Am I doing it right?

Hi everyone,

I've been drawing for a few years with no training but I found my drawings very hit and miss. So recently I took it upon myself to educate myself (with some help from the Vilppu manual + DVD's) So im new to all this figure drawing etc and I was wondering if im doing it right. Here are a few 30 secs gesture drawings.

http://i60.tinypic.com/20hobow.jpg

http://i60.tinypic.com/2a1fee.jpg

http://i62.tinypic.com/24opy8j.jpg

P.s Sorry for the poor quailty my scanner is broke so I had to use my phone.

Thanks for stopping by.

First off welcome to the site! :) Glad to have you with us!

I looked at your drawings and I think you're doing a great job with it so far. I'm a bit curious about your more polished works - it will help us gauge your skill level and figure out what kind of critique will benefit you the most.

You definitely captured the motion in the gesture drawings however, and that's a great first step. :) Keep it up!

One thing you may want to try is to bump your drawings up from stick figures to shape models. It will be of great use to you as a base to work from. By shape models, I mean defining the torso and hips in your gesture drawings on top of what you already have. Adding joints is also important to figure out how the limbs connect.

http://i.imgur.com/W0tTjbn.png

This is one of my gesture studies. If you compare them to yours, you will notice mine have extra shapes and joint areas.

If you haven't already, check out these articles:

https://line-of-action.com/gesture-basics-1-line-of-action/

https://line-of-action.com/gesture-basics-2-torso-and-hips/

https://line-of-action.com/gesture-basics-3-joints/

They will help you figure out how to advance your gesture drawings to include the things I mentioned above.

Like I said before, these gesture drawings are a great way to make a solid base to work off of. Quickly breaking down the body and putting it onto paper in simple shapes is a very common way for many great artists to start a drawing with. But if your base is missing things (such as joints or a torso and hips) it will make it more difficult. Get the base down, and it's ten times easier to make the final image come out great! :)

Please keep practicing and keep us up to date! If you have any other questions, fire them away. :) We'll be more than happy to help you however we can.

Thanks for the welcome Sanne,

I will take you advice and start to add some shapes and joints, I will do some more later and post them up.

Here are a few of my favorite sketches, If you want to see more just ask.
http://i60.tinypic.com/2nl8g1h.jpg
http://i59.tinypic.com/30t781i.jpg
http://i62.tinypic.com/e67nyq.jpg
http://i62.tinypic.com/xnrpmw.jpg
http://i62.tinypic.com/b5h8gy.jpg

Recently Ive taken a big liking towards cartoon pin ups (All there are drawn from different cartoon pin up I like but I tried to put my own spin on)

http://i58.tinypic.com/mmbqlh.jpg (This one looks so much like Paris Christou pin up but I wasnt even looking at one of his drawings at the time :s lol)
http://i59.tinypic.com/scx4s7.jpg
http://i61.tinypic.com/6853cx.jpg
http://i57.tinypic.com/2j0l74k.jpg

My background is in Tattooing but you've properly guessed that already. I like drawing in a cartoony style as you can see. I use alot of reference to get my ideas onto paper but where I use alot of reference my drawings always end up looking like someone else's work (If you get what I mean) but if I dont use references my drawings end up looking like scribbles on paper. I was advice to start at the basics and go to some life drawing classes, but sadly I dont have any life classes in my area so a search on google lead me here and a friend of mine gave me the vilpuu drawing manual and dvd's to help.

So basically im starting from the bottom hoping to improve, When it comes to criticism be as harsh as you like I here to improve and I wont get upset if you dont like it.

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

Also feel free to recommend any books. DVD's, sites etc to help me on my journey.

I attempted to add some shapes to my stick men

http://i61.tinypic.com/34zhobm.jpg
http://i59.tinypic.com/10nsz1c.jpg
http://i57.tinypic.com/1z36n40.jpg

That's a huge step up!

One thing I notice is that you are drawing the torso as a shape that goes from shoulder to hips in about 90% of these drawings. I would encourage you as you continue practicing to work on recording JUST the rib cabe -- that might mean a second shape within your "full" torso shape, or it might mean replacing the current torso shape with a just-ribcage shape. Either is fine, so long as you are training yourself to find the ribs.

The reason I recommend this is that there are these two major structures in the trunk of the body, the hipbones and the ribcage, and they are inflexible. You can rotate them all over the place and see them in different positions and angles, but in reality they don't change that much. But then there's this super important several inches that separates ribcage and hipbones where there are no wrap-around bones. This area is quite flexible and changes shape constantly as the tilt of hips or chest changes, bringing the two major bone structures closer or further apart.

Knowing where the ribcage actually begins and ends and where the more squishy bits live can help oodles in composing very dynamic and active poses, and held you understand how to more realistically shade your figures.

Keep it up! :)