Forum posts by Sanne

Hi Retrodictionary,

When you sit down to draw from your imagination, how do you go about that?

I find it's extremely hard to just sit and wait for inspiration to hit me, I don't think it really works that way for most artists and it's an unreliable method of creating. You might want to consider finding a theme and maybe creating a moodboard for it. (That means collecting a bunch of pictures related to your theme and creating a collage that shows these things together on a single board/picture.)

You can use this moodboard to create a new drawing that is based on what you chose. For example, you can collect images of certain clothes and bodytypes and then draw various models that fit these themes, but instead of recreating a reference you're creating your own.

I think if you do this regularly, you can train your brain to create new concepts from source materials in your environment (or even relying on your memory) and then 'create from scratch'.

It's probably best to let go of the idea that all original work has to come into existence from literally nothing. Art exists because we see the world in a certain way and then create based on that. Nobody ever creates something from absolutely nothing, it's always traced back from a source. Unlearning this is probably the hardest part for me and many others.

Hey Castore, it can be really hard to tell what he meant without seeing the works. Do you have the ability to link to his stuff?

Hi Kategida!

I'm sorry you're having such a hard time drawing gestures on your own. I wonder if it's because your focus on drawing along with someone else made it harder to understand what to look for in a gesture? I see a lot of attempts to refine the figure in the 2 minutes you spend on these, but not a lot of ground work to build upon that allows for natural looking gestures.

2 minute gestures are kind of 'long' gestures in the sense that they give you a lot of time to overthink and add too many details, without capturing the essence of a pose. A 30 second gesture for example is focused on finding the main lines and curves that define the movement of the figure. That could be no more than 3 lines that only vaguely look like anything, but do capture the fluidity of the figure. It's meant to help train your brain to look at a figure, recognize the essential core lines and understand what makes the figure look dynamic and lively.

I highly recommend that you try out 30 second poses and try to capture the figure in 4 lines or less: the spine, the arms and the legs. Add the head if you have time left, but if you get those three basics down move you can move on to the next. It's okay if it doesn't look like a figure, it's about the brain training. Spending about 5 minutes a day doing 30 second gestures like this will help you understand the figures better, and allows you to flesh them out when you move on to longer timers.

Also, I fixed the link for you. On the bottom right of an image in your Sketchbook, there's a shortcode that looks like this:

You'll need to use this code instead of the URL of the image itself if you want to display it on the forums. :)

I personally appreciate you advocating for POC, so thank you for your contribution on this HornetOfJustice! It's good to consider all perspectives, and we want to treat the subject of modeling and figure studying with the utmost respect.

Having Betsy and David weigh in as actual figure stuy models is also valuable, since they see things we normally wouldn't see on the other side. I really appreciate hearing their take on this as well! :)

After some thought, I think to have a meaningful discussion about representing POC in the tools and how it affects them, we should perhaps focus on inviting them into the conversation and give them the podium to share their thoughts on this. As white people we can have long discussions about what we hear and see, such as the injustices POC experience that they have told us about. However, I also believe that it's important to let them speak for themselves, as they're the ones most qualified to share with us what does and doesn't hurt them. If they have anything to contribute on this topic, we welcome that!

Those are some interesting points and perspectives being brought up! That is definitely something we have to consider.

Therefore People of Color, especially Black People are far less likely to offer their image and body to be openly used by artists as a whole to be used to create art. It is difficult to book them for Life Drawing sessions or acquire photographs of their image for the purpose of reference photos for a site like this. Line of Action has access to a fairly small pool of images, and that pool is going to generally come from what is more commonly available.

And perhaps due to the larger complexity of this issue it would be wise to create a premium set of photos - that when a Black Model is gracious enough to gift us with their image to use as references - that are never a part of the free site. And that every artist who makes use of that Model's image has to pay a nominal fee. This would help balance the scales and reduce the complexity that is involved in this sensitive issue.

I just wanted to ask if you're aware of our profit sharing policies? The photo bundles that are submitted can be made exclusively available behind a paywall for as long as the submitter wants. We share profits 50/50 in this way.

• Sanne edited this post on December 7, 2018 7:50pm. Reason: Fixed blockquote formatting

Hi Davidabse,

We at Line of Action totally agree!! Diversity has been one of our main points where we struggled because our library used to rely on the generous donations of photographers. That meant we unfortunately had no say in the skin color, gender, bodytype, age and other aspects of the models.

All the photography we've recently added ourselves has been focused on being more inclusive (the faces tool was our own photoshoot and we made sure to include people from different ethnicities for example, and we've also included photo bundles of babies, children and generally ensure we always include people of color in these) where we possibly can be with our limited resources. One of the reasons we made photo bundle submissions available is to allow the community to contribute their own work, and help us diversify the library!

In an ideal world, we'd have countless photoshoots of our own and include people from all walks of life and ensure Line of Action truly is an all-encompassing figure study tool. We're really commited to this (I'm personally a very tall and heavy woman and am absolutely dying to be represented in the figure study tools), but with a small team of people and years of relying on donations and fundraisers to keep the site going, it's just not been possible.

If you know of anyone who'd be willing to contribute, please do pass the link along. :) In the meantime, we are working on expanding our library from here on out with diversity in mind whenever we can.

I hope this was helpful. Please let us know if you have any questions!

• Sanne edited this post on December 6, 2018 10:27pm. Reason: Elaborated a statement

Hi Midnightdessert, how big are the images you're trying to upload?

I went ahead and closed it for you. :) Thank you for reporting back!

Hi Sallyb!

It can take some practice to always nail it, but essentially the line of action is an S or C shaped line that defines the biggest motion of the body. In most cases, the line follows the spine. When in doubt, try capturing the spine's motion with a C line.

Do you have any examples of your gesture studies? It will help us help you better!

Welcome to figure studies!

I think a better question is not "How much time is appropriate?", but rather "What is the goal of your drawing?".

Time isn't really relevant for how much to add if what you're adding doesn't meet your goal. A 30 second gesture isn't about creating a finished piece that is perfect in every way, its purpose is to be a warmup and create familiarity with the figure's construction. It doesn't matter if you spend 30 seconds or 10 minutes on the drawing if your goal is being met, time only matters to shift your boundaries to create new challenges. Timers are tools, not rules!

What I'm trying to say is, if your goal is add more motion and fluidity, will shading and adding details help? Or will it take away focus from creating fluid shapes and motion?

If you're looking for things to add and resort to shading, then you're already done drawing the gesture, and forcing yourself to fill up the full x minutes won't really help. What does help is to review your work with the time left, and see where your gesture can use improvement for motion and fluidity. Then take this knowledge and either fix your gesture, or apply it to your next one.

Shading and details are goals of their own. Trying to study 3 different things and limiting yourself to a timer is a recipe for disaster. Use the timer as a tool to push your boundaries and expand them. A member has mentioned that they gave themselves 10 or 15 minutes, and challenged themselves to draw a gesture in 10 pen strokes. That encouraged them to think carefully about the figure and what makes it a figure. 30 seconds does the same thing, but uses the time as the challenge, not the pen strokes, forcing the brain to recognize shapes faster. They have the same goal, but are executed differently.

So all I can say is, focus on one specific thing at a time and don't treat the timer like the end-all. It's useful in many ways, but if you're done with your gesture, you're done. That's always the time to review and either fix or move forward.

That's really strange! I don't have a lot of tech advice to offer for the upload button at the moment, as Kim knows the details of the system better than me.

For Chrome's login, can you confirm you don't have any sneaky spaces in front of your name and/or in your password that aren't supposed to be there? If you can login on Microsoft Edge but not on Chrome, then the issue is probably that your browser is not sending the correct info for some reason. I've had this happen before where I copy and pasted the password and didn't realize there was a blank space I didn't detect, and the login form was sensitive to the space.

Hi there!

Flipping and mirroring images is already a feature. :) However, this feature is limited to people who have a full subscription. You can check out more details on this here: https://line-of-action.com/article/new-features-greyscale-and-image-flipping

Hey Rosenhips! Looks like something went a bit funky with your message there, the image didn't show up and hid the rest of your post. Can you try reposting the image? :)

Feeling restrained by your canvas is a legitimate thing, but it's not one I'm sure I have tips for.

As for struggling to move forward and incorporate details, that's probably the result of not having a goal set for yourself. "Draw the thing" is a bit of a broad concept, so it might be good to switch it up and narrow it down.

Are you happy with the proportions? If not, spend a week or so focusing on proportions.

Are you happy with the motion and fluidity of your getures? If not, spend a week or so focusing on drawing short 30s gestures in as few lines as possible.

Do you feel capable of drawing faces? (I don't actually see any face details in your gestures, but one guy's underwear is surprisingly detailed.) If not, spend some time doing face gestures instead.

Drawing without a goal is not going to improve your skillset, it typically just stalls you and becomes demotivating. There are some things you can work on, but how you work on them depends on your goal. Pick one, and you'll have a much easier time moving forward!

Hi Pilot!

This is a pretty good start for your gesture classes. :) Do you have any 30 and 60 second gestures to share too?

To get better at proportions, I think a good step between drawing the action lines and then the outline of the figure is to compartementalize the figure first. Right now, you have a loose action line going through the body with some joints drawn that don't really connect together how they should, and you build the figure around this. Each bodypart is its own shape, and it connects to other shapes in pretty specific ways. Your gestures don't show this process and it can hinder your progress to get proportions right.

A good example are mannequins, they have solid shapes like the ribcage and pelvis, but they're connected by the joint of the waist - the ribcage and pelvis are able to move separately from one another, and if you draw the underlying shapes and connect them with the joint, you'll be able to get the proportions between the two correct more easily with time and practice.

There's a really good article by Proko on the common gesture drawing mistakes that includes a bit about proportion and mannequinization that might help you!

You're on the right track for sure and I'm glad to see your progress between those two pieces. I hope you'll find this useful and can incorporate some of these techniques into your practice routine.