Forum posts by Thestripper

Hi. I had a fun session the other night. These are all done on A3 size newsprint with a myriad of different brush pens and markers. A half dried up brush pen gave me the best result but I think I will try to stick with graphite pencils or Conté next time. It was funny going through this because I didn't realize that I had done the same pose twice until posting this (13a and 13b). If you have any thoughts after seeing these I would love to hear it, especially if you commented or saw my earlier gesture post. Thank you!

• Thestripper edited this post on February 14, 2021 9:07pm.
• Thestripper edited this post on February 14, 2021 9:08pm.
• Thestripper edited this post on February 14, 2021 9:11pm.
• Thestripper edited this post on February 14, 2021 9:28pm.

I would suggest you take a look here:

https://www.alexhays.com/loomis/Andrew%20Loomis%20-%20Fun%20WIth%20a%20Pencil.pdf

Have a look and print out the pages you want to work with. It is much better than having it on a screen, or better yet you could buy the book.

Just play with it and have fun. This book starts of easy and with Great fundamentals! Towards the end it gets more and more advenced and if you keep with it you will even learn about perspective and more advanced techniques. Good luck and have fun!

• Thestripper edited this post on February 14, 2021 8:54pm.
• Thestripper edited this post on February 14, 2021 8:55pm.

Hi Ausler.

For someone who started only a week ago you are doing good. Some of your poses show the pose quite well. Gesture drawing is a good way to learn how to express a pose with a simple sketch.

It looks like you are drawing with a ink pen, or something that put's down very black lines as soon as it touches the paper. One thing that helps a great deal especially as a beginner, is to use a pencil that can do very light, almost not vivisble strokes as you "search for the form". A soft graphite wooden pencil like a 6B is a great tool for this. I'll post two videos that I have found helpful showing you how to get your arm to do the shapes you want(note that proko uses a Conté pencil. Thhey are good but any 6B graphite pencil will do for starting out). Use whatever cheap paper in the beginning so that you can feel relaxed while putting out many training sessions. Good luck!

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Hi Luke.

You have some really nice drawings, I especially liked the page with three female poses that had a simple and dark shadow. These poses could have been even stronger if the starting lines had been bigger, looser and longer. I'm not sure which are which, but on the poses that look like they are 30 or 60 seconds it looks like you are drawing too fast, trying to capture the whole pose in this short time and that the big swoops or gesture lines, suffers a bit. Try doing some short timed poses, 30 second might even be too long infact. Just put down the long swooping directional lines explaining the gesture. This means that when the time is up you will probably be looking at only two long direction lines and an oval for the head. It's a huge benefit to hold the pencil with the flat side against the paper and doing soft and long searching lines in this stage. Once you accept this simple way of expressing a pose you can then lengthen the time a bit, but still use this same type of approach. The added time will add more detail, don't rush. Good luck!

Hi.

Thank you, that is really good critique! I've done heaps of volumes since this. Just drawing boxes and pipes going different directions. Also switched to bigger format and been trying different media. Also trying to keep in mind to put more "rubber bands" on my models. When this gets more intuitive the drawings have a tendency to get better. Volumes location and in which direction they are going is clearer. Had a good session tonight it felt like. I'll upload some later, hope you take a look, I think they are much better.

Thanks.

Hi.

Thank you for that! And right you are about the cast shadow. Loomis has some very very good descriptions of this in some of his books that I've read after posting this first one. I haven't put the perspective system he explains into action yet, but I think I am just about am starting to get it. I've done maybe 6 or 10 more spheres this last week, no really long ones though but I would say they are better than this one. Nailing the shape and placement of the terminator is the biggest challenge. I also did one sphere with a smaller spehere inside the cast shadow of the big one.

Hi. Thank you for your insight. But is there really any foreshortening going on when drawing a sphere?

Hi Brian.

You are doing good but there are a few things that I know would help you progress.

First thing is that it looks like you are drawing mostly with the point of your pencil. This makes it hard to vary the line width and pressure. There is a special way to sharpen your pencil and then the way you hold it in your hand. This way feels weird at first, but after a few hours of excersise you will start to see results. I'll post a video where Stan Proko explains this. He uses Conté - Pierre Noir pencils. Those are a bit expensive and can be hard to find so I would recommend any soft graphite pencil instead. Derwent Sketching , Stedtler Mars Lumograph, Mitsubishi Hi-Uni, Caran D'Ache, Winsor Newton, Faber-Castell... These are all good brands. Just go for the soft grades such as 4B, 6B or even the very soft 8B.

I think of gesture drawing as a "search". Meaning that you go very light with your pencil as you go over the paper and search for your line, so that the stroked is very very light, almost invisible. When you feel like you have found the right shape you can put down darker and darker strokes. This is how you work up the flow and arm movement that will help a great deal in gesture drawing, and in all other drawing to.

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• Thestripper edited this post on February 3, 2021 4:59pm.

The sphere. I've done a few of these in the last days. It's harder than it looks, and then it's actually quite hard to take a picture of it without getting reflections that makes it look unevenly shaded. I think it looks al right but the shape and placement of the "terminator" have strayed a bit off course.

• Thestripper edited this post on February 3, 2021 4:14pm.

Hi. You have got some very nice ones in there. It looks like you really found the gesture from the get go in sketch 13 and 16, very good flow.

My advice is a bit counter intuitive because in gesture drawing it's usually all about finding the big movement as the gesture. Now, it's true that some poses has clearer gesture and direction than others. Let's look at pose 5 as an example. In this pose there's no long sweeping through line like you see in a stretched out ballerina pose for example. But there is gesture to be found in this pose. A swoop along the arm goes over in a swoop on the oposite leg, the other upper arm can flow in the same gesture as the oposite lower leg and so forth. I think that in this case it's a matter of stepping down the scale of the gesture you are looking to find. Instead of finding one or two long sweeps you can find many, shorter and quicker gestures. Hope I'm making sense. I think I know the picture this pose comes from. If I find it I'll give it a go. Good idea to number the poses. Makes it so much easier to be specific when talking about. I might steal that idea for next post.

• Thestripper edited this post on January 31, 2021 10:49pm.

Watching music videos with people dancing on you tube is a good source for poses. Just pause the video (take screenshot if you want to keep the pose) and time yourself as you draw it. Keep it short, and do many.

Hi. I will second what those before me have said. Gesture drawing is key and keep it short. No more than 30 - 60 seconds per pose.

The watercolor is so tempting to use because it looks good. My advice would be to stay away from that right now though. I can see that you have been drawing before but it looks like your eyes and brain understand what to do but the arm does not obey like it used to. This is an easy fix. I see that you are only, or mostly, using one type of line in all your drawings, a quite thin and even line. Try doing some stroke practice with a soft pencil, holding it like a crayon. Go light and make thousands of different random shapes and go over them again and again. Do broad strokes, thin lines, S curves, C curves and all sorts of other shapes. This will get you dexterity back and your whole repertoir will grow. Good luck!

Hi. These are nice and clean. I would suggest that you try regular soft lead pencil on paper instead of digital draing board. I know... it's been said before, but that is the way to learn to do it for real. Once you master the pencil you might do something good on a drawing board as well, but line weight and pen preassure will only come from working with physical materials.

Now for some critique on your scetches. It looks like you have a good fundamental understanding of proportions. The head is a little bit small in most of your drawings but the proportions of the rest of the body looks quite good. The pose on the second row on the right hand side of sheet two is an example of good gesture! I would also suggest to practice some more on poses with more twisting of the upper torso in relation to the pelvic. The spine bends backwards, forwards, side to side but it can also twist at the same time. Showing that twist can really give life and movement to the drawing. Good luck!

A soft lead pencil will set you back about $1. and then get some cheap paper. Newsprint is cheap but if you are really tight for cash you could even go to the food store and buy a roll of food wrapping paper. That will also be about $1 and it's usually around 25 yards long. Another way to get some cheap paper (yes I have done this...) Is to go to the food store where they usually have this wrapping paper for flowers or meat packaging lying around. That is newsprint paper and they are usually big! Buy something cheap and then roll it up in a thick layers of wrapping paper, viola.

Hi. Thank you for commenting. I do agree with what you are saying. Line quality is of great importance. In this session I was drawing in a quite small 5"x8" sketchbook and using a thin mechanical pencil so line quality is hard to obtain that way. I'll go up in size, probably draw on A3 newsprint and use a good soft wooden pencil for my next post, see what that does. Thanks again.

• Thestripper edited this post on January 30, 2021 1:22pm.