critique on 2 figure drawings and one skull drawing.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1kAoEyI_FempqTk8mSsJ-xKHCbbnzu2gq?usp=sharing

Hello, I've been drawing for a couple of years and have improved quite a bit in the past two. I focus mostly on gestures and lines, getting them to resemble reality.

I'm currently in my second year of high school,( I'm 17 ) in the art program. our school focuses mostly on abstract art so, some critique to help me with my realism drawing would be much appreciated. :)

thank you

The basic thing with gesture drawing is it's not supposed to be pretty or very accurate. It's you and a subject for maybe as much as 5 minutes, and you're scribbling down notes to yourself so you can remember what moves.

You can actually do a gesture drawing of a skull. To do it, you're asking yourself what is moving. For a skull, mostly that's going to be the light on the skull is moving, and you have to figure out how to communicate that. Not easy. But each time you try, you'll come up with something a little different.

Your figures look like they're pretty long sketches, probably a lot more than 5 minutes. It's very hard to judge the quality of someone's gestures in a nice clean outline drawing. If you're trying to get critique on the quality of your gestures, the best thing is to go through the tutorial and do a 30m class, then show us your 30s sketches. Those will be messy and look awful. But they'll show your thought process a lot more clearly.

My entire first year of figure drawing as an adult, my 30s figures looked like sperm with a squiggle and sometimes a head. That's ok. That's normal. We all start there.

Well there, Dorthea, I've looked at, flipped, rotated, and grayscaled all of your photographs, it they state to me, that, as far as gestural sketching with an emphasis on realism goes, you're definitely on the right track.

So, I've got one tiny little, and smaller bit of advice, it would be these two: I love the range of animation and motion on your skull and nude figures; especially the skull, nicely observed, but I really want to work out your myelin with this link right here: Line of Action Learn to Draw here (hope this works, if it fails, please look for it....!) And while you're at it, unwind yourself with 141 minutes of 29 second poses, pretty please????? (141 x 60/29, 8460/29=292 quick drawings of poses, bones and muscles)

The legitimate reason why is because of two things: First of all, if you want your gestures to have some realism, then please go for it. And second of all, this link right here:https://www.myisense.com/blogs/blog/improve-muscle-memory-with-better-sleep. As a result, it's from the Daniel Coyle advice book, The Little Book of Talent, where this bit of advice is:

Practice doesn't makes perfect; Practice makes myelin, and myelin makes perfect.

My thumbs up to you, good luck from me to you, and I hope you'll find these completely and absolutely concrete and beneficlal.

Polyvios Animations.

P.S.

Some very good abstract art, that your high school teaches, always come from a great classical training. So please take it with a grain of salt. Have a great morning.

You have come to the right place. Line-of-Action (L-o-A) has a great deal for you to learn from. It has faces, hands & feet and figures to draw. You can get additional figures to draw from On Air Video (free). You are going in the right direction. I would recommend a good study of anatomy - both bone & muscle structure. Be sure to make drawings of what you find and keep them close by. Learn what you can from your current art classes. They can help you in designing works. Remember: Practice makes better. (no matter what you are doing). Keep up the work and study and someday it will pay off.

Wow, Dorthea2410! You've already got a good sense of proportion and perspective. The best advice I ever got from my drawing teachers was that I needed to loosen up. My lines were too rough and segmented. They suggested drawing standing up and drawing on bigger paper. If you don't have an easle, you could use those large wooden clip boards they sell at art stores (way less expensive). By drawing standing up you'll be drawing with your arm and less with your wrist. Having a relaxed wrist leads to smoother lines ("less jaggies" my teacher said). Other than that, I'd say you're way ahead of me when I was a sophmore in high school. Keep at it and with a strong portfolio any art school would be glad to have you.