Forum posts by Psychicdan

Hmm, like what others said, focusing on longer lines rather than shorter lines may help improve your art, as well as focusing on the gesture before the proportion or anatomy. I drew something like this too in my first year or so, but my art professor told me that if I keep breaking apart my linework in the gesture phase, it just won't flow. Here are some exercises from other arists I've been doing to improve myself that might help you, you're choice though.

1. Use a scrap paper to doodle some squigles or whatever. Doesn't need to be anything, lines, wavy lines, scribbles, it's al,l just meant to free your hand from tension and let it flow. If your hand starts out tense and limited, it''l probably limit your line art.

2. Do some exercises blind. What I mean by this is to only look at your subject and away from the paper. This is blind contour drawing, or in my seesions blind force drawings. Many artists recommend this because not only does switching from looking to drawing break up the flow, we end up drawing from short term memory, which can be very faulty. Training yourself to draw what you see will be invaluable. I know you'll probably get a mess of squiglles, but that's not the point. The point is to develop both observational skills and muscle memory skills so that you draw naturally. You won't get it down in a day, but practice a week or so drawing completely blind, then exercises where you you have brief intervals to look where your hand is on the paper. By this point, you'll likely have an awareness of where your hand is and a focus on the subject itself. I labeled this number two, but this is very important, please practice it.

3. I mentionied blind force drawings. Part of my practice has been seeing gestural force drawings from Michael Matessi's force method. For us, imagine the tension in your elbow when you bend your arm. That's force, and learning to see, feel, and draw it can help make your gestures more dynamic. Matessi being the expert explains it a lot better than I do, describing it as sculpting a figure through pencil. Hed has a bunch of videos on Youtube and if you can shell the price he's got books too that I've found worth the read. Look into the videos and see if it's for you.

All in all, I'd say first get advice from a bunch of different artist about methods they use and their exercises, then try out what's most intuitive to you in your practice. You'll have to keep at it for a while to see some effect, but I know you'' get it. Also, don't be afraid to get out of your comfort zone in a while. If you feel like you've hit a wall, try something new in your practice. Alot of art implements elements from several art methods rather than one, into an approach that's most suitable to the artist, whether it's intuitive, constructive, or just fun. Heck, it can be a combination of the three, that's the beauty of it. So, I guess try out what I said and more. Don't limit yourself and you'll go places. Hope that helps, good luck. Oh one lat thing. Draw from the shoulder and elbow, not the wrist. Agh, my wrist.

As someone who's only been drawing 2 years, half a year of serious practice really, my advice is limited and a bit suspect. I think though you've got the first rules in gesture down. Capture the gesture flow, don't get caught up in the details, make it dynamic. Each of these gestures has more life and flow than a super detailed store manikin, a good sign you've got your priorities straight. From what I've heard and read, starting with hip torso relationship is the first an most important step, as everything flows from there and is balanced by it. If proportion and scaling is giving you trouble, keep the head, hips, and torso in mind. Arms, legs, and the head all have relation to them, so if something seems off, check how they're connected to see if anythin is out of scale or off balance. When just doing gesture, it's more intuitive and practical than doing hard measurements and scaling. Doing that at the beginning can risk making your drawing stiff and boring, and best saved in the later drafting and correction phases. Just a suggestion, I've been reading Michael. Matessi's force method to capture force in my gesture drawings, and he's got a bunch of books, videos, and even courses on the subject. Just throwing that out there, nice work!