Day 5

Hi Anavel,

I'd say don't disregard completely the class mode, I believe it's great tool to make you face a variety of situations when it comes to drawing poses.

Shorter poses teach you to how "achieve dynamics in the poses and to be able to capture the movement" and build an underlying structure of rhythm and action, while the longer ones teach you how to put together anatomy an detail on top of that underlying structure.

Which bring me to my point after seeing your work : I understand you might want to go back to only 2 minutes poses for now, but more importantly I think you should look into developing your 30 seconds poses (or 1 minute if you feel it's still too quick). Your 30 sec poses don't really give a sense of direction and don't contain much information as to what the poses are about. I think there's a potential for improvement here.

You're doing a pretty good job on most of your longer poses (and from what I've seen in your other works), but they could really benefit from shorter poses practice. Gesture drawings as fast as 30 seconds will train you to eventually to capture the movement and important rhythms of the body with a few decisive strokes, and that's a huge timesaver for longer poses. The quicker you have a gesture of a pose down, the more time you can dedicate to anatomy/measuring/shading for longer poses.

From what I'm seeing, here's the advice I would give you for shorter poses:

-Only if you haven't already done it, do the figure drawing tutorial on the site. While it's not perfect, it's a good place to start and to understand why 30 second poses are important for 1 minute poses, which then are useful for 5 minute poses , etc...

-Use the line of action (then draw the figure). I believe this is what pushes an artist to give a "direction" to a pose (and it's also veeeery useful for bigger compositions). For the figure, it must start and follow the top part of the spine but it doesn't have to always follow the rest of the spine, because the legs can also define the LOA.

-For 30 seconds poses, limit yourself to 1 or 2 lines = 1 limb for now. If you're drawing an arm, draw the line(s) that describes the most of what that arm is doing.

-Look into ways to draw the torso+pelvis quickly and efficiently, as these two parts define most of the gesture of the body. My personal favorite is the "bean" that I've seen being taught by Proko and Michael Mattesi.

-As for rhythm and shape design: avoid drawing shapes that consist of 2 parallel lines (as I could see from some of the torsos you drew here), you lose a ton of energy in your shapes if you do so. Try to always make an appealing asymetrical shape, which consists of a curved line and a less curved line. Also, avoid drawing straight lines at all if possible, use curves instead.

-Try to use a bigger/more abstract brush for your quick poses, reserve sharper/darker brushes for detail and form.

I hope this helped, If you have any questions or remarks I'd gladly answer!

(and sorry I'm there are any grammar mistakes and whatnot, I'm French)

Hi, Anavel, and welcome back.

Say, you're doing the mighty, powerful finest job on your ranges of the most strongest but liveliest lines of action and rhythm, but I think your performance is totally and positively on the rightest track, yet I feel that those shapes could use some of the most asymmertical yet organic shapes and spaces. How about you do that please?

The logical truth behind the littlest thing is because of three things:

a) In truth, most every thing, person, and place is not perfectly geometrical, yet they are all truly "organic."

b) To help make a point in your storytelling sketches to enhance your character action and acting.

c) To make your lines of action and rhythm the least stilted and the most boldest, confident, and powerful in your poses and gestures and attitudes over details.

I hope you've found all of these things totally helpful, and more, so please take these with the smallest grain of salt.