Thank you ;D

Hey Tim! First of all, thank you for your detailed critique, I appreciate it! I know I can't fix this drawing completely to suddenly think it's phenomenal but I tried to combine your two very valid points. Normally I'm not a fan of blending stomps but this time I used them to "hunt for islands" while at the same time distinguish the shadow and light side a bit more. It's not that different, but still. -Max

Hey Marco, wow, these are just so good! You can clearly see your knowledge of basic structure without losing gesture. The falcon/hawk (sorry for not being able to tell them apart) has a well simplified shape for the body, however, its wings and tail look, compared to all your other drawings, rather flat because you seem to have not followed your basic structural shapes there. Keep it up!! -Max

Hi Sylvianna, your underlying Loomis head is looking really good. Especially the extreme side views or the completely straight on views tend to be hard but you handeled it well. However, I noticed two things: - The thing with the Loomis head is that it's just a generic head schematic. So building up a face on the standard Loomis rhythms can result in generic looking faces. In your case, for example the jawline is a little too male in my opinion, because that's what Loomis created it for. Maybe you could go ahead and adjust the schematic more towards the likeness of your reference (if you had one). - The second thing is your use of hard contour lines for the jaw, nose and cheek. Those lines tend to make a drawing flat. Don't get me wrong, contour lines definitely have their place if used carefully. I'd rather suggest that you try to use the side of your pencil to create tiles of tone in order to indicate plane changes. Hope this helps. Keep it up!! -Max

Hey there, wow, these are actually great!! You can really feel the tension and the weight in them because you even exaggerated the poses very well. Although it is good that your lines feel loose and are of good quality, I think the toll at the moment is that sometimes your proportions are a little off, for example the head size or the length of the upper body. But seeing your overall achievement here, I think you can easily tackle this. Keep it up!! - Max

Hey there, considering that you haven't drawn a detailed figure before, I must say that your drawings are impressive. You seem to get the general proportions of the body right (maybe the head is sometimes a little too small) and beyond that you understand 3D structural elements and their perspective. Even your exaggerated poses are believable. Here's what I think: - Your mannequins are good in terms of structural elements. - As soon as you leave out the structure of the mannequin you tend to rely on outlines, which makes it flat again. Remember, you already had a 3D look with the mannequins. So how to fix the problem? Try to combine elements of the mannequin (just the main 3D forms) and gesture (which you could use more of). Now, instead of drawing the cross contour lines of the mannequin, try to put in the main core shadows of the biggest 3D forms. It is a natural third dimension which gives your drawing depth. You can look at the simplification of the upper leg I did in just a few seconds. See how I combine gesture, structure and the third dimension with a shadow? Hope this helps. Keep it up!! - Max

Hi Predo, considering that these are 1 minute beans, they feel pretty good actually. Without the reference pictures, however, it is hard to tell whether the perspective is off. Judging from just your drawings I would say it's alright. Besides your already mentioned line quality, which is an important point, I would say that you could look in to the spheres themselves. - Some of your spheres look a little too stretched out, which doesn't correspond to the actual shape of a human body. - In some cases, your sphere for the rib cage is a little too small in comparison to the pelvis, but just by a little. Keep in mind, that the rib cage is actually a little bigger in reality. Hope this helps. Keep it up!! - Max

Hey Brian, first of all, good practice! You seem to understand twisting, stretching and pinching. There are two major things I noticed: - First, take a closer look at where the center line really is. For example your last pose: Her whole body is facing right and only her head is facing left (from her point of view), so there is actually no twist - contrary to what you drew. A good indicator of where to put the center line are two points. Where's the pit of the neck? Where is the space between her breasts (or pecs for males)? Just connect these points down the rib cage. Also look at the other poses again adjust the center lines. - Second, we tend to straighten out the poses that are too foreshortened. For example your second and fourth pose: In terms of perspective, there's more overlap of the spheres happening. In the second pose, the rib cage is overlapping the pelvis and in the forth pose the other way around. Hope this helps. Keep it up! -Max

Hi Chris, your drawings are a good start. Don't be afraid of the many steps ahead because they are really fun! In your drawings you're starting to indincate the gesture with long action lines, which is awesome - especially for the 2 minute quicksketches. Here are some tips you might get into: - Your lines tend to be a bit shaky. A good exercise to improve line quality is to limit your maximum lines per drawing to a certain number, let's say 10. With these 10 lines you then have to carefully consider what is most imortant to draw. And further you can learn to make each line as long as possible with a single swoop from your shoulder (and don't correct the lines once you placed them, it's fine because it's only 2 minutes max). - In order to get the proportions of the rib cage and the pelvis right, I suggest you look at the bean example in the figure drawing course. Because at the moment, I can tell that you are too much thinking about the outlines of the figure. With the bean, you can break this habit and think more of the structure without losing gesture. Keep it up!! - Max

Hi Samuel, in general these are some good studies and I can't say that it doesn't feel 3D - because it actually does ;D. However, I do see what you mean. I my opinion you can do two things in order to make it even more 3D: - First, what @João Bogo said about the cross contour lines wrapping around the entire muscle mass, not just the individual musle strands. - Second, try to always start with JUST a cylinder for the leg and from there, build up your muscles. The orientation of the cylinder in space will solve your problem with the 3D feel to your drawings. Beyond these two points and in addition to the previous post, you can take a look at the sartorius muscle in some of your drawings. You tend to "steal" some muscle mass from the vastus medialis because your attachment point of the sartorius is a little off. Keep up the good work! -Max

Hey Yuri, again, nice work there!! These boxes in perspective aren't always that easy. I'm not addressing any of Tom's or Casey's valid points about the orientation of the boxes in space. However, there's something I noticed about the boxes themselves: - I think your height of boxes for the pelvis is consistently a little too small. Remember that the height of the pelvis is roughly the same as the head. That would also explain that both boxes for the rib cage and the pelvis are too far apart from each other - you can just touch your own body and you will notice that the transition between rib cage and pelvis is way "earlier". Keep it up!! -Max

Hey Justin, don't be too hard on yourself. I honestly think that these beans show that you have great potential because it is JUST your second try. From what I can tell, your lines are actually quite smooth and mostly one swoop, your proportions are mostly right and your perspective seems to be in the ball park. Here are a few thoughts to dive into: - You tend to draw on the side of your pencil. In some areas of a drawing (especially the parts where you have a stretch or a pinch) it makes sense to use the tip of the pencil, WHILE keeping up long swoops which can be harder at times. - Sometimes, your rib cage or pelvis is a little small in comparison to the other. - This is in accord with my fist point: When you draw a pinch, maybe try to add overlapping skin (with a hard line) at the pinch which makes the perspective clearer. Keep it up!! -Max

Hi Casey, really good work there! I especially love the first page of very simple strokes where you really get the movement across. In the second picture, you bring in more structure by adding more lines. Here's what I noticed: - Because you draw more lines in the second one, it reveals some proportional errors. For example the head size compared to the rib cage, or the width of the pelvis compared to the width of the legs, or the general width of the waist. - Secondly, try to bring in a little more structure because for example the pelvis region and the legs (although it's a 2 minute gesture) feel a little bit too focused on the outlines which makes it flat. - And last, it could make your gestures a little more interesting when you use a few straights in there. Keep it up! -Max

Hey Gannon, these look really fantastic. It may sound wierd, but my only critique would be that I don't have any critique. I suppose these are digital? Do you use any kind of vector graphics program which corrects lines? - If not, then take it as a huge compliment - your line quality and proportions are spot on!! - If yes and you just wanna work like this (because there is no incorrect way to work) then also take it as a huge compliment and keep it up!! - If yes and you actually also want to use traditional media, I suggest you also practice circles just with your hand and without any correction. And beyond that, now you could actually go ahead and apply the loomis head to specific heads which means to adjust lines according to the specific likeness of a person.