Working on simple forms. Horses on a lazy day, a heron looks for its mate, hiding in the bushes. And I’m still working on scapulae and those back muscles. To find the locations of it all in a moving body is hard, but it must be possible to make choreographies from imagination one day.

This is great! Keeping this in mind helped a lot with my figure drawing study today. WIll have to make sure to do this especially when there are complex poses I am struggling with or when my drawings are looking to flat and 2D.

Back back back!!!

Wooooo we're back!!! High key missed this.

HELL YEAH, WE ARE BACK BABY! :D I can't wait to dive back into that! Actually, I haven't stopped lol. I kinda already did lots of practical perspective exercises during the course break. For example: I sketched my favorite Pokemon for each type starting with primitives and even did some crazy perspectives (fisheye, extreme angles). But now I am even more thrilled to get even better. I honestly love drawing in perspective so much by now. It's almost like meditation <3. And omg Marshall. I felt so honored seeing my sketches included in your video QQ. Thank you so much! Looking forward to watching and practicing with the new content! :D Already enjoyed the bits about Winsor McCay! Please more of that.

Marshall, I hope your promise (" I will show you how to use these basic shapes to draw anything") includes breaking down people and animals into simple forms. This is a skill with which I have difficulty.

I will be back in this lesson’s post on June 23rd.

Yay! Excited about this next part

So excited you are back.

I bought the entire course just for this second half. So excited!!

Hey @Carlos Javier Roo Soto I hope it’s okay to answer your comment in this section, because the previous one is so full of projects and feedback it’s difficult to have a conversation. You wrote: “On a unrelated note, today Marc Brunet made a video in which he talked about Caped Levels. Meaning that there are some skills that no matter how much you practice you can't improve upon after a certain point, and everybody's different. I'm quite scared of asking myself what those skill might be for me, because it might destroyed my goals or tell me I'm been wasting my time all this years, and is not just laziness and procrastination what has stutter my progress.” So, I kinda wanted to drag this here for discussion because it’s a common fear, and definitely mine. I think there’s truth to it but it’s not something like “I suck at perspective/values/rendering I’ll never get better at this thing”, but more about the avenue you take to a specific goal. If you have a goal, I think more often than not it’s your strength because it’s what speaks to your soul, right? At least that’s how I set mine. I will come right out and say once again that I cannot draw boxes and cubes for shit IF I have to draw just those things without a HL. I’m never going to be a Michael Hampton most likely. But within a figure forms begin to flow if I don’t have to think about perspective. I’ve always been an ellipse and tube person and now I’ve begun constructing forms using mostly these, and you know what, it turns out Steve Huston does it that way too and it’s fine. I can only feel form if I’m gliding, and, well, Glenn Vilppu does it that way and he’s great at what he does. When I post fanart it’s mood and lyricism that gets compliments and they’ve always been my goal, so lately I’ve been focusing on making form the servant of gesture/emotion rather than making bodies out of boxes and cylinders. But I will also draw the shit I hate because it helps me learn things I didn’t know before. And I feel like my figures have improved since embracing ellipses more than when I was than trying to grind boxes, - which is basically what Marc Brunet is saying about grinding your strength instead of your weakness. Find what doesn’t work for you and then think how you can achieve that goal differently based on what comes easier. For example, compare the first image with the second one from a few days ago and I do feel the second is stronger. even in imagination stuff or stuff I have no experience with (like the deer and cervtaur girl doing stuff with tubes/ellipses gets me somewhere without being familiar with anatomy.) So yeah, I think there are caps but so much in terms of a specific fundamental necessarily but more its offshoots of that fundamental if that makes sense? as a friend put it, about the order of operations and finding the best order of operations for yourself, rather than the goal. And if there’s anything I learned in art, is that fixed mindsets are always going to be your enemy here. We can’t grow if we don’t open ourselves to new experiences and that’s where grinding the same thing can be detrimental.

Yes! I love these types of drawing practices!

Can it be? After decades will Michael Giff finally be able to draw a box? Taking bets now! ... and no I won't tell you how I'm betting!

Welcome back Marshall! I noticed on your bookshelf behind you the book “How to Draw” by Scott Robertson, is like a star shining prominently. I just acquired this book recently, and I have noticed that it is the perfect complement to this course. I am very excited to start working again on basic forms as I tend to have artist block, never really knowing what to draw from my imagination. So, maybe after drawing nothing but basic forms for the next few months, I will never have the excuse of artistic block again? Again, welcome back! Cheers!

During the break i had the opportunity to shadow a small production, and now I'm half through reading the Artist's Master Series: Color & Light! A section about honing forms couldn't have come at a more perfect time!