Forum posts by Sanne

Hi axm, the server limits uploads to 2MB a file at this time. I believe Kim is looking into this! In the meantime, reducing the picture dimensions a bit or running it through a compressor like TinyPNG (it compresses .jpg, .png and .gif files I think) can get most pictures under 2MB without a real loss of quality.

That makes total sense to me, they're two different skillsets! Being able to draw from reference requires a different way of drawing than drawing from the imagination. But the best way to learn how to draw from your imagination is by having that 'drawing what you see' as a basis where you deconstruct and understand the figure. Drawing from life is chapter 1, drawing from the mind is chapter 2, so to speak!

You also need to keep in mind that the two key components to improval are time and practice. Practicing is necessary of course, but you also need to allow yourself to take your time doing so. You're also seeing your drawings every practice session, so it's harder to see your own progress. (Think of it like seeing a 2 year old child grow and age - if you see the child every day, you won't notice their growth until there's a sudden click in your head of recognition. But you also can't expect a 2 year old to age to age 5 in just a single year. The same is true for your progress and skills, you won't see growth in your work for a while, but when you do you also need to remember that there's only so much progress you can make in that period of time.)

Learning art takes time. It's different for everyone how much time it takes to reach certain milestones, but we don't ever really stop learning. So be kind to yourself and your progress - I compared your first post's drawing to your most recent one, and I can definitely see areas where you've learned a lot in a short amount of time. The small improvements you made matter just as much, even if they're hard for you to see. It's okay to recognize and appreciate them!
It's totally fine to keep this topic updated with daily drawings! It's not spam at all. :) Your first post shows up in the random critique queue only though (as it's posted in the Critique forum), not your responses, so if there's a piece that you really want separate critique for I recommend dedicating its own topic to it. Updating the same forum to keep a daily gesture journal however is absolutely okay and a good way to keep track of your progress without overwhelming other people's critique topics.

Hi Rosenhips!

Glad you figured it out. :) You can show your image in a forum post by using the little code on the bottom right of the image, it makes it easier for people to give critique if they know which image it is.

I checked it out and I like how they turned out! I watched one of Proko's mannequin videos and I think I understand what you were going for. When I see your gestures though, I see an outline that has some seemingly random lighter lines drawn inside that aren't consistent between the figures. The difference with Proko's drawings is that his figures appear to be constructed from multiple shapes that connect on purpose. Every line represents a section of the body or indicates a joint, every line very deliberately represents something.

When you draw your gestures, working from that point of view can help a lot. Every line you drew in your gesture needs to have a purpose of representing a specific part of a mannequin. What do the horizontal lines on the legs represent in your bottom two gestures? Are any of them randomly added? If so, try to avoid doing that.

Remember that the challenge in the mannequin construction lies in breaking down the body into joints and connecting shapes, everything has a reason to be there and a specific way of connecting. If you understand this construction, you understand anatomy in human bodies better.

Hi Koolydragon!

Welcome to Line of Action! :) Those are some beautiful gestures, you really managed to capture a lot of fluid motion and used minimal strokes to get them down. That's exactly the point of a quick gesture, so you're doing great!
We'll be able to help you out with that for sure! Can you try to narrow it down to a more specific goal? 'I want to improve' is a big concept that can mean almost anything, but stuff like "I want to practice drawing more detailed figure studies" or "I want to focus on improving my understanding of lights and shadows" is much easier to help someone with.

I've been trying to give critique to some people who uploaded images to their sketchbook, but find myself struggling because the images show so small on the screen, it's hard to see any details. Even opening the image in a new tab often doesn't do much to improve visibility.

Is there some way we could see a larger version of an image to get around this issue?

@Kim: Haaaah, that is an amazing coincidence! I LOVE it though, I'm very excited to try upside down gestures!

@Madammallow: Thank you for the advice! Do you mean drawing gestures with no head at all, or avoiding to draw the details of the head until much later?

Hello Noddson, welcome to Line of Action!

You've made some great progress with gestures in this one month! :) You manage to capture a lot of motion well and understand the action line, so you're on the right track for sure.

What I notice is that in your gestures, you connect the pelvis and the ribcage together through the shapes you draw. This results in some stiffness in the figures. The reason why humans bend the way we do is because there is a gap between our ribcage and pelvis that is primarily covered by muscle tissue and squishy organs with a flexable spine in between. Going forward, I suggest trying to draw the ribcage and pelvis separately with a gap between them, so that you can create more flexibility in your drawings. Check out our Gesture basics #2 article! It has some good examples and explanations on this.

I also recommend trying draw your figures with less strokes. You'll want your lines to be confident with time and practice, and the more 'scritchy scratchy' you go on your lines, the less confident they feel. It also helps you think more carefully about how to draw a line if your goal is to draw as few lines as possible.

There's no right or wrong way to do gestures. :) If 2-5 minutes is what you need to get comfortable drawing gestures, then that's absolutely fine. 30 second gestures are useful because they train your brain to make quick decisions - deconstructing a form into shapes, figuring out where joints are located, figuring out where the motion and force in a gesture is - and then translate those decisions onto paper. Starting with 2+ minute gestures is good because a lot of people struggle to figure out how to do this if they start off at 30 seconds. Some members also challenge themselves by giving themselves 5 or 15 minutes to draw a figure, but only use exactly 10 strokes/lines in the gesture total. It's a different excercise that's also super useful!

So my only suggestion on gesture timers is to switch it up and keep yourself challenged without demanding so much from you you'll burn out. You've learned a lot already, but it's only the tip of the iceberg of what figure studies have in store!

After recently picking gesture drawing back up, I noticed that animals are easier for me to draw than humans. This is strange, because I've always focused a lot of human anatomy and less on animals.

A bit of reflection later, I realized that I struggle with human anatomy still because I learned manga/anime style first, instead of the real foundation of actual anatomy. My brain feels almost hardwired to draw what I think I see (in a warped perspective because of the wrong style) instead of what I actually see (real anatomy in the model), so every stroke feels like a fight against instinct.

It's difficult to deal with. I like my human gestures considerably less because they're harder for me. Has anyone figured out a way to undo this sort of training of the brain and retrain it with the real info?

<div align="left"> <p dir="ltr">It makes sense! Although it's been over 15 years since I first used a tablet, I do remember the feeling being very different from paper and pencil. If you're sensitive to tactile feedback it'll take some getting used to.

<p dir="ltr">Nowadays I can't even tell anymore, but I also draw almost exclusively digitally.



</div>

There are a few things that I've personally found useful!

Don't skip pictures in the tools even if you don't like them. Pushing yourself to draw figures that are hard or unappealing to draw can actually improve your skills dramatically, because you're likely avoiding them for reasons related to what you currently can and can't draw. AKA I'm terrible at reptiles but if I don't draw them, I can't learn how to draw them. So every time a reference makes me want to skip, I don't and just try.

I also try to keep in mind that repetition is key. Setting a realistic goal that is attainable but does challenge you a bit is a good way to go. Right now I have a modest goal of '15m per day, 4 days per week' but I actually started with '10m per day, 2 days per week'. I bumped it up because it was too easy, but with my health issues and schedule I don't want to commit to overdoing it and then feel bad for not meeting my goal. 4 times a week at 15 minutes is time I can spare where it's a bit challenging but still doable. AKA don't set yourself up for failure, stay realistic about what your limits are, but do try to push it just a bit into the challenging zone.

While it's a good idea to stick to a tool and practice something consistently for 1-2 weeks before moving on to a new tool and goals, I also remind myself it's okay to do something else. Even if I want to focus on making my drawings more fluid and capturing motion, if I can't be bothered doing figure gestures today I will just spend 15 minutes on a single animal drawing instead, or drawing a bunch of 30 second hand gestures and so forth. The goal for me is to keep drawing something, even if it's not specifically what I had in mind to work on. Because of my health and personality traits, it's tempting for me to just do nothing at all if I can't get myself to do the thing I set myself out to do. (If I can't get it just right, I get terribly demotivated and if I don't draw today, the hurdle to draw tomorrow is taller than it is today.)

So for me it's overriding to keep doing something to stay in motion. I can still practice this specific thing tomorrow or later this week, but for now I'm still in the motion and habit of drawing 4 times a week no matter what. Continuing to draw even if it's not a huge challenge and even if it's not in my scope of training goals is better than to not draw at all. That by itself can be a huge challenge!

I really like this idea! I think a "Don't display this critique request anymore" toggle would be excellent - it doesn't really matter why out of all the possible reasons, but if you've chosen not to critique a piece being able to just not see it anymore can be helpful. I'm personally in favor of this. :) (Disclaimer: this is a personal endorsement only, Kim is the person who decides whether features get on the list or not!)

I do think that it's a good idea to try and give your input even if you feel you don't have a lot of experience with the subject at hand. Sometimes encouragement can be helpful as well and just what a person needs to improve themselves, so don't discredit yourself too quickly! I also recognize that at some point, everything that can be said has been said on an image, which is why I'd like to see this feature as well.

Thanks for all the input! I'm sure this info will be helpful to others if not for me, so please don't be afraid to share. I'm sure this is something the entire community can benefit from.

@Whotower: Thanks! I'll try those techniques. :) I also like the idea of reflecting on previous drawings during breaks, that's helpful!

@Flarebrush: Ooh that's a good way to go about it. I don't draw on paper, I draw digitally and don't have an adjustable desk, so drawing standing up is not an option unfortunately. But I'm certain that it's something a lot of people can try.

@Line: Practicing smarter is an excellent mantra. :)

Hey Mike!

Your gestures today look really good, I like them a lot!
Fun fact: you're not really supposed to get the whole figure down in 30 seconds! You're really meant to capture the action lines of the figure. Here's an article that explains why and how:

What happens if 30 seconds isn't enough?

I've been trying to pinpoint the reason your gestures look very fluid, but at the same time lack something. I'm wondering if it might be the necks? I can't help but feel that some of them are uncomfortably arched and contradicting the action line of the body sometimes. An example is the figure on the very bottom center at 5 minutes. There's a lot of good motion going on, but the neck feels stiff.

It does work! One of the biggest reasons to draw gestures is to train your brain to recognize what you see better and faster, and to be able to put it down more confidently to capture the essence of a pose.

If you're scritchy scratchy with your gestures, you get lost in details and your drawings are not likely to look confident and fluent. Fewer lines means you're more boldly expressing the flow of the figure because you're trying to capture more in a single line. That's why it's called 'less is more' in this context!

I noticed an almost immediate improvement when I focused on using fewer lines. These animal gestures are a day apart but you can tell the difference fewer strokes made:

This sounds interesting!

Can you define what you mean with "story"? I'm not sure if it's similar to a theme, mood or something else.

It sounds like a really good exercise though!