Forum posts by Sivreayyl

Hai Heliganreigns, I'm a beginner, so take everything I say with a grain of salt.

The cool thing about mannequinization is that it allows you to represent a complex shape that you do not understand with a set of simple shapes that you do understand. There are a plethora of different mannequins that people use, and you can, or course, create your own to suit your own personal needs. Proko is an extremely advanced artist, and many of his classes are geared toward more advanced students (even ones tagged 'beginner friendly'). That's not to say you can't learn from them, but you may want to try some simpler mannequins before you dive right into what Proko is doing. For example, many of the wrapping lines Proko uses to demonstrate the form are actually anchored on very subtle muscle features. If you know they're there, you can place those wrapping lines strategically, and they make sense. If you don't know where those changes are, then you tend to just kind of place them randomly, and... they don't really do much for you.

I would recommend you try some simpler mannequins, maybe even deconstruct / break them apart and draw individual forms for a while. Once you're a bit more comfortable, you can come back to Proko's mannequins.

Alternatively, you can reallllly deep dive into Proko's video(s). For every single mark he makes, pause the video and ask yourself, 'why did he make that mark that way? Why is it there? Why does it have that weight? why does it have that curve? What is it doing?' And then when you go to draw your own figures, (hopefully) you'll remember what proko did, and why he did it, and you'll look for the things he saw in your reference image. Try looking at proko's reference, drawing it, and then watching proko draw it, and compare the reults. What did he do differently? What did he do the same?

To make a long story short: your drawalong with the proko videos looks awesome, as do your own poses. I'm not convinced you completely understand all of the forms you are drawing. Solution: simplify them until you do understand them, and then gradually add in details/complexity, or spend a LOT more time thinking about them, or even isolating them until you understand the individual parts.

Stay creative, --Siv

Hey there Laitochris, I'm Siv, a beginner to art, so make sure to take everything I saw with a grain of salt.

There's a lot I don't know about you, and there will be things I may suggest that you are unwilling / unable to do, or even already practice. Please don't let this discourage you. Keep pushing forward with your art, and you WILL improve. There is no such thing as wasted effort.

It looks to me like you started off a few years back with traditional graphite + paper, and you now work digitally. Of course, I'm only seeing a tiny snapshot of your practice, but I do have a few suggestions:

1: Try to draw every day. It doesn't have to be a lot, and it's not a do or die thing (certainly missing a day or 2 is not a valid excuse to quit drawing) but make an effort to improve yourself a little each day.

2: Split your practice time into three portions: One to gain information (watch instructional videos, find advice, exercises, new ways to practice, etc), one to improve (Do a some of these exercises, I try to mix them up so I'm not doing the same thing every day) and one to have fun (work on something you enjoy, I like to do short, stylized comic strips, but you could work on your finished pieces, or whatever it is that brings you joy). I would split these in 20%, 40%, and 40% periods respectively, with short breaks in between. Having a bit of structure like this allows you to be more intentional with your practice, which tends to lead to faster improvement.

3: Incorporate as much variety as possible into your methods of practice. This will help you become a well rounded artist. Try out different drawing styles, different mediums, different references / inspiration, even different places, or postures to draw in. Mix and match these, and see what you like. Don't worry about being 'right' or 'wrong', whatever makes you enjoy your art the most, do more of that.

4: Set long and short term goals. Your long term goal should help set your overall direction, and should probably be able to answer the question 'why do I want to learn art'. Your short term goal should be a specific thing you want to improve, over a specific period. These would include the goals built into this site, but there are many more, for example you could say I want to learn how to draw hands, and then focus on hands for a month (remember to mix it up though, you don't want to get immediately burnt out on your goal). Then, after a month, go back and look at your previous work, and ask yourself, 'have I improved? Can I draw hands better now?' and speaking of your previous work...

5: Save your work. An easy trap to fall into, especially in digital art, is to draw things for practice, and then delete them. This leaves you with no reference for your improvement. It is important to go back over your work and look for your mistakes. This is especially helpful if you let them sit for a while, long enough for your brain to forget actually making the image. This will allow you to get more of a 'first impression' of it, and you may see things that you missed before, because you were looking at specific details you remembered. I would highly recommend starting a sketchbook / sketch journal.

A few side notes:

One exercise you may want to try out to improve your memory, as well as your imagination / improvisation, is an exercise I call quick look. Take your reference, and quickly scan over it. (I usually spend about 5 seconds) Note the major features, and then try to draw it from memory. Of course, you won't be able to remember everything, so you'll have to improvise a bit. That improvisation is what will help push you towards drawing from imagination, allowing you to become more confident in drawing your own characters.

You may also want to try to find / participate in more communities. You seem to be doing sort of a yearly checkin here, but I don't see much activity outside of that. I would try to find a community where you check in a bit more often, maybe once a week or so, and develop some connections with people. You can even try to find a local art club to participate in.

Best of luck, and props for making it this far, Stay Creative

--Siv

WOW

Hello JohnySmallBoy, I'm Sivreayyl, a total beginner to art. A big reason I am giving this 'advice' is to help myself thing about how I can improve. If it helps you as well, so much the better! But please take everything I say with a grain of salt, as I really don't know what I'm talking about.

First off, you say it's obvious you're messing up. The funny thing is, that's actually kind of the point of quick sketch. Let me explain. (From the look of these drawings, I assume you're doing timed practice, with a good assortment of time frames. That's awesome!)

If you were to take an image, and start off with all of the tiny little details, and keep drawing tiny detail by tiny detail until you were finished, when you stepped back from your drawing, all of the details would be in the wrong places, and your proportions would be totally off. You would probably be entirely dissatisfied with your drawing. Perhaps you would spend a lot of time erasing your errors, and redrawing things in the correct spots. Perhaps you would try to find a shortcut, such as tracing the original image. Or perhaps you would ball it up and throw it away.

However, if you were to start off not with the details, but instead with the relationships between the details, and then move on to the details themselves, you would find that when you stepped back from your work, it would bear a much stronger resemblance to the original.

The quick sketch exercise is an awesome way to practice this, because if you begin to get distracted by the tiny details, you'll start to run out of time and think "awe man, I'd better hurry for this last bit" and you'll draw a few quick, efficient strokes for the remaining body parts. Those last strokes that you drew in a hurry? Those are the strokes you're after. Not the super detailed, accurate forms, but the essential lines that describe the important relations between the details of the body. Eventually, once you get better at pacing yourself and focusing on what's important, you won't go through this running-out-of-time process as much. At that point, you'll be able to focus more on deciding which lines are important, as well as making your lines look good.

Not that geometry, forms, and contours aren't important. They are. Study them. However, if you're studying gesture, set them asside. Pay more attention to what you see overall (the big picture, so to speak), and try to translate that into as few lines as possible. Once you have your gesture, then you can add in the actual anatomy / forms and contours.

To circle back around, I may have implied it before but I wanted to be a bit more explicit, when you say you're messing up, that is a good thing! Of course we all want to draw stuff that looks good, but in order to improve, we need to focus on the areas that need the most work. Do most of your drawings of a certain type look 'bad'? Chances are you found an area you need to work on. Keep making those bad drawings until they get better.

Speaking of making them better, let's talk about a few things you can do. First off, look for tips/advice. I do youtube, but there's a ton of platforms with lots of amazing artists, and a lot of them are willing to share their experience. Remember that what worked for them won't necessarily work for you, so try to find a lot of different perspectives / advice, and give them a try. There isn't necessarily a 'right' way, if it works for you, it's right, if it doesn't work for you, keep looking. Also ask for peer advice, like this! Just remember not to take it too seriously.

Here's a [url=]video[/url] on gesture that I like. As I practice and improve, I like to go back and watch the videos I've already watched again. A lot of times, I'll get new information from them, or I'll understand something that didn't make sense to me before.

A few specific tips, and I'll wrap up.

Your lines are a bit scribbly, and that's not unusual when you're in a hurry, because if you're not drawing, you feel like you're wasting your precious seconds. That's not necessarily the case. Feel free to spend time thinking about the important lines / objects in the pose. Where do they start? Where do they end? How do they relate to other lines / objects? If you need to, make marks to help yourself keep track of important locations. Once you know where to start and where to end, and the curve you want to take to get there, go ahead and trace the curve with your hand, but not touching the paper with your pencil (or in this case, pentablet). Imagine you were using tracing paper on the original image, but instead of drawing it slowly and correcting as you go, you had to draw it all in one go. Keep going through that motion until you're confident you can make the curve you want to make. Only then do you let your pencil touch the paper and make the curve. Once you've got it down, it's done. Don't try to fix it, don't try to draw over it, deal with it. You can adjust the pose, to match the curve you drew, or you can just accept that it'll look a little funny. Remember, you're learning. It's not a big deal if you mess up on a 30 second sketch.

Finally, be patient with yourself, and have fun! You won't see improvement overnight, so the most important thing if you want to improve your drawing is to keep at it and not give up. So do what works for you, and do what you find fun. If what you're doing breaks the rules, but you're enjoying it, then keep doing it!

Stay Creative,

--Siv

P.S. The short and sweet version is: if you want to focus on gesture, scrap the shadows, contours, and forms, and look for the rhythm/motion.

P.P.S. See, even in writing there is the concept of gesture. I got rid of all the little details, and just said what I meant.

Hey ZayneTiF, glad to see you decided to take the plunge and do a bit of drawing! I'm a total beginner as well, so please take everything I say with a grain of salt.

My first piece of advice is: don't worry so much about doing it wrong! Try a bunch of stuff, and if you like what you see, then it's right. Even if you end up going towards a different style down the road, doing what you enjoy right now will help keep your motivation up, which is SUPER important, especially when you're just starting out. Look for different techniques and styles, and go with whatever works for you. Also, remember that muscle memory is HUGE when it comes to making marks. The more marks you make, the more muscle memory you'll gain. The more muscle memory you have, the more confident and accurate your marks will be. So even if your drawings don't look how you want, that doesn't mean you're wasting your time.

Second piece of advice: set reasonable goals, and give yourself time to have fun. Becoming a great artist takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of time actually spent drawing and studying, but it also takes a lot of time for your brain to absorb all that information. That means even if you study 12 hours a day, you're not gonna get the same level of improvement as if you spend an hour a day over a 1 year span. My point is, don't rush it, it's a process, and the most important thing is to not give up. It's a battle of attrition, a marathon, not a sprint etc etc. While figure drawing is a great exercise, and this site provides a great way to keep track of your practice time, there are lots of other ways to learn and practice out there. I would encourage you to set aside some time to exercise other forms of practice, such as free drawing (doodling) or drawing animals, scenes, random photos, life, etc. If you don't have the time, consider shortening your class time. While having a routine is valuable, your big improvements / breakthroughs will mostly come when you're really enjoying yourself. Our brains operate best when they're happy.

Alright, let's do a bit of analysis.

https://imgur.com/HznIXwH Good stuff here, I can see you're thinking about the spatial relationships between the points of interest, and you've got some pretty solid geometry. You could probably use some basic shape practice (boxes, cylinders, cones, pyramids, etc) to make your shapes feel a bit more solid, but it's not bad.

https://imgur.com/wDqpfzJ Same for this one, you've got some really good movement in some of these. Doesn't it feel awesome when you nail those big sweeping curves, and you're like 'woah, I can see the motion all of a sudden!'

https://imgur.com/aIpz7qk Holy... you clocked that one on the right inside of 60 secs? Very impressive stuff, definitely something ot be proud of.

https://imgur.com/bxAFOdC I wouldn't worry all that much about anatomy, just focus on getting your drawings to look the way you want them to look. That being said, the fronts of the thighs usually curve outwards to show the strong muscles you use to walk. Having them curve inwards leaves the person looking a bit emaciated. The bicep is a little higher on the arms, the neck is not quite that long, and the head is usually a little larger. Going back to your sketch and comparing it to your reference after your done (try holding your paper over your computer screen) can be a good way to spot some of these little errors.

https://imgur.com/Xa6DIgj Good proportions, clear muscle masses, it feels like you were a little bit scared on the sides of the body and the right arm. Remember, this is an exercise, not a finished artwork. If you make a mistake, learn from it and move on. Don't try to correct it by drawing a whole bunch of lines so that the shape is ambiguous and you can't tell that you were wrong. You need to know if you were wrong so you can fix your mistake.

https://imgur.com/zKfVMHj Good stuff. The torso and head feel a touch on the long/skinny side, but that might just be the reference.

https://imgur.com/uPcLIx1 Not sure exactly what happened here, but it looks like you may have skipped over that nice geometry you had in your thirty second drawings and skipped straight to the contours. Remember, just because you have extra time doesn't mean you jump right into the details. When you're going a longer sketch, you should still spend the first part getting your rough geometry down. This will help you avoid things like the forearm being twice as long as the upper arm. If you feel like you're running short on time, consider skipping the props and only focusing on the figure.

https://imgur.com/B6PZdP1 Cool sahding, once again, a few proportions seem a little off (check the length on that forearm) but in general you'll get better at that with more practice. Also, thinking about relative sizes helps a lot (you can use your own body for reference) for example, your elbow will usually be somewhere near the bottom of your ribcage, your upper leg will generally be the same length as the distance from your shoulder to your hip, etc.

https://imgur.com/bojtRWH man, if I meet this one walking down the street, imma be SHOOK. That boi needs some muscle! In all seriousness, his overall measurements and anatomy is pretty solid, his limbs just need to be a lot thicker and more shaped for him not to feel emaciated. It looks like this was earlier on for you, so if looks like you got this problem mostly solved. Good job!

https://imgur.com/keKV76h Is that... MARKER?! I... love it! Try different mediums, throw stuff out there, see what works for you. This one actually looks really good though, so great job!

https://imgur.com/BN7QWxK So this is really good, although the head is a tad small. Also, one other thing we probably need to talk about, you mentioned you (try to) think in shapes... are these 2d shapes, or 3d shapes? It looks like you're constructing your torso out of some elipses, which is cool, but makes sure that somewhere along the line you're giving them depth, and understanding the actual 3d shape of the body, not just the profile on the front.

https://imgur.com/KhwjLn8 Man I love your marker drawings, they're so clean! Doing all the geometry in pencil and then making the outline pop with the marker is an awesome style. I've always been impressed with people who can see the geometry in their head, and just mark out the contours directly, but that takes a LOT of practice. You may want to consider adding some cross sectional lines to your shapes to help both you and the observer better understand the shape and make it feel more 3d.

So yeah, I'm not an art teacher or anything, so again don't take any of this too much to heart. You're doing really great, especially for how recently you started, and it looks like you've improved a ton. Now the real battle begins, which is to not loose your motivation.

Stay creative,

--Siv

Hey Newbie974, I'm Sivreayyl, and I'm a total beginner in art. I've always been interested in art, and I've done tracings and copies of my favorite pieces since I was like 13 (I'm 22 now) but it was only about 2 months ago that I really started trying to improve my skills. Like you, I am very much inspired by a particular artist (wlop, in my case). It's very easy to get caught up in your favorite artist's drawings, and then look back at your own drawings and think "wow, I'm so bad". When I find myself doing this, I usually try to put things into perspective for myself, so let's use your example of the great cartoon artist Kim Jung Gi.

First off, this guy was clearly super motivated. A brief glance into his history tells us that he started art school when he was 19, but I'm absolutely positive he was drawing long before that. He is 47 now, which means he has been seriously practicing art for a minimum of 28 years. Let that sink in for a second. Twenty eight years. That's 336 months, and, interestingly enough, almost exactly 10000 days. When you look at my 24 day practice streak at 30 mins a day, or even your (very impressive) 500+ day practice streak at 2 hours a day, it all pales in comparison with the sheer amount of work and effort that the masters have put in.

If I could give you one piece of advice, (and this honestly has a lot more to do with life than it has to do with art) it would be to cut the negativity out of your life. People who are extraordinarily skilled in specific fields often tend to be very self critical, and art is no exception. This self criticism is a huge part of what drives people to be better, as they're always striving to avoid their drawings looking like 'trash'. But I believe the environment they are in is also a huge factor in determining whether or not people realize their dreams, and become that great artist they want to be. If the people around you are all saying "you should give up art, you'll never be anything, art is stupid and you are stupid too" then you will almost inevitably lose motivation and quit doing art.

You may have noticed that a lot of great artists have been to art school, and I think that the main thing an art school provides is an environment that fosters skill. That won't do any good if you lack the motivation to develop yourself, but if you do have that motivation (and it sounds like you do) then putting yourself in an environment to develop your skills will almost certainly lead to vast improvement in your skillset over time. Think of it this way: Time + Motivation + Environment = Skill. You mentioned that the biggest things you need to work on are your shadows, head size, and hair, but I would say the biggest thing you need to work on is your environment. You can go to an art school and basically get that environment in a can (and I really do think that you'd get a lot out of taking some art classes) or you can try to generate that environment yourself, which is what a lot of us are trying to do, since most of us don't have access to art school :(.

A couple of things that I think are really useful to have in your environment are:

High skill people. These are the people who inspire you to better. Study their work, look at what they're doing, maybe even reach out to them and talk to them. People who are really into something are almost always friendly towards others who share their passions, no matter their skill level.

Low skill people. These aren't people to put down and make fun of, but people you can relate to, who are going through the same struggles that you are. If you keep an eye on them, you'll notice that some improve faster than others. Ask them how they did it, and try to emulate what they did.

High value criticism. You can get a long way by looking at your own mistakes and trying to fix them, but at the end of the day, getting advice from others is a super great way to find ways to improve your work. Of course, not all of the advice you get will be good advice, so it's important to take it with a grain of salt, but if you get a high volume of advice, you can sift through it and find those few golden nuggets that are going to propel you forward.

These are all things you'll find in an art school, but you can also find them for yourself. You can join an art club in your area, you can join online communities, (such as this one) and you can reach out to people that you find interesting / inspiring. Find a place where you feel like you belong, and find some people you like being around, even if it's only a virtual place and virtual people.

Alright, I think that's enough on life concepts, let's move on to art.

I think it's great that you're practicing so much. Keep that up. I do have a few pieces of advice on how you practice. I don't know your exact practice routine, so you may already be doing some of these, but here's how I like to break up my practice time (I do digital art, so some of this may be a little different for traditional).

10% of time spent on art I try to spend studying concepts (you don't need a pencil for this). This can mean reading art advice / tips, watching youtube videos, asking questions, etc. I see you have at least one art book (it looks like it's oriented towards gesture?) so studying that would definitely apply. I like to watch Mark Brunet videos on digital art, but probably Proko videos would be more relavent to traditional.

10% of time spent on art I try to spend in my community (I think of it as giving back). Give some advice, take some advice, and have a good time with some people you enjoy. I know this sight says it, but thinking about how others can improve is often a good way to find ways to improve yourself. You don't have to be a great artist to give advice, and as long as it's positive and encouraging, you probably won't ruin anybody's career, even if your advice isn't great. I'm on art station, pixiv, deviantart, line of action. I'm sure there are french based sites as well, if language is a problem. You can also go to real life meetups / get-togethers.

40% of time spent on art I study the basics. You can decide for yourself what you think the 'basics' are, but a lot of schools teach color, form, line, shape, space, texture, and value, so that's what I practice. I usually focus on one of these each day of the week. For this portion of my practice, I do not think of what I'm doing as art, but practice that I am doing in order to get better at art. This helps me avoid judging whatever I'm working on as 'good' or 'trash'. It's simply practice to get better.

Color I usually practice by looking at reference pictures and blocking in the colors I see. Then I think about how I can make the colors more interesting, or how to make them work better together. Another exercise I like to do is draw a picture using only two colors (not just drawing the outline, but conveying the information with color shapes, such as yellow blobs for areas that are lit, and blue blobs for areas that are in shadow).

Form is mainly what I use this sight for, doing quick gesture drawings of animals or people or hands or wahtever, trying to catch a general action or idea. I also use a random image generator to give me ideas on what to try to catch the essence of. I often try to exagerate what I see in order to convey things more clearly and make it more readable.

For line practice, I often switch off my tablet and go to traditional, drawing straight lines, C curves, S curves, hatching, etc. I put dots on the paper at various distances from eachother and try to draw lines between them. Then I go back and draw some relaxed curves, trying to hit the points with my curve, while maintaining smoothness and confidence.

For my shape practice, I start off drawing various triangles, squares, circles, elipses, etc, then I move on to more irregular shapes. I like to do cross sections of things like engines, rifles, machines, etc. You can usually find references for these online. A lot of times I finish up with the two color exercise, focusing on the color shapes this time as appose to the colors themselves.

For my space practice, I start off with basic shapes in perspective (mostly boxes, cylinders, cones, pyramids, etc.) Then I start deforming them, squishing them, stretching them, skewing them, etc, while trying to keep them looking believable. I then move on to more complex shapes such as buildings, people, trees, etc (I use lots of references). I often try to break the more complex shapes down into the simpler shapes, or enclose complex shapes with simpler shapes, and then draw the details in afterwards (I see you did this with some of your skulls).

I once again go back to traditional for texture. I do a bit of hatching, cross hatching, curved cross hatching, stipling, scribbling, etc. Once again, I use reference images and try to represent the textures I see with the textures I can draw.

for value once again with traditional I try to create strips going from very light to very dark, with an even transition. Then I try to create edges between different values, varying from hard edges to smoothe edges. Then I go back and draw some basic shapes, but this time I don't draw the lines to show the edges, and instead represent them entirely with shading. Then I move on to more complex shapes (once again using references).

The remaining 40% of my practice time I spend drawing whatever I feel like drawing. I usually try to draw from imagination, but sometimes I don't have anything in particular I want to draw, (or sometimes I even don't want to draw at all) so I go back to my random image generator to give me ideas. This is where I actually try to create something that's worth looking at. I use lots of different styles, from black and white, to color, to realistic, to various stylizations, to just putting random shapes and colors down. This is the part where you just enjoy yourself and let loose.

Also, I try to take short breaks every 20 mins or so (especially during my really long practice sessions on the weekends) to rest my eyes, stretch out, and clear my mind.

As far as specific critiques on your art itself, I really don't have too much to say. It looks great. You should stop putting yourself down so much, and give yourself some credit. Sure, you've still got a long way to go before you meet your goals, but you've come a long way too, so as long as you keep it up and put in more effort than anyone else, you'll be better than everyone else before you know it. Part of learning is the struggle to learn. If you're not worried about whether or not you're learning right, then you're not learning right. That worry, that search for how to improve, that's part of the process of learning. How people learn best is different for every person, but the general rule is that if you want to improve and you look for ways to improve and you take specific and intentional actions to improve, then you will improve. So you're on the right track, keep looking, keep struggling, and keep asking questions. Le seul qui échoue completement, c'est lui qui n'essaye jamais. (sorry my french is extremely rusty.)

Hope this helps, you're doing awesome!

Stay creative,

--Sivreayyl

Hey Carl, some nice sketches you have here! I'm Siv, and I'm a total beginner, so please please take everything I say with a grain of salt.

As far as I can tell / understand, gesture drawing can sort of be considered the opposite of contour drawing. Contour drawing involves drawing the edge of an object in order to create a precise, well defined shape (for example, when you see a geometry teacher draw a cube, this is contour drawing). Gesture drawing, on the other hand, uses more flowing and relaxed curves to capture the basic proportions and actions of a subject (for example, the stick figures that many children draw could be considered gesture drawings).

A lot of artists like to focus on the gesture before they move on to the anatomical details, because it gives them a very fast way to see how the drawing 'feels'. If it doesn't feel right, scrap it and move on. You've wasted all of thirty seconds. If, on the other hand, you spend a lot of time putting in all the details and contours of the body first, and then take a step back and realize that the pose feels dead, uninteresting, or downright innacurate, it's easy to get bogged down and loose motivation.

I would start off trying to represent whatever it is you're trying to draw using one line (either a straight line, a C curve, or an S curve). Do 30 sec or one minute poses, and really think about the pose. What is the person doing? Why are they doing that? How can I communicate what they are doing with only one line? Be sure to take a bit of time to study the model before you put your pencil to the paper. You want to do quite a few of these (I'd say at least a dozen) in a session. Once you're finished, go back over your drawings. Can you remember the poses? Do the curves accurately represent the poses? Do some of the curves stand out to you more than others?

Remember contour drawings are supposed to look like their subject and accurately represent their shape. Gesture drawings are supposed to demonstrate the flow or action of the subject, often leaving the shape ambiguous. While using a single gesture line to capture an entire figure is a good exercise to get you thinking about the flow of objects, you can really use gesture lines in any subject you draw, for example you could have a gesture line for just an arm, or one for just a foot, or one for a mouse, or a horse, or a mountain or a tree. Anything that has a form will have a gesture, the trouble is finding it and putting it on a piece of paper.

Once you have your main gesture line, you can either begin adding in some contours (head, chest, pelvis, etc) or, you can move on to describe smaller gestures to describe more detailed relationships (relationship between head and shoulders, shoulders and arms, shoulders and torso, torso and hips, legs and hips, feet and legs, etc). The more you focus on gesture, the more natural your drawing will feel. The more you focus on contour, the more solid and real your drawing will feel.

I wouldn't say what you're doing is just scribbling, but it's not quite gesture drawing either, I'd say it's more on the contour drawing side of things. There's nothing wrong with contour drawing, in fact I would highly encourage you to continue practicing contour drawing, but usually you want to start off with very basic shapes for that (boxes, cylinders, etc) before moving on to a complex shape like the human body. It's a little bit counter intuitive to use the method that can show a lot of detail on simple shapes, and the method that aims to simplify things on the complicated shapes, but think of it as flexing your artistic muscles in order to diversify your capabilities.

You may also find this [url=]video[/url] helpful, as it contains a pretty good explanation of gesture, as well answers to a few questions somewhat similar to yours.

Again, I'm a total beginner, but here is an example of a few of the practice styles I like to use. Once you're able to combine the flow of the gestures with the geometry of the contours, you can create a pose that is both fluid/dynamic and believable. The more you practice gesture, the more fluid your pose will be. The more you practice contour geometry, the more real your pose will look. I look forward to seeing more art from you, keep up the good work!

Stay creative,

--Siv