Does this REALLY help?

Hello all, I'm a begginer to this site but not to art itself.

Today was the first day of taking the 15 minute and a 30 minute gesture drawing class. But I don't really feel like anything has changed whatsoever.

I want to be an animator so i came to this site so i could comfortably draw character poses without much trouble. But what will this actually help with? Will it become second nature? Like something I'd automatically think to do once I start drawing? Or is it techniques to apply for still images?

I'm a little stressed right now so sorry if i sound agrresive at all :P

• Doodlediamond64 edited this post on March 14, 2024 2:04am.

One day definitely isn't enough for something to change! :)

Animators use the line of action to exaggerate character movements a LOT! I studied animation in college quite a bit - for awhile it was my major - and line of action techniques was something they had us practicing all the time (thus why I named the website that!)

The short warm up practices, like the 30 seconds, are meant to force you to take in the big picture of the drawing and record as much info as you can about it in as few strokes as possible, rather than getting lost in interesting details. A HUGE number of proportion problems come from artists going too granular too fast, so training your mind to think first about an overall pose and not the little things like fingers or nose placement etc. will save you a shocking amount of grief in the long run.

Did you do the tutorial that introduces you to the line of action exercises to do during the super short time frames?

If you're talking about this:

then yes i have. To be honest it was a lot more challenging then I thought.

Well, kind of. The timed classes are a practice tool, which allow to refine some stuff, but you also need to know what you want to work on, to get the best result with them.

Several people have different interpretations for what to do with that tool. Some people try to train to really get a completed drawing done within 30 seconds, and if someone just loves the challenge, and keeps at it... I have some people achieve incredible results with it, but I am not certain whether that really leads towards any particular advanced techniques..

My understanding of what the tool is best to train with, is the first lines of a drawing. Why would you want to train them separately? Because according to one drawing philosophy, most of the quality of the later drawing is decided by the quality of your first lines. And the short timer helps you to avoid waisting time on "polishing a turd", i.e. spending a lot of time to add more bells and whistles (or usually rather shades and corrections) to a flawed start, instead you better spend more time training to find a good start. For example, if you spend 15 minutes drawing and erasing and redrawing the same stuff, and then kind of draw some shadows over it, to make it somewhat look better and cover up obvious flaws, and it still looks crappy, you would have probably learned more by practicing your first lines 30 times in the same amount of time.

That method of drilling "quickies" comes with a theory of how to approach drawing a figure, and there is also a bit of a tutorial mentioning some concepts like line of action, and drawing the masses first to capture the pose, but it is extremely brief. I found this side: https://www.proko.com/course/figure-drawing-fundamentals/overview promotes a similar technical approach, but spends a loooot more time explaining the individual steps toward capturing a pose and constructing a human figure from it.

Besides the "classes", there is also the option to chose a certain timing and to stick with it, which may be more appropriate, depending on what you want to do. For example, I am convinced, that the shorties work well for figures, but don't work well for portraits, especially if you want to apply some common portrait techniques like Loomis or Reilly, as they just take at least 5-10 minutes to properly finish the initial construction.

However you use it, the site provides you with a selection of poses and references, and getting used to really "drill" your stuff, i.e. doing lots of repetition in a certain approach towards different references also made at least me more comfortable with daily training, and with not always planning ahead to creating the next masterpiece to hang into a museum and then be frustrated with the result, but to focus on watching myself try out and acquire a bit more of a technical approach to drawing.

Think of it like a benchpress in a gym. The benchpress itself doesn't make your muscles grow, and doing a single repetition on it won't either. But if you get used to regularly strain your muscles with it, you will see differences in your results.

BTW, the site quickpose.com has a similar selection of timed poses, if you start looking for more variety after a while, but it comes without a forum to ask questions.

Honestly, practice always helps. The previous people brought up wonderful points that I would have also said. I think while practice makes perfect, finding other people that also are striving for what you are is helpful too and will definitely make the repetitive practice process a little emore rewarding. It's one of the reasons I appreciate the forums on this site, you can almost always find someone to critique drawings or provide encouragement 👍❤️

especially when it feels like you're getting nowhere in your practice