Practice 8.8.22
© 2022 Oc2022Done as part of a 30 minute class. It was my first time actually practicing using this site. I know I've a lot to work on, so any critiques are welcome!
Syrus Hyena
What's great on this page, is that you can see the progression of your work. With your quick poses, you're marking "what is important in this pose". It shows that you are breaking down the figure into basic shapes and guiding them on that line of action. The longer poses we see more shape and definition, and in the longest poses we have some really nice sketches.
One thing that'll take some practice, is finding landmarks on animals, namely muscle groups and bones. When you find them, try wrapping around those shapes, in near cylindrical shapes! One example is in your green horse sketch, you have a line that wraps around the neck muscle, which is really good. Wrapping around will give them volume.
Sanne - Site moderator
You did a good job on these! It looks like you understand equine anatomy quite well. :)
My main recommendation is to perhaps try to draw your gestures with more fluid lines. A lot of your lines are scratchy 'going back over this spot multiple times', which doesn't have to be a bad thing by definition, but it does tend to make drawings look less confident.
Horses in particular tend to have beautifully curved necks, and a neck defined by a single, confident stroke of the pen tends to look more fluid and energetic than a line comprised of several sketchy lines.
For your next class/practice session, I encourage you to try and capture the early gestures with as few strokes of the pen as possible. I changed my practice sessions this way as well and it turned gestures like these:
60 second animals - Sept 9 by Sanne
into this:
Equines are hard by Sanne
Some sketchiness is of course okay, but single strokes are very effective at creating more dynamic drawings! :)
Oc2022
Thank you for the advice! I'll try to do that in my next session! I normally only draw horses, so I'm trying to branch out into other animals. It's surprisingly more fun than I thought it'd be! :D