Forum posts by Aunt Herbert

Your figures look quite great, but in my opinion, you draw way too fast. The 30 sec/1 min poses aren't meant to be completed, they are there, so you spend more time on practicing the foundation for your longer drawings, and less time polishing turds.

I mean, if you ever want to progress beyond first sketches, you need something good to draw upon. If you say, want to draw 10 minutes, but you train to finish your drawing within the first minute, what are you planning to do with the 9 minutes you have left?

This is, why hands and feet are way less of a problem... you don't get a prize for sketching them in seconds, you take all the time you need to draw them properly.

Instead of speeding through the drawing process, I would recommend drawing way fewer lines in the shorties, but instead make sure, they are measured and placed properly and drawn with beautiful and controlled lines. Head and torso is by far enough for 30 secs, even for one minute, if they are designed in such a way, that you can expand them into longer pieces without constantly having to erase them or cover them in clouds of darkness to hide all the mistakes.

I mean, for how much you put down in such short time, your pieces are astonishingly good. I would recommend to really try one of them out, to see how long you can work on one of those, before you reach the point, where everything you could still add will make the piece just look worse.

• Aunt Herbert edited this post on January 2, 2024 10:23am.

OK, good, you already understand the basics, that helps a lot.

One typical mistake I see is, that you overestimate the distance between hip and ribcage, thus lengthening the torso. When in doubt, put your hands to your own sides and feel with your fingers how little space there is between the hip bones and the lowest ribs in various positions.

A related beginners mistake, that could be there or not, depending on the references you used, but that I want to mention just in case, is beginner's tendency to straighten the torso. Best immediately practice counteracting it, by trying to make the twists and bends between hips and ribcage as dramatic as you dare to get away with.

A detail, that I started adding right about at the stage that you are now in is the shoulderline, so the clavicula and arm joints. It is basically just one line more added to the top of the ribcage, that helped me a lot to understand, find and depict how the upper torso is formed from the ribcage. I like the way you used an actual ribcage instead of a circle on the figure on the lower right of the first page. You might want to look up some depictions of clavicula and shoulders, quickly, as they are really not sooo complicated, but explain a lot about the upper torso, and the possible range of where the arm joints can be located.

You do depict the limbs as tubes, which I know is proposed in a lot of courses. I am personally not such a big fan of that. My reasons:

a) The shorties, especially the 30 sec ones, should be dedicated to the head and torso. Unless they block the line of sight to the torso, all that is necessary to know about the limbs is where the joints are at, and maybe one line to find their general length and direction.

b) Once you got more time, after you defined the torso, and you get to drawing the limbs, generally their final organic form isn't so much more complicated than the tube form. That's why I personally skip the tubes. Less lines to draw, less lines to erase or to distract the viewer. But that may be just because I am lazy, and is definitely a me thing. If you prefer the tubes, for better spatial orientation, that is certainly not false in itself. Just make sure, that your first lines are dedicated to defining the torso as much as possible.

Sorry, I can't download any of these. You could upload them to imgur.com and post a link here, that's what usually works, and it doesn't take long at all.

Thank you for your service, sincerely!

I read my last reply again, wasn't happy with it. It's not about "stay away from extreme poses, until you eaten your vegetables and done yor studies". The true message has to be: "Twist that torso, darn it!"

The idea of the whiplash pose is to show how much potential tortion energy is built up for that strike. And the best muscles are the biggest muscles are the torso muscles. So, I woke up this morning, with the burning urge to test out what the maximum twist I could get away with,... after 30 attempts I settled with this pose... (the upper shoulder still beats me. There has to be a correct and convincing way, to depict it as actually stretched to the max, but my shoulder anatomy knowledge fell short)

Twist that torso, gosh darn it! by Aunt Herbert

https://line-of-action.com/art/view/9081

• Aunt Herbert edited this post on December 29, 2023 6:04am.

Now it works. Thanks for your service.

Lol, took me a moment to understand what is going on with the chain whip (?). The foundations for head, ribcage and hips looks good, and I like the clean outlines you settled with.

The pose is leaving some questions unanswered for me.

From the position of the shoulder joints I would expect the ribcage to be pointed more towards the viewer, but it's cornercase. The way the upper arm reaches behind the head looks uncomfortable, though.

Ribcage and hips are oriented towards each other almost in a straight line, which rarely happens, unless someone is standing calmly and straight up, and I have trouble believing it should be really that way in such an extreme pose. You sure the torso isn't bent or twisted at all? I would have to see a reference of an actual human being in such an extreme pose to decide. There are some quite weird martial art stances, but this one isn't coming together for me physiologically.

The legs are markedly uneven in proportion. I assume you tried to forshorten the leg, that holds the bodyweight, but even then it is too short. Here my doubts about the position of the hip come up again. If the knee of the support leg pointed outwards instead of forwards, that would make more sense in regards to the straight hip, and I am not sure, whether it is possible to end up with both feet on the same line.

With the extended leg, both upper and lower leg are each almost longer than the entire torso, which is just too long, and makes the problem of the way too small support leg even worse. If it worked, I could chalk that off as a stylistic decision, but it doesn't. Not in the stark contrast with the other leg.

About the overall pose, well, as I said, some martial artists and ballerinas can do rather improbable looking poses, but I wouldn't suggest focusing on those for practice right know. Not when working from imagination or from a manga/comic book reference. The more extreme the pose is, the more your understanding of physiology and anatomy has to be on point, to disperse any doubts. If you find a photo or video of an actual martial artist in such a pose, that would be an interesting study, but to just make it up you lack a bit of graphical "authority".

For a while, I would avoid the combination of straight torso and extreme pose also for a very practical reasons: it is one super typical beginner's mistake to by default draw the torso straighter, than it is on any reference. When you are drawing from imagination, I would rarely trust a straight torso. Emphasize the bends and twists between hip and ribcage a lot, to end up with more dramatic poses. This is also where the whole "line of action" concept comes in, as head/ribcage/hip generally tend to follow and emphasize that line.

If you would want to repeat this exact pose and "fix" it, my first suspect would be to give the position of the hip a very good second thought. I think if the hip would be placed more naturally, you would also find more convincing positions for the leg joints and legs.

Hmm, class still ends with the pop-up "You successfully finished the entire class". No offer to upload, no option to revisit the references again...

Does it possibly have to do something with free and premium features? Like, I uploaded a lot via my premium option directly from my sketchbook. IIRC the upload option is somehow limited for free accounts. May I have run up my counter for free uploads with my uploads via my sketchbook?

If the option to revisit references is then tied to the free uploads, it would be clear, why both options are no longer available for me, and it would be specific for my account atm.

Hi, there used to be, that at the end of a class I had the option to revisit all the references that came up in the class, uploading one image was suggested, and the upload came with a premade short text "this was created as part of a 30 min class" or so.

Now since at least a few days, at the end of a class, there is just the pop-up "the class is finished", and that is that and all is done. I especially miss the option to revisit the references from the class, as I would like to continue working on my final piece.

Hi Josefe, the good message, you aren't doing anything wrong, you have been following the tutorial very diligently, and I actually see your lines developing in a good direction.

The bad message, you probably can't see that direction at all and are confused. The reason for that, the tutorial on this site is extreeeemely abbreviated and condensed to fit into one page of text and a few pop ups between drawing sessions. Everything written in the tutorial is true, essential and important, but learning to draw from that is like learning to fly a plane by following the instructions on the back of a cereal box.

I recommend the Human Figure Fundamentals course on proko.com. The free version is entirely sufficient. It follows basically the same drawing concept as the tutorial on this page, but it takes itself 32 hours of videos, with instructions and practices to follow, to fully explain the concept.

I could try to give you individual advice on your drawings, and how to progress, but I would mostly quote from memory from Proko's course for these first steps, so it probably just makes more sense to point you towards the original source of most of my basic understanding of the human form.

Hi Euphony. The daily practice shows, your designs have improved a lot, although there are still inconsistencies between different attempts. The next steps on your art journey should be to develop your shortcuts of the individual parts of the body. How to show informations about where the head is located and oriented, ribcage with shoulderlines, the hip, the whole torso, the joints.

Do quicksketches, but don't rush to finish your sketches, just find good shortcuts and place them correctly. And I know, "nghbut then I nghcant finish the outline in time".... don't fixate on always finishing your outline. Design the features and get used to end with unfinished sketches when practice. That's not a bug, that is a feature.

OK, I see good and clean applications of the Loomis abstraction of the head.

Too be honest, I am at a bit of a loss about the logical path to progress from there. I am myself more experimenting around, then knowing what to do.

Concepts, ideas, I picked up so far: If we want to progress to a stage, where we can apply a lot of intense shadow, we need some solid construction to clearly identify the planes of the face, so we can always identify properly at what angle they are to the lightsource. (Or lightsources, if there are multiple)

Loomis clearly does not provide that. He gives a decent orientation where some prominent features like the eye sockets, mouth, nose, chin and ears generally should be in relation to each other, but not much else.

Reilly, as you said, adds a few more details mostly about the area around the mouth and the cheeks, which makes it a bit more difficult. And I am not sure, how much he ultimately gives in return. Maybe I will know more about that in a few weeks.

Loomis, Reilly, and other head constructions also have the principal problem of working from idealized heads. Which is somewhat at odds with achieving likeness to a specific reference.

To your drawings and your own plans of going forward, I would say, you achieved a level of skill, that makes your result look confident and comfortable with what you try to do. If you want to progress, you should probably try to leave your comfort zone, and define new goals to work towards.

Getting a more solid foundation for shading is only one possible goal, which came to my mind first, at it is the thing, that I personally would like to progress in, but there are other possible goals as well:

-your line quality is suitable, but not exceptional. you could try to push yourself towards fewer, but longer and better designed lines, for a more elegantly looking end result.

-I don't have the reference you worked from, so I can't judge how convincing the likeness of your drawings is. I think I remember some of the models on the images, and it feels like you are more working on drawing some human face with a few of the features of the reference, then on THAT specific human face. To improve the likeness, you need to become very good at measuring, and willing to deviate from the standardized features that working from idealized templates like Loomis or Reilly try to push you.

-so far, you are (like me frankly) mostly copying the reference. there is the possibility to go beyond that, and find ways to stylize your drawings.

-you could also experiment with how a different medium than always graphite pencil would influence your art.

Wow, a lot of that stuff is just goood, starting with a very effective selection of references, super clean and deliberate lines and shapes, etcetera... You clearly know quite a few things I haven't even touched on on my own arts journey,

The "what would I do differently" part will be getting really hard with you, as I feel most of the stuff, I couldn't do at all. Two thoughts are in my mind right now.

First one, the stuff you present on your artfol and instagram looks like fanart from a very dedicated and talented intermediary, which taught herself a lot, but is maybe lacking in a bit of technical foundation, this stuff looks really pro in comparison. Artfol/instagram sunkglier is copying a lot from other people's work, clear manga references, some comics in daily strip quality. What you show from imgur looks much more individual and shows a ton more skill, than your "public presentation" lets on.

What you might want to change is thinking a bit about the foot you put forward to introduce yourself, and to start with the greatest hits first.

Second one, digital media has some very effective functionality to smoothly blend colors and values, but I feel you should step on the break with that a lot. a) you use it so hard, that it looks like you try to hide own flaws behind technical gimmickry, and b) you know shapes, you know lines, but if you just mush with the hardcore softener tool over everything, you lose a lot of message.

Try designing the shape of the individual colors and values in your draft, and then let those shapes stay alive and tell people about your skill in designing them, about which planes and forms they represent on the subject you are working on. Maybe try limiting your color palette to, I don't know, exactly 8, or 16 or at most 32 colors, or some number like that, and don't allow yourself any blending at all between those colors.

That way your personal skill will be way more prominent on display than your ability to repeatedly hit the "smooth it out and blend it all together" button on your machine. If your technique holds up, it will look absolutely stunning, if your technique runs into a wall, then at least you discover areas for yourself to work on.

Sites doing art critique? Not really so far. There are some set up to encourage community critique, like this one, and I am here and a few others to try to develop it into a lively community. But I am not an arts teacher, I only play one on the interwebs :)

The problem with getting free critique is, that a lot of beginners are too shy to post their opinions, the intermediarys feel like they are doing something wrong, when they post basically the same tipps over and over again to different beginners, and the pros are somewhat too posh to give critique for free. Unless they are doing a promotion for their stuff, they want munies for their attention.

Buuut, as I said, I think this here site has the potential to develop into an actual community, if people just encourage each other to post their drawings, but also to critique them and debate general ideas about art and technique.

To the works you have posted:

Pro: Your stuff looks beautiful and expressive. My guess is, that you started copying one or two artists you enjoyed, and then you clearly kept at it, experimented how to expand on it, and found great solutions for yourself. Your lines are clean and decisive, you understand how important it is to effectively simplify forms, your shapes and outlines are extremely effective at communicating ideas.

Worries/suggestion/tipps:

a) You post a whole arts gallery to critique all at once. If this site had better emojis, I would post a line of tokens of me breaking out in tears. If I tried to do every entry in your gallery its due service, I would have to spend days, and produce walls of text, that I don't want to write, and nobody wants to read. Please find a solution to point out clearly which specific image or small series of images you want critique for. Maybe there is a good tool for that on the sites you already use, if all fails, just upload something to imgur.com and post the link here

b) From my guess about your arts background follows a potential future hurdle for you. These artists you admire, they very likely have way more of an academic background, than their stylized end products let easily show. Art fundamentals like perspective, human figure, posing, line economy, stylization techniques, shadowing, color theory, etc... They just effortlessly apply it and have developed it into their very own, very personal style. Backward engineering these fundamentals solely from analyzing their styles is close to impossible, which will make it very hard for you to expand on your experience from copying them.

This here site, line-of-action.com is mostly centered around one specific tool that is rooted into that academic approach to a degree, the timed gesture studies, and so a lot of people here follow that academic approach. I highly advise giving it a try, and just start a 30 minute class and see what happens. First attempt will most likely feel frustrating and strange, so post your results and ask around, what that was all about. You will hear a lot of tipps, that sound similar, so I will right away point you to a source, that explains and demonstrates a lot of the thoughts behind studying poses very well: the "Human Figure Fundamentals" course on proko.com There is a premium version, that asks for a lot of money, but you don't need that, just do the free version for now. The style Stan Prokopensky is aiming for is vastly different from your current style, but don't shy away immediately. I think you have enough artistic experience by now to extradite the basic informations you will be getting, and incorporate them into your own style.

c) Please, please, please, stick around, and share your experience with others by doing critiques. With your different style and approach you might not be too certain how to critique a beginner or intermediary, that is certainly trying something, that you yourself haven't tried yourself by now, and so you don't know what to tell them. Here is my two step approach to critique: First, look at whatever they have done, and try to find out what you like about it, and tell them. Second, try to understand, what you personally would have tried differently and why, or what they should focus more on practising in their next attempts, and tell them that, too.

There is also a forum here, where you can tell others about your current art project, what you are trying to accomplish, what you are struggling with.

To repeat my answer to your initial question: Anyone know any sites that do art critique? Not now, but hopefully this site here in the near future, and hopefully with your help and experience, too!

Well, don't be shy about critiqueing others. I am also not an art teacher, I only play one on the interwebs :)

But I think you got a lot of experience to share, and some to gain by sharing it.

I also dream a bit of turning this site into a lively place, where people actually dare to share their experiences, and debate them, and my life experience tells me, that such things only happen if you nudge people into what you hope them to do for you.