Yes, tracing is helpful for difficult poses, if you're just beginning to draw, or rusty. Of course eventually you'll want to move away from tracing, but to get the general proportions down, it is a good technique.
All the advice about gesture and the line of action is great! Another thing that can help if you're struggling is to print out a photo of a pose and trace it. This can help your eye and hand feel what it's like to draw the proportions correctly. And most importantly, keep practicing regularly. Even if you feel that you aren't making progress, just keep going, even if you need to do only a few minutes a day. We believe in you!
Hello Magazine Cop!
Thank you for sharing your drawings. It's a very difficult thing to do. I can say as a high school art teacher that your drawings have a great foundation! I would suggest comparing the size of the animal's head to the size of the rib cage. Is the ribcage 1.5 times larger than the circle that the head fits into? Is it about the same? Then do the same with the circle for the hips. This will help with proportion. It might also be helpful for you to google a picture of a dog's skeleton and draw that to see how the legs joints, etc, are built.
Great job; keep up the good work! Thank you for sharing your art.
Hello Pterodactyl365! Thank you for sharing your drawings.
You have a beautiful contour line (line indicating the outside edges of the figure) and smooth strokes.
Try to imagine what is happening internally: focus on getting down the skull, ribcage, and pelvis. You don't have to get the whole figure down in 30 seconds! :-)
Again thanks for sharing and keep drawing!
Hi Noddson, Welcome to the wonderful, frustrating, and rewarding practice of figure drawing! Thank you for sharing your drawings. As an art teacher, I can say you have definitely come very far in a month and learned a lot, so pat yourself on the back for that!
Going forward, I definitely agree with the suggestions to try making separate shapes for the rib cage and pelvis. I have a professor at art school who used to talk about the three "moveable masses": the skull, ribcage, and pelvis. He said if you could correctly draw the locations of these three parts, you would have the essence of the pose. Don't worry about not being able to draw a "perfect" oval for now and just do it. Some anatomy studies (just look at a skeleton in different poses and draw the three moveable masses) might be helpful as well.
You may also want to try a more extended pose: 15 + minutes, where you can really study the way the torso and limbs interact.
Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain is an amazing book (it was instrumental in me making huge gains in my own craft) and I highly recommend it.
Please continue to share, and keep drawing!!
Hello marymary, welcome! I love your sequence of drawings-- it reminds me of some of my friends from school who were in animation; they were always so great at drawing a series of actions.
Hey all: I've been doing the challenge (though not every day with the start of school.) Now that I'm a couple weeks in, I'm renewing my commitment to sketch everyday. I can't figure out how to post pictures here... it wants a URL. Do I need to post the pictures on a blog first?
Thanks!
Awesome sketches everyone!
Hello all!! I'm definitely up for a challenge. I've been using Line of Action for a while (back when it was Pixelovely!!) and I love it. I am an art teacher and illustrator, and I'm working on building my drawing skills. We're about to start back at school,and I think it would be good for my students to see me practicing what I preach and drawing everyday. I'm going to start in "normal mode", but I'd certainly like to carry it to "hard mode"! I'm going to alternate subjects every week or so; I also want to practice animals since I'm working on a children's book. I appreciate any helpful feedback!
Nevermind; I found the answer in the FAQs! Here's my Day 11. Sorry it's so light; I'll try to make tomorrow's marks darker. I just did the 30 minute class.
