loes roos
panama, mariato
Drawing since I was little, MSc biology, continued drawing, did several courses to improve techniques. Mostly into scientific illustration
Abdul Bari Abbasi
added comment inDead vs Live Shapes with Mike Mattesi
11d
Sorry for the bad picture quality
loes roos
7d
it is not that bad. We can see your lines
I have a pretty philosophical question. I've been keeping up with the assignments. And i know proko has spoken on length about how the lessons are not so we can draw a good (pear, seal, apple, etc) but we're practicing the fundamental of the subject, But how do we get from here, drawing seals etc, to there, drawing our figure, or face, or masterpiece. I want to be able to draw really good action poses, or beautiful scenes with people smiling looking at each other. But at times i feel insecure that me drilling the practice doesn't get me closer to my goal. I assume it comes with applying the principle to other things. But then when i draw something for me, I don't accomplish anything near what i want to do. Sorry, this message just comes from a place of discouragement as I am not trying to not compare my self to other artists that started at the same time as me, but appear to be making tons more progress then me, but without this amazing course. As an artist my greatest weakness my whole life is fighting the feelings of insecurity that come along with feeling i'm not good enough or that I will never be good enough to be a masterful artist. Unlike something like a physical sport like baseball, i have a hard time seeing the ball being hit by the bat as progress when it comes to art.
7d
I am not sure how old you are or how many hours you have put into drawing and learning to become better. The most important thing is enjoying the craft. Enjoying the learning. I think when you focus too much on the eventual goal you become impatient and most artist need a lot of hours to make good art. And the better you are at understanding proportions, shapes and figures, the faster you eventually will be. This course will take you in total around 18 months of drawing but it helps if you practice and go back, try out things. Dare to fail and accept you are not perfect. If you never try things out than it will never work. Everybody wants to be really good, but maybe the first objective is to enjoy doing exercises and invent projects. And understand what is needed.
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An interesting attempt but do rewatch some of the critique videos and take a good look at other peoples drawings and comments. Try and make a scale of 5 values, with white the paper being the lightest and your black the darkest. Try and do only 3 in between and do not begin too early with details. First add the big shapes and add the middle tone. Then in the middle tone add darker values ... In the whiter areas add softly the lightest grey...
1mo
Asked for help
Light and shadow L1
i tried to add variety of lines by making lines taper from thick to thin as they travel from dark to light.
1mo
Did you also do some from reference? I found that it helps a lot too. Learning their proportions.
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1mo
Asked for help
Caution: drawing seals is addictive! ;)
I started off doing the sketches in pencil but then changed to procreate - easier to quickly iterate on shapes and the image quality is better for uploading.
The seals were lending themselves to "C" and "S" curves but I tried to use the "I" whenever possible too.
I think I managed OK at getting the shapes interesting and asymmetrical. But are they dynamic?
1mo
Nice SCI ... but I am not sure it is gesture as such... May be a bit too much focus on outline. But they do look very cool! In the beginning of 2023 I had decided to draw more digital and now that I see you did them in procreate I realize I should have done that too. However, today was the day that we had a massive planned power outage (from 9h30 am to 4h30 pm) so I did mine in the morning on old fashioned paper and cleaned it all up just now in Gimp.
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1mo
Asked for help
Gestures were the nail in my coffin the last time I tried a Proko course (figure drawing) years ago. I burned through 300+ pages of newsprint with of 10s/30s/2m figure gestures drawing....and nothing felt like it stuck. I just couldn't connect gesture to structure and, since I don't like moving on if I can't at least understand why I'm doing something, my enthusiasm dried up and stopped following the course.
I was looking SO forward to the rematch. Sadly, this dropped on what could have been the worst work week I have had in over a year, so my efforts were subpar. Given I only got about 20 minutes to draw at the end of some VERY long days. So details and proportions were sacrificed so that I could focus on trying to creating interesting shapes.
Keep that in mind when you pull out the pencil to measure :)
1mo
You did at least several and I think it is good to not always have that time so you skip the details. Gesture can be very useful when doing quick studies.
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1mo
Asked for help
Indeed, drawing seals and sea lions is very addictive. It is very nice with references, but also good for the warming up doodles. I was taking notes and decided to do some seals while watching the gesture video with the koi fish... I used colours to distinguish a bit with the phases: red for the action line or motion or flow.... But I am not very used to using more than one gesture line... I tried to make the shapes interesting so with some I was more inspired by the reference than trying to copy it exactly. Some I did twice. Some I used blue to correct but not always for the better. It was a fun exercise and I tried some without references. I also rewatched the gesture from the figure drawing fundamentals afterwards.
2mo
Asked for help
Not off topic I think - but while waiting for this assignment I worked on this. Would love to be able to draw walking, trotting and galloping horses out of my head. Think these lines help a lot.
2mo
To me the front leg going backwards is too stiff. You do know that horses walk on their toe. So be very clear where the ankle sits and the knee and how they would bend. The knee of the horse’s back leg is close to the belly. The front legs shoulder is not clearly defined yet. Sometimes using little circles for the joints help you bending.
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2mo
Check on aaron blaise creature art teacher. He has courses right now for very little money and he has a whole package on trotting and walking animals… well explained
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2mo
Asked for help
2023/7/26. Good morning everybody. This is an acrylic painting I've just finished this morning (it took me 11 hours). I'm very bad in painting landscapes. I specially struggled with the color of the river especially in the bottom area. I feel like, it's not bad but it still look very amatorial. I'm not sure if the dragon merges correctly with the background. Thanks for your critique.
2mo
The way the dragon sits in the composition is good, but the landscape does not help to tell the story…. However, I am just not sure what story you wish to tell. Is the dragon mad, sad or happy? If the bridge were on fire we could consider it mad… why is the bridge there? It has details just like the houses but it is not clear what the relationship is of those elements with the dragon at this moment in the story…
The warm colours of the dragon do make him/her stand out from the blue and the green background but there is a lot of detail in the background so it looks rather near and therefore reduces the effect of the dragon being in the air.
The light and shadow is also not very clear.
What I would do is cut out your dragon and make a new background onto which you paste the dragon. Do however choose a shade and light side to make it feel more 3d.
I hope this helps.
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2mo
Asked for help
If I had to draw an accurate portrait I would chose the precise guidelines. Otherwise I would make many sketches like the 3rd image (which was a first attempt) until one stands out to work on and make it more expressive.
2mo
The guidelines are good also when you eyeball. You get better when doing more portraits.
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2mo
Asked for help
Hello! First attempt was done on 18x24 in. newsprint. the measurement lines were very light, so they're hard to see in the picture. Second picture was done digitally. I wanted to do a few digitally so I could check proportion issues more easily. The final drawing was in a 9x12 sketchbook. I can definitely still see proportion issues (and the face features are pretty funky haha), but I can see improvement after doing the assignment
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2mo
Asked for help
It is kind of hard to work first with shapes and than still show that in the process. I did that in a blue colerase prismacolor pencil with a photo of the drawings on the table but in rather horrible light... And in the second version went over that with a light b pencil, which I scanned. However there is still lots of gray noise on the side when I multiply it to make it more visible.
I always start light when doing a portrait. Both eyeballing and measuring it. It is a long time since I did a portrait. But I regularly draw outside and measure all the time... I did my drawing slightly larger than the printed lettersize of the portrait so did not focus on the exact composition of the head on the page (I left as little as possible).
2mo
Just for all those people saying it takes a lot of practice and patience. Definitely. I did practice a lot. And did many a portrait. In high school I would draw class mates (we did not have smartphones then…) and sell the drawings. (That is nearly 40 years ago). And 30 years ago I did portraits in Africa, Zimbabwe, from the great river Tonga people. But I am still learning. And I also believe that I draw more freely now with the bigger lines and shapes.
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2mo
Asked for help
I did another portrait. Proportions were way off. Did corrections based on the previous demo. Still off. This is just going to take a lot of practice.
2mo
Try and first block in the bigger overal shapes and directions of lines with your pencil. For example the right cheek and chin and how it is nearly paralel to the front of the neck (throat). And how the backshoulder line if it were extended touches the tip of the nose… Such lines help to find the proportions. You can also verify the line for the nose and the browse and use those lines to make the shape of the whole eye socket before even starting to add details. Keep trying. Indeed it does take a lot of practice.
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2mo
Asked for help
I think I need a lot more practice. My second try does look better than the first one, but man that nose, and all the angels in this picture makes it one of the more difficult projects I've tried so far.
I cannot wait to see the critique video, to learn more and see where I can improve.
2mo
Great thing is that because you did 2 tries you already see improvement. It really works to keep doing the exercise.
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2mo
Asked for help
This project requires a lot of patience. I was rushing a bit and eyeballing too much, also got a bit distracted with adding details.
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2mo
Asked for help
From left to right, are my three attempts. I struggled too much, since I get used to rely on eyeballing to measure something( It isn't precise. I use Ctrl+T to adjust my drawings in Photoshop ). Also I am troubled by "tunnel vision". So I tried to measure in the same way as Stan taught in the lesson, using pencil to measure. BTW, I spent lots of time on each one, 3-4 hours average or more, I believe. Maybe it was perfectionism, which made me feel bad while drawing. Critiques appreciate.
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3mo
Wow. It is so interesting to see and hear the critiques. I do realize that it is very very easy to just simplify and not really look at those shapes... I will need to do more of this exercise, to do it way better! It is a lot of fun and very helpful but oh so easy to not make the shape. Thanks for the critique demo. OK try to do follow through not in my head but do it... shapes shapes and more shapes!
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3mo
Asked for help
Casually did my circles while listening to David Finch explain gesture drawing. I’m not certain if it’s wise to be studying both anatomy and the fundamentals at once, but here are my circles next to an anatomy quick sketch I did. I’ve taken figure drawing before, but I want to be able to create my own characters or accurate fan art. So, I’ve decided to come back to the basics to fill the gaps in my knowledge and not give up this time. Excited for this course, Stan! Your lessons are a source of encouragement.
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3mo
Asked for help
I reattempted the assignment. @loes roos gave me a lot of confidence about the assignment by helping explaining what I might of not been understanding. Then after watching some of the proko Livestream I wanted to try the shapes and also pushing the shapes to make 2 different characters.