Jan '22

Hello! I'm Kaob, a 20 y/o university student wanting to learn how to draw.

I've always enjoyed drawing, but I've never been good at it. There have been times where I can enjoy drawing for weeks or months, but then stop drawing for even longer whilst giving myself excuses such as being too busy with school.

Art has been an on-and-off thing for years, but I do eventually want to reach a level where I can be proudly who off my work.
I bought the first term months ago, but have finally decided to fully commit to it!

Exercise wise, I decided to start with Figure Drawing as that's what I'm most excited to get better in at the moment, but I will continue with perspective in the coming days.

I started yesterday on New Years Eve, mostly just following along with Marc's video.

31st of December, 2021

So here's 10 simple stick figures, 5 of them being with volumetric shapes (cylinders).
This took about 40 minutes, which is quite a bit.

Next, I continued watching Marc's video, and did my first body proportions attempt alongside the video,

And that's pretty much all I've drawn on the 31st.

I'm excited to learn and get better!

Jan '22

1st of January, 2022

I thought I would attempt doing these exercises as daily practice, so I've reattempted the exercises I did yesterday with new references

Similarly, 10 references with 5 of them being used for cylinder skeletons. This, once again, took a total of 45 minutes.

I'm not sure if I'm being a perfectionist, or if I'm doing something wrong, because it feels like I'm using quite a lot of time on this. For now, I'm just going to hope that I get much faster the more and more I practice this.

I also redid the body-proportions exercise, this time without marc's video guiding me. However, I did use the drawing I made the previous day to help me out in parts I don't remember, as well as some body shapes.


I'm not quite sure how I should feel about this one yet, I haven't rewatched Marc's video to crosscheck if I made anything obvious mistakes. I'm hoping that I'll be able to eventually make this without having to look back on previous attempts though.

Finally, I decided to try out drawing a full figure using measuring tools (aka, using nothing else other than my hand and pencil

It was really difficult, and really time consuming.

I feel like the final result was pretty good overall, considering this is my first time. It is definitely not perfect, and I can point out a lot of problems just by overlaying it.


For one, the raised leg is far too long - I think I misjudged the height relationship between the foot and the knee.

In addition, I think I have a bit of trouble trying to figure out horizontal proportions, as the waist is too thing, the lowered arm is too thick, etc.

I'm going to attempt to do gesture drawing and perspective soon, but now that I've done all these exercises, I feel like trying to attempt to do every single thing per day would take too much time. So, for now, I'm planning on focusing on specific exercises per day instead of trying to do all of them.

Any and all critique and advice is welcomed, and would be great!

Jan '22

HI Kaob! Welcome to the forums.

These exercises are looking pretty good!

The exercises when starting off can definitely feel slow. But as you keep doing them you'll start to develop your own rhythm and it'll start to become more clear on how to approach each construction of the pose.

And for the body proportions, same as before. As you keep drawing them you'll naturally get better at it. When learning the proportions, instead of going from top to bottom, try to divide everything in half. Like how the general crotch area divides the whole figure in half. That way it can become a lot easier to see the figure in your imagination.

Also another thing I would like to say is to use thinner lines. Marc will mention this somewhere in a video later on, but using thinner lines will force you to be more accurate. For example, in the figure study you did those lines are very thick so even if your measurements were incorrect, it would still look pretty accurate when you overlay it on your reference.

There are times when thicker lines are useful like when trying to convey weight or shadow, but for these studies I think thinner lines will be helpful.

I hope these helped! I'm not very well equipped to give criticism yet, so please take everything I've said with a grain of salt. I look forward to improving along side you! :smiley:

Jan '22

Heya!

Thanks! I'm planning on continuing these exercises, but probably not all of them daily due to the workload hahahah. With enough time and practice, it would be nice to see these as exercises that I can do as warmup rather than exercises I have to constantly do to get better

Thanks for the tip for the body proportions! I've been doing them from top to bottom, so I'll start dividing everything in half.

I'll start using thinner lines as well! It's probably going to make things look quite a bit worst, but that's the whole point of finding which parts to improve on after all

Jan '22

Day 2 - 1st of January, 2022: Gesture drawings

Did some gesture drawings for the evening. Going to be honest, I don't really like these drawings, and a lot of the images that popped up were of people either sitting down or laying down, which were quite difficult (I'm using lineofaction.com for the pose references)

But well, drawings that I like and dislike would both aid me in improving, so I'll post them anyways!

Twenty 30s gesture drawings:

Twenty 1min gesture drawings:

Jan '22

I’m glad you decided to join the community Kaob, and am excited to see where this takes you. Your work looks outstanding for just starting on New Year’s Eve, great job!!