Messages du forum par Icouldntthinkofaname

I completed the challenge myself; it's very common to get tired or burned out at the end and phone it in, rather than progressing in a linear fashion. Are you getting feedback / logging your challenge on the website?

Alternately, DAB may just not be a good fit for you. A lot of people praise it and swear it's the only way to improve, but it's only effective for certain experiences and learning styles; I found that it wasn't very helpful for me, personally.

Thanks all! Made the post in a fit of frustration and genuinely appreciate the responses.

@Remyalyssa glad to hear that ! I've been doing more structure lately, but I'm having trouble getting the two to mesh, timer or no timer. I don't have a mentor but I try to get more specific advice, and go to forums and the like when I'm stumped. Asking artists I like isn't much of an option (I draw more stylized / anime-esque, so most of my inspirations don't speak English, and the ones that do either haven't replied or only have their emails open for business and commission inquiries). I'd definitely be interested in your practice!

@Cafeaulait The frustration is real! Good luck to both of us, lol.

@Mahatmabolika I do have a system, but it can be hard to stick to it (I try to start with action lines / torso, but I've drawn the head first for years and fall into that really easily). Any advice on the abstract shapes? I also try to focus on one thing at a time, but it's easy to forget what I was doing before when I do, so I've been trying to get as much as possible out of whatever practice I decide to do. I'm having a lot of trouble with the things coming together part (I jumped back into these after a short break, but during that time I was working on more construction, and both feel like they're getting harder, lol).

Re: goals, technically speaking I want to not have to think too hard about posing or proportions or making things look more dimensional, but broadly it's just to get more comfortable and go back to doing personal work (it's been nothing but studies for a while - I don't have any recent finished work beyond simple portraits / headshots). Also I still appreciate the encouragement! It's just frustrating to ask a more technical question and hear "keep trying you'll get there" in place of advice, but in addition to it is something else. Someone on here told me to try meditation once.

@Quiet Katt I mostly work digitally, but I do similar excercises for other things! I do these traditionally and mostly in pen so I don't Ctrl+Z constantly.

Please read the entire post first!

I have been drawing for 10+ years. Over the last 2 years, I tried to go especially hard on studies and practice. I have specific goals, I'm practicing frequently, I have taken classes, I'm not self-taught, I tried Draw A Box already, I've read all these textbooks and watched all of these YouTube videos, - but I feel like I'm 'stuck' and / or going backwards. I am not interested in motivational / mindset advice so much as trying to identify and fix the problem.

I'm also not looking for critique about my line confidence; I know I have issues, but I haven't found much that helps. I'm not drawing from my wrist (I wear a wrist brace, which makes it pretty hard to).

These are some 1-minute some practices. The first is from 2023. The second is from a few months ago. The third is from today.

This extends to longer timers, untimed drawings, and personal art as well, but I'm using these as examples because they're similar. Taking breaks hasn't helped much (also sorry about the tone of my post; I have gotten a lot of unsolicited or unrelated advice and want to be as clear as possible).

• Icouldntthinkofaname edited this post on August 4, 2024 5:27pm.

I've been seeing your posts, and I think what might help is to slow down a bit and really get into the nitty gritty of studying forms and anatomy (some of yours are very strong, so you already have a decent foundation that might make the curve easier) - right now it feels like you're subscribing to the idea that practicing more will automatically improve your skills, but are you stopping to absorb the information? Are you learning anything?

Doing things like this can sometimes cause you to reinforce your bad habits, and will eventually burn you out. It might be worth adding longer timers, or trying to do things without the use of a timer at all - just take your time and really observe your subjects.

• Icouldntthinkofaname edited this post on June 29, 2024 4:01pm.

Have had similar issues to you!

I'm not sure what your skill level or experience is currently, but you could either try to keep working on ten-minute poses (it might just be a matter of trial and error and coming to understand what 10 minutes "feels" like to you), or you could stick to shorter timers for now if your attention span isn't having it (I know mine doesn't always). You could also try doing poses without the timers at all, which might take off some of the pressure of trying to fill things in.

I've been exactly where you are with the issue of staying aware of an entire piece. What helped me was just to try to get all of my basics down "at the same time", and then refine them later. This site's tutorial is part of what helped me (starting with the two lines of action, one for the body and one for the arms), though I think I'd need more detail to offer better feedback. Would also recommend Michael Hampton's figure drawing book, which provides a good, simplified breakdown in a similar vein.

Have dropped off of LoA a bit in favor of doing slower, more careful studies and finding methods that work for me, with a small amount of success!

I've filled several sketchbooks (as well as practiced digitally again), and I'm working on learning to design things that I feel are a ways out of my current skillset (elaborate machines, for example), but I'm not sure what to do to further my studies when it comes to drawing people.

I've gone through Proko's courses, as well as Anatomy for Sculptors and Figure Drawing: Design and Invention, and while I'm practicing things from those still, I feel like I've fallen into a bit of routine, and I want to add more variety to my practices. I have tried Draw A Box and found it wasn't a good fit for me.

Ideas? Thoughts?

Thank you!!

Hey, thanks for the speedy reply and comments!!

I'm glad I was wrong here - that's genuinely good to know, thank you for clearing it up! I totally forgot about this, but I had a lot of internet problems (outages, etc) when I first started using the site. I'll keep an eye out and see if the problem persists! Thanks again!

Saw the other suggestion re: critique, so offering something based on that. I second the emojis not being all that helpful!

I think that the giving good critique guidelines are good in theory! But I needed to go out of my way to find them, and, having had some unpleasant experiences trying to get critique both here and elsewhere, it might help to put them somewhere a little easier to see than a direct link from the Your Studio page (stickied to the top of the critique forum, a shorter version in a small window above the new thread or comment sections, etc).

The critique forums and the critique requests section also contain the same posts, but are treated differently by the site (the forums don't have that "giving good critique" pop-up); it might also be helpful to have the button on "Discuss" go to the latter rather than the former, or to have the site treat them as the same section (if that makes sense).

Hi, I just checked my profile and noticed that it says I've logged... five hours.

I've been doing 30-minute classes a few times a week for a number of months now, and there was a stretch of time where I was doing them daily. In some cases, I had closed the window too early (did all 30 minutes but didn't see the end screen) or had been interrupted and didn't get back to completed class. Those ones don't seem to have been counted. I know for some I wasn't registered / logged in, but the ones I have done while logged in should be more than that.

Is it possible to have the site count by something like the images you've completed times for, rather than the entire class being marked finished? Or at least to not tie it to seeing the end screen.

Small suggestion spinning off of that is to have an option to opt-out of the tutorial or notifications about completing the tutorial. I've done it twice, but it was only just now marked completed (for possibly the same reasons those hours weren't logged). The tutorial is great for beginners! But I'm here brushing up on existing skills rather than learning to draw, and only completed it much later.

• Icouldntthinkofaname edited this post on May 10, 2024 4:47pm.
• Icouldntthinkofaname edited this post on May 10, 2024 4:48pm.

Maybe some of your problem is that you don't have an aim. Why are you drawing? What's your goal? Are you doing anything outside of studies?

Also, I've similarly had trouble with Loomis. Someone sent me