3 minute gestures.

(without warmup exercises)

https://imgur.com/a/ukleY0s

(after warmup exercises)

https://imgur.com/a/gL0dnRC

honestly i was trying to draw a lot more than this in the time limit.

Recently ive started my drawing sessions with an exercise thats like, just letting your mind and hand draw whatever without worrying about failure. I do feel like its made me a little more aware of my lines when im practicing and im not just throwing down nonsense hoping it looks good

anyway though, any advice or exercise recommendations to go from here? i want to be able to draw humans from imagination (long term goal) and characters/animals are my focus right now

thanks and many appreciations

Hei! Great drawings!

I can see that you are implanting the box logic to your figures, and volume lines that give volume to shapes. The thing about quick drawings is exactly what you are mentioning, its good exercise to stop worrying about results. So critiques have to reflect that :) I cant pick on every little mistakes.

What I find hard working with boxes, is that I restrict myself too much to the edges of the boxes, and my drawings become too tied up. It's like: the lines restrict, at the same time- Box thinking and volume lines are essential for describing form and to get away from 2 d contour-drawing. When your goal is to draw from imagination, from any angle- Boxes are the thing. So, think both box, and think outside the box :D Practice boxes, practice action lines without boxes, and implement them. Keep it loose. You are doing great!

Your face drawings could improve from the same idea. Facial features are more or less in line with eachother, exept- They have some expressions- things move a bit around. On the front of the face: The eyes, tip of nose, and chin, will be more or less aligned, and drawings often benefit from this. A way to implement box logic would be to make small marks on natural points, eyebrows, nose tip, and chin- with parallel lines. Instead of drawing a box, you just suggest it. The ear will be on the other side of the visible "box" and will have another direction, still aligned with the eye. If the face is at a more normal distance- the lines are closer to paralel- and you would get away with it. If the face you are drawing is supposed to be very close- these suggested lines will taper and be steeper- towards a vanishing point.

Boxes don't need to be square, and the box logic doesn't even have to show any box at all. Just directions.

Hope it makes sense :)

Good morning, Afro, and welcome back, but I'm so in love and enjoying your range of forces and forms of your figure poses and face attitides, from imagination and reference. What I really love about them is how much you've totally retained the forces while you're slowing constructing out the volumes and forms, therefore, you're completely having fun with yourself and trust in the drawing process, so more power to you. Yet, I'm still not getting enough of the bolder power and appeal in your drawings yet. Kindly loosen up your lines of action of your poses with our proprietary online drawing tutorial in our website, while you can and will loosen up but liven up your lines of rhythm in your faces with 10 minutes of 30 second sketches, but with looking at the refs 15 seconds each, then quickly ruffing them out in the last 15 seconds each.

The reason is because of the two truer arguements: 1) To make your visual memories more sharper but varied, as you can benefit you memory drawings.

2) To make you faces and poses the least rigidest, but the most emotional, vital, but energetic. For most details, kindly look into a PDF of the Walt Stanchfield books on Volumes 1 And 2.

So, my hat's off to you and your amazing march of progress, while I hope these have all made sense.