Gesture Critiques

Hello there,

I have been doing (almost) daily gesture practice for a few weeks now. I use the 'class' setting under 'figure study' so each drawing was completed under a different time limit. It's hard to tell where I need to improve so any feedback is highly appreciated. Thank you!

Sketches: https://imgur.com/a/zJ8YfeJ

The absolute job you'd done, Deutro, on your pillow bodies in your gestures. But I've got one tiny question: How long was your earliest class mode??? The reasoning is because, you and I would like to know if it's 30 minutes long or much, much, much longer. Hope this question supports you.

Polyvios Animations

Your proportions seem mostly consistent, which is good, but they need a little work! (and who couldn't benefit from a little bit of that!)

My only honest feedback is to keep going, and keep it up!

You have great gestures that clearly capture the energy of each pose! Just keep in mind your proportions, specifically how the rest of the body relates to the size of the head - your torso areas tend to be a bit long/wide (which might be a personal choice, in which case nevermind!). For the limbs, capturing the gesture first is great, but remember to articulate that there are multiple, cylindrical parts to each, rather than one long fluid arm or leg. You could use small circles to indicate the joints, and then break the line up as it connects with those joints. 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!

The heads on some of the figures aren't proportional. I'm new myself so I've probably made the same mistake, maybe try to keep the head even. Or simplify the drawings to see the basic shape of it.

Hope this helps :)

@rmdurkee

Thanks for the feedback! I should probably contribute to the community too. About segmenting the limbs, it's sometimes hard to capture the individual 'cylinders' whilst still keeping the drawing fluid and maintaining the flow/gesture of the figure. In other words, I don't want the figure to be stiff, but I don't want to merge body parts that should be seperate. We have to find a balance between the two extremes I guess.

@Polyvios Animations

It's hard for me to understand what you're saying. I did these drawings using the 30 minutes class mode. Is this what you're asking?

• Deutro edited this post on June 5, 2020 7:05am.

@Deutro

Thnaks for your answer, Deutro, but what meant very much is that you would and could be open for yet another 10 minute figure study. The reason why is because, it'll completely loosen up your forces, completely loosen up more forms, and most details. Would you like to go for that, please? please?? Please???

Hope that it'll surely help.

Polyvios Animations

Looking good! I noticed that you are doing a good job of looking for the long lines of motion going through the figure. Don’t worry too much about the details, keep focusing on those. I would also recommend drawing on a larger scale, this allows you to use your whole arm and get nice, smooth lines. Make sure to keep a gentle grip on the pencil. Keep up the good work!

Hello,

I think you are improving your sense of movement is nice, I can see how the sketch would move just from the few lines. That is something I am struggling with for example.

Just a tip make your drawings bigger so that there are maybe 2-3 on a page if they fit. This way when you get into the longer times, like 15-25 min, you can easily draw in the detail because you actually have the space to create it. Also mabye watch a few videos about anatomy on youtube once you get into it, Proko is a good channel. This part will probably be really frustrating because experienced artist know probably most muscles in a human body to improve their drawing skills.

I hope this helped.

Your line that shows how the body is moving is great! I would work on the proportions and study how human musculature works. There are great tutorials on Youtube that you can watch to learn how to draw proportional bodies. You just need practice, looks like you have some natural talent.

Hi Duetro, one thing I noticed is that the proportions in your drawings struggle more within the abdominal region. Based on what I am seeing, it seems like the proportion problem is related to the spine. I think that studying how the spine interacts and connects with the pelvis and ribcage may help you. One idea is to do studies where you isolate the torso and draw how the spine connects these pieces (even if the spine is blocked from view because of the ribcage and pelvis). Also, keep in mind that general proportion studies are great and can give you a broad sense of how the body relates to itself but this can have some limitations when perspective is accounted for. Nevertheless, they can also help you with how the body connects together. Other than the distance between the two parts of the torso and some poses where the head is too small, you have a good sense of how the body connects and I noticed that you are looking for the larger movement of the figure. I hope that helps you out and I think you are doing great! :)