Robin Darley
Austin, TX
I'm a digital artist and I'm currently working on polishing my drawing skills. Sometimes I stream art on Twitch at https://www.twitch.tv/mrsdarles
Robin Darley
3yr
Asked for help
Gesture, Bean and Landmarks Assignments. The gestures are not timed so I don't have an exact time limit on those, probably close to 2 and 5 minutes each. Any feedback is appreciated!
3yr
Had to rework some of the proportions on this.
3yr
Here's my attempt at the front landmarks, not sure if I got them all
These are fun to draw :)
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I didn’t do a strict time limit on these since I’m pretty new to gesture. I used some Force methods in this since that clicks a bit better for me.
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No question, I'm just really happy with the site! Thanks for making a neat community for artists!
3yr
Asked for help
Hi, I tried simplifying some animals. This is proving pretty difficult so I'm going to need more practice. I'd love to hear any feedback anyone might have!
Robin Darley
3yr
These look really good, I'm really impressed with your understanding of the basic forms of each animal. This has been a huge struggle for me and I can't seem to get it to click. Keep up the good work!
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3yr
These look really good. There is quite a bit of information in them like you said. Your exercise in attempting the same pose side by side and making notes is something I'd like to try out too.
This looks really nice, the hair is lovely and you've captured a likeness to the reference. I did notice that the values on the face could use more contrast, adding in brighter sections of highlights/midtones on the face would help. Specifically on the cheek bones, forehead and chin. If you are interesting in doing this piece in color I would recommend this video by Dave Greco: https://youtu.be/LeZc-uYXv3Y
Hands are a big struggle for me so I would have omitted them too! Keep up the good work!
3yr
Very nice, you've got some good lively lines happening. Seeing different attempts at the same pose is really cool, that might be a useful exercise for everyone practicing gesture.
3yr
I agree with the others about needing more contrast and softening the hard lines. If you do increase the contrast remember in the darker shadow areas the level of detail decreases, you can see an example of that in the eyes under the cap brim in your reference photo. Adding more detail to the areas in the light (moustache, hair, cheek bones, etc) will make a big difference too.
Asked for help
I've been practicing the Bean lesson for a while now, these are from a practice session today. I feel like it's been going pretty well, but I've been learning on my own for a while now and probably have some blind spots, so any feedback would be really helpful!
3yr
It looks like you have a good understanding of manipulating the bean shape to show the pose. One thing I noticed on a few are the curvature of the center lines. When the center line is in the middle of the form it stays fairly straight, when it moves toward the edge it curves more. On some of your beans the placement and curvature aren't always consistent. Your line quality looks nice, what size paper are you using and about how big are you drawing each example?
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3yr
Asked for help
Hi everyone, I am so glad to be part of this amazing community. These are some of my gesture drawings I did today. Do you guys have any suggestion where to pay attention next time I practice? Any response appreciated. Feel free to be honest, I know I still need to improve a lot:)
Have good day!
3yr
These look really good, I love the poses! How long did you spend on each pose? Exaggerating the center lines and main motion lines would help make these even more dynamic. Keep up the practice!
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Let's see what the community wants. We were planning on keeping this category clean with only official challenges, but if there is enough interest in allowing user created challenges, I'm ok with it. I can just pin the official ones to the top.
Let's VOTE.. Reply to this comment with your thought!
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User submitted challenges sounds like fun! I think having those available would be great. Making sure we don't have a ton of user challenges going at the same time might be tough, perhaps gathering user challenge ideas and then voting on them would be a good way to handle that. If there are a bunch of user challenges submitted having several category specific challenges (gesture, figure drawing, anatomy, portraits, etc.) would be helpful.
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3yr
Learning is like putting together a jigsaw, once you place a piece, you should keep trying to build on it, eventually we get the whole picture. You don't want to fixate on forms forever, other material will help build your knowledge of basic forms further, such as light and shadow, perspective even gesture.
If you feel a necessary need to go back, then go back for a short while then continue to push forward.
I'm no expert on art or teaching, but I've learnt after trying to self teach a lot, that pushing forward always beats going back.
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That was also on my mind while I’ve been working on this lesson. I may try to watch a lesson or two and go back to the structure and forms to see if it clicks any better with new information. Thanks for the tip!
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Drawing basic forms is not as intuitive as it might seem at first glance. It looks simple, but there is a lot of nuance to it. A lot of art books and courses don't pay enough attention to really nailing down how to do boxes and cylinders correctly, and if you move forward without a solid understanding of those things, it will plague your drawings.
I was thinking about posting some threads to help with this very thing. Let me know if you're interested.
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added a new topic
Practicing Structure and Forms3yr
I’m working on the structure and forms part of the figure drawing course and I’m having trouble with visualizing and breaking down the animal drawings into basic forms. I thought I had a good handle on drawing shapes in perspective but I’m thinking I need to practice that more. Would practicing drawing the basic shapes from memory be the best way to get the idea down or going back to a perspective grid be a better route to make sure I’ve got the shapes correct?
My first attempt at the assignment is attached and I’ve gotten some helpful feedback on that, but my attempts at fixing my mistakes have been not great.
Asked for help
This was a tough one for me. I'll be practicing a lot more and sending more in for critiques next time. This is a broken down structure of a gorilla.
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For sketching and study drawings, what size paper is ideal? Is a regular 9x11 sheet too small to work with?
3yr
Hi @Patrik Nordlund ! Your work looks great! Being in that mental limbo can be really rough, I have struggled with that quite a few times. Your comment about lacking the motivation but loving the process when you were motivated is really close to my own experiences. For getting out of it I would suggest putting effort towards drawing along with the tutorials you watch, even if you hate what you end up drawing, it is still going to help you get over that mental block and may ignite the fire again. Hope that helps!
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