Forumberichten van Muralis

Thanks for your answer Breno!

It was really helpful, and I'll definitely start studying some artists that I love.

Cheers!

Hello!
I've been studying and practicing how to draw heads and faces for a while, and I've reached a point where I'm starting to see progress on realistic portraits (by realistic I mean trying to copy the reference as much as possible, I don't mean very detailed). Those drawings are not that good, but I can see improvement and I kinda know where I need to focus to get better.

However, if I try more stylized faces with simplified features (kinda like for comic book or animation styles) I feel completely lost. I costantly need to erase and replace the features and I have no idea how to simplify things like the eyes or the nose.

I'm guessing that I need to do more of those structured and detailed studies before thinking about simplifying stuff, but how do I actually make the transition? How do I learn to represent the features with a few lines instead? How long do I need to practice slow studies before going into simple heads? I've watched a ton of videos but almost everyone is mostly about "draw the eyes like this" but that doesn't teach me how to draw stuff from any angle and with all the variations.

Btw just for info: I've studied the head/face mostly with Michael Hampton's book (which derives from Loomis) and Steve Huston's course. I've watched Marco Bucci's course on Skillshare but his approach of learning all the different planes of the Asaro head didn't quite click for me, so I went back on those first two approaches.

Thanks!

@Polyvios Animations:

Thanks a bunch for your feedback! But I have to tell you that those Vilppu poses that looks a bit better than the rest are just a mere copy of his gestures. In fact, the time that I tried to use his method on a photo reference (the 3 poses at the bottom) instead of just copying they turned out really bad, and that's why I decided his approach could not be the best for me.

@Torrilin

Thanks to you too for the response! I accept your suggestions, but I'll explain my point of view anyway (NOT because I'm being defensive but just to put things into perspective from this side): Honestly it doesn't bother me to grind a bit for practice. From what I've been told, you'd need to practice these thousands of times and I have time because of the quarantine. And indeed I usually try to go for 50 gestures per day, as a personal daily objective. As you have noticed they're short, so that doesn't take much time and in all honesty it doesn't feel that grindy!

As for longer drawings, it feels quite the opposite for me. Spending as long as 5 minutes for a single pose feels incredibly boring, I'm doing that as a part of Figuary but it feels like an eternity and I can't wait to go back to 1-2 minutes drawings.

The reason for this I believe it's because I'm still at the early stage of gesture drawing, which from what I've seen it should be about quick and short drawings just to get the movement of the pose, while longer drawings involve the actual figure with construction, contour, form and shading which I have no idea how to apply because I haven't studied them yet! Should I do them anyway?

I see that you're talking about tutorial and standard classes, which are them? I saw the class modes on the figure study section but cannot find tutorials around here. Apologies, I'm new to this site.

Finally thanks for your blunt response, you were very direct and specific, that's what I like to hear. I'll definitely try to make the most out of your suggestions about longer drawings and loosening up a bit about practice times.

Greetings! I'm new at drawing, and I would like to get figure drawing right. I started 3 weeks ago with gestures and I decided to keep track of my practice one week at time. Here's the imgur links:

Week 1 (from bottom to top): https://imgur.com/a/qfpXWJP

Week 2 (bottom to top): https://imgur.com/a/Shb17J9

Week 3: https://imgur.com/a/KbEMchA

Now, I know that less than one month is a very short time before actually seeing true progress, but I'm feeling I'm getting into the same mistakes over and over again, without even grasping some concepts that could lead to progressing further in the future. I started with Loomis and Proko, but I switched to Hampton because I like his way of building gestures. I tried looking into Vilppu which I absolutely love but I don't feel comfortable at all with his way of drawing almost without any construction (unlike Hampton which provides a couple of guidelines). I'm also doing Figuary and trying to practice with at least 50 figures every day.

For now I can dedicate a lot of time into exercises, but I'm afraid to be stuck into practice without progress. How can I get better at this? Please don't be afraid to be blunt. I want to improve. Thanks!