Figure Study Critique (with a little gesture, as a treat)

Hey guys, found this website this week and I've been sketching for the past few days. I really feel like I'm flying blind as I usually only doodle with very poor understanding of form and I am just "symbol drawing" (I think that's the term...?)

I would really appreciate some pointers and comments for some of my pages in the last few days: Imgur Link

I'm also doing this digitally - do you think I could gain more from pencil and paper??

Tysm and can't wait to contribute more to this forum. :)

Hi Hungree,

excellent drawings! It's difficult to comment because you clearly have a lot of experience, and it might be interesting for you to indentify what you feel you're struggling with and that to the community? keep up the good work!

Hi Brian, thank you so much and your advice is so helpful 😭😭

Something I'm unhappy with is my shading which i think can get scruffy really quickly, especially with more textured stuff like clothes and i think the faces of quite a few of the ones I linked in the OP.... keeping the lines clean is also hard!! Would love to hear your thoughts on how to produce something clean. :)

Hi Hungree,

I've looked at all of your sketches, and I think they all looked beautifuller. And, I feel that you'll get better to let go of your symbol mode with practice, this time with pencils, and newsprint paper. That's just my advice. But, I've got one tinier, littler critique. Say, ever heard of L-Mode/R-Mode? Here is this link:

Why? Because this video is about the Betty Edwards technique, which regards on drawing from the right side of the brain. And why?? Because, if you have done 92 more minutes of figures, faces, hand, and foot poses in 30 seconds each, it could also tap into your right side of your head. Cheers for you, and I hope you've found these completely and totally informative and kindly.

Thank you Polyvios! Thanks for the video I really enjoyed it - quite relaxing hahaha. What do you mean by newspaper??

Well, Hungree, and by newspaper, I mean by practicing drawing on newsprint paper, because you don't really need to be that precious with your sketching. Hope it's been completely and totally nice and supportive.

Wow, these are good! I have given this advice to others before and I will do it again now because it is one of the most valuable things you can do as a drawing artist. Use lead pencil and do every day line practices to learn to make big and precise lines from your shoulder and elbow. You will also learn pen preassure so that you can scetch and explore the shape with almost invisible strokes until you find the form and then use a bold and beautiful line to express it.

&t=701

• Thestripper edited this post on January 29, 2021 9:23pm.

if you feel like your doing "symbol drawing" then try drawing the space instead of the object.

I can't speak to your technical ability but I do have one suggestion for approaching digital art: You need a different brush, with a lower stabilizer. I can tell that you have skill, but your current brush isn't working with you. I personally use the "Pencil-5_Tilted" brush that comes with Krita (a fantastic free program) because it allows for sketchier styles that use a lot of quick strokes (like yours!).

The pictures you've posted remind me of when I used to try sketching in Paint Tool SAI with the stabilizer a little too high, which causes the brushstrokes to be much stiffer than you intend, often with strange little curls on the ends. If you look at the shading on the cheeks of your portraits, you'll see what I mean by this. Again, this isn't anything you're doing wrong, but rather just a matter of an incompatible brush for what you're attempting to do.