first figure drawing class

I've never taken any formal classes; I'm completely self-taught. I decided this semester to start trying to really improve, by doing "classes" through LoA 3 days per week. Today was day 1.

I generally want to improve, but I'm not super clear on what I need to get better at. I feel like my 10 min drawing is better than my 30 min drawing. (I hope you can see all 3 photos in the link below.)

My long term broad goal is comics (very dynamic, well composed, stylized drawings), my short term goal is... uncertain. A little guidance would be much appreciated.

http://imgur.com/gallery/DEds5B2

• Acharbonnet edited this post on August 17, 2020 5:30pm.

Hi!

Nice drawings! Your gestures are very expresive.

I recommend you to study some anatomy so you can improve in the details. Also it is important to pay more attention to the proportions.

- I also think that your 10 min drawing is better than you 30 min drawing. Maybe this is due to the kind of posture, your gesture are very expresive but maybe you don't know much above anatomy so having 30 min to draw might be a lot of time for that very position which by itself is not very expresive. The 10 min drawing show your understanding about how the body moves.

You can take a look to some content in internet to learn about more anatomy and proportions. I am currently learning from Proko and I think he is very good at teaching.

Hope this critique is useful!

Love any drawings you did, acharbonnet.

I really love your 30 second gestures, to your 1 mins, to your 5 mins. Why don't you focus on your body, hand and foot gestures even more, in your next 30 minute class, on hands and feet, pretty please?? Because, you will succeed in capturing the animation of forces and forms of those hands, feet, and them.

I have some mixed feelings on your longer studies (10 & 30 minute poses). Don't get me wrong, you're off to a good start on the perception of edges, shapes, and spaces. However, some of the anatomy and foot proportions and angles are sorta off, sorry. Why don't you loosen up your relationships of them?? Pretty, pretty please??? As a result, you will record even more than believable angles of the feet and bones and muscles. If you ever want to master foot bones and muscles, be sure to look up a copy of Sarah Simblet's Anatomy for the Artist. It's extremely vital and important for every and any art student.

Just trust me on the comment thing. Hope it's been really, really, really, really crucial into your next post. Take care, and stay safest.

Polyvios Animations

Looks very good. I love the 10m drawing. I think the 30m drawing looks a little flat because of your shading. I would continue shading like your 2nd drawing because the lines show movement and the 30m is just shading without any values.

Nice start. You need to do a study of human anatomy - both muscles & bone structure. Make drawings of both. To make knowledgeable artwork, either regular art or comic books, you need a very good knowledge of muscle & bone structures. In your study make many drawings. The internet has plenty of information on these subjects. Also, make many drawings provided by Line-of-Action. As you move on request critiques of your work so you know how you are doing.

Rember: Practice makes better. So practice, practice, and do more practice.

I'm not an expert because I have also started learning figure drawing some months ago by myself, but I think the reason why the 10m drawing looks more expressive and less flat than the 30m drawing is not only the pose itslef, but also the time you have. Maybe 30 minutes is too much time if you are starting to learn where to draw your lines, while 10 minutes force you to find the most important and expressive lines. Of course, you can improve the proportions and anatomy, but you are learning and that's great. I think your drawings are good!

• Cristina6252 edited this post on August 20, 2020 4:55am. Reason: idk what happened but when I uploaded the comment the words mixed like ???

I really like these, I would try learning the anatomy the best you can. In the 30 minute one the head is a little to small, so fixing that little thing can definitely make the drawing ten times stronger. I also really like the 1 minute ones. Just be careful not to outline them. I used to make that problem all the time, but it can make a huge difference as well.

You can learn a lot from your 1min sketches. Maybe you start to overthink and it gets obvious when you go to 10 or 30 min. Try to simplify the figure into circles, boxes and cylinder. Study a little of anatomy using these figures, study how some of them are covered from the form of the other ones, how they overlap, then, in 1min o 30 sec sketches, try to catch the 3d feeling in simple lines, like in S or C forms. Exaggeration helps a lot. When you know how to use the basic forms, then you can shade, for now, try to simplify and the you can move into something more complex.

For anatomy lessons that don't cost very much if you want a teacher, former Disney artist Aaron Blaise has helped my self-taught self more about how the human figure is constructed. And on Youtube, I find Sycra's tips in general to be less professional but also generally helpful.

With that said, I do think your gestures are nicely loose and have a rhythm to them, which is important. Keep going!