10 minutes
© 2021 Aunt Herbert
Aunt Herbert
Thanks for your critique, and yepp, hatching is definitely my problem child. From my perspective it feels a bit like juggling 2 or 3 different ideas (i.e. undecisiveness, which is always the worst decision). I start out with just emphasizing the shadow edges with broader lines, content with beautiful blackness, but then, there is still a lot of time on the clock, and unless I want to drown the whole page in ink, I need some halftones.
Which is invariably the point, when I realize, that I am far from the point where I can afford to skip the boring control exercises - not if I insist on sticking thick-headedly with the ink brush - and I LOVE the brush, even if she is an unforgiving mistress.
Next week, I'll try to focus on exploring different hatching techniques.
Mx. Abi
What I have found personally helpful is to give myself the room to do both the small practice and the larger more fun images.
As an example, I love portraits. They are some of my favorite things to do. And mouths were my absolute bane. I could get amazing expressive eyes, great porportion and the whole thing was a hot mess because I struggled with the mouth.
So I would use the Class mode set for an hour to study just mouths until I was confident that I was consistent in mouths. I have focused in on other areas for the same reason.
Right now I do a 10 minute sketch every morning, allowing for the occasional, I just don't have time skips. I rotate through the options here because animals and scenery are out of my comfort zone. I cannot operate on my knowledge of anatomy and structure to push me through. Scenes and landscape are really not my strong suit, nor my favorite subject. However I learn to see and measure, and it broadens my skill set.
Personally when I start on a human figure I can get lost in the nuance, and often forget to practice the skills I want to develop. So the scenery is helpful. So a hatching practice that may be more fun would be to not focus on a figure or a face, but rather draw something different.
Maybe grab a scenery reference and pick something in that and rough it out and practice hatch and cross hatch on that. Or zooom in on a limb, or a torso, and rough it out and practice hatch and cross hatch on that. It's less boring than some other practice sessions, it's in your comfort zone. But there is less pressure to complete a recognizable image. Maybe alternate your sessions, do one as normal where you focus on figures. and then one where you focus on the details.
This is also where I find hands and feet helpful. They are so hard because it is all the proportion of the human figure with added foreshortening and shading. And the proportions are so unforgiving.
Keep it up!
Polyvios Animations
Nice job on capturing the pose, while at the same time, retaining the vitality of the gesture, AuntHerbert. (all in 10 straight minutes)
I've got one tinier, littlest, and smallest suggestion. I think the pose is very well-recorded, and I completely feel that the gesture, I'm not getting enough of the life and vitality in there. Would you please do 9 minutes of a 5, 2, 1 minute, 30 second, and 5 minute poses of the figures, nude or otherwise?? (all flipped horizontally or vertically, or neither) I used to be;and still; too guilty of toning down the vitality and energy of the rough sketch.
The reason why you would and could do this critique for you is because, to make your overall human form proportions less stiffer, and the most dynamic, energetic, vital-er, fluidest, and the liveliest.
If you're curious about drawing pose constructions and gestures, look up Andrew Loomis' Fun with a Pencil, on PDF and physical book.
Hope they've been definitely and totally useful.
I like the boldness of you lines and gesture. It shows a great deal of confidence and experience. My critique would be to challenge you to be more on purpose in the direction of your hatching in shading.
I can see your unique style coming through and the practice is paying off. The shift in hatching directions do not seem fully aligned with either an intent to draw the eye or to match the shape of the body. So I would focus on that next.
Over all a good 10in sketch