Forum posts by Sanne

Hey guys!

It's your forum moderator here. I spent some time in the hospital at the beginning of this month and I'm back home on medication. I'm pretty sluggish so I'm not in much of a condition to give valuable criticism and practice tips, but I will still be monitoring the forum for spam and double posts every week.

I hope to be off my medication in a week or two and then I'm back in the saddle. :) If anything's up or you need assistance, feel free to reply to this topic - I'll be getting email notifications so I can be right on top of things!

Keep on drawing and rock on. <3

Ah! I think I understand the confusion.

The timer is not actually visible - it runs in the background. It's briefly visible when you pause and resume the tool though!

Hi Gnaws!

When you start a practice tool, option 2 (session mode) and option 3 (timer durations) let you customize the timers of a session. They're in effect the moment your session starts! You can pause and resume the timer by using the buttons at the top left of the tool once you've started.

If you're experiencing a bug or have other troubles, let us know what browser you're using and what is happening (step by step instructions are helpful to us)!

I basically start off with a single, c-shaped line for the spine and motion. I find that if I build on such a line first, my drawings come out much more fluid and alive than if I were to draw shapes immediately.

Basically, I follow these articles:

https://line-of-action.com/gesture-basics-1-line-of-action/

https://line-of-action.com/gesture-basics-2-torso-and-hips/

https://line-of-action.com/gesture-basics-3-joints/

And I love doing that! :)

Hi Sarosna! Good to see you again. :)

I really like the gestures you drew and posted. I can tell that you get a little hung up on details every now and then, so it's really good that you managed to focus more on the gesture! Quite a few of them have great motion, so keep up the good work! :)

There's no one 'right way' for this, but it helps to break the bodies down further. Don't mind the contours of the body so much and try to focus on the break-down of the different parts.

Start with the spine line, trying to make it a fluid line (c-shaped at most, never s-shaped). Draw a circle for the head, draw a circle/oval for the rib cage, then a circle for the hips. With these three shapes down, you can add the joints at the shoulders and hip bones. From there one you can break the legs down into joints and limbs. If you skip the joints in the legs, you risk drawing legs that aren't anatomically correct.

I've never drawn animal gestures before (my personal focus is humans), but I drew this 30 second gesture just now to illustrate that the basics are still the same:

http://i.imgur.com/fd8Y4mF.png

Does this help you?

Hi Alex!

Thanks for joining the site and sharing these wonderful drawings with us. :)

What exactly are you looking to get critique on? You appear to have a really good grasp on anatomy and motion already, and I think you understand the concept of practicing these things quite well! There isn't a whole lot I can critique on without knowing what specifically you're looking to improve.

Welcome westas! I'm happy you've decided to join us. :)

I looked at your DA gallery and I see a bunch of different things. Some are fantasy, some are more realistic. One thing a lot have in common is often a very stiff pose.

Have you used the tools on this site to practice gesture drawing? It aims to help you draw characters in motion and get their proportions right. This will benefit your art in both the realistic and fantasy areas.

Are there any particular things you're looking to improve yourself? Do you struggle with anything?

Hello Matthew!

I've looked through the images you posted and there are some seriously stunning pieces in there! Amazing job. :)

I have to ask, is the issue with you being unable to draw something from your own head? Some of the images are exceptionally well drawn in a lot of highlight and shading detail, and I'm not exactly certain in what way we can help further your skills if you're already so good at creating detailed works.

However, it's not uncommon for people to be good at drawing what they see but having a tough time at creating figures from nothing. I'd love to give my thoughts on the gesture drawings, but I don't want to give you useless info.

Can you be a bit more specific with what the problems are you're facing? I'll try to reply asap!

Hello Wert! :D Glad to have you here!

I took a look at your drawings and you're on the right track. You seem to have a general sense of motion down! That's a good thing for sure. :)

One thing I recommend is trying to build your figures from a 'basic shapes' figure. Much like is outlined in these articles:

https://line-of-action.com/gesture-basics-1-line-of-action/

https://line-of-action.com/gesture-basics-2-torso-and-hips/

https://line-of-action.com/gesture-basics-3-joints/

By drawing the head, rib cage, hips and joints before adding the body as a whole, you'll find that your anatomy will improve. Right now it's still a little choppy in some places and I feel it might be because you're not quite yet fully understand how to connect the parts to one another. By breaking the body down into basic shapes, you'll gain a better understanding of the body!

If you're doing 30 second gestures, don't worry too much about making it look 'neat' or complete. If you only get the basic shapes down that's plenty!

Starting from 1-2 minutes and up, you get to build on top of these basic shapes and you'll see a drastic improvement. Give it a shot and let us know how it goes?

Hello dash!

Welcome to the site, it's good to have you here. :)

Your drawing looks nice, love the outfit you gave to her!

There are indeed some anatomy/proportion issues with the picture. It's hard to give criticism on it without going into insane detail and making it really confusing, so I'll just point out a couple of prominent things.

To begin with, I noticed the hands first. They're probably the hardest part of the body to draw and the bane of most artists' existence, but diligent practice can help with that. Try our Hands and Feet practice tool to study hands and see how they fit together, it will be very helpful.

Besides the hand, your general proportions are a little off. That's probably because you don't fully understand how all the parts fit together, so it doesn't look natural, even if everything's there! A good way to get comfortable with and understand how everything clicks is by doing gesture drawings using the practice tools.

There are some super useful articles that explain how to break it down:

https://line-of-action.com/gesture-basics-1-line-of-action/

https://line-of-action.com/gesture-basics-2-torso-and-hips/

https://line-of-action.com/gesture-basics-3-joints/

Try drawing these in 30 seconds. If that's still too fast for you, I recommend 60 seconds but no more. Your goal will be to draw gestures in 30 seconds.

If you practice with these and keep up with it, you will be able to build new images on top of gestures, and you will find that not only do you gain better understanding of how the body fits, your drawings will also improve greatly!

I hope this was helpful to you. If I didn't explain something right or you still have questions, just let us know! :)

Hi there, welcome to the site!

Thanks for sharing your art with us. :) I took a quick look and I'm impressed by the gestures you've drawn, you improved a lot!

There's not much I can actively give criticism on, you're progressing quickly and a lot of it looks good to me. The only thing I notice is that sometimes it looks like you're putting more effort into the background and props than in the figure itself. Perhaps you should prioritize the figure and try to neglect the background more? Although it looks pretty, it doesn't add much to the gestures.

That's totally up to you though, I personally recommend focusing on the figures and disregard the backgrounds, but if you feel it works out for you just fine then it works out. :)

Edit: Also, your Tumblr is not accessible to people without an account. Although I have a Tumblr, others might not. I recommend posting your drawings publicly where everyone can see them without needing an account so that it's easier to receive feedback!

Hi Sarosna, welcome to the site!

I'm sorry to hear you've been so frustrated with your art. :( I can sympathize with feeling depressed and stressed out, I know what it's like.

The first thing I can recommend is to take a breather, step back for a couple of days and try again when you're feeling perkier. It can be hard to focus and feeling like you've failed with your drawings probably makes you feel worse.

Now on to your art. :) I have to say your drawings are quite adorable! Foxes always look really happy to me and I think you captured that happiness really well! Love the drawings you did so far.

The problems you're facing might be because you're spending too little time on one technique or style and move on to a different one too fast. How long have you stuck with a certain way of building the characters before trying something else? We naturally progress and try out different things as we go along, but moving too fast means you don't have a chance to adjust to it, and the new technique repeats the cycle all over. It could be causing a loop of disappointments in your own eyes.

I recommend finding something that appeals to you the most and stick with it for an extended period of time, preferably a couple of months at least. Even if it doesn't meet your expectations, try to push through that and keep going. We're often too critical of ourselves and see the images as far worse than they really are, but after a while we look bad and think "That wasn't nearly as bad as I remember it being". That might just be the boost you need!

<b>"How does this teach me about anatomy?"</b>
The 30 second gestures are meant to help you break down the body into basic shapes: a dynamic line (following the spine, always a C curve, never an S curve) with the head, rib cage, hips and joints placed on it. Although these articles refer to human anatomy, the idea is the same for animals:

https://line-of-action.com/gesture-basics-1-line-of-action/

https://line-of-action.com/gesture-basics-2-torso-and-hips/

https://line-of-action.com/gesture-basics-3-joints/

Recognizing the basic shapes in an animal and starting off with these 30 second gestures makes for good foundations. You capture motion and build on the motion before anything else, you learn how to proportion your subjects in a few quick lines and it will become easier to create images in the long run.

It also makes for an excellent warm up before you start on bigger drawings, getting you into the right state of mind and loosening up your hand and wrist. :)

I'm about to do a quick drawing session with someone else, I will try to do a couple of 30 second animal gestures to show you how it looks like in my practice sessions!

Gesture drawings, particularly the 30 second ones, are a great way to help you break down the body you're seeing into basic shapes. You capture the motion line and build on top of it, improving the dynamics of the subject, and it's a great way to get tricky poses down. It also helps with proportions if you find yourself struggling with that.

8 hours is a really long time to be spending on one image, even though it's really good! The problem you may run into is that you'll be so focused on the detail that you lose eye for the basic things like proportions and it's easy to burn out on.

If you spend 30 minutes per drawing, you have 16 drawings in the time it took you to make one. It will speed up your progress because you have more variation in your practice and you will get less hung up on the small stuff. Being a perfectionist is great for details, but (and I speak from my own personal experience) it can also hinder your progress a lot. The 30 second gestures are a great first step to loosen up and start disregarding the flaws, helping you to see the bigger picture. :)

If you're not sure how to draw the image in 30 seconds, give these articles a shot:

https://line-of-action.com/gesture-basics-1-line-of-action/

https://line-of-action.com/gesture-basics-2-torso-and-hips/

https://line-of-action.com/gesture-basics-3-joints/

If nothing else, these are an amazing warm up to get you into the right mindset for your practice. I used to think warm ups were silly and unnecessary, but now before I start drawing, I always spend about 15 minutes on 30 sec gestures and it's making a huge difference in my 'serious' drawings! Give it a shot, see if you like it and find it useful. :)

I don't have any experience with this myself, but a quick Google search pulled up a topic on a different website that has suggestions for the kind of paper to use.

http://www.sweatdrop.com/forum/showthread.php?t=12579

I hope this is useful to you!

Hey Paul, welcome to the site!

What sort of things do you usually draw? I would love to see your regular stuff! I'm also interested in knowing why you started with figure drawings. :)

As for your drawing, that looks pretty good! I particularly love the care and detail put into the hands and feet, they look very realistic.

The only thing really standing out to me is her face. Her facial features are misaligned. The original image only shows the eye on the left, but you added the second eye and positioned it wrong, which unbalanced her face quite a bit. That's really just about it though!

How long did you take on it? Have you tried doing the 30 second gestures yet? :)