consistency

I feel like the quality/accuracy of my figure drawings varies wildly, any tips on getting more consistent art? general tips and critiques would also be appreciated.

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My only feedback is, that I share the problem, and it might be the same for a lot more artists. There might be occassionally a methodical solution to a specific period of lower quality output: may be you are currently focusing on a different problem than before, and neglect some fundamentals, that you already felt they were sound. Maybe you have been focusing on a single problem for too long, have reached a plateau, and might have more success by introducing some variations to your practices.

But the amount that your general mental disposition can impact your art also can't be underrated. I know for me, it is sometimes rather easy to be fascinated with a specifical type of graphical problems, I am already looking forward to drawing, when I am away from the desk and mentally go through all the options, that I still want to try out, and when I get to the desk, concentrating on drawing for hours just seems to be the natural way to follow my interests, and the results I produce amaze myself.

On other days, it is just a grind to even get through the basic practice to not break the streak, one out of 3 drawings looks halfway acceptable, and when I try drawing anything beyond a few minutes, the time just seems to drag on forever, and everything just feels hard and complicated to do. A lot of that just seems to come from non-drawing related stress factors, beginning with the weather, health. the quality of sleep or nutrition, over family, job, other conflicts and worries, etcetera. Sometimes the batteries are just empty. General life experience shows, that such phases pass. Which is still rather little consolidation, when I am right now immediately in one.

Hi there!

Great work so far :) I thought I would share some ideas that came to mind when looking at your drawings. First of all: try not to beat yourself up over not being consistent!! That's what practice is for.

Here's what I would do:

· Try to identify three poses you did which you are not totally happy with. What do you notice about them? Is it the proportions? Are they too rigid? Do you think you understood the structure of the poses correctly?

· Give them another go! Try to find the images you worked with, or similar poses. Break them down into simple shapes and take your time. Bean it out!! Don't go into much detail, just enough to help you understand where the main masses are. Does it look better? Great! Does it not? That's great too! You can compare them to your initial attempts and see which areas you got right and which parts could use a bit more work.

I'm no pro but I hope this helped :)

Good evening, ecryptiid. Welcome back to Line of Action. How are you? Say, I think you're doing a finer job on your range of speed and accuracy of lines, spaces, relationships, and gestalts of your figure studes. I love the economy of lines. But I don't love the rigidity of the forces. Would you like to please loosen up your exaggerations of relationships with our interactive drawing tutorial here on our website?

The reason why is because, your gestures will be even more exaggerated into their rawer spirit. It can and will get more better with more consistent practice, if you just try and do it. For most details, please look into the Shamus Culhane book on gesture drawing here.

Good luck from us to you.

I took a look and at first blush I'd say they're looking more consistent than you post suggested. I also struggle with variance in quality and I have different styles that I'm in the mood for.

I understand why you might notice it and want to address it, but it's also a natural part of the process as the reference image quality, lighting conditions, etc. The size of the character available on the page, and the challenge if the individual poses also have an impact.

To that end I'm wondering if some of the poses your less happy with have a pattern. Do you find they're of a gender, body type, or pose style that you find easier or harder?

what follows is more of a hunch / conspiracy theory I've started to develop over the years: I was taking a class recently on stylized character design after years of mostly drawing and painting from reference - and I realized that comic artists really craft idealized versions of their characters. They use reference and then assemble the idealized pose that's the easier to make look good. And it can be so subtle you don't recognize it unless someone's breaking down what they're doing as they're doing it. It's like "natural" makeup - it's still makeup and it makes a big difference in presenting.

Much longer ago I was working with my art director and watching her work and noticing that she was sidestepping issues of complex muscle behaviors in favor of more confident construction. There's subtle tweaks you can do later once you're in tertiary details to bring some of that messy reality back. It seems less like cheating to me, and more being gentle with yourself that you don't have to be so caught up in highlighting the hardest (and least aesthetic) parts of a particular still frame pose that a photographer would direct their models to change.

I think more seasoned artists get used to this pose sweetening - and their canvas of gesture studies incorporate that into their sketches. The final result is a pleasing - inspired collection, not photographic accuracy.

I spent years bouncing between still life and life drawing and where there's less rooms for interpreting gesture and I think it broke my brain a bit feeling beholden way past the utility of making sure you're drawing what you see and not what you imagine.

It looks like you master proportions just fine and general shapes of the body.

Maybe the next step for you is to learn some anatomy and to put more details in your work, or start shading things :)