Jun '22

Introduction

Hey Everyone!

I am a 25 year old graphic and motion designer for advertising. I started this course to regain some ownership over my creativity. Working as a corporate creative almost stamped out any love I had for creating. I originally got into design for advertising because I wanted to hone my eye for composition, color, layout, etc. while holding down an office job that would support me.

I almost feel like I had the opposite experience as art started to feel like work for me and anything that I produced that wouldn't look professional to clients or wouldn't look good on my portfolio started to feel like a waste of time. Since starting this course and focusing on the nude figure drawing section I have regained a spark for creating that I have not had for a LONG time. Seeing work hit the page that has no other purpose other than strengthening my skills feels great as I don't have to make sure everything is perfect before moving on, just that I learned something.

I am now looking to get into tattoo art mainly, but any job that allows me to create work that is at least somewhat within my interest is the overall goal. I have always been really hesitant to draw people as they were never my strong suit, but I have found a great love for it completing the nude figure drawing section of the course. I would love any critiques or advice for my continued study of the human form.

Thanks for reading that lengthy intro for anyone that did, I felt like I needed to share that to give context for the projects I am going to share from here on out! Lots of love and thanks for looking :smile:

Constuction

Jun '22

Hello there Andrew, and welcome to the forums!

I'm glad more and more people are joining along with the same passionate aspiration of developing their art. Unfortunately, back when I worked on a different field than art ( web developer, ugh ) I had a similar case, where my work would go to waste on deprecated code and old hard to maintain software infrastructure. 0 opportunity to improve, thank god I resigned and started taking art seriously, I couldn't see myself there for any longer.

It's even more intriguing reading your intro, since similarly, one of the many main motivations for taking art seriously was to start tattooing! Though as the months pass, I'm still exploring where art leads me. At least I want to polish my fundamentals before going into tattoos.

Finally, your sketches look nice, and you got potential. Keep practicing the exercises of this term, gesture drawings and the pen control exercise will help you make more confident lines as the times passes. For less shaky lines, try to learn how to use your shoulder more when you draw, and focus on the line flow instead of accuracy at first.

Keep it up Andrew, I'll do my best to keep in touch with your updates!

Jun '22

Thanks so much for the input, it's super appreciated :smile: I'll definitely work on both of those exercises some more! Hearing your story, its also great to know that others are out here also trying to switch out of a career that isn't right for them! Thanks for sharing!!

Jun '22

Welcome to the forums! I believe that there are several tatoo artists in the forums you should be in good company!

Jun '22

Great to meet you :smile: I'm happy to hear there are a lot of people having success applying these lessons to tattooing!

Jun '22

June 20th 2022 Update

Hey Everyone! I put in a lot of work on gesture, full figure construction, torso construction, and mixing gesture and construction! Thanks so much to @daudraime for the torso and gesture resources! They helped a LOT and everything would not have turned out this well without them! Thanks for looking!

Gesture

@daudraime took your advice and tried to do more more confident lines on these even though they ended up looking jankier because of it I definitely am starting to understand how much better a single confident line looks!

Construction

Torso Construction

Gesture and Construction Mix

Jun '22

Nice to meet you! I'm glad to hear you're starting to regain your spark.

Jun '22

Reply to

Swallowing_Safety_Pins

I gotta say, you have a substancial improvement over the last time! Very good! Keep practicing like this, and I am VERY happy that my studies helped you friend!

Jun '22

Reply to

Swallowing_Safety_Pins

Nice work so far! Good progress! One thing that may help visualize the cylinders of the limbs in space is to draw the elpise all the way through the form to the other side. It will really help define the roundness of the form. Good work and keep it up!

Jun '22

Thanks so much for taking a look! I'll definitely focus on trying that more in my future construction studies!

Jun '22

June 27th Update

Another week's worth of construction, gesture, and combining the two. I think I started to grasp gesture a little more this week, still struggling to define it quickly and need up too 5 minutes to capture the gesture with semi-correct proportions. Working on using more c-curves, s curves, and straight lines and trying to make my strokes more confident. I feel like my structure is getting a little better. Haven't done digital at all this week, because these studies just feel better to do in traditional. Let me know if anyone thinks this is a problem, thanks so much for looking :smile:

Gesture

Construction

Gesture and Construction Combined

Jul '22

I havnt done much traditional but they are the same set of skills so I don't think it matters to much which you practice on. I just like digital for Ctrl z lol!

16 days later

Jul '22

July 19th Update

It's been a while since I posted, but I've been hard at work and have filled a full sketchbook from the last time I posted until now! Been practicing a LOT of gesture, anatomy, and structure. One of my next goals is to start learning about facial structure, but I wanted to get some critiques on some things I can improve on when it comes to how my current work. Any advice/critiques would be very appreciated :smile: Thanks for taking a look!

Jul '22

For improvement you could work on your line quality. I think that would help the read and the professionalism if the piece. Try making your curves and lines in one clean stroke.vif you don't get the angle right erase and try again. It will be worse at first but will pay off in the long run.