Forumberichten van Kim

*cough* new feature just released will help with this *cough cough*

It's funny you ask this question today of all days, because my suggestion would be to flip the source material upside down -- try to trick your brain into seeing the figure as a collection of shapes instead of instantly going, "Oh, that's a human, and here's my set of pre-defined symbols I use for a human."

or do you need to use more than 5-7 lines?

My question about this is: "need to" for what purpose? It depends very much on what you're trying to achieve in your practice and with the end product of your drawing. However, for 30 second gestures, the usual "point" is to help warm up your brain and get it ready to see and make decisions about what is most essential to a pose, what will convery the feeling or energy of what you're seeing as quickly as possible. That's why the length of time is so very short - you're not really supposed to be able to capture an entire figure in that length of time, you're supposed to have to make hard decisions about what to capture and what to leave out. The idea of limiting how many lines you use is a great one for this same sort of training. For most people, the short length of time just naturally limits the number of lines they can make anyway. For others, adding this second layer of restriction helps to sharpen their thoughts and learning process even further.

Of course, if you are making a finished piece of art that is meant for display, it's entirely up to the artist how many lines they want to include. But when it comes to exercises that are meant to teach you something, push you out of your comfort zone, and don't necessarily need to be finished pieces you hang on a wall -- I think this can be a useful exercise for a lot of people. :) Depends on what you're working on learning right now though!

• Kim edited this post on September 16, 2018 8:16pm.

I would go even further and say: If a day comes when you CAN get an entire figure down in 30 seconds, switch to 10 or 5 second warm-up excercises. The purpose of the 30-seconders is to teach your brain to see the essence of the pose and force it to prioritize what's most important to communicating that feeling or movement. If you can draw a whole body, you have to make WAY fewer hard choices about what's "essential" or "core" :)

Back to your other drawings: I'm really enoying the way you've captured special patches of light on the figures by just circling them. It gives them a much more 3D appearance without the need for actual shading. I think I'm going to try doing more of that myself, now that your drawings have reminded me of it!

I will add this to my list of stuff to work on down the line :)

In reference to not wanting to "just" say good job - I would invite you to reconsider not wanting to do that, whether or not this feature goes into effect. Feeling your efforts are seen can be just as motivating and contribute to improvement as actual critique, especially if you are new to receiving critique and need the extra fuel to keep going even as things you are doing wrong are pointed out to you. :)

Just following up, Hornet! Has the issue resolved? Still the same?

I've been invited to be interviewed about Line of Action on a local community TV station! They are asking for visuals to show during the interview -- would anyone like to have their drawings included in the segment? I'm suspecting they will not want to show nudity, but sketches of various skill levels and from the various tools would be awesome. :)

Hover over your user icon in the navigation, and click "Submit photos" in the dropdown that appears. :) That link is only useful for logged-in folks though, so it's not great for sharing.

The general guidelines for the program are here: https://line-of-action.com/photo-bundle-policies although as pages to share it is on the boring side.

In terms of promotion, I'm working on a landing page that explains the program in a much more punchy way, specifically as something that can be shared on social media. Gimme a few weeks here to settle the moving dust and I'll have that out for everyone. It'll most definitely end up in the news. :)

I'm pretty new to Habitica myself, but I'm so pleased to see there's interest! I'll look into doing this :D

Oh yes! I think basically everyone wants that. :) It's easily one of the most requested things of all time, along with more racial and age diversity.

We didn't raise enough money in our recent fundraiser to schedule another photoshoot right away, although it's something I hope to do in the future should we have enough subscribing members to support proper photoshoots. In the meanwhile, we've added the "submit photos" option in the hopes that other photographers out there will help us expand our library in many different ways.

Plantlife has been a popular suggestion over the years, and I will look into it. For now though, the next scheduled tool is interior/exterior environments. :)

(Deleting first half of my post because Sanne beat me to it!)

I do want to echo the request to know what browser and device we're dealing with here though. I've heard this report before, but so far have been unable to get any details about the circumstances under which it occurs. I would so love more info. :)

A 5 minute gesture executed in 10 lines or less, was one of them.

I just wanted to call out how much I love this goal, and to acknowledge how much time you gave yourself to do it in! That takes a lot of patience and deep thought.

You can clearly see progress in this collection of poses! Good job.

One thing I'm not seeing is any under-construction, which can help dramatically with improving. I know it's very tempting to skip doing the line of action and drawing the underlying shapes because they don't feel like part of the finished drawing, but they will inform both your understanding and an improved finished piece.

I'm also seeing a lot of furry lines, where you've used lots of little short lines to make up what is essentially one line. This makes the piece look less confident. Try to draw with longer, smoother storess. Less is more! With fewer limes, it's also harder to hide mistakes, so this might feel very jarring at first.

Great job committing to your practice! I look forward to seeing more from you :-)

Please excuse any typos, I'm writing from my phone

Do any of you use Habitica to motivate yourself? Would it be interesting at all to have a line of action Guild and/or challenge(s) on Habitica? :)