Critique of 10 min poses plus a 30-min class

Hello everyone,

I am a beginner artist and would love some critiques to help me improve. I used to dabble in digital painting when I was much younger (ie. drawing my Neopets back in the early 2000's haha) but I'm just getting back into drawing. I want to start working on my fundamental skills and gesture drawing in particular. I love the quote “Practice doesn't make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect.” I want to work on the right things rather than practicing the wrong thing over and over again, so I need your wonderful eyes to help me!

The link below has my 10 minute sketches done using my wacom tablet, as well as one 30-minute class of sketches on paper. For various time and privacy reasons it's often easier to work digitally, but that will change in a couple weeks and I'll be able to do much more pencil work since I know that's important. I also know I need to get better at using long lines instead of smaller sketchy ones, but right now I don't have the muscle control to get nice clean lines. I warm up every day by drawing a bunch of circles, loops, and waves - any other suggestions to get better control?

Hope this link works and thanks so much for your feedback!

https://photos.app.goo.gl/P7XqAPqwuEhRctJ26

Well, march, that's a very great work of performance of the 10 minute sketches. Very amazing work on the foreshortening. Incredibly dynamic job on the proportions and perspecitve on the human forms, indeed.

So, if I was to give you a postively and completely truthful suggestion, I'd say, I feel a bit of rigidity in most of the 10 min bodies, here. I've got two pieces of advice: 1) Please use a timer, or timer app on your iDevice or Android, to discipline yourself in your drawing warm-ups. (2) If you want more faster, and more than confident strokes, then I encourage you to please use your whole entire shoulder and arm, instead of just your wrist. The reasons are because: First of all, it could be useful and encouraging to your learning curve in anything(and everything, I mean it), if you'd get a whole lot better with practice, and more; second, to be able to use lesser and less muscles to co-ordinate, because it can and shall be able to get your much more broad strokes down pat.

For more details, here is a link: https://buffer.com/resources/why-practice-actually-makes-perfect-how-to-rewire-your-brain-for-better-performance/

BTW, good luck, cheers to you, and I hope you've found these completely and totally beneficial, useful, helpful, and informative.

Thank you so much! That's a great idea about using a timer for my warm-ups. I will pay attention while I'm drawing and work on using my whole shoulder and arm like you suggested. And that link is really fascinating! I love how it even mentions “Perfect practice makes perfect” haha. So important to be mindful in our practice.

I really appreciate you taking the time to give detailed and helpful information!

I love how you catch the light and shadow on most of your figures. Your self-critique of your short sketchy lines is something I struggle with myself. But I do see some nice long lines here and there, so good job working on that!

You seemed to portray the overall figures very well. I suggest perhaps considering why you didn't get to the shading in some figures in the same time frame while you did in others.

Muscle control is a pain, I find myself researching warm-up exercises constantly. Try looking for new ones. If some don't work, don't keep them though, different artists seem to find different exercises helpful. I do dots and then try to connect them with perfectly straight lines in a single stroke.

Thank you for your thoughtful comments! I especially like what you said about trying a variety of warm-up exercises. Doing dots and connecting them with a straight line sounds awesome, and I'll try looking up other ones to find the ones that work best for me.