needing advice on how to move forward with my art

Last week I had an eye opening realization after my first post and my birthday as well that I'm not where I want to be with my art.

I worked so hard in 2019 to improve on figures, gestures and hand drawings and apply to Ringling for Animation and due to life events I didn't attend after being accepted for Game Art.

I've told myself that I'll have the career of my dreams by 27 and become financially stable for future kids (and so on) Now at 26 I'm helping with my boyfriends business with graphic design posts & some marketing for his business and as much as I enjoy doing that, I want to take my art to the level of something that I've always imagined.

I'm not sure if Animator is still in my sights but I love watching the process of Storyboards, Concept Art & Visual Development from videos and art books I've collected. Having all these story ideas that I have and never being able to illustrate them properly...

Getting back into drawing shows me that I've stopped at the stage of figure/gesture drawings, so now I'm trying to figure out how to take the stepping stone that I'm on and take it farther. I want to start on illustrations, concept designs, storyboards but I have no idea where to go with the figure & gesture drawing knowledge that I have now.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk lol

OK, first of all, content warning: wild speculation from some old dude on the interwebs, who so far earned less than 50 bucks in total by selling his own art.

Now, after that is out of the way, let's talk about things I heard from other people, that sounded convincing to me, and that I long decided to start with soon, but keep pushing away. When you say figure/gesture drawings I assume you are mostly talking about drawing from reference. Which is a good starting point, but if you want to be able to get towards most of the stuff, that you are talking about, you need to develop further into drawing from imagination.

That might sound strange, because isn't that what you did anyways, before you started drawing from reference(?), and no, it isn't exactly the same. The difference is, that you have to learn to draw from imagination at the same level of precision, as if you would be drawing from reference. The way to get there, is to first learn how to modify the images you drew from reference. So, you learned all about gesture, and the way the human body is constructed, and you can prove it by really nicely copying this photo? Level up, try again, but this time from a different point of view. The model on the reference is from side view, how would it look in the same pose in 3/4 view, in front view, in back view, drawn from above? To do that, you really need to up your construction game. That hip is here, that chest is there, so if I turn them by x degree, they would be....?

A different modification, OK, this model has their arms raised, how closely can you picture the same model, but with lowered arms? How much would that impact shoulders, muscles, would it have influence on the torso?

Or, same model, same pose, but now the light is from a different direction.

If you can freely rotate and modify your models, then you are at a stage, where you can react to someone handing you a photo and telling you: I want you to draw this guy, but jumping like a frog. I want you to draw that gal, but beating up a boxsack.

Which, I would imagine would be a lot of the actual job descriptions you might professionally get. Unless you approach the job from the other side, and want to become the person who tells other people to draw that guy, but jumping like a frog, but then you have to learn the fine art of storytelling, how to write a scene, how to structure a scene, what makes a good narrative, etc, and then you will probably get better advice on other sites.

To me, the biggest hurdle is to go back to the beginner stage, and start to focus on structure, structure, structure. Instead of practicing to draw as pretty as I can, really trying to use 3-d shapes, that are simple enough for me to rotate. like boxes, tubes, and the occassional sphere, and reconstructing all references with that stuff. then trying out if i can turn them around.

Maaaaybe you knew all of that already, then I have to ask for your forgiveness for blathering. About actual art careers, I can't seriously answer you any questions, as I have less of one than you at this point.

Thank you for this, I really appreciate it!

I think I understand what you're saying. Most of my figure/gesture drawings come from reference (thanks to Line-Of-Action :) ) and even though at times I drew from imagination as a kid, I also copied a lot from anime and cartoons but everything I was imagining for stories and comics and so on weren't ever really drawn out so I stuck with references because that's what looked good. The same applies to when I went for a Portfolio Day at Ringling and be told that my figure/gestures, perspective studies are good but needing work on simplifying my linework and focusing on that single stroke to make it more professional.

I will definitely take your suggestion of "Leveling Up" (jaja) and attempting to use the reference image and rotating the view/perspective of it while in that pose.
I love the idea in that and I believe that's what I'm in need of to practice and improve on my imagination and expand on modifying models/stages. I'll also be focusing more on Structure as that's something I'm definitely lacking in, as well as perspective and those are the hurdles I need to get past.

Again, thank you for your message! It's been really helpful and insightful. You've definitely opened my eyes to more things I can do and what to focus on to get closer to my goal!

Heya!

I'd also like to add that figure drawings don't have to be (and shouldn't be) your primary learning source for drawing the human figure! From all my friends who do art, we all sort of approach figure drawing different and some don't even like it at all!

I personally use figure drawing as a way to solidify the things I've learned; I study muscles, the skeleton, etc. and then I do figure drawings and see how quickly I can identify those landmarks and simplify what I've learned! So instead of seeing it as 'moving forward' with what you've learned from figure drawing, it can also be useful to use it as a reminder tool versus the other way around!

I am an animator and I do my fair share of illustrations, and I've recently been trying to up my game in that regard but I've felt my anatomy lacking though I like my posing well enough! So my primary use of figure drawing is as mentioned above!

^_^ ! Learning art is super non-linear and I feel like you'll always find yourself coming back to the basics throughout your journey