Class mode

Hello Naima,

Your line work is really nice and confident, it seems like you've practiced quite a bit, and it shows in very flowy and elegant curves. I'm not sure what was meant in the phrase that you quote, but it made me think of this: Maybe it refers to increasing your understanding of anatomy and the forms of the body in 3D. I think that a good understanding of volume and all the volumes that constitute a body in this case, will allow you to draw figures that seem right and give depth just off seeing the simple linework. In your drawings, some are really nice, and for others, like the central character, the right shoulder (most forward in the drawing) seems kind of off in terms of placement, which breaks the illusion of volume. Does this make sense to you? I hope it deos. Keep it up, your hard work is showing!

Hey BentHorseShoe!

Thank you for your percise critiques, I see your point and indeed, I need to work on the get togehter of the figures. I appreciate very much yiu tried to understand the classmode phrases with me, your interpretation makes sense.

( by the way: why did you choose your name? Is a bent horseshoe a c or an s? ) Anyway thank you!

Nice work but way to go on your range of gestures and shapes over the most complicated forms and details and shadings of your figures, but I think your warmups are getting ever loosest. But I feel that these lines need the most vitality and energy yet. How would you like to please try out our session of 67 minutes of 22 second warmup poses? (67 x 60=4020/22≈183 scribbles of poses)

The logical reason behind this fact that why you could and should try this out is because, your poses and shapes will be drawn less stiffer and the most liveliest, fluidest, but flowing yet. For most details, please look into the Vilppu Drawing Manual book and the Daniel Coyle PDF, The Little Book of Talent.

Let's hope they've all helped the most.

Hi Naima !

Great blend of gestures, measuring and line quality you’ve on that page!
While I can agree to some extent with the interpretation that BentHorseShoe gave of that phrase, I really do not think this is the whole story.

Ironically, you’re usually doing a good job of representing the “insides” of the body from what I’ve seen in your work, but I find you rarely emphasize these “insides” to create more drama.

I just think you’re not fully aware that there is such a thing as rhythms in the body.

Here I made some annotations on your work to show some rhythms I found in your figures (with arrows do show direction) : https://imgur.com/a/IC9pj2b (note: I didn’t draw all of the rhythms on the figures for the sake of clarity)

In my humble opinion, this is the “why” of gesture in life drawing, the reason figures drawn by some artists feel like they’re moving and alive even in stationary and almost symmetrical poses, while other artists struggle to achieve that even if they got their line of action right etc...
I really do think these “insides” is just another way to say the rhythm, the flow of the body.
Whenever the classroom mode is giving you tips such as “ drawing from inside the body”, I think this means ”emphasize the rhythm by drawing things that represent that, do not focus on contours and little details too much”.

Now, how do you represent that in figure drawing ? This is where I agree with BentHorseShoe, anatomy is one of the best tools for doing that.
From what I’ve learned so far, anatomy is a perfect mix of gesture and form/3D, especially the muscles, fat and skin (in other words, all the fleshy stuff aside bones).
Think about it : look at how you usually draw your gestures, the biggest cues of gesture come from how well you communicate the curves of muscles, fat and skin by simplifying them by their function and eventually revealing the movement of the whole body.
Anatomy being a gathering of multiple things that can squash and stretch, it is a great tool for revealing rhythm and form at the same time while drawing realistically.
You can draw anatomy with line strokes that fit the rhythms, or if you want to keep it realistic, you can represent anatomy by shading with directional strokes (the direction being wherever the rhythm takes you)

Now here is the trick though, You want to think of rhythm/flow and THEN build anatomy from that. Otherwise, just assembling body parts individually without thinking about how they interact with each other gesturally will make your figures look like stiff mannequins, even if anatomy is on point.

Anyway, just thinking and just being aware of rhythm goes a long way in order to draw from the inside of the body, no matter what method you decide to use to represent them in your figures.

Again, I see rhythms in your figures and this is great, just be aware of that phenomenon and take it to your advantage to create more drama and life.

Keep up the good work! If you have any questions or requests feel free to ask them, I feel that I’m learning a lot too :)

Hi Mejiiconfused!
thanks so much for your profoung comment, it is great to actually see what you ment by rhythm in my figures, your drawinf lines made it much more understandable! And your comment on my wuestion with the "within drawings" also clear some humbling in my brain. I really appreciate you took time and effort to answer. Have a nice day!