30 Minute Session 1
© 2019 Fist Of SpiritDone as part of a 30 minute class. The upper left was 5 minutes and the bottom was 10 minutes
My current goal is: Reduce stiffness and make my drawings feel more dynamic, energetic, fluid
Critiques help a ton!
Hi!
First of all, you captured quite well the energy of the top right pose, there's little stiffness to that.
I have two big things to recommend to you. Firstly, fewer lines. Also, you seem to be drawing from the wrist judging on the short hairy lines.
The abundance of lines is a problem because they add a bunch of stiffness to the pose. Kenzo from Love Life Drawing (Youtube, check him out) has this awesome advice I took recently and helped a lot: challenge yourself to capture poses, with only 12 lines. Give this a try.
The problem of short hairy strokes that probably come from the wrist is that it is neither efficient nor healthy. You can get Carpel Tunnel's from it if you strain your wrist too much. Drawing from the shoulder also takes away a lot from the fluidity of poses. What I would advise for you (apart from trying to use your shoulder and not really move your wrist when moving) is take a big piece of paper, mark out two points far away from each other and try to connect them with one big stroke. That helped me loads, but you're going to find better methods on Youtube (I'd recommend Proko and Love Life Drawing).
Here's two good things you did so it's not only advice: the top right pose suggest that you are getting closer to achieving dynamic poses, so you are on the right path. Also you didn't blew off your time on random details, like clothes and faces, which is also really nice.
All in all, keep up the good work!
Hi Lardes, thank you for your advice! I'm a bit confused though. On drawings that are timed 5 or 10 minutes, I shouldnt try drawing more lines to correct the pose? I feel like if I limited myself to 12 lines I would have to erase a lot, which defeats the purpose of figure drawing, right? I'm actually not sure haha.
I heard something similar about the wrist from an art teacher so I'm not doubting you. But I just don't know how to lower the strokes while also studying and making drawings more fluid/dynamic.
Thanks again for your critique, I hope to hear back from you soon!
Hi!
Oh yes, the eraser problem.
First of all, during 5 or 10 minutes I tend to limit myself to 12 lines when I put down the basics of the pose, so I'll have loads of time (~3 minutes) after that to elaborate further. The 12 line rule, in my opinion, is most useful during the 30 sec and 1-minute poses, it warms up my hands and my sight, so by the time I get to 5 minutes, it's much easier to put a pose down!
But yeah, what if a line comes out wrong?
Nothing. No. It's good. Get your lines wrong. I make it impossible to undo lines, I use non-erasable color pencils when I study by myself because I have some crippling perfectionism and I can't make myself to move on otherwise.
I wish I knew which channel put this video out, but this mangaka was asked how to improve fast, and he said that he once bought this pack of office paper (500 A4 pages) and he gave himself a year to fill the whole thing up. By his own account, that experiment revolutionized his art. Also, there was this "600-page sketchbook challenge" on YouTube like 2 years ago, where you had 30 days to fill this stupid big sketchbook. You _see_ the growth in the videos, it's amazing. Obviously, these are pretty sick projects, but nice examples of what's possible.
Honestly, I very much experienced that you get more growth if you focus on quantity over quality. It forces your brain to see correctly, and your hands to get more coordinated because you give it so much repetition, not improving is impossible. * This also applies to drawing from the shoulder. Another trick to teach yourself to draw with your whole arm is drawing in bigger sizes. A4 already does the trick, but the bigger, the more uncomfortable, and the more uncomfortable, the faster the growth. (I have a problem with pushing myself, so be better than me, braver and more fearless pls. Hehe)
Keep up the good work, draw lots, and good luck!
PS. I tried to write coherently, I'm just very passionate about this stuff and I can babble on about it endlessly hehe
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*Personal story:
I had a sketchbook (2016 fall-2017 spring) that had 24 pages left. I made a bet with a friend of mine to who would complete her sketchbook faster. I kid you not, I improved more in those 2 weeks than the 60 pages and 3 months that were before that point.
After that, I developed some serious anxiety over drawing _right_, that even made me experience some nervous breakdowns during live studies, but that's the extreme you can get when you become reliant on the eraser while being perfectionistic.