Daily class session ready for critiques

For this one session I followed the advice of not stopping the timer and using as few lines as possible, I think the result might speak for itself. I was not even capable to draw construction lines or solid shapes at all for how little time i had.

https://imgur.com/a/ZDyx103

• Idon'tknow edited this post on December 20, 2023 10:53pm.

Ok, I did one session and scanned in all the shorties too, to give you an idea with what I mean with: you are drawing way way way too much in that first minute. (I probably should have increased the contrast while scanning, the shorties are a bit hard to see)

https://line-of-action.com/art/view/9071

You aren't supposed to finish the entire drawing in under one minute, the idea is to find a few lines to build a long form drawing upon. If you finish the draft in one minute, what do you plan to do with the rest of the time, once you go to 5 min, 10 min, 25 mins, or longer? Keep embellishing a flawed and hasty foundation? That way only lie tears and frustration.

There are 3 elements and 2 relations you need to get right, the head in relation to shoulderline/ribcage, and the ribcage in relation to the hip. Don't fixate on finishing the outline, don't mess around with drawing entire limbs. If head and/or torso are partially hidden behind limbs, you sometimes need to indicate that, but stick conceptually to drawing head and torso, not the limbs. If the limbs are stretched out in an epressive manner, that clearly informs the curve of the spine, use at most 1 line to indicate 1 limb. The foundational core of each pose are head and torso, and the short poses are all about focusing on only sketching out head and torso.

It also needs to be said, that for all my preaching, I myself still suffer from sloppy and hasty lines and constructions a lot. There are a lot of people, who do these first lines way more beautifully designed and executed with more intent, than I do.

• Aunt Herbert edited this post on December 21, 2023 11:34am.
• Aunt Herbert edited this post on December 21, 2023 11:52am.

One more thing, what am I supposed to do if i have to correct the drawing if it is quite obvious i am not representing the action at all? Should I make the very first line the best possible one by the get-go or move on and make it a learing opportunity for later? Sorry if I am still asking all these questions, I just want to know if my eyes are not decieving me. Thanks again for your help.

Greater job on drawing the quicker poses, but not stopping the timer. I love the motion and flow. I think your skills are definitely building up fairly quickly, but I feel that the lines of action in your poses are not too looser enough yet. Why don't you please liven them up with 6 minutes of 30 second poses? (12 poses)

As a result, your lines of action can and will become lesser than stiff, but more vital, energetic, but spontaneous in your expressions. For most info on learning how to distill your traits of the poses, kindly refer to any drawing from Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics.

My hats off to you.

Idon'tknow, I guess it depends a bit on how flawed the line is. If it immediately bugs you out, draw another one. I mean, ofc you should try to make every line the best possible one, but I think while drawing, the focus should be mostly on finding and designing the next line to draw, not on correcting and repeating the same line over and over. Especially in the shorties at the start, you'll have your next attempt within a few seconds anyways.

If you plan to spend 10 or more minutes on a draft, it makes more sense to be self-critical during the first lines, but for me during drawing it is more important to keep your eye on the overall composition and designing the next line. Erasing and correcting what has already been drawn, for me has about even chance of making the drawing worse, by overcorrecting, by diagnosing the error wrong, by just leaving more noise and dirt on the paper, so I generally only do it, when I am 100% absolutely certain it will improve the drawing.

I think what I would most often correct is, when I twitch while drawing a long line. Like, I plan to draw a straight line connecting two specific points, but I fail to coordinate my arm muscles correctly, and end up with a crooked something, that misses the end point by an inch. That's an obvious mistake, and I would redraw a straight line instead. But if that happens more than once during a session, it is a sign, that my drawing motions got flawed, and I might interrupt the session to practice drawing long straight parallel lines into that specific direction to find a better motion.