50 Min figure study
© 2024 Gustave Wannabe
Aunt Herbert
You eventually found decent shapes, but my first spontaneous question was "what did he do for 50 minutes"? Then I noticed all the signs of erasure marks.
Just from a point of view of optimizing the grind, I would recommend getting a big stack of cheap paper, and start popping out a lot of drafts within a rather short time for each. Ultimately about a minute or two for each, and keep the erasure in a locked box outside your reach for now.
First results probably wont look great, because you haven't got a lot of experience with measuring yet, but don't fret too much about it, a lot of the learning will be done between your visual cortex and your hand. If you spend less time per draft, you can fail faster, and the repetitions will get you used to finding the initial lines way quicker and more confidently.
I would recommend using either the "class mode" or the "same time" mode on this site with a low time setting, and try to focus on how the head, chest and hip are aligned to each other.
I wouldn't go back to spending 50 minutes on a draft, until your first one or two minutes of drawing can produce a foundation, that is worth pouring that much time into.
Gustave Wannabe
Thanks for the reply! I will try to do that more often, but I already have been hitting the class mode pretty hard and have been doing plenty of quick drawings, my longer figures are looking better now and less sloppy. I will focus more on 1-2 minute sketches to really hammer in form though.
Aunt Herbert
Well, attempting longer drawings is off course valuable, just to understand where the quickies will eventually lead to, but so far I probably wouldn't go beyond maybe 10 minutes at most. My estimate is, that you don't benefit a lot from the last 40 minutes of a 50 minutes draft, and you would have used the time better to draw 5 imperfect studies than to frustrate yourself with one unending draft.
Hello, Gustave, how are you doing tonight?
Nicer work on your forces, spaces, forms, relationships, and of course, your bone and muscle anatomies as well. But, the gestures all seem too colder and stiffer to me and my tastes. Would you like to please just go ahead with our interactive drawing tutorial right here on our website for now?
The reason why you could, should, ergo would go ahead with this drawing tutorial is because of many things, including getting back on the horn called drawing fundamentals; furthermore being even more into the whole of your figure sketches. For more details, please look into the Proko gesture drawing videos for free, to overcome your and our obsolescence.
Let's hope you'll find these completely and totally useful.
Thanks for the advice, If you are talking about the 15-minute tutorial, I already took that almost a week ago, and I have been doing the practice since. if you are insinuating I should retake it then I will do that. I will look into the proko videos though, I have heard from multiple people they are really helpful.