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I second that. What a literally beautiful way to put it. Preach it, @Aunt! You made my day!

Hey Idon'tknow,

First, I’ll repeat what Aunt Herbert wrote the other day, which I thought was excellent advice: breathe. Take your time. Getting nervous because of the pressure of the timer and trying to get as far as possible always pushed me to make as many lines as possible, hoping one of them would be the right one, but this just produced messy sketches.

When you take your time, think about what each line is supposed to depict on paper (e.g., muscle shape, shadow, or motion) before you make it. What angle does it have? How is it supposed to cross or overlap other structures in its vicinity? Where should it be thick or thin? How should it curve? Then, deliberately try to put it down just like that. It might also help to study artists you look up to and see how they use their lines.

Finally, I would recommend working without a timer for a while until you are more satisfied with your lines.

Hope this helps. Happy drawing!

• Mahatmabolika edited this post on August 17, 2024 6:17am.

Hey Jappersinho,

A good friend of mine, who is a professional musician, once told me something that has stuck with me ever since: When you’re practicing your scales and chord progressions, be like a robot—just repeat them over and over without questioning until they become smooth. But when you’re up on stage, throw everything overboard and go nuts as if nothing counts anymore.

Find something you love to do and work towards it. Copy, invent, or combine the two—it doesn’t matter, just make it work. Take the shortest route toward your goal, whatever that may be. That’s what every artist dreams of and works towards, I’d say. Get the technique out of the way so you can completely focus on your expression, like a language you’ve studied for so long that you don’t have to think about it anymore. You just say what you want to say. Express what you want to express.

TL;DR: Do whatevs, just enjoy it! You earned it! :)

Funny enough, getting into that state isn’t as natural as it might seem and I find it as challenging as sitting yourself down for extended periods of time and patiently drawing nudes. I try to practice one as much as I practice the other.

Thanks for this question, by the way. I’m currently working on a project that’s quite a bit outside my comfort zone, and I needed to be reminded of what I just told you, as I kept thinking about returning to my shell and playing it safe.

Hope this helps. Happy drawing!

Hey Staples,

I found a video recently that has a model doing similar poses being dressed and undressed. However, their clothes are black and tight fitting and you are probably wanting to train drawing drapery, so it may not be the best for what you are looking for. Might still be a start:

Happy drawing!

Hey Ted,

great work! You use beautiful flowing lines and you seem to have a natural talent for grasping proportion.

There are two areas I could see immediate improvement.

Gesture lines: While you are doing a great job with these already (letting them cascade into each other nicely) you more often than not, seem to interrupt them at the joints (e.g. knee, shoulder etc) breaking up the flow. Especially if you are aiming for energetic poses I would search for lines that go further (like one whole side of a leg, or whole arm and shoulder area) than just the individual parts.

Shadow shapes: you make these beautful flowing drawings and then weigh them down with scribbly black areas as shadows taking away much of the flow. I would suggest designing your shadow shapes just like gesture lines for the figure complimenting the flow you have already established. Look for the core shadow if you want to take it one step further.

I took the liberty to do a quick draw over of your work. Hope that wasn't out of line but it helps a lot to get my point across: https://imgur.com/a/draw-over-TZt33X7

Hope that helps. Happy drawing!

Link seems broken for me...

For a quick deep dive into hands as well as their gestures and simplification I recommend Sinix' video:

His other stuff is brilliant as well.

Nice work with the picture you send!

And one last wise-ass comment, then I'll STFU: If, in order to not give up, you occasionally need to produce work that goes beyond stick figures, then simply occasionally produce work that goes beyond stick figures (like you did beautifully in the piece you linked). ;) sorry couldn't resist :D

Happy Drawing!

I don't think I got across the point I was trying to make. I wasn't trying to parrot 'drawing is hard and takes very long' for the millionth time. Or that you have to draw a lot to be good at drawing.

I'll try a metaphor. Say you wanna explore the world. You ask where to go first and people tell you 'I went here, and did that', 'I checked out this first and then went there'. So you pick a route and start out but you are driving a real shitty car, that breaks down three times a day. So you get frustrated, because you want to move along faster, see more things quicker. But instead of working on your car to make it more reliable, you blame the route you took 'I should have gone here first, I just did it the wrong way'. Or even worse you blame yourself for being lazy, untalented, stupid etc.

The car of course being your mental state, calmness, focus or whatever you want to call it. All I was trying to point is, that it occured to me way to late, that this is very much a trainable skill. Start small and build from there. Don't expect to run a marathon on your first day on the track, but understand that it is very much possible to pull off with time.

I am also not saying you should not plan a proper route, but I am trying to point out, that it is much less important than it seems to be, especially with such awesome study sources around every corner nowadays. What seems wasted at a time, will probably help you later and be a shortcut along the way.

Personal example: I got the full Proko anatomy course and worked at it for 6 months. I went through two thirds of it and then it just broke me. I couldn't see it anymore. It was way to detailed for my understanding of anatomy at the time. I knew all the muscles but not how they went together and moved on a more holistic level. It felt like a complete waste of time. Half a year later I went back and finished it. Still felt senseless somehow. I hadn't even noticed how clean my lines had gotten and how well I had learned to measure by eye from copying all his drawings and 3D models. On top of that, another year later, I realized I now finally understand and can properly study Bridgman (who was always my art parent when it comes to anatomy – just love his style) because I can make sense of his stuff that sometimes just looked like a scribbly mess before.

Again: don't overthink it. Pick a subject you enjoy and stick with it for a while.

I hope this didn't come across as condescending or anything. I have a strong opinion on this subject, because I have suffered from it much more than I would have liked to and it baffles me, that hardly anybody seems to mention it anywhere and instead everybody gets lost in details immediately. Just trying to help. :)

Hey Vermiform,

glad I could help.

What you are doing sounds solid to me. You even reported progress with being able to handle poses you couldn't a couple weeks ago so just keep going and keep posting your stuff for reviews.

Concerning your question: One beginner 'mistake' I wish I would have caught sooner, is failing to realize that the 'how' is just as important (if not more) than the 'what' – the process being what matters and not the result. Establishing a calm and focussed state of mind, as opposed to a frustrated ego that keeps criticizing everything in a demeaning way and constantly wishes to be somewhere else.

My biggest challenge was keeping constant evaluation and judgement of what I did in check. The feeling of having to draw for Instagram (every drawing has to be perfect) as opposed to drawing on sand and wiping everything away once you're done to start over. This made drawing and practicing a struggle for me, which led to it being very exhausting and me not being able to work for extended periods of time (which in turn led to even more frustration and so on and so forth).

Taking my drawing practice beyond judgement, making it a thing I just do (like brushing my teeth) made a world of difference for me. It even turned the whole imposter-syndrom or i'll-never-be-as-good-as-this-person-cause-I-suck thing into a positive driving force that motivates me as opposed to something that pulls me down. I am happy with where I am (which is much further than I could have imagined in my wildest dreams), but still have so far to go and very much look forward to this journey now.

Hi Vermiform,

here are my thoughts on your questions:

1) Capture the essence of the pose with beautiful, flowing lines, going from big to small. You could try to incorporate more lines that go beyond just drawing the limbs, like doing one big swoop down the torso and through the leg etc. The bigger the better. Also, don't focus on finished drawings.

2) This question is kind of hard to answer as it depends on two things: Where do you wanna go? How much time are you willing/able to invest consistently?

A very good starting point is this curriculum for the self-taught artist based on free or very affordable online sources as learning material, that gives you an insight on the skills needed to become a well-rounded illustrator:

https://www.reddit.com/r/learnart/comments/dapk62/from_the_guy_who_made_the_most_comprehensive_list/

Mentioned in this list a couple of times is the website drawabox.com. Going through its basic courses is a must, that I would recommend to any beginning artist. It did wonders for me.

Because you mentioned it: imo pretty much everything in drawing will be an 'extremely long-term goal' if you focus too much on the results. Be kind to yourself. Consistency is key. Drawing five minutes every day is much better than doing 5 hours once a week.

3) From what should be expected from the timed drawings that you did your proportions actually look really good. Getting lost in the details too early is probably one of the biggest challenges of figure drawing. Try to establish a routine of doing the big masses (skull, ribcage, hips) and/or gesture lines first and check those for proportions before moving into more detail. Also do not try to aim for finished drawings with these quick poses. The goal is flow, as well as capturing the 'essence' of a pose. Exaggeration often works better than exact proportions.

4) A great overview on Light/values is this Marco Bucci video:

And Marco's take on drapery:

Hope this helps. Feel free to ask if anything is unclear. Always happy to talk shop :)

Happy Drawing!

Hey Graphite,

I completely agree with Aunt. Structure is key when it comes to faces. No matter how well you can draw an eye or other details of a face, they will always look off if the base (i. e. mass of the skull) isn't done properly. Especially if your goal is drawing from imagination at some point.

Also yes, most definetly take your time at the beginning and focus on the process, not the results.

I just wanted to add one thing. The skull is already a more complex mass put together from different primitive shapes. You should be able to rotate a box on paper before moving forward to more complicated stuff. If you have problems with that, I recommend doing the 250 box challenge (on drawabox.com) if you wanna go all in. Boring as it might be at times it will positively affect everything and anything you draw, as your brain will have gotten much better at imagining and simplifying 3D space.

I ran into a similar problem just recently when studying hands. I just couldn't seem to get it right and then noticed, that my box game just wasn't up to par. Ironically enough, the shortcut here is not taking the shortcut. :D

Keep up the good work and happy drawing!

• Mahatmabolika edited this post on July 26, 2024 10:35am.
• Mahatmabolika edited this post on July 26, 2024 11:32am.

Hey Gwoi10,

I completely agree with Rincitaporfa. Cleaning up your lines (literally) will make a world of difference and fix a lot of other problems automatically.

If you haven't heard of 'drawabox' ( https://drawabox.com/lesson/1 ), the website does an amazing job at teaching the basics (line and also the structure aspect that Rincitaporfa mentioned among others) and I would very much suggest going through their basic lessons before doing anything else.

Keep going and happy drawing! :)

Hey Aunt,

hope you got through your late shift alright.

you're bringing up a lot of different subjects, albeit really deep ones, so I'm focussing on the drawing related ones to stick to the forum topic.

I agree with the addiction as a cover-up thing, though. Also, giving too much space and time to the mind to figure out a why, a what and then judging all the time is the biggest cock blocker of humankind, tainting literally everything. I found adressing it at this basic level (mind = self-absorbed radio of doom) the only way to get it under control. Don't negotiate with (grandiose) terrorists.

I find time-spend-drawing a really nonsensical measure for quality of practice. Similar to time-spent-cooking-a-meal it says next to nothing about how good it is. There is a minimum viable timeframe (literally like 5 minutes) but 10 minutes of focussed anatomy study go further than 5 hours of mindless scribble or even worse, repeating mistakes over and over.

Your idea of lack-of-clear-goals is quite interesting. It made me think: the tasks you propose all focus on direct technical aspects of a piece (proportions, perspective etc) and not on a purpose beyond that (like conveying a mood, message or anything else that you would want to be invoked in the viewer). The other half of the dichotomy of great art (as opposed to skill) is the expression, the artist's voice. One might even argue it is much more important than craftsmanship. Maybe focus on having fun and going nuts instead of just counting the time grinding poses. Get out of the comfort zone.

Hey Jotty,

great job for getting back to practicing!

The IMGUR link you provided seemed dead, so I'm commenting on the two sample pics you posted.

While the effort you put in is admirable, I doubt this will have the desired effect of improving your craftsmenship, that you are looking for. Doing very short drawings mainly improves gesture and linework (or 'looseness' for lack of a better term). Your lines actually look pretty good already, even in the first drawing you did. Not the 'chicken scratch' style you see in most beginners (I had to work on getting rid of it for years myself). Also the gesture and proportions of the ape in the second picture aren't bad at all. If you want to put in 90 minutes a day (which is a challenging plan starting from zero – don't be too hard on yourself and aim for consistency rather than intensity) I would do like 10 of these as a warm-up and then focus on a specific goal that you set for yourself (anatomy, values, perspective, composition...) for the rest of that time.

Also I would suggest not putting a huge anime character and your name in front of your work if you are looking for critique. It is kind of distracting. If you want a funny figure there, I would use one, that is actually drawn by yourself and not some other artists work. But that's just my opinion. You do you :)

Hope this helps! Keep going!

• Mahatmabolika edited this post on June 23, 2024 10:10am.