Critique of Second Live Session

Hello, I recently completed my second live figure drawing session after not strudying the figure for about 6 months. I did much better this time and am happy with my progress on gesture, but my 10- and 20-minute poses are . . . painful. I would greatly appreciate any critque offered.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1SbOvozVypZHe9MHrnm0bv1VvU1WKN_FV?usp=sharing

discussion on distortion and sight size

Drawing faces from any side

the YouTube channel “thekirkshop” is also geat

Great! Your fast gesture drawings are excellent. You should be proud of those. These feel like they are sitting in space even though they are basically stick figures. And your lines are confident, they do not look like a beginner. Did you start with those gestures? because your proportion looks better then your long format drawing. It shows you will improve in no time, and you will love both. I don’t know what your history is but if this is your second time drawing live. You might be struggling to draw larger then “sight size”. There is a skill I call the proportion skill, where you step back and compare the whole of the object to the whole of another object. This does not come automatically, you have to practice. And if you have only ever drawn small it’s a bit of a shook.

the biggest issue that is jumping out at me, is the way you are shading. Some lines attempt to follow the form and others cut across and break the plane. You have to chose one or the other and be consistent.

At the top are some links.

I'll check out these videos, thank you for the recommendations. I agree with your critiques - my shading is confused and my figure-to-page proportions could use some work. The class did start with 10 - 15 quick gesture drawings, the rest were long poses. I would have preferred more gestures to warm up on, but I'm thankful for any opportunity to learn from life all the same.

Thank you for the advice!

You are welcome!

i just rewatched that first video, I don’t know why I picked that one but the rest of his teaching is good

• Cave Paint edited this post on November 13, 2022 2:38am.

Try working more with the solid shading technique you've used to build up the sculptural feel of your work. The places you have used it have a more convincing feel of shape and mass. Overall you clearly have excellent sense of proportion and great confidence in your lines. Keep at it, and try to look for more positives in your work - avoid the perfectionist trap of always identifying flaws - that helps while you're working to identify things to correct, but to improve more you also need to make conscious efforts to identify what is going well and why those parts are working.