Tiny Dancer 1

Thank you for your critique. As I said I am planning to do another watercolor based on Elton John's Tiny Dancer. I have been looking for my dancer. At this time, I have 3 Canidates which are the 3 dancers in my sketchbook. I have not chosen the one yet. The source for them is the new dancer photos just put in A o L library. There have been improvements in the photos quality. Suggest you go and check them out and do some drawing.

I would, for the time being, reduce the features of the face to browline, centerline and chinline. It's a common abbreviation, that doesn't distract much from the figure.

If you want to depict a young body, it is also quite important to develop line efficiency, and long, rounded lines. If your lines are broken too often, that gives an indication of reduced connective tissue, either from an extremely low fat contempt, like an extremely muscular body, or from old age.

To show the flowing curves of a young female body, you really need to reduce her forms to few clean shapes. If you are determined to go into further details, your lines need a very clear hierarchy, the distiction between indication of form, surface and shading needs to be both very obvious and immediate to the viewer, and very precise and subtle.

I would strongly recommend not to be too adventurous with details, before you feel really confident with proportions and flow of the major lines. Especially when drawing pretty girls, less is most often more.

Thank you for critiquing my work. Remember I am drawing with permanent ink. If a mistake is made then oh well, too bad move on. Why do I use ink? Because I like the quality of the final work. In life drawing sessions, I use pen and ink. If chosen for the final work, I use a pencil which can be corrected. In the sketch, I was trying to get down as much detail as I thought necessary to do a final drawing. This model is from the A-o-L new dancer photos. In the final work, I will not have the photo available so I have to put as much information into the sketch. I will consider all that you have said.

Your gesturing is good (especially the bottom half). Proportion of the neck is out of sync. The bottom half of the drawing is the best. What helps me... is to see the body as shapes... not as body parts. When I concentrate on drawing body parts I lose perspective and porpotion.

Great work and job on your tiny dancer pose, tx, I'm speechless for it. I'm speechless because how slow and patient you are with your bodily and facial anatomy, and you're distinguished at those, too!

My biggest and sincerest critique would and could be that though your attitude is perfectly clear and preceivable, but, question: how long did this sketch of a nude pose take you? And your pose is not getting enough caricature or exaggeration in your organic forms, shapes and lines. Would you please be able to do us a favor and loosen up your organic graphics with 2 5 minute poses? (10 minutes)

The reason is as a result, your drawn poses will become the least rigidest, and the most loosest, applealing, dynamic, fluid, liveliest, energetic and vital. Don't be discouraged if you don't get it out fast enough. The more you do work fastest, the most experienced you'll be. My hat's off to you, and I hope you'll find these completely and totally helpful and encouraging.

Thank you for critiquing my drawing. I just put in 3 one min & one 2 min sketches that I did in my local life drawing session. You might want to check those out. When I draw, I draw very fast. Remember I have 30 volumes of life drawings from 6 plus years of practice (average of 175 per volume which makes around 5000 drawings). These provide me with an archive I can go back and look to see if there is anything I can use. In a life drawing session, you can not just sit there and do nothing. You got to get with it (particularly if it is a 1 min, 2 min pose). When I taught Flash in high school, I was very much interested in animation. The detail I put in my Tiny Dancer drawings was because I would not have the access to the figures later. Again thanks for the advice.