Forum posts by Eros

Continue with the gestures then as often as you can and this plateau will past. And just get used to being on the plateau. If you want some serious insight into this theory check out the book Mastery by George Leonard.

Yea of course I think those are everyones goals. But you mentioned about being on the right path which is why I ask what it is that you're ultimately trying to do. Drawing people then ok, lets get more specific. Do you want to be able to accurately draw the human form or does that take a bit of a back seat because you want to be able to get a accurate likeness of a person with portraits?

Well I guess the first thing to ask is what do you ultimately want to be able to do? I would say that the answer to this question is where your journey really begins. Since once you've established that you can then focus on what you should be doing and as time pasts you can see where you're going and how far you've come. Long as you keep drawing your are making progress. Good stuff by-the-way.

Draw everyday. It can be difficult to dedicate to when you have a lot of other things going on but, makes a huge difference is a very short period of time. Get a cheap sketch book and try to work on small pieces that you can complete too. That way your going through every step start to finish. It also gives you a nice feeling of accomplishment. You'll also have a small record of your progress and everyday you can see the fruits of your labor. I tried it myself for initially 20 days since it takes about that long to form a habit and after that it kind of just became something I did. Try associating it with a certain time as well (when you wake up or are about to go to sleep) if you can then it becomes almost a ritual. About every 10 days or so you'll see a few spikes in your abilities and you'll notice where you need to do some more work write those thoughts down on the back of the drawing. Or on it mark the changes you want to make or parts you don't like out with a red pen like teachers do in grade school since technically your grading yourself anyway. Lastly (since I'm starting to feel like I'm ranting) draw WHATEVER your favorite subject is. Really important while you're still forming the habit because it will make you want to draw. Apathy is really like the arch-enemy of the artist. I know this post was really long but I had and still go threw this so figured I'd help much as I could. BTW good job.

Welcoming any and all advice. These both are really rough sketches. Accuracy is my main focus but I can't help to think of speed as it takes me forever. The baby about 45m and the girl over an hour I didn't really care about the time then.

http://i.imgur.com/2YGtt1M.jpg?1

http://i.imgur.com/UHdOoGT.jpg?1

Ran into a few issue getting these images up but I think I finally got the hang of it now. Sorry for the hiccups.

file:///tmp/mozilla_visionary0/20160209_050153.jpg
file:///tmp/mozilla_visionary0/20160213_055703.jpg

I'm new to this site so if this doesn't show up about right sorry. My goal has been primarily portraits and after doing a lot of research and watching hours of Youtube videos I found a few methods that helped me out a lot. (Loomis method and the Reilly abstraction). I've been working on this for while now I think like 6 months and just wanted to get whatever tips I can far as speed goes. Cause right now it take me forever. The baby took about a hour and the girl a lot longer but I didn't really care about speed during that one. I've seen some people do sketches with twice the detail of these and it taking them about 20 minutes. And so I don't get into a rant here could you tell me what you think and any tips for improving speed without losing accuracy.