figure critique // first post

hi this is my first post here so i hope i'm posting the links right haha -

i struggle with stiffness a lot, if anyone has any advice to overcome that. otherwise, any critiques on my understanding of anatomy or really anything would be greatly appreciated as i'm still pretty new to all this technical stuff !! thank you :)

https://imgur.com/a/WwT1zs3

Hi, gelatingem.

Great job on your economical sketches. And more importantly, greater job on your organic lines, shapes, spaces and forms of the human anatomies. My tiniest suggestion is that though your control or understanding of human bones and muscles are completely spot-on, but I'm getting an uncanny feeling of the stiffness of the geometric construction, specifically the 5 and 10 minute sketches. Would you please loosen up your dominant and non-dominant hands with the 2 minute and 1 minute sketches of nudes and half-nudes? The explanation is because your anatomy of the muscles and bones will become the least blander and more spontaneous, fluider, and liveliest, sort of like Al Hirschfeld. For further inspiration, be sure to look into posemaniacs.com and this video below:

Good luck, and good bye.

Gelatinggem,

I think if you are struggling more with stiffness, the best thing I find is to draw one figure per page.

It is not a waste of paper. See, when you draw more than one figure on the page, you are now in the realm of composition. When we compose, we have to consider all of the other figures around it, which can hamper our feeling of dynamic movement.

If you would like to help your anatomy, I would like you to consider the movement of your lines. The line can say so much. Your fast drawing is better, I think, than your longer poses because you are not thinking about how the line forms across the body consciously. You may be better at the fast stuff because you don't have the time to think about it. -Don't sweat this; I have been there myself.

I feel you would do well to read the Practice Line chapter in The Science and Practice of Drawing.

Above is a link to the audiobook on youtube if you can not get it in your library or are disinclined to purchase the book. Yeah, it is a bit wordy, but it is also chock full of golden drawing nuggets.

All the best,

JCML Fine Art