i'm a beginner, here are my first 3 30 min figure study classes!

hi! i'm really very nervous to post this, but i really want to get better! i've drawn before, on and off for my entire life, but i still consider myself an absolute beginner since i've never really attempted to commit myself to something like this before. please let me know what you think and where you think i should go from here! :]

day 1:

day 2:

day 3:

very good! keep it up!!

Great start! Focusing on capturing the main line of action seems to be working well, the main gesture is clear to see, especially in the longer poses. The lines look more confident on day three, the slighly wider pen means they look less scratchy. Keep it up!

You capture the action the torso nicely with your center line. I recomend applying the same thought to the limbs, like the gestures in the ones on the top right of the first drawing and the bottom right of the last.

Hey! This is looking great so far!

I think something that'll really help you out, would be to try practising drawing motion, and lines of action, rather than structure. In university life drawing classes, we're often asked to do multiple versions of the same, or similar poses. One that focuses on structure, like you're doing here; lots of boxes and cylinders to represents the puzzle pieces that keep us together, and then poses that focus moreso on just the outer line of the body, paying attention to how the body curves, how fat and muscle hangs off of and affects the silhouette of our bodies. Look up examples of gestural life drawing, and try to imitate what they're doing.

Also, keep it lose! Don't press undo, just do single long, confident strokes, rather than hundreds of short sketchy ones (I'm still struggling to get out of this habit). If you happen to mess up, or you aren't happy with a line, don't stress over it, and don't erase it! Just keep going, and know that you'll do better next time. Allowing yourself to make mistakes and move on, rather than doing everything in your power to fix them, will help you improve a lot faster.

Best of luck, and keep up the good work!

thank you all so much for your feedback, i really really appreciate it and i will make sure to put your critique to good use! :D

Nice work, sludge!

I suggest that some of the quick poses are a bit too rigid, and I really need to see a lot more life and fun to them. Why don't you please loosen yourself up and lighten your touch up, with 30 minutes of 29 second quick sketches???? (1800/29=62 quick light scribbles)

The reason why is because of this video right here:

And because, if you need a goal for getting the chance to kiss the paper or screen, then I encourage you to go with it.

Good luck to you.

Hey!

These look pretty good! And you can definitely see a lot of improvement, even in day 1-3.

Although I'm not an expert, heres the advice I would give:

-Watch the proportions, in some of the sketches the hips are almost bigger than the ribs! Since this is a quick sketch its easy to so that.

-Getting the distance between the hips and ribcage right. It's hard to tell if it's right at first glance, but the full drawing can end up looking weird. This is something I'm struggling with as well.

All in all I think you did really well. The best advice I can give you, though, is to keep practicing. Have fun! :D

Hello, it's nice to see such a devoted artist; as for your practices, if your goal is to study figure drawing then the main problem that I see is that you're not trying to capture the gesture but instead looking for proportions.

Proportions in a figure drawing are important, but the come later in the run, first you have to get a feeling for gesture, to do so don't use straight lines but curvy ones like the s or c, a really good source of info for that is the proko channel on youtube

&list=PLtG4P3lq8RHGuMuprDarMz_Y9Fbw_d2ws.

I hope it'll help you improve and make your journey much more enjoyable!

Hi Sludgejudy! Thank you for posting and I really admire your courage to request a critique!

From what I can see with the 30 seconds poses, where you drew the torso, hips and sometimes the head shapes, I would suggest to draw faster. The faster you draw, the more information you will be able to put in your drawings. Don't hesitate to be messy, to be rough as it's close to if not impossible to draw everything in 30 seconds, but it has to be readable, to be clear (not clean). A tip for quick sketches would be to draw lighter, so you can make lines thicker if you want to correct faster.

If you go faster on the 30 seconds poses, you will have much more time for your 1, 5 and 10 minutes poses, time you can spend on drawing limbs for example! I see on your third day that in your 10 min pose, you had time to put some contour lines for the torso, which looks pretty nice!

Good luck on your art journey! Cheers!
Firis

PS: I really like how loose your "Lines of Action" (the main line coming from the head) is for all your poses!