Forum posts by Eshlost

Update after 2 weeks. Majority of these are either 30 or 60 seconds long gestures! (There are a few obvious exceptions).
Progress goes from top to bottom of the page. Would you say I've improved at least a bit? What is the most repetitive mistake? Anything that comes to mind, please tell me

Hello,

First of all, your poses look really solid, I think you're heading in the right direction! If those are meant to be gestures/ quicksketches I believe you could improve them by considering the following:

- Exaggeration. Drawings aren't supposed to be photographs, they must convey the flow, the energy, the force of the pose! If you see someone slanting leftward - draw them slanting even further! Twisted sitting pose? - twist it further! etc. I believe that would give more life to some of the poses. Even when a person is standing still, Human body is so gestural you can always invent a few twists and bends of your own and it'll seem natural!

- CSI lines. There's a wonderful video by Stan Prokopenko about gesture on YouTube, if you haven't watched it yet, where he insists that you shouldn't use a line more complex than C or S for the curve (Lines that look like C and S) and I for straights. Anything more complex than that risks raking away from the flow, think of it as making a road too "bumpy". Same is with the eye when it is trying to follow a line that it too zig-zagged. Now, this only really applies to the first lines, the gesture lines, later on when you add shapes you can do all sorts of lines of course!

-Trying focusing less on the shape of the form but more on the flow of the pose itself. In some of the drawings I feel like you're more focused on getting the overall 2D shape rather than making sense of what your own drawing needs! You aren't copying, you are drawing from a reference and subtle differences in angles or shapes aren't just fine, they're great to have!

As for advice on how I think would be nice for you to practice: Try to separate gesture practice from form and/or anatomy practice for now. For example, you could do 1 week of gesture practice only, then another week of studying the shapes of the body and then third week you could combine the two, I'm sure it'll bear great results!

Good luck : )

Hey, thanks for your feedback.
Yeah hand proportions actually seem odd on the top left one, I see that now. Although I'm not sure I get what did you mean with the muscle training. Those are supposed to be gestural lines (At least the 5 - 10 min ones :p) meaning that there are no muscles included.

Hey,
The poses have been timed with 5, 10 and 20 minutes. The ones that are 3, 7 and 15 is just I thought "I don't need extra, time I think i'm done" (3 minutes one was timed 5 minutes, 7 ->, 15 ->20).
I've started only doing 60 and 30 second timers now, so I'll report in a week more so we could see if I'm going in correct direction, I'd appreciate if you could comment then! Thanks a lot!

Are you, by any chance, following Angel Ganev's tutorials on those?
I feel like it.
If that's the case, I think it's great, you're doing great! But you need to keep in mind those eyes are stylised and simplified. Stylisation is good, once you know the fundamentals, but if you rush into stylisation ahead of time, you risk becoming the second -insert-name-here- and not discover your own unique style! To avoid that, try drawing eyes like other artists (not just Angel) as well! That way you'll develop flexibility and figure out what do you like in different ways people draw eyes.

Another suggestion from me would be to try and draw realistic eyes as well. I know people nowadays frown upon advise of trying to draw realism, if you are not interested in drawing realism, but I think it's really important to understand reality, before you start stylising it. That might be just me though :)

Now, to a more specific critique, one of the more repetitive mistakes I see would be:

(If you can't tell what it says due to my awful handwriting it's this: "Top eyelid goes further than bottom one because it needs to protect the eye from the rain)

This is the only major flaw I see in some of those, other than that It's great! Keep up the good work :)

• Eshlost edited this post on March 13, 2022 2:53pm. Reason: Typo

Well, I will keep going I guess. I just don't know what am I looking to improve at what am I supposed to think about what should I find? What must "click"? I don't understand.
I'll report the results in 2 weeks, so far I just feel like I'm developing bad habits and actually getting worse.

Happy to help :)

Hey, thank you for kind words.
I've watched the videos suggested by polyvios and I think I took away the same thing you've said, that I should be focusing on faster gestures, but... I don't know why but somehow I feel like 30 or 60 second gestures turn out to be stiffer than the longer ones I make. I think it's because I usually take my time to observe the figure, while most artists I've watched doing gestures kind of jump right into it the very second they see the pose, however if I do that it really feel like some mindless doodles with no gesture to speak of. It's odd to me because most suggestions I've got from youtube videos or elsewhere was the opposite "If your gestures seem to be stiff then try doing quicker poses".
Any suggestion on that?

Hello!
If I could give you a word of advice it would be not to focus on the anatomy itself yet. Anatomy comes in later once you have established good gesture, proportions and later shapes!
Initial line of action seems to be well placed (I assume that because I can tell which references have been used, means you've conveyed the pose well :) ), so you need to learn where to go from there. I suggest you watch these (In this exact order):