First serious session in months!

Hi, I'm practicing gesture drawing to reinforce posing for an upcoming comic of mine (hopefuly not too far in the future). My goal for now is to do 2 practice sessions 30 mins each every day, I'll share some of what I did today:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1rEazZSXrdahVTBg8Zo7EUDQZ90aiYb_d

Besides this I'm doing other kinds of practice, mostly doing dynamic forms and building something that resembles a mannequin with those. Any tips?

I'm in love with your latest sketches, Spark74. Although, here's one littler request: Would you like to post your next 30 minutes of 10 minutes of figure sketches, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty please, please, please, please????? And you wanna know why?????? Cause we at Line-of-action.com would love to totally see how you loosen up your muscle memories in your next sketches on your sketchbook. Are you up??????? Hope and pray that it'll be very helpful and supportive.

Polyvios Animations

I actually missed the two last sketches (the longer 5 and 10 min) because at that point the scanner refused to cooperate, I'll post them later.

Sure! I'll post tomorrow's sketches as well ¦]

• Spark74 edited this post on June 3, 2020 2:57am.

You do a really nice job of capturing weight and placement of the large masses with only a few simple lines! Great foreshortening also. The only critical comment I really have is that sometimes the shoulder areas appear flat/boxy; could you maybe utilize a basic shape, like a circle, to help ground/connect them to the chest? There are some drawings where you did this, so maybe it was just a time constraint thing. I am relatively new to critiquing so I don't have a lot to offer, but I want to develop this skill and contribute to the community before asking for critiques of my own drawings. Hope this was at least a little helpful!

Today's sketches:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1xG_nx7P13JAf8yik9VP3rUEizpJDzCuY?usp=sharing

When it comes to the longer 10m poses I have more time to observe and look around for those nice flowing lines and actually capturing them in the drawing, but I kinda struggle when it comes to those 30s poses, looking back at those seems like I'm trying to build the shape of a body rather than looking for the actual flow of the pose itself, if it makes any sense. Perhaps I should start by doing more of the 10 min poses to get a better hang of those flow lines?

Edit:
5min sketches
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1xtSdfVcM3EqtnnTmbodpI18MBgaJe9v1?usp=sharing

• Spark74 edited this post on June 4, 2020 1:18am.
• Spark74 edited this post on June 4, 2020 1:19am.
• Spark74 edited this post on June 4, 2020 2:50am. Reason: new stuff

Day 3

Today I tried both a regular class and an inverted workflow (where 5m poses come first). I'd say I had better luck starting with those longer.

These are very well done! Your proportions seem well done and your drawings have a good flow to them!

My tip would be to work on your line confidence, and to darken your background color so your image pops out a bit more! (this will also help strain your eyes less!)

Keep up the great work!

Day 4

Today I tried something different, to capture 1min(-ish) poses with the fewest lines possible, trying to find those lines that travel almost through the whole pose. All models were male, as I their less curvaceous bodies are less readable from that perspective I guess. Also hands+feet bonus.

Hello!

I think your drawings spark with life and feeling, I'm sure you will do great at comics! One think I thaught about was that the legs sometimes seem too short in relation to the rest of the body. I think you should pay more attention to measuring your lines and shapes in relation to one another in a really early state of the drawing. Good luck!!

Hi Spark,

I think you did a great job. I do not know if the upload was chronological but I felt a progress trhoughout the pictures. I think as a next step, you can practice drawing forms (basic forms) in human body. I noticed that my drawings became more solid when I started dividing them as basic forms.

Good luck with your practice and your comic book :)

Nanako

Hi ! Those are great !

It's really hard to critique quick poses, but I think they need more structure. To do so you can try to simplify your drawing, and focus on the skeleton. Keep hard edges on the joints only and soften the curves between them.

To illustrate it you can look at the work of Ryan Woodward : http://ryanwoodwardart.com/my-works/conte-animated/

Of course you will not have this level in your next session (+ his shading skills helps a lot but don't pay attention to it for now), but his style can maybe inspire you. You already start your drawing with a strong guideline and that is really good, you can continue your by adding other strong lines like often the hips and the shoulders (you can see Ryan did them on almost every drawing), and from there you will quickly have a solid base for your character.

Also I'm not a fan of color pencils for this type of exercise. I think it would be better with a tool on which you can have more control on opacity and thickness. A 2B-4B pencil can be good :)

Keep it up !