27 days later

Work got extremely busy again and I completely fell off the wagon with my practices. Balancing life, work and practicing art is a real struggle for me at times and It makes me feel bad because I had such a good momentum going too. I made a little chain and fence brush tonight which was all I could fit in for today. Hopefully this small step will kickstart me to continue again.

What an appropriate visual for today. Sometimes life and work chains you down. lol

Notes from the 3 point perspective lesson. I started on some eye studies as well but haven't shaded them in yet. Glad I was able to make a little bit of progress this week after being away for a while.

Study sketch of a portrait from the book 'Drawing The Head for Artists'. I completed the rough sketch then tried some deformations of the drawing to push the shapes. I feel like pushing the shapes a bit brings a bit more attitude to the drawing.

I really like the clear planes you're using in this, especially in the nose section. I always overwork that, making it look too blocky.

I drew some boxes on the 5 point grid.

I'm still struggling with daily practice. Sometimes it's a fight with myself to get going but once I get going then it's much easier. Just starting is the hardest part for me. Especially when I am already feeling burnt out with everything else that's going on in my life.

Even one small thing a day is better than nothing at all though.

I tried the man in 4 point perspective. This was turning out soooooo wonky looking while I was working on it that I burst out laughing because he was so wide! I must have gotten the initial measuring proportion off, so i slimmed him down by squishing the art horizontally. I also had to go back and adjust the head since it was super tiny compared to the rest of the body. I think it turned out ok in the end, but don't think I am ready to attempt more of this just yet on my own.

I took a bit more time to render these eye studies than the others. I had to cut myself off though cuz i could just keep going further into hyperrealism.

I want to study some anime and cartoon artworks next I think since I kind of want to get away from realism eventually and I'm interested in learning more about stylization.

Nice work on the chains and fence brushes. You may need more practice with the 3-point perspective. Nice work on the faces and the deformations of its shapes.

The 5-point grid looks great, as well as the eye studies.
The four-point perspective mand does look a little challenging. But it works

Thanks for the comments. The 3 point perspective stuff was a note taking copy from Marc's lesson. I haven't actually tried applying that to any art yet.

Taking notes while watching the lesson helps me to remember what he said, but I think i'm going to do some perspective lessons out of a book soon though since his lessons on that topic aren't very in-depth.

I did some studies from the 100 heads challenge pinterest board. I stuck with just line art for these since they were pretty time consuming.

Back to some gestures and feeling rusty. I really need to make time for these every day.

Nice work on the heads. the line work looks great. The gesture drawings are pretty good as well.

Some more gesture drawings from the past 2 days. Definitely need more practice here. They all still feel very stiff to me since I think i have a tendency to focus too much on the outline instead of pushing the poses with more sweeping lines.

I see the potential in a lot of these poses to be pushed even further, exaggerating movements and playing around with the flow. I personally can't do it on poses faster than 2m. As for drawing the outline, from what I've observed, drawing the outline seems to be the default state we revert too when doing gesture. I do it myself and it's difficult to kick the habit.

I tried to follow Michael Hampton's techniques for a while (He recently did a video on the proko channel but I haven't really been able to put it into practice on 1m poses due to a lack of line confidence and observational skills. Maybe you'll have a better time with it, you have such good lines.

Maybe we should ditch the timer in favour of learning the other approach and just be mindful not to overdo it? The timer actually might be hindering growth and cementing in bad habits since we are approaching it in the same ‘outline the contour’ way every time. Maybe it benefits pro artists that already have the skill set, but I am now thinking it might not be doing people that are new to gesture any favours. We want to get better while doing these exercises and improving our approach isn’t always about speed.

From my understanding too, the point of gesture is to find the spirit or essence and push the pose beyond what we are seeing so that we can develop under drawings that have a more dynamic look to them so that when we actually do that final drawing over top, there is still some dynamic ‘pushed’ aspect left in it. This just isn’t coming through to me in my gestures at the moment, which is why I think I am approaching it in the wrong way since i am still so focused on those contour lines. I also seem to have a tendency to try to complete the full outline and not leave any areas for the eye to just fill in on its own.

I was watching Glenn Vilppu’s approach last night and it’s more about ‘feeling’ the flow of the body and he uses numerous curved lines with breaks in between them to lay in the flow of the rhythms. He then does another pass over the drawing with the wrap around contours and what he calls containing or ‘bracketing’ areas like the ribcage and pelvis and leaves some areas completely undefined. From what I have seen of Michael Hampton’s drawing, his also looks similar with the contour lines and he has more of that flowing feel I am after.

Took your post to heart and gave it a go, I'm not fully pleased with the result, mainly due to the technique being new to me. But the results are definitely gestures, not figures in gestural poses. The gestures could be pushed further and the line quality better, but that'll come with more experience.