Forum posts by Icouldntthinkofaname

I've been seeing your posts, and I think what might help is to slow down a bit and really get into the nitty gritty of studying forms and anatomy (some of yours are very strong, so you already have a decent foundation that might make the curve easier) - right now it feels like you're subscribing to the idea that practicing more will automatically improve your skills, but are you stopping to absorb the information? Are you learning anything?

Doing things like this can sometimes cause you to reinforce your bad habits, and will eventually burn you out. It might be worth adding longer timers, or trying to do things without the use of a timer at all - just take your time and really observe your subjects.

• Icouldntthinkofaname edited this post on June 29, 2024 4:01pm.

Have had similar issues to you!

I'm not sure what your skill level or experience is currently, but you could either try to keep working on ten-minute poses (it might just be a matter of trial and error and coming to understand what 10 minutes "feels" like to you), or you could stick to shorter timers for now if your attention span isn't having it (I know mine doesn't always). You could also try doing poses without the timers at all, which might take off some of the pressure of trying to fill things in.

I've been exactly where you are with the issue of staying aware of an entire piece. What helped me was just to try to get all of my basics down "at the same time", and then refine them later. This site's tutorial is part of what helped me (starting with the two lines of action, one for the body and one for the arms), though I think I'd need more detail to offer better feedback. Would also recommend Michael Hampton's figure drawing book, which provides a good, simplified breakdown in a similar vein.

Have dropped off of LoA a bit in favor of doing slower, more careful studies and finding methods that work for me, with a small amount of success!

I've filled several sketchbooks (as well as practiced digitally again), and I'm working on learning to design things that I feel are a ways out of my current skillset (elaborate machines, for example), but I'm not sure what to do to further my studies when it comes to drawing people.

I've gone through Proko's courses, as well as Anatomy for Sculptors and Figure Drawing: Design and Invention, and while I'm practicing things from those still, I feel like I've fallen into a bit of routine, and I want to add more variety to my practices. I have tried Draw A Box and found it wasn't a good fit for me.

Ideas? Thoughts?

Thank you!!

Hey, thanks for the speedy reply and comments!!

I'm glad I was wrong here - that's genuinely good to know, thank you for clearing it up! I totally forgot about this, but I had a lot of internet problems (outages, etc) when I first started using the site. I'll keep an eye out and see if the problem persists! Thanks again!

Saw the other suggestion re: critique, so offering something based on that. I second the emojis not being all that helpful!

I think that the giving good critique guidelines are good in theory! But I needed to go out of my way to find them, and, having had some unpleasant experiences trying to get critique both here and elsewhere, it might help to put them somewhere a little easier to see than a direct link from the Your Studio page (stickied to the top of the critique forum, a shorter version in a small window above the new thread or comment sections, etc).

The critique forums and the critique requests section also contain the same posts, but are treated differently by the site (the forums don't have that "giving good critique" pop-up); it might also be helpful to have the button on "Discuss" go to the latter rather than the former, or to have the site treat them as the same section (if that makes sense).

Hi, I just checked my profile and noticed that it says I've logged... five hours.

I've been doing 30-minute classes a few times a week for a number of months now, and there was a stretch of time where I was doing them daily. In some cases, I had closed the window too early (did all 30 minutes but didn't see the end screen) or had been interrupted and didn't get back to completed class. Those ones don't seem to have been counted. I know for some I wasn't registered / logged in, but the ones I have done while logged in should be more than that.

Is it possible to have the site count by something like the images you've completed times for, rather than the entire class being marked finished? Or at least to not tie it to seeing the end screen.

Small suggestion spinning off of that is to have an option to opt-out of the tutorial or notifications about completing the tutorial. I've done it twice, but it was only just now marked completed (for possibly the same reasons those hours weren't logged). The tutorial is great for beginners! But I'm here brushing up on existing skills rather than learning to draw, and only completed it much later.

• Icouldntthinkofaname edited this post on May 10, 2024 4:47pm.
• Icouldntthinkofaname edited this post on May 10, 2024 4:48pm.

Maybe some of your problem is that you don't have an aim. Why are you drawing? What's your goal? Are you doing anything outside of studies?

Also, I've similarly had trouble with Loomis. Someone sent me