Hey hey, Mustard — thought I'd try something! Loving these sketches you've got here.
Your 30 sec sketches are simple and effective, exactly how they should be. They communicate the pose very well and show a great understanding of motion following through from top to bottom! However, if I were to critique them I'd say to stray away from the more stickman-like foundations you have; while many of your poses read well, they're stiff, and experimenting more with different types of lines and incorporating circles/squares where necessary will help you make them more lively and maybe even fit some structural details of the figure in! Don't be afraid to exaggerate either.
The advice for the 30-second poses holds up for the 1-minute ones as well, of course. You seem to currently build upon the mannequin you make, as seen in your leftmost ones; when you don't do this, like in the rightmost ones, you lose gesture and proportionality. This is expected and understandable. Again, representing larger masses with shapes might help you build upon the form quicker and allow you to focus more on gesture.
Your longer sketches reflect my concern with your shorter ones — when you have more time, you begin to focus more on structure and contours, sometimes losing the gesture in the process. The ones that are sound are very much so, and they come off very nice; meanwhile, something like the leftmost one on the first picture could use more gesture work.
Overall, though? You're doing amazing. Your work is beautiful, clear, and communicative. To push those boundaries you have for the sake of expressivity is what I yearn to see. Sorry for my long critique, but I hope it helps!
Amazing work you have here. The gestures all communicate the poses they source very clearly, so much so that I can imagine a photograph.
If I am to give any critique at all, I would say that the lines here do feel just slightly stiff. I'm not feeling as much of a rhythm connecting one part of the body to the next as I'd like to, but I am certainly feeling one. I feel as though slightly looser strokes would benefit these pieces.
Let me start off by saying I'm very impressed by what you can accomplish in 10 minutes. Those pieces are well shaded, structurally sound, and flowy.
As for critique, something particular I notice is something that has already been said, I feel. Your 30 second poses look and feel loose and communicate the pose well. Moving on, however, your lines become harder and a bit scratchier. I almost feel as if this is due to fear of time constraints? With 30 seconds, your depictions are simple yet effective, and with 10 minutes they are indecipherable from the original image — yet I fear you struggle with striking a middle ground.
My advice to you would likely be to always put structure second. It appears from left-to-right in your photos that you become more comfortable as time goes on as well as with more time. I like to look at it as a process, treating the loose linework as almost an armature before really detailing prominent muscles like the glutes, biceps, or breasts.
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Kesuscheist
edited this post on June 9, 2021 7:11pm.
Reason: "indecipherable" could be easily misinterpreted
Hey there, N2l! Great work!
Something particular I notice about your pieces is a sort of over-focus on the contours and form of the body, and less on the energy of the pose. It seems almost as if you are focusing more on capturing as much of the model as possible rather than the energy of the pose — something I was definitely guilty of before.
A good way to combat this, at least in my experience, is to truly start from that longest axis on the pose — that one that spans the longest range of the body — and then add on details around it. When doing so, don't worry about the bumpiness of specific muscles like those in the legs or the biceps, but instead just the general motion.
Hope this helps!
