
Crystal Blue (she/her)
cheese aisle
Squinting at potatoes is my ✨passion✨
Mariana Santos
added comment inFigure Analysis in Boxes and Cylinders Exercise
1yr
Asked for help
I did this kind of exercises with one of my drawings, but I don't know if I'm doing it well...


Crystal Blue (she/her)
6d
Looks great! The pose looks nice and energetic as well, although when you're just doing a form study you don't have to worry about gesture too much. I think you should focus on the structure of the head, that's the only thing that looks a little flat. Watching proko's loomis head videos and then doing studies from photos and imagination helped me alot.
Keep up the good work!
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These look great! Your gesture has improved a lot. I think I'll try the thing with the arrows that you did in my own practice, looks helpful.
I think the next step for you would be to get a basic understanding of the pelvis and the rib cage. The angles of your pelvis boxes are good, but for a better representation of the pelvis you should make them somewhat taller and narrower. Understanding the connection of the tibia to the pelvis is important.
For the upper body, understand that the rib cage gets narrower towards the top, and the widening of the silhouette is caused by the shoulder girdle and the neck muscles. I think knowing where the ribcage/ shoulder girdle ends and where the neck muscles begin would help you on that one drawing with an x by it.
Hope that helps! Please let me know if you have questions :)
13d
Asked for help
I watched the proko videos and did more practice. Please let me know how I did!










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15d
Start by reading and copying the plates of loomis book : Drawing the Head and Hands
Also I recommend you see the proko videos where he speaks about the basics : https://www.proko.com/course-lesson/how-to-draw-the-head-from-any-angle/assignments Take notes
17d
Hey Chrystal,
Good job working on the Loomis head. The thing I notice the most is that your lines do not wrap around the shape of the head. The skull is a 3D shape, so make sure you wrap the lines around it. I did a quick sketch to show you what I mean :)

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17d
Asked for help
Here are my assignments for the shoulder muscles. I had difficulties with the third.



im not an expert but it looks like in the third one the infraspinatus, teres major, and teres minor are tensing, so maybe trying to show that abit more would help.
Also I think you could make the shoulder blade on the left be pulled further back
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added a new topic
Loomis head + skulls18d
I’ve been practicing loomis heads as @Dudts Draws recommended. All these drawings were fairly quick, around 5 minutes. My main goal was to get the placement of the features and the proportions correct.
1-11 are from reference, and 12-14 were from imagination.
I also did afew skulls from reference before hand.
feedback is always appreciated!




18d
- this is not a good reference
- I feel you should be more assertive and accurate with the shapes : head, neck , hair - also with the shapes of the shading
- the face features arent so bad but there's a problem with their placement
My recommendations is that befor this type of study:
- practice the loomis head
- practice and memorise the reily rythms for the head
- redraw from reference but only do the shapes and lines, master that before trying to shade
- practice drawing and shading 3d shapes : sphere - cube - then more complex geometrical shapes
- practice simplifying organic shapes into simpler geometric shapes: this will help you transfer the shading skills into shading organic shapes
Hope this helps
Good day !,
Ghada.
Thanks for the advice, I have a much better idea of what I need to study now!
added a new topic
Value and likeness study19d
My main goals for this were to get a good likeness and get the values right. It came out okay but it feels a lot softer than the reference (which is pretty grainy this was supposed to be a warm up but I got carried away)
Any feedback would be great!


the Form is solid and I like how expressive they are!
19d
Asked for help
This was my first attempt. I realized very late, that I had made the cast shadow and core shadow too dark. Besides that I think what I'm struggling a lot with are the half tones, those were hard to do. Also I'm not sure if I made the reflected light too dark aswell? Feedback would be appreciated! :) I am going to try again now :D



It looks like your halftones can be lighter. Remember that the decrease in value is very small in the lights.
for this particular lighting situation, your reflected light could be lighter. However what you have could be okay for a different lighting situation.
if you’re trying to match your picture exactly, your darks should actually be darker. It’s hard to get with graphite, so I’d reccomend using charcoal or a black colored pencil for that if you can.
for these sorts of studies it’s helpful to compare values to other values, for example how far is the light edge of the egg from the background value? What about the dark edge? Comparing the value of the bounce light to the value of the area in the direct light would be another example.
hope that helps, please let me know if you have questions!
Asked for help
Happy to hold a pencil again after digital drawing. The paper is thin and shiny, I guess not te right newsprint, but I like the colour more than the grey.

The form on the knuckles on the left side is great! It starts feeling a little flatter on the left, which isn’t the end of the world since that doesn’t seem to be the focal point. However I think it’d work better if you had the leftmost edge of the pinky be a tiny bit lighter than the rest of it instead of darker, to show bounce light.
I also think it’d look better if the angle change between the hand and the forearm was less extreme. When I try to put my wrist in that position it’s pretty uncomfortable.
your anatomy and shapes look great
please let me know if you have questions!
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The perspective on these is solid!
the top part of the first pelvis in picture #2 looks a little tall and the bottom pelvis in picture #3 is rotated more towards the viewer than the reference is (it looks fine though). The top part on the pelvis in picture #5 also looks tall. Also I feel like the angle that those top bones go up at and the angle between the bones right below the public bone could be wider.
all your pelvis features are nice and cohesive. I can’t imagine how much ur brain hurt after drawing these lol, nice work.
please let me know if u have questions :)
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She looks like the same character in each one to me
added a new topic
Looking for critique- ribcage and shoulder girdle25d
I’m not sure if I’m getting the ribcage sat the right angle and correctly positioned within the body.
also am I correctly understanding how the scapula and the collar bone come together?
any feedback would be great!










The colors good. If you want to try style using it and moving away from the reference I’d try:
1. playing with the shapes of your brushstrokes. The overall shape of the rock formation may be the same but the shapes of the subtle shifts between values and hues can be styleizsd
2. Pushing color changes. You can try things like making a subtle reflected light color more obvious, or making saturated areas in your reference even more saturated in your painting (don’t overdo it though).
https://youtu.be/nINus0lYQjo this Marco buck video is helpful for learning how to do that.
also sometimes what I do is I just add random fun looking colors and see what happens.
Important note though, none of these tips are things that you must do in a painting, they’re simply here for you to try to see if you like them :)
hope this is helpful! Please ask questions if you have any
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25d
They look very painterly! I also like how you did the loose skin on the middle guys face, shows the form well but doesn’t draw attention away from the eyes and nose
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looks nice!
try pushing the darks even darker and making your darks more saturated.
more contrast between darks and lights shows the form better.
Hey Crystal,
I like what your doing here, I'm seeing a lot of gesture in these poses. I agree with @Leandro Alli , you would benefit from studying anatomy as a whole, and one body part at a time. I think though, because of the kind of artist I suspect you are, you should continue drawing from your imagination. As you learn new anatomy, use it in those drawings.
So, about the heads, I like to add them into my gesture drawing at the beginning. A lot of people add the head after figuring out the torso and pelvis, which is fine. One thing I keep in mind is that the body always follows the head, just like the head always follows the eyes. This goes back to my animation training, that's why I do it that way. I did a sketch to show you what I mean about making the head part of the gesture.
Keep up the work, that first figure you did is pretty good, and the boxing pose is really nice, I can really feel the distribution of weight. I hope this helps :)
