From this small sample, it looks to me like you construct your animals using more circles and your humans with more stick skeletons, but it's pretty hard to tell based on just this!
I think when it comes to "incorrect proportions" it might also seem that you do better with animals because you are more familiar with human proportions? (just you know, because you are seeing humans on a daily base, but perhaps not exotic frogs)
If you’re trying to loosen up your figure drawings then def over exaggerate the pose that you’re doing in your initial sketches. You can reign it back in once you start adding body to it, but it helps in the beginning of a drawing not to think too much about the accuracy of the human body, especially if you start with lines. Don’t be afraid to be dramatic with the lines. Hope this helps, but honestly your drawings didn’t look too stiff.
The difference is, that you expect a lot more from your human figures than from your animal figures, because you know them much better.
You are more familiar with details, so it is harder to abstract from them. If your drawing of a frog makes the audience clearly recognize some sort of a frog, then that is satisfactory. With a human, you know how to distinguish a specific gender, a body type, an action, a gesture, individual traits, specific anatomical properties and functions, down to the level of micro-expressions. And because you intimately know those distinctions, it is far harder to abstract from all of them to simplify into geometric shapes.
If you want more "flow" in that regards, you don't have to just "practice" perfectly combining precision and expression, you also and foremost have to start negotiating with your own sense of taste, how much precision you are willing to sacrifice for the sake of expression.
Like in, really experimenting with pushing the boundaries, by drawing in a way that leads to unpleasant results, because it feels like cheating or overly simplistic. That way you get both a sense of how far you are willing to go into one direction, and what the aesthetic costs are of going into that direction as far as you can bear.
I had the experience of trying to follow some very gesture centric artist's tutorial. At first I thought, that I did not understand their ideas. But when I looked closer and tried to match stroke for stroke how they approached a specific reference, I became aware, that my problem was not so much a lack of skill, but a lack of willingness to sacrifice the amount of detail, they gleefully ignored.
They are clearly proficient artists, but I rather stick to my specific "stiffness" than to adopt the amount of generic typification they produce, because I am still in love with these details, and with observing, examining, and portraying them.
the replies here have been fantastic thank you everyone its hugely appreciated.
this describes perfectly where i am. I see amazing artist like mark mattesi, kim jing gi and ramon90 and i always wonder why they construct the way the do. Ur right in saying that humans have much more complexity in the little details that we can distinguish as well as the larger details. i think thats where i come up short , im too focused on making it accurate to the reference or to how a human should look i sacrifice my willingness to let go of those details.
I will experiment as you have said and try to tell my brain "hey look at the bigger picture" so i can let go of those tiny details in the beginning and find the gestural flow and shape of the pose or action. Finding a balance between being more free flowy but keeping the structure correct. And there's the other side of me who loves using shape language as well and balancing that with flowy lines and correct structure lol.
Thank you for your advice
Ajirh
1 week ago.
