I have to say it's awesome that we STILL get updates on this course even though the main content is done and finished since quite a while now. Thanks for the dedication.

For my first attempt I choose the mangaka Ryoko Kui, whose character designs I have been in love with for years. I did cheat a bit by first doing a fixed weight trace of the image and turning it into an exercise similar to the rhino one, but it made it much easier to focus on the linework. Even though I ahve many artist I appreciate, I never paid much attention to their linework specifically. This exercise really opened my eyes to their nuances. Excited to do similar studies for others as well.

I redrew 2 artworks from mangakas I admire, and swapped their styles. Toshio Sako and Ogure Ito are both using very different lines. One has a more sketchy quality and create its values with layers and layers of directional lines and textures, while the other tends to keep an ultra-clean linework with no distraction and very few values. It takes ages to replicate their style, so I certainly wasn't courageous enough to fully redraw the vampire lady. Yet the idea is mostly there. Also, I checked if I could imitate the line quality by doing insertions. When adding some object to a drawing, you can try to make it feel natural and coherent with the rest. I think it was a nice exercise by itself.

Hey, my English is not that good. So I tried to translate my text using 'ChatGPT'. Hope it makes some sense :) I've only done the beginner tasks so far, but I found the advanced task so interesting that I wanted to try it out at least once. For the first image, I chose a goldfish. It looks like I dressed the fish in pieces of cloth. I was very lost in the design process and much of what I drew is quite illogical, but I had a lot of fun during the process. I also tried some other animals. With the otter (second picture) I tried to pay more attention to creating a nice overall picture and to draw my lines more clearly. After all the attempts, I realized that I became more relaxed while drawing. The mouse is my last drawing. Before I started looking for reference pictures, I had a clear idea that the mouse should be an "adventure" or at least fit into that theme. When I made a sketch with a mouse with one eye closed, I immediately had the association with the character "Guts" from the manga series "Berserk" by the artist "Kentaro Miura" (an absolutely outstanding manga! Unfortunately, I cannot recommend it without reservations because its dark and explicit content traumatized me a bit at the time. But from my point of view, if you can handle it, it's the best manga for "Dark Fantasy" genre.) Although I know that many proportions are not correct, I am surprised how much I like the result. I see good progress in my work and understand how practicing with the previous drawings affects my current skills. It is very rewarding and motivating for me to notice this. Please write your critiques. I am very grateful for your opinions.

Yeah not happy with this one. This was like my 10 th attempt at the pinguin. I seem to stay stuck in the 'lost lines' stage here. Cant get the form right and I keep adjusting, therefore making the lines darker and darker.. How to come from this to the searching sketch lines. I thought if I just keep trying over and over, but after the 10 th one I m pretty done :p Anyone else has this problem? Or knows how to get past this?

Hello ! Well, first, it's a bit difficult to help you if you don't show your references. If you could include at least one reference, next to the corresponding drawing, it would be awesome. But with what you provided, I can already give you a few tips. First, you're consistently merging the torso and the pelvis into the same, rectangular form, on which you attach strokes for the arms and legs. Only sometimes there are timid strokes to show an angle and twist that rectangle, but it's not enough. If you want your gestures to feel more dynamic, I think you need to unlearn that rectangular torso, and break it down into its ribcage and its pelvis. Even if it's not what you usually do for gestures, I advise you to force yourself to draw it into 2 round forms. (cf blue lines in the attached pictures) It might help you a lot getting your lines curvier, and capturing a better flow. Also, quite often, you're simplifying the shoulders into a straight line. Instead, try to make that "shoulder line" into a curve that connects the arms. Just as if you were tracing a big line coming from the right arm to to the left arm. All in one stroke. (cf red strokes) Of course, it's not always the way to go. Brutal angles are sometimes better. But in your case, doing this will help you stop seeing this "shoulder line" as the top of your rectangular torso. I hope this will be of help. :) (my colored lines are guess work, btw. Again it's difficult to help you without knowing the reference.)

Hello @Stan Prokopenko I can only see the transcription files in the downloads tab. The video is missing :( EDIT : Oh I see it's up now. Thanks! Guess I was just too impatient.

Hey guys, I tried my hand at the level 2 assignment. My daughter wanted to get a dumbo - octopus to color it, so I settled on it. I attached a clean lineart out of habbit, but the assignment probably asked more for something in the lines of the page with the 2 designs. Hope you like it.

I have zero idea how bird anatomy works. But the point was to get loose, and I did.

Done with a charcoal pencil.

Today, in a life drawing session in Paris, I tried to draw the model as a mermaid. It was the longest pose, so I had 25 minutes to do that. It was really a fun exercise! (for the trivia, she was reading a book on the ground. That's why the mermaid is looking so intensely at the shellfish ^^)

I went to 2 life drawing sessions today. And the longest pose for both of them was 25 minutes. So it probably fits if I post them here. (other poses range from 2 to 10 minutes) I did not especially use the Reilly rhythms to draw this, though. (already commented on the main page that I think this "course" fails hard at explaining them) But still, I made use of some abstracted rhythms that made sense to me, in addition to anatomy knowledge.

I can see so many things in this video that I recognize from artists I love but never knew where to even begin to emulate. Going to practice this a lot before going to the next video. Any suggested excercises?

To set the tone directly: this post is gonna be a negative critique of this course. I don't want to slander it or anything, as the content does have value and I like it. But I think it hardly matches what is being promised, which got me a bit disappointed. Anyway, Let me explain. The course includes an ebook and a bunch of videos. The videos are real-time demos of 4 different artists using Reilly rhythms to get some pieces done. And apart from Brian Knox - who takes the time to explain how he prepares his pencils, how to draw clean lines, perspective and such, before going into the usage of the Reilly method to construct the figure - they're not really teaching you how to do the same. You'd think each specific rhythm would be explained, from how they relate to the actual anatomy down to how they look like in many different poses, but nah. Doesn't happen. After Brian's done showing the big idea for the torso, no one does the same for the arms/legs, or break down things any further. It just becomes... commented demos, really, with Jeff Watts even stating that he doesn't expect us to really follow what he's doing because it's extremely advanced, or Ben Young not even using the Reilly rhythms at all to focus on tonal rendering instead. As for the ebook, it does contains different diagrams for the Reilly rhythms, which makes for 3 pages. And the rest is made of commented pictures of the drawings that we're already seeing in the videos. In the end, it's almost entirely up to us to figure out how these rhythms really work. I understand that students should learn some things by themselves, but a course should break some things down to make it easy for them. If it's just merely about giving clues, it breaks the whole purpose of a course: teaching. Again, don't get me wrong. I don't want to roast this completely, nor to offend anyone! These are genuinely great demos, and the ebook is good material to work from. I'm really happy to have them. But frankly, after coming from Stan's awesome courses (which include real lessons with explanations, exercises, critiques, etc.) this can only come as a disappointment. And for all I know, maybe the team behind this is made of extremely good instructors. But in that case, I suspect that the good stuff is kept away in the main Watts atelier program, making this just a pricey teaser... Anyway, feel free to express any counter-opinion. I'm open for discussion, and would actually be really happy if someone were to change my mind about this. ^^ I'm also curious to see if anyone else shares my point of view.

I drew along the video, trying to follow the process for front/side/back poses. Depending on the pose, it wasn't always clear which line I was intended to draw, so I may have some weird stuff there and there. I need to spend some time studying what each rhythm means, I guess.

Anyone else feels suspicious about the shoelaces? I thought mmm this is a simplification exercise and those laces look way to complicated :p Dont know if I should feel smart or just lazy :p

I had 2h to spend on all of this. So, given the time it took, I'm happy with the result. For the camel and captain skull, I did it traditionally on paper. For the l boots and the snail, though, I went a bit crazy with my tablet and tried stuff that hasn't much to do with the assignment. But still, it's about lines. :p

My first try using a monochromatic palette. I did that over a quick, ugly portrait sketch of some famous video game villain. And I'm kinda amazed about how cold these greys can look. This course is a real eye-opener for me.

I struggled, especially with the portrait.