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Hi Kly Kuu.

I salute you for posting your drawings with numbers and even the reference pictures you drew from. Way to go! It's so much easier to give critique when it's clear like that.

Now for your drawings. It looks to me like you are off to a good start. You have a good understanding for where the main joints are and how they connect to the body.

My advice for you to progress would be to practice "the bean" to get a more natural start to the body in it's pose. You can watch Proko's videos on it on youtube. This is a very simplified and quick way to start the main shape of the body and how it is bent or twisted. The bean is a simple shape and can be done in seconds. Draw the bean shape, the centerline for the upper and lower torso then locate the head. The tilt of the shoulders and the tilt between the hip bones can be added just as light lines. This is a very good start in 30 second studies. Then as you get more relaxed doing this you can start to add simple legs and arms.

I see that you are doing big round balls on every joint. It's really not necessary to do so. A very small and light mark is enough to show where the joints are and as you get better you will not need them at all. The most important features to get down first is the ribcage and pelvic bone and then draw the centerline. Check out this video for a good start.Good luck!

&t=343s&ab_channel=Proko

• Thestripper edited this post on March 6, 2023 8:13pm.

Hi Alistairr4!

It looks like you have a good sense of linear perspective and you create some depth in your paintings using it. There is also something called "atmospheric perspective". Do a search and see some examples of this. In short it means that as things get further and further away from you the saturation decrease as well as contrast. Think of the wiev from a mountain top. The closest mountain might have black rocks, green trees, white snow and blue water lakes. The next mountain that is much further away will not look as sharp and the colors will be much more muted. Instead of black rocks and green trees it will all look more like different shades of greyish blue. This effect will be even greater in the next mountain after that until the mountains furthest away towards the horizon will almost blend in to the sky without sharp edges.

So color saturation decrease with distance. Another thing that can increase percieved depth in a painting is that things up close are sharper than things further away. If you try to add this theory to your paintings I think you will see a big improvement! As things get further away, make them more and more closer to gray and less and less sharp edges.

I second what Syd O said about James Gurney. He is a fantastic teacher and has put out many good videos for free on youtube. His book "Color and Light" is a great source if you want to go in depth.

Good Luck!

I don't know what happened but my reply just disappeared??

Anyway, just to give you an idea. You know when you are on a lecture and want to remember what's being said. You don't write down whole sentences because you don't have time for that. Instead you grab a few words and put them down so that later you will remeber by just reading those few words.

Gesture drawing is a bit like that but with shapes instead of words. In gesture drawing you take down "notes" so that later you can look at it and see what the pose was. You can use the gesture drawing to make a more detailed drawing later if you want to but the gesture drawing does not need details. For some reason the long flowing lines (line of action) are the most effective when doing gesture drawing. Have a look at Proko on you tube. He explains it well.

• Thestripper edited this post on February 22, 2023 5:27pm.

Here's James Gurney doing a quick sketch/painting. He has got a lot of good videos where he is explaining what he is doing step by step. Very helpful!

&ab_channel=JamesGurney

• Thestripper edited this post on February 22, 2023 5:16pm.

Yes, that is it! I sometimes go back and do 10 second poses where I do ONLY one stroke to describe the whole pose. Then maybe add a very simple head shape but nothing more. This can be a great way to get back to the basic shape that is so important. Sketch loosely and keep the same approach in longer studies.

• Thestripper edited this post on February 18, 2023 12:36pm.
• Thestripper edited this post on February 18, 2023 12:36pm.

Hi Khj2005413.

You have beautiful pencil stroke, shape and weight. It looks like you are not drawing too small. I think you would improve if you kept going in the same direction that you have been but added some simple perspective exercises. This will automatically make your gesture drawings less "flat" and the shape will get more depth from it. Drawing boxes and cylinders from different angles is very helpful and if you practise those they will automatically find their way into your gesture while still keeping that beautiful movements that you have got.

Good luck!

Hi Thephilistine!

You have a good start and you will improve if you keep going. After doing gesture drawing for a while you will learn to calm down as you draw, even very quick poses under 30 seconds. The key is not to draw more detailed depictions but rather to show more by generalizing what you draw. It is a good thing to warm up by drawing C and S shapes all over a paper again and again going both ways using light strokes and heavy strokes. This will loosen up your drawing arm and also make you more precise so that when you want to put down a stroke later, the stroke will land exactly where you intended it to.

Check out how Stan does it. See how few lines he is putting down and still manages to capture what the pose looks like:

?t=205

I agree with Evehalcyon that drawing cubes and cylinders. Draw a quick box and then rotate it a little bit and draw it again and again, twisting it or rotating it everytime. In extreme perspective (wide angle) foreshortening becomes even more apparent than in normal perspective. Meaning that things a little closer gets much bigger and things a little further away from you gets much smaller. "Wide angle" is in many ways an unnatural way of seeing things but can be effectful and enchance the sense of action in an image. It can be a great excersice just to draw a simple box shape from a few different angles using a wide angle view and then draw them again but in a normal perspective. What is the dirrerence and what makes it? In technical terms your angle of view on a paper is dictated by the distance of your vanishing points on the horizon. It's very rewarding to study this a bit just to know what's going on. There are some great books on this. Ernest W. Watson - Creative Perspective Made Easy, is a great source.

Hi X Vagrant!

For starters I would strongly suggest that you get some softer lead pencils so we can see what you are drawing better. Softer leads will put down a darker line. Try some 4B or 6B pencils. Watch on youtube how Proko sharpens and holds his pencil. This is a good start.

Hi Chloé87!

I love to see how you draw, or paint. It looks like you are having fun and trying out to draw everything from faces, hands and feet, animals and more.

It's so beautiful to watch all those different colors on the paper. These are some of my thoughts. When using a paintbrush or a fine liner or pigment pens it's impossible to sketch lightly. As soon as your paintbrush touches the paper it will leave a strong and very visible stroke. It's difficult to sketch lightly to try and find the right shapes. I almost always recommend people to use soft lead pencils but in your case, since you like collors, I would suggest that you buy a few watercollor pencils. Two or three different ones is enough for starters. These can be used to sketch with just like a lead pencil but the good thing about them is they will dissolve and dissapeare when you paint with watercollor over them.

This is a good way to combine sketching and painting and few artists out there do it better than James Gurney. Search for him on youtube. He has many short videos where he uses this technique.

Good luck!

• Thestripper edited this post on February 18, 2023 11:55am.

Hi.Syd O!

Jcmlfineart had some really good advice.

I would also like to add that you should try to use fewer strokes. An arm can be done with just one or maybe two long lines. Get rid of those short scratchy lines and do long and confident flowing lines, especially when you are drawing quick sketches like one or two minute poses.

Use a lead pencil because it will let you put down very light strokes or very dark if you want to.

I would not recommend the book "drawing on the right side of the brain" for gesture drawing like someone said though. Gesture is not about s not about depicting exactly what you see with all the details and bumps of the shape. It's more describing the way a pose "feels" using with simple shapes.

Good Luck!

• Thestripper edited this post on February 18, 2023 12:31pm.

Hi Khj2005413.

I like your drawings very much and I can for the most part easily understand the pose you are drawing. My advice for you to develope would be to draw bigger. It will be easier to find the big long lines that are so rewarding in quick sketches. I would also suggest to have a look at Proko's "bean shape" on you tube. This is really helpful because it starts the torso and hip bone with round shapes. I would advice against getting a harder pencil like someone previously adviced. Stick with something soft like a 2B or 4B. I like Faber Castell 9000 Jumbo pencils in 6B for my gesture drawing. They are not expensive and lasts a long time. They might be a bit too soft for regular paper but for smooth and cheap "newsprint" paper they work very well.

Good luck!

The best drawing-teacher is the artist who is doing the paintings you love the most. Maybe you were hoping to get a more specific answer on whether Loomis is better than Hampton or Stan Proko or Tim Gula or whoever. They are all phenomenal artists and teachers but one might fit your learning style better than the other.

I feel that Loomis is a good start, and Proko. The habit of practicing short gesture drawing as often as you can is essential. Then go and take in as much as possible from them all and from every other artist you like. Figure out what the artist is doing and why you like it, or why you don't like some other artists work. If you can pinpoint that then you will have a much easier time trying to figure out in which direction you can go to do art the way you like it.

Good luck.

• Thestripper edited this post on February 8, 2023 1:44am.

Hi Ahug.

Here's a fun experiment that I have found very helpful.

Depictions get way better if I can tell a story about them. It doesn't have to be a long story, just a little snippet that says something about what is going on.

I try to do this even in my 30 second gesture studies. What I mean by "telling a story" is that there is always more to a pose than just a person sitting or standing. Try and find that little story and it will help you.

You can do these exercises in one or two minutes just to try.

Imagine this pose and try to draw it: [A person sitting].

Then imagine this pose and draw it: [A man, or a woman - sitting on a beach, feeling the warm sun, the smell of the ocean and feeling the breeze].

Or this one: [After the battle was over he sat on the beach].

Or: [As she sat down with a cup of coffee and the newspaper, the doorbell rang].

Do they look the same? They are all just "people sitting"...

These can be short studies and quick to draw, but there is something different about them, right? The first example does not offer anything to draw inspiration from, it's just a person sitting nothing more. While the other examples invites the imagination to get to work, images form in your mind and now you know what to draw. Think about this: what is the difference in how a person looks when they are doing the same thing but they might feel sad or happy or angry or lost or scared or in love? If you have some story about what you are drawing the results always has more power in the end.

Imagine a person standing. Or... give this person some more meaning with a little story like "he loved those calm moments waiting for the bus" or perhaps "he waited for the bus but wished that it would never come".

I just made up these stories and you could probably make up your own to fit better to what you want to draw but I hope the idea is helpful for you. It was for me.

Good luck.

• Thestripper edited this post on February 8, 2023 1:17am.
• Thestripper edited this post on February 8, 2023 1:23am.

I love how loose those drawings are rendered. In 30 second poses this is a good level of drawing complexity, nothing more is needed to describe the pose. I can easily read and understand them all. I would advice you to try and avoid the short scratchy lines (like on the second pose on the first sheet, the one with two swords). Aim for flowing, long and light lines until you find the gesture and then put it down in one motion. Maybe those are contour lines or so called "rubber bands"? That's good practice to use those. Maybe it's time to try 60 second poses but try to clean things up a little. Don't take the complexity of your drawing any further but try to be more exact. In 60 seconds you can move a little slower.