Request for critique: 30 minute class

https://imgur.com/a/oe6S0dS The first three images are 30 second references, the fourth image is 1 minute, fifth and sixth are 5 minutes and the seventh is 10 minutes.

I care about capturing the energy, action, and volume of the pose rather than a figure's proportions. My end goal is to be able to draw a wider variety of poses and body types without reference. I'm planning on using some more action-shot style reference next, and after today's class I'm going to do some hand and foot studies too :p

I would appreciate any and all critique-- I'm deciding what to focus on for the next few weeks, and I'm sure I've got some blind spots.

Hey Ted,

great work! You use beautiful flowing lines and you seem to have a natural talent for grasping proportion.


There are two areas I could see immediate improvement.

Gesture lines: While you are doing a great job with these already (letting them cascade into each other nicely) you more often than not, seem to interrupt them at the joints (e.g. knee, shoulder etc) breaking up the flow. Especially if you are aiming for energetic poses I would search for lines that go further (like one whole side of a leg, or whole arm and shoulder area) than just the individual parts.


Shadow shapes: you make these beautful flowing drawings and then weigh them down with scribbly black areas as shadows taking away much of the flow. I would suggest designing your shadow shapes just like gesture lines for the figure complimenting the flow you have already established. Look for the core shadow if you want to take it one step further.


I took the liberty to do a quick draw over of your work. Hope that wasn't out of line but it helps a lot to get my point across: https://imgur.com/a/draw-over-TZt33X7


Hope that helps. Happy drawing!

You are focused very much on long flowing line, which gives especially your shorties a nice aestethic. In your longer drafts it becomes more apparent, that you don't have much experience with the proportions and relations of the big masses.

Yes, you expressly said, that is not your focus atm. Just in your longer drawings it becomes very visible.

My idea would be to deviate from your path a bit, to get acquainted with the typical blocks that are arranged by gesture, so, to dip a bit more into structure. Typical pathways would be manniquinization (this stuff: ), or focusing on only drawing the masses as boxes, to get more of an idea of their relative size, and how they are oriented toward each other. As the word "deviation" implies, that would probably be quite a break to your current practice, and I don't want to tell you to drop all you are doing and do something different instead. I just think occassionally looking into this aspect of drawing would nicely compliment your approach.