. Before you start to draw, ask what part is carrying most of the weight, then try to express that in your drawing. Try to feel the pose, as if you were striking it yourself. Maybe actually get up and strike the pose yourself (assuming it's safe XD) to feel where the weight and tensions are. The body is connected and in the case of that bottom left drawing you have this chain reaction: most of the weight is put on the bat --> which causes the arm to tense and the shoulder is pushed up --> and that stretches that side of the torso --> which squashes the other --> etc. I attached a slide with some weight tips. In short: Weight causes things to bend. The amount of weight applied and the strength of the thing determines how much it will bend. (Just keep in mind that these "rules" are ones that I've formulated myself. They might not be 100% accurate.) I hope this helps : )
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Marco Sordi
2023/11/18. "Dama di Norvegia" (oil on canvas 530×410 mm) in her final version. If you want to see it live don't miss NANA Exhibition at National Art Center in Tokyo from 12/1 to 12/11. I have been painting for less than two years and I will be at the exhibition to exchange opinions and ideas about art, drawing and painting. If you are in town please come and let's meet there! Thanks!
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Martha Muniz
Lovely work! Congratulations! :D
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Marco Sordi
2023/11/17. Good morning everybody. This is my last pencil figure drawing for this year (pencils and graphite on Kent paper A3 size). Thanks for any comment or critique.
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@tompencil
Great job, I really like it! Your drawing is very clean and carefully finished in it's details and shadows, amazing how it was done with pencil only :-) Did you draw it from imagination or were you partly inspired by reference images?
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@gothamdemon
Squinting at this I feel some values are a lil too similar, I feel there should be an absolute dark here. Overall well done on this. I hope this helps!
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Marco Sordi
2023/11/14. Good afternoon everybody. I am pleased to announce that this year too I will take part in the NANATEN art exhibition at the National Art Center in Tokyo together with other professional and non-professional artists. I will exhibit four works: the first is an oil on canvas (p10, 530×410 mm) entitled "Elf Bride". In the next few days, when the final touches are finished, I will post images of the other three. Thanks.
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Marco Sordi
2023/11/10. Good afternoon everybody. Here is another illustration of her Majesty. Until the end of the year I will only draw Elsa. Bruce Lee once said, “I am not afraid of a person who knows 10000 kicks. But I am afraid of a person who knows one kick but practices it for 10000 times”. I want to push my style as much as possible towards the style of Disney animators and character designers. And I want to be able to draw my favorite characters without any reference. If I draw a different character every day I will never master anyone. Of course I am also making other things, such as figure drawings and paintings, and continue to study the fundamentals such as gesture drawing, mannequin drawing, anatomy, etc. But I decided to dedicate at least two months to just one character, and honestly, with every illustration I draw I feel like I'm getting closer and closer to making Elsa look believable. So I hope I don't bore you. As always if you have any comments or suggestions please feel free to leave a comment. Thank you and enjoy the weekend!
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Steven Wolf
Nice work. I have a few notes on things that stood out to me that I think could be improved. First thing, is that her left arm, the one closest to us, seems thinner than her far right arm. I am talking about the upper arm. If either of the arms should be looking thinner it should be the farther one, because of perspective. It’s also a little unclear to me if that closer upper arm is meant to appear to be showing us just the outer side of it, which is what it looks like to me if I just look at the upper part, or if we are meant to be looking at more of the back of the upper arm while still seeing some of the outer side of it. If I look down at that elbow it looks like it has to be showing us a lot of the back of the upper arm. What was your intent there? Another issue is with the overlap with the one arm in front of the other. For the upper, closer arm, you have a tangent line there, where it seems that the closer arm, to us, is sharing a contour line with the far upper arm. Tangents play tricks on the eye and are best avoided if you can. To do that, you could either make the front arm overlap more of the far arm so it is clear that they are not competing for who’s contour line that is, or you could do what I would suggest, in this case, and create some negative space in between them, which would give a better read to the silhouette. This is even made more true in this instance, because the legs are also shown both together, with no space in between them, as well. This creates a kind of mirroring effect, of both less clear silhouette which further takes away from the impact of the read of the image. Now the overlap for the legs is good because there isn’t that tangent issue of the shared contour line. But it does give more of a quick read as being maybe one leg. If, however, you brought one leg back a bit in it’s placement of the lower leg and foot, so that there was negative space between the two legs, I think you would get a stronger read from the silhouette. Or maybe have her crossing her legs to achieve the same effect. Also right now the legs are doing the same thing, and the arms are doing mostly the same thing. That’s a lot of parallels for a pose. A pose will always be more interesting when you have variation instead. Her torso also looks a little stiff, that plus all of her limbs mirroring each other in parallels adds to the stiff feeling. Right now you have her looking back with her turned head, which is nice, but I think that would be enhanced if you gave a bit of a twist to her torso so that her chest would be facing a bit more towards us, with that closer shoulder pulled back with it. This would both make the head turn look more comfortable, and add more dynamics to the pose. And make it easier to have a space between the two arms, like I talked about. I also don’t know what you are doing with the hand which looks like it has one really big finger. I am assuming that was meant to be two fingers together but it looks like one big finger. The last thing is that line, looks like maybe a shadow that goes from eye to eye across her nose. Removing that would look a lot better. Other than that her face looks great. She has a nice expression. The hair looks nice too. Anyway, I think if you made those changes it would improve this drawing. I hope that helps.
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Martha Muniz
Looking good! I would recommend further checking out Jin Kim and Shiyoon Kim's work on Frozen/Disney if you haven't already. I think their sketches are good insight into the construction and thought process that makes up the "Disney style".
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Marco Sordi
2023/11/4. Thanks @Martha Muniz!!! The only way I can repay you for your kindness is to try to correct the mistakes and add adjustments following your suggestions and tips. For the gentlemen and the gentleladies who wants to know more about it here is the list of what I changed (from top to bottom of the character). It's a bit long so I'll also post the two close-ups of Elsa, before and after, so if you don't feel like reading, you can check the changes made at a glance. 1) I rounded the top of my hair making it less voluminous and raised the middle hairline so the forehead looks a little wider. 2) I enlarged the eyes and eyebrows by 10% and the irises and pupils even more (about 30% compared to the old version). 3) I rounded the inner profile of the right lash and joined the lower part with the upper part in a single line to make the makeup closer to the image of Elsa's eyes. 4) I repaired the left eye by making the sclera (eyeball) rounder on the lateral side and the medial one (the area of the lacrimal apparatus) less pointed. I drew the shape of the eye following the line of the nasal septum. 5) I increased the distance of the eyes, blurred the makeup and enlarged the ear to give the character a more "adorable and childish" look. 6) I changed the tip of the nose making it more rounded and pointing upwards. 7) I added some red blush under her cheeks to bring out the upper plane of her zygomatic bone. I also added a reddish shadow between the nose and the right eye. Her face now seems much more three-dimensional. 8) I accentuated the shadow on the back of her neck trying to better suggest its cylindrical shape. 9) Finally I changed the overall tone of the background by moving the overall color towards a light ice blue as suggested by Martha. I think the character is more "visible" now. Well I hope so. Thank you all.
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Marco Sordi
2023/10/31. Good afternoon everybody. Here is my last illustration for this month. I thought of it as a cover for an art book, a CD or something. As always if you have any advice to make it better please feel free to leave a comment. Thanks!
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Martha Muniz
It looks cool, the design would totally make a great cover! The abstract background goes great with the textural ice/fractals motif and concept design from the movie. I would say that the color + value of the ice background could be modified to make Elsa stand out more (especially because of her dress), since right now the two are very similar and get lost a bit within each other. Perhaps shifting the background to something lighter or more desaturated like a light ice blue could help, or it could just be something to watch out for in future pieces. As for her face, it's true she has more of an upturned/cat eye style compared to other Disney princesses like Anna or Rapunzel, but continue to watch that the eyes conform to the head's 3D form, so the inner corner of her left eye would be more turned in perspective as its further turned away from us. Plus, if getting closer to the Disney style is your goal for this piece, a bit of advice for their 3D princesses is that their eyes tend to be further apart, to add to that cute element, and their pupils are larger overall. Lastly, another choice you could make to add readability to Elsa would be to strengthen the shading, like around her neck, so there is more clarity in shapes from afar, or light blush on her cheeks as a way to show the form/depth of her face. Overall, this is a beautiful piece to be proud of, and I hope you find these tips helpful as you continue in your work :)
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Marco Sordi
2023/10/22. Good evening everybody. Here's my latest illustration. I'm not a graphic designer so probably the poster that promotes the event is not very good. I have the impression that it is difficult to read due to the very similar colors (yellow and orange) that make up a large part of the background color palette. Thanks for your help.
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@pmak22
I think I've taken this one as far as I can. I'm happy with most of it, but still struggle with the face/hands, which isn't my attempt to discount the work, but boy was it challenging. I'm going to try to do quicker studies as this one just took much longer than expected (in my defense Baulder's Gate 3 took over a lot of my free time).
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Martha Muniz
Good job :D You show plenty of knowledge about the figure, and as you continue doing these, I hope these notes are useful as you go about into the next steps of rendering and directing your image: Texture - It seems like the image has a lot of texture throughout, both for the figure and the surrounding environment. Especially for the environment, given how busy it is, it can take away from or overwhelm the focal point, which should be the figure. There are master artists who do add texture to complement their figure, but this is used more as a controlled and deliberately organized frame that adds to the composition--take a look at Fechin, Jeff Watts, or Richard Schmidt if this interests you. But for now, keeping things simplified outside of the focal point is the best bet--though it doesn't necessarily mean just one plain value as the background, just something less distracting. Edges - Edges are another way of keeping the focal point from getting lost. Having both soft and hard edges adds to a visually pleasing effect, and keeping the focal point in the sharpest contrast through hard edges while less important details are softened out helps organize the image. For example, things like the shadows could be softened out, or even areas of the figure you deem less important can also be softer in comparison to what you want to make the focus, whether it be the knee, her shoulders, and/or her face. Simplification - Yet another way to organize what is important and what is less so. More important areas can have the most detail and value range, and vice versa for less important areas. Also, I would caution when expanding the value range and level of detail on faces, as this can quickly age a person up. Value organization - It helps to think about how light hits the subject as a whole, rather than focusing on one part individually at a time--here we can see the strongest area of light is around the middle, with the face and feet softly fading into darkness. You do capture this, but it seems like the halftones remove the clarity of this organization a bit. Here is a video that has helped me a ton with shading, especially controlling the halftones: https://www.proko.com/s/3CWA Either way, these are all suggestions I hope you find useful as you continue your learning progress and continue to refine your already awesome work. :)
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Marco Sordi
2023/10/17. Good afternoon everybody. Here is my latest illustration. I imagined how I might draw an illustration for a picture book, a puzzle, or a calendar. No contour lines. Very simple background. For the pose I used the photo below. I changed a few things (like the gesture of the fingers) and obviously her face and dress. The most "challenging" part was getting the facial features in the right place at the correct angle without any reference. I also took a little longer than usual for the hair because Cinderella has a very particular hairstyle and orienting it correctly was a nice exercise. I would like to have some tips that can help me improve it (proportions of the subject, balance of colors and tones, etc.). Thank you very much!!
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Jesper Axelsson
Nice illustration! I think it's a good idea to be inspired by reference. I think you did great with the face! Feels solid. - If you're interested in drawing characters from animation I think you would really appreciate the Drawn to Life books I recommended earlier. - I did a drawover of this pose and tried to think of what the story is and how I could clarify it. I get the feeling that I (the viewer) is Prince Charming and she's loooking at me. I get the feeling that her body is moving away from me and that she's expressing "come with me honey" or something. So if I want to emphasize that she's dancing away to the left into the distance, I might indicate the weight on her right leg pushing the hip in that direction, and have the body twist, so that her head is sagging behind. I might then put the arms in perspective, strenghtening this direction. So the story becomes: she's dancing away, asking me to come with her. A close welcoming left hand, and body driving the motion into the distance. - In terms of composition I would play with dominance and subordinance. I suppose you want the focus to be on Cinderella --> giving her the dominance in the picture. The vases in the distance have some very interesting shapes, that compete for attention. If you want Cinderella to be in focus, you might want to simplify the shapes in these background elements. Or you could achieve it through lightening the value and lowering the contrast. I think there are many ways to achieve dominance and subordinance. I'm currently playing with shape, and find it really interesting. I attached some examples of the exercises I've been doing: • How does placement and size affect the story of a circle within a frame? • How can I compose a large and a small circle to adjust which one is dominant? The large one is by it's size dominant, but if I crop or overlap it, it looses a lot of its power making it possible to make the small one dominant • And two examples of a composition exercise: Design a few objects. Make them as different as you can. Compose them within a frame and see if you can tell different stories, playing with dominance. In the one with the ape, the shapes were a little similar. In the one with the bee, I focused on studying nature, to create unique and distinct designs. Next I'll try to think more about the dominance of the shapes. The leaf's spikes attract a lot of attention. Removing those, makes it less dominant and a better supporting actor to the flower. Also, be mindful about tangents. They create a lot of visual tension that you might or might not want. I hope this helps :)
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Marco Sordi
Fixed! The neck was too long.
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@aeyt
Longer figure drawing i just finished! It’s been about a year since i started actively drawing and while progress can’t really be seen day to day it’s fun to look back to see how far I’ve actually come. Feedback of course appreciated!
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@draft_al
Greetings @aeyt , It is amazing how we can see where our journey was as opposed to the present. I like very much your use of value. I do see that some of your edges seem to be hard edges, perhaps you can try to blend some of them to soften them up. The one feedback I see is the leg that's stretched seems to be bending inward I would suggest to do a construction with gesture first and look at your proportions before you add the anatomy. @Proko has a good video on proportions. You can also also try some plum lines for where things are at in relation to others. I hope this helps.
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Marco Sordi
2023/10/9. Good afternoon everybody. After reading @Steven Wolf's critique I decided to make some major changes to my latest illustration. Steven pointed out to me that the pose wasn't quite correct with the right foot raised. So I checked several photos and based on them I moved the right foot forward quite a bit making the toes touch the ground. Now the pose seems much more stable and solid. The hips were also not aligned correctly. I think they should be ok now, well I hope so. Then I widened the waist slightly because if the right leg moves forward the twist of the pelvis should also bring the right side of the waist forward so that that side is more visible. Finally I added a background color with a subtle indication of the floor so that Snow White doesn't appear to be floating in the air. Thank you Steven for your very important feedback!
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Martha Muniz
Nicely done! One small fix I would recommend would be to add some cast shadow to the hand underneath the elbow, as it's underneath the other arm and also turned away from the light source it would have less direct light, and it takes some attention away from the intended focal points due to the strong value contrast of light against the dark mirror background. Either way, great job :)
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Steven Wolf
Yeah, that looks a lot better now. I am happy that was of help.
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Marco Sordi
2023/10/8. Good afternoon everybody. Here's my latest illustration. I need your help because i get the feeling there's something somewhere doesn't work properly when I try to set a background but I can't say what it is. Sorry. Your opinions would help me a lot. Thanks and have a good Sunday.
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Steven Wolf
I think it’s because you have her standing too close to the wall. Also, is the foot on the far leg meant to be hovering off of the ground, or resting with the tip of the toes on the ground? If it is meant to be hovering, why? I don’t think hovering is right for this pose, because she seems firmly planted in a resting position, based on the pose of the rest of her body. It seems odd that she would be just balancing on one leg alone. If that foot is meant to be providing support then I think it would improve the pose to have the tip bending forward to show that it is helping to support her balance. That foot would probably have to come down a bit for that. I am not sure about the perspective. Something to consider is that most of her weight is on the closer leg, so that means the hip on that side would be pushed up, and the far side of the hip would drop down, so that far leg would start a little lower down. Doing something with that might help you with making the far foot touching the ground with the toes bent without making the leg seem too long. Just a thought I had that you could consider, if it is useful to you. Right now that foot looks like the heal is pressing through the wall because of the perspective. So try pushing the wall back a bit, and consider having the far foot bent at the tip to help plant her position. I think those changes would help a lot. Looking at it more, I am wondering if it wouldn’t look better if you made her waist a bit thicker. I am not sure how stylized you are intending this to be, but as the rest of her looks pretty normal that might stand out as feeling odd. Right now her arm mostly blocks it, but if it wasn’t, I’m not sure that it wouldn’t stand out more. Just a thought I had. I didn’t notice it at first. All that being said, really nice work man! It’s fun to look at. I really like this interpretation of Snow White.
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Thieum
Very nice job!
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Marco Sordi
2023/9/29. Good afternoon everybody! Here's my latest illustration. This time I used a very abstract approach. Thanks for any comment or suggestion. Have a good weekend!
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Martha Muniz
I love the composition, it's super dynamic! I think the only thing I would mention would be a small fix for the hand--some more even distribution between the size of the fingers on the hand nearest the viewer in order to improve the clarity of the hand position. But that's a small nitpick, great job overall :)
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Marco Sordi
2023/9/21. Good evening everybody. Figure drawing lesson tonight at Royal Museum Art School. 2h and 30 mins session with live model. It was the last lesson for the spring/summer module. I’ll see my fellow artists and instructors next month for the first lesson of autumn/winter course. Stay tuned! Thanks and good night 😴
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@reneewilla
sounds so exciting! Can't wait to see drawings from the autumn/winter course
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Marco Sordi
2023/9/19. Good afternoon everybody. Here's an illustration a realized for the concept of a butter cookies box that must be sold at Disney Stores. I'm not a graphic designer neither a merchandising or packaging designer but I wanted to know if I would be able to realize an illustration can fit this kind of project (I made an easy sample of the final product too). Thanks for your feedback or critique.
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Marco Sordi
2023/9/15. Good evening everybody. Here's my latest illustration. Another personal tribute to a masterpiece and the old school animation. Thanks for any suggestion or advice.
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Jesper Axelsson
Cool! Maybe you could more clearly think of what is squashing and what is stretching, in your next drawing. Squashes and stretches clearly signals the action. You might also want to move things to create more depth. Maybe her lowered arm, her hair, and her fin can go back into space. Apart from giving the drawing more depth, it also helps with the story, in that her raised arm is closer to us than the other parts (the whole body is angling in the direction she's reaching), and we feel it reach even more. These are things I've learned from the book I recommended. I hope this helps :)
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Marco Sordi
2023/9/10. Good evening everyone. For this new illustration of mine I was inspired by a beautiful illustration by one of my favorite artists. Thank you if you would like to give me your feedback. Thanks again and good night.
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Martha Muniz
Hi again! I love the vibe of this piece, it's very beautiful. I did want to add some suggestions for color/lighting tweaks to consider, so I did a quick pass with adjustment layers for further clarity. Namely, I think value composition/clarity could be furthered, whether by Elsa appearing darker against a light window (as seen in the example attached) or vice versa with a darkened window and lighter Elsa. Also, I love the hues you used for her skin and outfit, but I think the dominant cool blue light source could be further implemented as well, unless brighter colors are your goal, which is totally valid as well as a stylistic decision. Anyhow, great work as always :)
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