Forum posts by Aunt Herbert

The one guy I had in mind, and I could kick my back for not noting down his name, was a a guy who actually drew figures from live with charcoal, in a single non-ending big swaying motion of perpetual circles. When he started doing it, I was certain it would all end up in a giant mess, but after a few motions it started to turn into a very good looking actual drawing. I tried to follow the advice he verbalized while drawing, but just couldn't translate his descriptions into practical behavior on my part. I tried just imitating him, and produced something, that didn't look that bad at all, but nowhere near anything, that I would want to present to anyone. His method was strange, but I felt a bit of envy for his results. That is what I meant with actual legitimate artists, who might approach a topic from a really weird angle.

Another guy comes to mind, still no name, but one of the lead figure designers for Riot Studio of Arcane fame, so absolutely a demigod in my books. He showed off his work method, and... well, he definitely cured me from my prejudices against searching lines. That guy started to draw one vague line, and another, and another, until his screen had almost turned into one solid black plane from all the attempts, then he switched to another mask, drew the one line he finally settled on over that mess, deleted the rest, and it was an absolutely ace looking crispy clean fighting pose. I told myself to never ever again judge someone for using searching lines (if done right)

But yes, 10 second drafts, maybe as a very specialized tool to train something very particular, but I don't see much use for me personally either. 30 second warmups, as warmups, I find useful as a reminder to go for the big forms and don't start with details, b/c if you start with details you wont have squat on the paper after 30 seconds. For me 2 minutes is my "laziest" time, I can confidently finish the figure without bothering to go for shading.

I see, that you prefer to start with a quite detailed perspective foundation from neat boxes, and it makes sense to me that you prefer that methodic approach. I don't draw out a very neat foundation for figures very often. I kinda have internalized enough of one to wing it most of the time, and when I feel that my drawings become weirder than I prefer, I occasionally discipline myself by drawing a dozen actual foundations.

But I did experiment a bit with Reilly abstraction for portrait drawing, and, absolutely, trying to really combine an elaborate foundation with timed drawing is like trying to learn juggling with 20 kg dumbbells. It might be theoretically possible to do, and would certainly look impressive as heck, but the outcome seems uncertain, and the mere attempt may be dangerous to your (mental) health.

In the end, learning to draw for me is like learning home repair. It isn't a single skill, it is about learning what tools exist, what tools can do which jobs. and which tools fit your personal goals best.

I think the fascination with "fluid and dynamic lines" versus "stiff lines" is a strange and badly defined topic. I get it on the very basic beginner level, what drawabox teaches, translated as "don't accidentally chicken scratch" (unless you know what you are up to and consciously decided to chicken scratch for aesthetical reasons).

On advanced level, the only big name I found, that is actually trying to give a coherent definition of what the different between "fluid" and "stiff" ought to be seems to be Mike Matessi, and I have two big beefs with him: The one, more obvious and immediate one, his english descriptions of what he does sound like a foreign language to me, and the one more fundamental one, which probably also causes the first one, is a throwaway line from one of his interviews: "Yes, off course I learnt all the boring perspective stuff in art school, like everyone else did, but now..." Well, Mr Matessi, I think the reason your method works for you might be those boring times at art school, that actually not e v e r y o n e had the privilege to attend.

Just grinding 10 second drafts definitely aren't the silver bullet to get there (and isn't something even Mike Matessi would recommend). And I definitely had requests for critique here from people who just drew very neatly and cleanly, and then felt bad about their lines being "too stiff", .... and I don't get where the problem is.

Similar thought on this video:

To me it translated mostly into how hard it is for Peter Han, after a distinguished career of 20 years working 9 to 5 (plus definitely crunch times and overhours) as a professional artist, to break out of his mold. And yes, he is definitely a fantastic artist, and his dedication to still be willing to search out an area, where even he risks making mistakes is inspiring. Doesn't change the fact though, that I personally lack at least 2 decades of drawing experience to come even close to the mold, that he attempts to break out of.

• Aunt Herbert edited this post on April 19, 2024 9:30pm.
• Aunt Herbert edited this post on April 19, 2024 9:46pm.
• Aunt Herbert edited this post on April 19, 2024 10:05pm.

Sounds about right, and most importantly it seems to work for you, as the result is convincing. It conveys a lot of information efficiently, which gives the viewer that pleasant feeling of quick recognition.

Only little caveat, the "all" in "all figure studies" is a bit of an overgeneralization, just because there are quite a number of different techniques, styles or priorities someone else could have when figure drawing. I have seen some people on youtube start their drawings in ways that looked at first glance extremely weird to me, and nevertheless end up with astonishing results.

Idon't know, sorry if I find that a little bit funny, but how do you expect timid people to express their timidity in a more appropriate way?

I think the #1 natural expression for shyness is to not react at all. After all, all kind of reactions have to be interpreted and validated by someone else, and then those reactions can potentially be regarded as dumb or patronizing or unhelpful or silly or...... and that is what timid people are afraid of.

I have been reading your posts on this forum a bit, and I think a part of your artistic problem is a self fulfilling prophecy loop based on your anxiety about your own self worth and your expectation.

To explain what I mean, I'll contrast with my own drawing style. I think one aspect that characterizes my drawings is, that I always very quickly jump to the conclusion "Aaah, that's good enough, let's start doing something else". So I get a lot done, and I have a 95% experience with a lot of subskills, and if all of that comes together the end result can occassionally be impressive, BUT... there is also always that rough and dirty and unfinished feel to whatever I do, because there is never a real 100% in the mix. And it doesn't bother most people a lot, and people who give me critique often tell me that it looks bold and confident and carries emotional weight. Which is true, but it still bothers me personally a bit, that I don't have a real choice in the matter. For me, getting my lines to really look smooth and pretty, or cute, or really clean, or "girlish", or diligent, seems just outside of my grasp, because at every step on the way, I get to "Aaargh, that's good enough, let's do something else" just way too early.

For you on the other hand "That's good enough" never seems to be even possible. You start with sky high expectations about how every result has to look, and if you don't exactly reach it, you despair and beat yourself up publicly for it. And when you start your next drawing instead of focusing 100% on actual drawing, you are at least 50% already in the process of self-critiquing every dot you left on the paper, and start overcorrecting and then overcorrecting the overcorrection. Which actually lowers the resulting quality instead of improving it.

That said, your actual results aren't nowhere near being as horrible as you seem to perceive them. You are actualy a good draftsperson, and your results show that you improved a lot over what a complete noob would produce.

Now, from some experience with anxious people in my life, I know that trying to help them can run into a lot of risks. If you just tell them "Don't be anxious", no matter how soothing you intended that to be, the reply may just be "Now that is just rude. I can't change who I am."

If you instead come up with exercises for them to lower their anxiety, then they will just become anxious over whether they did the exercises correctly.

If you feel defeated and tell them to search help from someone else or to adress their issue on their own, they will feel rejected.

I mean, in this case you asked someone a question, that they had no answer to, and so they chose not to answer, and you are reading into that that you broke some unspoken rule, and now everybody might hate you for it? And if they wouldn't secretly hate you, they would have found a somewhat more appropriate way to respond?

I remember a conversation either with you, or with someone with almost the identical user name, which quite abruptly ended with me being told "I heard everything you said already a thousand times, and I already told you, that I am not interested in that, how dare you keep saying that!" and a threat to be blocked. This wasn't a response that was especially inviting to carry on a conversation, and furthermore, it did not change my conviction, that my answers were still correct and actually the best possible answers to the questions that were asked. If you ask questions, you have to live with people either giving no answers, or other answers than you wished for.

• Aunt Herbert edited this post on April 19, 2024 9:55am.
• Aunt Herbert edited this post on April 19, 2024 10:35am.
• Aunt Herbert edited this post on April 19, 2024 10:49am.

Yes, now it works. Aaaah, pristsine website again. What a joy.

To be more precise, it is the icon that shows I got 1 inbox message. I just can't make it go away, and it triggers my OCD.

Kim, there was this spambot with the french repairshop yesterday, and I posted a joke about it. You deleted the bot post and my joke about it, which is fine, but now I got the "forum post deleted" alert icon stuck on top of my page, and I can't make it go away, because it doesn't link to a post anymore.

People are definitely timid. I mean, just compare the number of people using this site to the number of people even asking for advice, and then to the handful of people who usually dare to give advice.

Also, there is the difference between having a skill, and being able to verbalize what it takes to acquire a skill. You can probably ride a bike, but could you explain HOW to ride a bike to someone who has problems with it?

So, not asking any random person for advice isn't so much an unspoken rule, it is just that asking is such a low probability attempt that most people won't even try. Maybe if you already established an ongoing conversation with someone, you could say "Hey, I noticed, that you are especially good at x, do you have any tips how you do that?", but then still the most likely answer will be: "Aaahm, never thought about that, I just do it!"

• Aunt Herbert edited this post on April 17, 2024 1:42pm.

Moriya, it's just a common and natural beginner's mistake to start every drawing by focusing on one detail first, then the next adjacent detail, and so forth. Which inevitably leads to the problem of minor variance in scale between each of the details multiplying with each other, until the last detail is much bigger in scale than the first one, and off by inches in either the vertical or horizontal axis.

What you describe about your figure no longer fitting into your frame is just a variation of that problem.

And the fix to it is to learn to establish the big overall shapes as soon as possible, so you can measure all details relative to those big shapes, and not from detail to detail.

Besides measuring proportions better it also allows getting a grip on composition.

You will find this principle in several different drawing techniques, named differently depending on subject and the method to establish the big shapes.

You will even find similar effects when you start to investigate how shading works and learn how to establish the big values first.

I have been drawing daily for several years now, and when I am particularly annoyed about proportions or compositions in the result in one of my drawings, and I ask myself: "Did you maybe jump into fiddling with details before you established the big shapes?" the answer is in 90% of cases: "Yepp, guilty as charged"

• Aunt Herbert edited this post on April 16, 2024 9:50am.
• Aunt Herbert edited this post on April 16, 2024 10:31am.

I think this video has a bunch of practical tips to try while you still feel insecure about proportions:

I don't see any systematic mistakes, that you could specifically avoid. You are focusing on powerful lines and simple forms. This should be the best way to train your pen and all the squishy matter that holds it to produce aesthetical depictions of the human figure. GJ, keep on practising.

The very simple sounding, but very hard to pull off trick: Learn to establish the biggest shapes first, so you can measure the details from them.

This is going to be important for a hundred different reasons, and unless you are completely different from most other people, it will take you quite some time from understanding the general idea, to experimenting how to put it into practise, to becoming so accustomed to working that way, that you no longer have to constantly focus on it and can start paying attention to other problems more.

But it will fix 90% of all your problems with proportions, be they about composition or about anatomy.

Edit: Maybe a more practical tip for the stage that you are at right now: Not every figure drawing has to capture the entire figure. If you realize, that you started the figure too big to fit on the paper, don't waste time fiddling around with the frame size. Just focus on drawing the parts that do fit as good as possible. So you end up with only a half-pose? So what. You start your next drawing immediately afterwards, and can avoid that specific mistake now. Learning is about making mistakes, realizing it was a mistake, and then not worrying, but just carrying on and trying to avoid repeating that mistake.

• Aunt Herbert edited this post on April 13, 2024 4:28pm.

One small extra I would like to have is an edit option for critiques. I am a bit OCD in regards to grammar and spelling, and when I discover typos in my critiques, it itches a bit.

• Aunt Herbert edited this post on April 11, 2024 1:02pm. Reason: OCD

OK, here is my attempt:

https://imgur.com/a/26vu0Zx

My thought process was:

#1: Ugh, the way he pulls his shirt around turns it almost into a giant quadrangle, that covers half of his body. Cool, half of the drawing done already.

#2: Making the legs curvy would be a nice contrast to the straight lines of the shirt. Hmm, I saw this abstraction of legs from the front with the double-wave somewhere on youtube, I guess it could fit here well. Idk is emphasizing simplifying, so let's do a bit line economy bingo... 31 lines for both legs, that's ok-ish.

#3. Add the hands and the bit of the head.

#4: Add a bit of hatching to make it look less flat in spite of all the big empty shapes.

This is one way of simplifying the pose.

Edit: Looking at it after publishing I realized, that I didn't really check the relations between the masses. The way he pulls the shirt up in my version would have actually covered the entire head, so I could have saved those lines, too, and it would have looked anatomically more correct. Alternatively, if I wanted to keep the head, I should have been a bit more subdued with the shirt rectangular and made sure, that it didn't rise too high above the shoulders./Edit

A more radical approach could look like this:

https://imgur.com/a/E2TOT15

just portray the most eyecatching-feature, the rectangular-ish shirt, and stickfigure the rest. It certainly is simplified as heck, and no one mentioned pretty.

• Aunt Herbert edited this post on April 11, 2024 8:16am.

I think you are actually on the path of "rewiring your brain" already. You observe yourself while drawing, you analyse your problems and break them down into specifics, you feel frustrated about them. You could translate all of this, including the frustration, into physiological functions of neurological plasticity, and you would end up pretty much at a description of how the human brain learns and acquires a new skill.

Untrained humans are not used to look for big shapes.

If you look at any childs drawing, they all start from a symbolic, language-based drawing style. Mama is a human. A human has a head, and legs, and hands, and legs and hands attach to a body, and to improve the drawing I need to find more words that describe more details, that I can add to the drawing.

Then beginning draftspersons discover shapes, and the easiest shapes to immediately observe are usually the smallest shapes, and you can see any number of beginner drawings where people try to accurately draw one detail, then add the next closest detail as accurately as possible next to it, and so on, and so on, but at some point realize, that they slightly mismeasured proportions and relations, and all those slight mismeasurements add up, and at the end, some of those details from the start of the chain just no longer fit together with the details at the end of the chain. That is usually when they either make those details fit by heavily compromising proportions and relations, or break off the drawing in frustration. I know I certainly went through that phase, and I see a lot of beginners in exactly that struggle.

The idea to start drawing from big and simple shapes is the best way to escape that conundrum, as that way you establish a uniform scale and composition for the entire picture. You will still have slight mismeasurements, but they can no longer combine into huge gaps, as instead of a chain of details, you have a hierarchy of scales, which reduces the range of errors to that of a single mistake, not a combination of mistakes amplifying each other.

But between understanding the problem on an intellectual level to becoming able to act on it "naturally", without specifically having to focus on it all the time is still a long way to go, and by the time you understood the problem for the first time, you still have no practice with it.

The way you practice it, is you decide to focus on solving exactly that problem before you start drawing. Then after you are done drawing you look at the result and only think about, whether you solved that specific problem well. If you decide you did it decently, you will get your dopamine shot from that discovery, if you failed, you will feel a bit disappointed. That is basically the rewiring process in action on a neurological level, and how it feels on an emotional level. To make it work efficiently, you have to organise your work such, that you can repeat this experience as often as possible.

Note that solving that specific problem isn't the same as drawing a more beautiful picture. Beauty is about more than a single problem, and while you focus on one skill, other skills may even deteriorate a bit, and the overall result might look uglier. This may lead to frustration and the feeling, that you did something wrong, but you did not. You focused on a single problem, and once you feel that solving that specific problem becomes more natural you can go back to analysing your overall process and identify other skills that you also need to practice, find other problems to solve.

A practice that I did at that stage, which I feel helped me personally was "line economy bingo". But I have to add, I wasn't especially focused on figure drawing, as I was mostly into urban sketching. The rules I set for myself: I walk through the streets, until I find an interesting shape. Then I try to draw that shape with as few lines as possible (CSI-rule, one line is either an I for a straight line, a C for a curve or an S for a double-curve) A bingo is achieved, if any observer could recognize that shape without me pointing at it.

One advantage of the game: as I defined the depiction from that shape, I naturally used the whole size of the paper for the shape, and once I had established it and decided it needed more details for clarification I did not fall into the temptation of expanding to neighboring shapes, thus I automatically kept the hierarchy intact, and all additional details were always in direct relation to that initial shape.

If I found the shape of a windowsill interesting, the result would always be a draft of a windowsill, with as many details as I thought were necessary, not suddenly a draft of that windowsill, plus the window, plus the next window over, plus the house wall, and the car parked before it, and the roof, the chimney and the clouds above.

I think the recommended practice in drawing human figures is to stick to an established abstraction of a human body, and strictly and always start each drawing following the "line of action first, then head, ribcage, hip, then joints, then limbs" pattern. Or alternatively you could learn Reilly rhythms and strictly learn following that pattern.

This will not necessarily make your drawings nicer immediately, but it will make you focus on the big shapes in a human figure. Some people will keep sticking to this abstraction throughout a whole successful career, other artists will do it for a while, and find other, more personal ways to draw, once they no longer struggle with identifying big shapes on a human figure. But for focusing on big shapes in humans, it is pretty much established best practice.

You are developing a good sense for pose and volume in space. I would even think maybe for 30s/60s you are producing too many lines. The idea is to find a good drawing rhythm that you can keep steady whether you start a short or a long draft, so that in theory every shorty you draw could be the foundation for a lenghty work.

I wouldn't worry about hand and feet in such short sketches of a whole body. If you sketch in their outlines as variations of quadrangles around the 2 minute mark, that is still plenty of detail.