Hi! im hannah im from canada. I've found it difficult to improve on art without feedback so maybe ill find some here! I'm also looking to speed up my process! my artstation is: https://www.artstation.com/hannah_strom
One exercise I was given in university is to draw the figure with constant circles, like swirling madness. It was fun but it also let go of the structure and let you see mass which I think helped me
Hi! I had no idea what the force method was before you enlightened me so thank you so much! With scratchy lines thats also something I had problems with and I think I have an idea you can try that links to FORCE. If you've looked at Proko's youtube video on force (you probably have already) then if you go to 6:37 and pause. Looking at the figure drawn if we exclude the oval for a head the entire body, limbs and all, are composed of 12 lines and they are all C shapes.
I see your photos are of poses that are 2 mins long but I definitely recommend taking longer to see how you can use your lines. Definitely warm up with some short poses and then jump to five and come back down! If I were you I would chose one pose, set a time for 5 minutes and really look at the shapes, start with the spine like a line of action and draw one C for the entire spine, go to the shoulder and draw another C thats also the bicep, a C for the forearm, etc. Thinking about FORCE while you go, how do the C shapes connect, push each other, stretch. If you can, try to do MAX 13 lines. This is one of the hardest figure drawing i've tried recently but it helped me
Looking at your drawings you seem to be making things that are very similar to what my sketches are ending up like, i felt a lot of stagnantion too and what i did to help a little, which might help you too, is actually not doing poses but going a different direction and looking at muscle and bone anatomy. I look up photos of medicinal/educational diagrams of the human body, photos of rotated ribcages with shoulders and bone on pinterest, some pose websites pecifically have muscle skins like posemaniacs. Try look up specific areas of the body if you run out of images.
This studying of actual body tissue and bones will give you a wider shape vocabulary.
As well what i think the anatomy studies have helped me with is adding weight and substance to my figures. Now my poses have some more structure besides circles and lines- which you have done and its good to keep that step in mind but it seems like you are in need of some new material to base your people off of. Hope this helps :D
These look great. It's great to see that as the session goes on you are thinking of the purpose of the circle in the body- not just a circle but the rib cage. I'm especially drawn to the 3rd picture of the person laying down, in this pose the way you have angled the torso circle to have a bit more weight that makes the pose feel more grounded. I'd encourage you to keep trying this way of structing poses in other line of action sessions or in person (a little bit harder) and adding circles to show the arms, legs, etc not just outlining the contour of the body.
Try, first of all, making more circles to represent all the body parts, then you could try stretching or squashing these circles- are the ribs more circular or oval shaped? Does the circle representing the leg start large and shrink like a pear? Is the circle of the pelvis overlapping with any other circles?
Then if you feel bored of circles definetly try changing circles into squares, make the ribs a square, maybe a rectangle? If a leg is a pear-shaped circle would it become a slanted rectangle or a triangle? Then once you are bored of squares try boxes, squres with sides- what direction is this body pointed in? Doodling 3D boxes not assosiated with bodies helps with this so if it gets a little too complicated take a break from people. Hope this helps for some next steps :D
What might help with figure drawing is that- since there is so much to learn- I personally find it simpler to go into each session with an intention/limitations in order to learn specific lessons. Some intentions are like, only drawing the shadows, drawing the contour, separating everything into circles, etc. Each limitation teaches something new about the figure- e.g only drawing the shadows helps to analyze poses into values and helps us stop seeing the figure as a figure and instead as shapes.
I also struggle with excess lines! Some limitations that have helped me is
1. Not lifting my tool at all, one big shape- sometimes making constant circles with your tool as you draw the figure helps as well, I once had a professor who wanted our figure drawings to “be as swirly as possible!”
2. You could choose a bigger drawing tool, large markers or large sized brushes on digital programs help you be more decisive with your lines because each mark takes up so much space you aren’t worried about outlining the body. Used correctly you can use the tool to fill in the torso in one big line instead of many.
3. Or simply, you go into a sketching session with the idea “less lines”, give yourself a restriction and take your time. A 30 second pose where you only use 10 lines, where do you put them? How long should they be for each body part? It almost like finding the line of action. Try decreasing the line limit or increasing it as you go to find a sweet spot. If you do this you should take a few seconds to look at the pose, put a line down, take another few seconds to look at the pose, see on your paper where it should go- with this method you will be spending way more time looking at the image than the paper itself which is a great habit
It is essential to fix any “problems” you find yourself creating with figure drawing by going into each session with intention. Without intention you try to learn everything all at once, which is very difficult! Nobody can find the line of action at the same time they separate all the body parts into 3d shapes at the same time they outline the shadows, at the same time they make the contour, at the same time they add detail- that is called a finished piece! Not a sketch! And that takes wayyyy more time than 5 minutes
