My first question is have you done the tutorial? Drawing a line of action can feel super awkward, but it really helps long term because it gives you a basis for cranking out those 30s poses and making lots of terrible drawings.
The second thing I recommend is trying even a 30m class if you haven‘t. Yeah, the 30s poses feel impossible at first. But if you‘re new to figure drawing, those poses are where pushing to find a line of action really pays off. If you take a line of action seriously, you‘ll find very quickly that your 30s poses improve the fastest out of anything. A longer class is not better, even a 30m class can be too long if you‘re new to figure drawing.
The third thing to try is mark up your classes afterwards. Just take a minute or two to pick the best drawings out of a timed group. Don‘t worry about the bad ones, just mark which ones are best. It doesn‘t do any good to focus on the bad drawings, classes are designed to produce a lot of bad drawings. What you want to do is focus on what worked, what you got right.
I can‘t swear it‘s possible for all these poses, but a bunch of them it should be doable to run a figures class. Might make it easier to apply what you‘re copying out if you slow down a little and get in some concrete practice on this specific style of mannequinization. A bunch of these poses are stylized in a very 50‘s way so it‘s not something you‘ll find tons of reference for. It‘s particularly noticeable in the stuff that‘s part of a walk cycle/arabesque series. (If you‘re interested in the issue I can cheerfully blab more and provide sculpture references and ballet discussion... it‘s a giant thing. Can‘t really talk about the animation side, but there‘s definitely that too)
Also if you have drawings from previous classes, taking one and trying to apply the going 3D process might be informative. Pick something simple and easy, and just see how far you can push.
The other thing with doing classes focusing on a specific pose is you can compare how you draw a pose that‘s really rotated with one where you‘re trying to do the rotation yourself.
Also, this might be an instance where tracing is actually helpful. Not necessarily trace the whole book, but try different tracing methods on the basic mannequin and the 3D expansion.
Find the line of action, draw it.
Which sounds oh so simple, but really really isn‘t and just... I mean I spent a good year or more with my 30s poses looking like sperm mostly ok? Sperm is fine if that‘s what you can draw in 30s.
Also I might not really think about proportion in a class until I‘m getting into 5 and 10 minute drawings. Too busy with other stuff.
Also also there‘s not a whole lot of deliberate thinking in the short poses except about the mechanics of slamming the idea down. Line of action. Head. Shoulder and/or hip markers. Rough in arms and legs. Scribble hands and feet. Balance curves and straights. Are negative spaces about right? Should there be a torso outline? Rough in the volume of the torso. Rough in muscle gestures that are missing, rough in major shadows. Are there clothes, accessories or background details that are missing? Do I have a gesture for hair? And at that point I‘ve gotten well into a 10 minute drawing and I probably am nowhere near done since I haven‘t done gestures for facial expression yet and the hand and foot gestures are more scribbles than anything else.
If I‘m pushing a figure sketch past class time, I‘ll usually do a proportion check on it at that point. Nothing fancy, just some simple canvas flipping, maybe a more intense check on how negative space works.
Pretty much the same as a front or back view in terms of steps. The tutorial covers how to find the line of action and how to elaborate pretty well. If you haven‘t tried the tutorial, start there.
If you have tried the tutorial, your best bet is to set up a short class with side view as the focus, and then ask for critique. Then we have something concrete to work from.
Also, remember you can and should critique your own stuff. To start out, take the results of your class session, and pick a best drawing from each time group. If you need to pick more than one best, it‘s ok up to around 3. If you have a reason why you think it‘s best, make a note of it. Ignore the drawings you think are bad, figure drawing classes produce lots of bad drawings. That‘s why we do them! You can‘t make good drawings without making a lot of mistakes. But if you mark the best ones, then you have goals to try to repeat or improve on.
Yeah, it‘s not fun. Thanks for the fix, I‘m set up with a suitable goal now.
What do you feel is *good* about the 25m pieces? What parts are right? The more you dislike a piece, the more important that question is. If you have a strong reaction, there‘s something there.
I can type, but my old RSI problem of nerve compression in the mid palm to thumb web area is back. And I tried to edit my goal so it’s 6 weeks of not cheating and... you can’t set a practice goal to zero.
I want to draw! I really want to draw! But I can’t, it’s not safe. Not being able to feel your fingers is BAD. (Yes, I’m gonna see a doctor but odds are the prescription is rest)
I feel like this comment is excessively harsh, but I’m not quite sure how to tone it down. You’re getting pretty much how I’d grade this class if it were mine. Try to hold on to the feeling that you did a new thing, and you did a challenging and difficult thing and you finished it while you read what follows.
You didn’t get hands and feet in most of the 30s poses in the class session. So if hands and feet are a priority, that part of the session was a failure. They’re good for 30s poses just... they don’t meet the goal. 30s poses often don’t meet the goal, if you are getting 100% here it’s time to think about new goals.
You got them in a few of the 1m poses, but it feels like you’re obsessing over fingers and toes. They’re a detail, like eyes. If you can get in a smudge or scribble to convey an important finger gesture, great, but not at the expense of the overall figure?
The 5 minute poses I think all have their hands and feet and it looks like you got some good observation before diving into shading. These are probably the strongest observation for the time in this session? One of these two probably gets rated as the best for the session. These are the ones I’d sit with most to think about what went right.
The 10m pose I find it somewhat implausible that there’s no hint of the other leg/foot at any point in the image. That’s not usually how bodies work. So something got weird. What, I dunno. It’s really really hard to get a pose where a major body part like a leg is entirely hidden, even if you have the help of a draped fabric prop. If it were me, this is probably where I started feeling really tired.
The 25m pose you got in 2 good foot structure studies, tho it feels like the observation of foot muscles kinda stops at the ankles. Remember that muscles never anchor within a joint. Muscles link two bones. And gesture is showing what moves, which is mostly muscles. So if you use a joint as a cutting off point it will feel weird. It seems like most of your time was spent on the torso. If you’re more interested in torso muscles than hands and feet, that’s fine. If the goal is hands and feet, not so much? And if your goal is the overall gesture, also not so much. The hands are notably weaker than the feet, so your level of detail is not as consistent in this as in the 5m poses.
If that 2 minute session was comfortable to do, I’d suggest trying a 1h class mode instead. If it wasn’t comfortable or was built up over a couple sessions, try a 30 minute class or a Croquis Café class.
See, class format is very old and we keep it around for good reasons. There’s reasons so many drawing tools offer class mode! Starting off with short drawings and gradually building up to longer pushes you and you don’t have time to settle into a pattern with anything. It also serves as a warm up for your observation skills. And the long pose at the end should feel a lot easier and stronger than anything you can do cold. There might be a place for long series of very short poses, but it’s not a great thing for someone new to gesture drawing. It doesn’t give that feeling of building up to success.
Also, a lot of how we learn is we repeat things that work. Class mode gives a lot of opportunity to find a trick that works and apply it. And you get to find the limits. How far can I go? Where does it stop working?
As far as hands and feet, scribbled square/rectangle shapes will get you far. Not nice tidy ones for a first gesture. Scribbles! It’s actually good if they’re wonky and have curvy bits or wiggles or funny points. Just scribble, and to start rate your drawing on whether you included all visible hands and feet or not. If you get to the point where it feels easy to include hands and feet in your shortest drawings, then you should have a good feeling for what scribble works for specific hand and foot gestures. And you should have bits where you’ve tried to go further with hands and feet, or maybe you have tried classes focused on just them.
Not the wrong parts, we all have loads of those.
A big part of how we make progress is finding the parts that are right and good. If you can’t see even a line you like, it’s a bit hard to do better. If you’re sure everything is wrong, maybe try picking out the best one out of each time group? It doesn’t have to be good, just better than the other ones.
And finding the tutorial is great. I think it’s a very helpful starting point. And it’s worth reviewing basic ideas every year or so, to see if there’s anything new you can apply.
Next question: in the drawing you’re doing each day, can you find things you think you did right?
Have you tried the tutorial yet? I can see you’re using class mode, that’s definitely a good idea. And you’re trying to include hands and feet, also good.
It’s not a classic trick because it works for every character. But it gets you an actual human in the pose you imagine. And it’s actually pretty easy to imagine poses that are physically difficult, or that don’t make sense in the setting, or that aren’t possible to hold for as long as would make sense.
It lets you check if the idea is a sound one.
If it is a good idea, then you can decide what to do next to pursue it.
And yeah, I’m only just starting to be able to adjust body types. It takes a lot of practice for that to get easy I think. But it’s a lot easier than making up lighting or making up a pose from scratch. Life would be a lot cooler if I could draw myself the body I want.
You have a bed. You have a you. You probably have a phone camera. So you either need a tripod or someone to hold the camera and you’re all set for the classic artist trick of being your own model.
If you’ve never drawn before, pick something you like and draw it. Don’t research how just try. Coffee mugs. Your dog. Your favorite tv show. Your favorite movie. Your dinner. Stuff you really like. It’s ok if it’s not realistic or looks odd, what matters is that you tried.
Now try again. It doesn’t have to be the same thing. And again. Right now you’re trying to find the stuff that is fun for you. Bonus if you find you’ve drawn things you like, or if you feel like you’ve learned something about the thing you drew.
The fun is what keeps you going, because any kind of art is hard.
When you have found some fun in art, you can work on getting better, whatever the heck that means for you. Gesture drawing will probably be a part of getting better, because it’s a key skill for all kinds of representational art, not just comics. (Tho it’s definitely key in comics) But gesture won’t be the only part, and if you aren’t drawing now it’s very difficult to figure out what comes next.
(you are allowed to draw with whatever you like. Pencil. Pen. An iPad. There’s almost no hard and fast rules in art)
