Hi ... again :) @Luigi Manese, @Liandro, and @Jesper Axelsson . So did another portrait drawing. As always continuing to practice. While this is likely the last "offical" drawing for this course ... I will likely be revisiting both this course and the figure drawing course in the near future. I'm planning to do a bit more work on structure based drawing as well. And it is interesting ... I remember asking you all about drawing from imagination and that I didn't feel like I wanted to do it but ... Lol ... Now that I've been doing draw a box :) ... the idea of drawing from imagination has really ignited. At some point I'm sure I'll be jumping into the anatomy course. So, still a long road ahead of me I think. But most importantly now ... I'm enjoying the process. As always again really appreciate you all!

Hello @Luigi Manese , @Liandro , and @Jesper Axelsson ... I hope you all didn't think I ran away! :) ... I have been keeping up with the practice. Posted a skull practice as well on the Male Skull application page. These are some of my studies. I think I captured some of the likeness. Still struggling with the planes of the face a bit with lighting (maybe I should choose some photos with more dynamic lighting?) and on the one not looking up ... seems like although I tried to fix it still ended up getting the mouth a bit wrong and angle a bit off from the rest of the features. Either way I always love hearing from you all. Let me know what you think! Thanks in advance! PS ... still struggling with the differences between how photos differ in appearance from the actual drawing :(

Posting one of my latest skull studies. Trying out something new … slowing down and not rushing through the layins ☺️. Didn’t push the values as far as I could but reached the point where I checked off all my goals for the study.

Hello everyone. Some ear studies from the lesson videos. Some of the shapes not as accurate as I would like but continuing to practice along with doing practice with the draw a box class. Hopefully everyone is doing well! @Liandro @Jesper Axelsson @Luigi Manese

Hey @Jesper Axelsson, @Luigi Manese and @Liandro Just posting again to let you know I haven’t dropped off the map! I noticed this course doesn’t have much assignments … so it’s kind of choose your own adventure 😆. Anyway, here are some eyes I did. I didn’t really measure on these, was just trying to get a feel for it based on the video. Hope you all are doing well! Others feel free to comment as well. Thanks.

Hey @Jesper Axelsson @Luigi Manese @Liandro just letting you all know that I have started the portrait course (likely anatomy next). Starting to get the hang of this a bit. Will be reaching out for assistance as I go through the course if that’s okay. Thanks!

Hey Vincent! Really nice drawing, the proportion and gesture are really solid. The even tones in the shadows are quite impressive as well, that's a hard thing to do! A couple things I'd say are to focus on the shadow shapes, and how to use them to help the form read. I've included some studies @Erik Gist did while I was taking classes with him. In his drawings you can see that he wraps the rib cage to emphasize the torso going forward in space. In your drawing, the upper back, the ribcage, and hips are all reading as the same form. If you were to push those fundamental bean shapes, I think it'd do a lot for your drawing. Good luck and great job!

Hey Vincent, Nice job on your drawing, the pose and gesture looks good. I wish you had posted the reference, it would make it easier to critique your drawing. I did do a drawing to show you how I think the shadow pattern might look. I also adjusted some proportional problems and fixed that foot. This is all guess work, but my experience tells me what It probably should look like. I hope this is helpful, and keep on drawing :)

It's great! The only that pops to my attention is that erector spinae is too protruding. They should look softer. Keep the middle line, and try to erase the two lines above the PSIS (Venus's dimple).

Hey @Jesper Axelsson, @Luigi Manese, and @Liandro ! I have completed my shading exercise! I kinda liked how it turned out. The reference was cropped like i have it. I think that left forearm (in light) still has some proportion issues. Still have a lot of practice ahead of me but I think I might be officially finished with the course? … I know I’m never “finished” but I think this is the last thing? Let me know what you all think. I think next up for me is a bit of prospective structure work, gesture work (of course), but also knowing I need some anatomy! Do you all critique for anatomy as well? You all have been so helpful, want to make sure I don’t loose the connection. ☺️

Hello figure artists! Been drawing almost daily for 8-10 months now, and thought i would share some stuff and ask for comments or critiques! The "January" page was a croquis cafe "live" session with five 1 minute poses, four 2 minutes, and one 5 minute. The others are from the gesture video, following along Stan and some other reference from comments here. I'll critique myself first: i notice i am too heavy handed, and get thick, bold, confident lines in some areas where i have no business doing so. This leads to an overall confused look i find. But, I'm loving drawing! Any feedback is appreciated, thank you for looking (:

Hey @Jesper Axelsson, @Luigi Manese, and @Liandro. So I did the exaggeration example then tried one of my own … with limited success. I tried a few things from imagination as well (see the pages and dates attached). So … here’s the question … I really didn’t find the exercises from imagination (which I’m including the exaggeration exercise as you have to try to imagine an exaggerated pose) … I didn’t find them that inspiring. Even though I did see some improvement over the few I tried. I also found myself trying to hunt for a not so dynamic pose for me to exaggerate passing over many poses that I would have loved to draw because they were interesting … just to find a pose that wasn’t interesting at all. Wait … that wasn’t a question 😆. The question is 😋, how important is drawing from imagination? I heard one of the guests on Proko (Zapata) talk about doing what inspires you instead of trying to do everything. I do think some imagination is necessary when designing the shapes and gesture when drawing from reference, so I know it has some place. But trying to come up with an entire pose … how important is that part if my current goal is to be able to draw from reference? What are your thoughts? I don’t want to skip over getting better at drawing “poses” from imagination if it will affect my goal of thing to get good at drawing from reference. I’ve also included 2 other drawings I’ve done since then … again not uploading all the practice sheets. But drawing these I did find inspiring and exciting. Got carried away with playing with shading. So I have been doing layins and then putting the “real” lines right over that without much erasing. So most if not all those dirty lines you see are not from erasing previous attempts at putting down lines … but from the original straight (sometimes gestured) layin lines. Im heading onto the proportion, measuring and shading lessons next so the next ones should show some improvement instead of me winging it. Was working some on figuring out the heads and hair as well. Thanks as always for your valuable responses and time.

@Luigi Manese, @Liandro, and @Jesper Axelsson! Hey everyone back again after having some fun doing some more structure mannequins. so added a few extra sketches just because I thought they would be fun to show. The ones that I thought put everything together best were the ones from 6/1 and 6/2. The other two I just included for fun even though there might be issues. There are more that I was tempted to include as well but didn’t want to overwhelm with too many photos. So feel free to comment on the fun ones as well if you wish.

Hello @Jesper Axelsson @Liandro and @Luigi Manese! I’m finally back. Didn’t take a break. Was just busy with the mannequins (there were a lot of examples to go through). As usual I am not posting any that I did from the proko examples (even though I think some of them came out really well) as the real deal for me is when you approach a totally new image and see if you can apply what you learned. So there is a lot of different parts that I like about these. Some parts I would change if doing again. The abdomen on the back bending one is out of proportion 😞. But all in all, I had a great time working through these. Still enjoying the journey. Let me know if it’s time to move on to the next lesson. Thanks again!

Hey @andypandi. I am just starting out as well and since I have already gone through my bean critique I thought I would try my hand at giving you some feedback while you wait for the professionals :) . First of all good job on trying your own poses! I think this is key, as it is often easy to follow what Stan is doing. But the ability to do it when you don't have a reference is where the rubber hits the road. So it's nice to see you taking on some new poses. I think that you are well on your way with these beans. There are some key things that I think this lesson is trying to teach and I can see a lot of those coming out in your drawing. Mainly 1. whether the top or bottom bean is tilting towards or away from you (Is the person leaning forward or backwards?). This determines in large part where you should place the overlap. In quite a few of your beans I can see this. The next part is how is the beans are twisting, which determines the center line running on the beans. It also seems like you have quite a good grasp of that in these beans as well. So good job. What I would recommend and what I think would take your beans to the next level is simply working on design. What I had to keep in mind in this lesson is that the goal wasn't to make the beans look like the person that I was drawing (don't focus on contour). Instead just focus on making both beans look like well rounded ovals that smoothly connected. If you look back over your drawings the beans that are move oval like look great! So focus on keeping that design oval-ish and don't get caught up on making the design match the actual look of the person being drawn in the pose. Remembering that the goal of this lesson is just a conceptual tool to help you get familiar with (and recognize) how the body torso is tilting and twisting. I hope this helps! Again, I think that you really seem to have a good grasp of concepts being taught in this lesson (as I understand them). I think if you focus on the design staying ovals with the overlaps and center lines and you should be good to go!

@pinkapricorn @Vincent Duncombe These are great (and super broad and complex) questions! :D I’ve quickly read the people who replied before and tried to sum up a few things that seem clear to me as a general common ground: —— 1. Deciding what to study depends on specific goals (so having clear objectives is a pre-requisite);  2. The calendar is our friend; 3. Keeping a log (whether public or private) is a good way to track progress; 4. Learning is a personal journey with no "single right answer"; 5. Consistency and patience are key; 6. Progression is not a linear ascent, it’s made of ups and downs. —— I think these points our fellows brought up cover pretty much everything. But I feel like I could add some extra thoughts on “how to keep the difficulty level appropriate”. If it feels too easy, I suppose the answer is pretty straightforward: once we notice it's getting boring, all we need to do is drop it and move on to something more interesting or challenging. But when it feels too difficult (not just challenging, but "freezing" difficult), chances are we might be getting ahead of ourselves. Often, it can be the lack of a more basic skill or knowledge. So I think a good “rule of thumb” for all aspiring artists is to make sure they’re familiar with the very basic, “universal” drawing fundamentals first and foremost: line, shape, proportions, perspective, 3D form and value. These are the “core muscles” they'll all use regardless the specific goals or contexts. Only after these they should move on to what I’d call “second-level fundamentals”: gesture, structure, composition, basic lights and shadows, design basics. And only after that I’d say they’d be ready to go to more specific or advanced topics, such as human anatomy, animal anatomy, drapery, character design, more advanced lighting, color etc. The only problem is: when we’re in the middle of the learning process, we’re might not be aware of the skills we lack. We just get frustrated, feel like something is wrong or missing, but can’t figure it out on our own. So here's what to do when things get too hard: get feedback. Count on other people to point out what you might not be seeing, and try to be open to it. If possible, even better: get mentored by someone you trust and that you believe to be "above you" in terms of skill and experience. But, since mentors, teachers, critiquers and even friends and mates are human beings and will have their own biases and judgments too, here’s a “hidden hack” few people mention: we can “filter” the feedbacks we get. Actually, we should. We certainly don’t need to accept every piece of advice as helpful, suitable or even true. If we’re minimally clear about what we want and where we’re going, we can learn to recognize and harvest just the helpful stuff from the feedbacks we get - in other words, we can slowly become our own mentors in a sense. Of course, we might also wanna avoid the opposite pitfall: becoming conceited or arrogant. It's a balance. And this balance requires a good deal of self-clarity and reasoning (as well as patience, humility and some effort to grow a thick skin sometimes) and it can be challenging. But by practicing it, over time, we do get better. Hope this can bring up any insights!

Hello everyone. Back with more assignments and the latest page of my robo beans practice. I also have pages where I practiced all of the assignment examples from the videos. But thought I wouldn’t post those as I could just look at the video drawing. I have been doing additional drawings from the Mallory pack to try on my own. This is the final page of that practice. I think these seemed to click a lot faster than some of the other lessons. Let me know what you think @Jesper Axelsson @Liandro. By the way @Jesper Axelsson, I just want to say thanks again for the time you took on my first review. I was seriously frustrated and thinking of quitting. Your critique came at the right time and have turned everything around. It’s been an enjoyable experience ever since. Thanks again.

Hi Everyone. Back posting my landmark examples ... these were some of the better ones. There are dots and connected lines for where I saw the landmarks ... but they are a bit light. @Liandro, @Jesper Axelsson Let me know what you think. If there are other reviewers feel free to jump in. Thanks for the help in advance.