Hey Gibson,

thank you for the explanation and the diagram. The thing is, that I didn´t look at any
anatomy besides the simple bony landmarks of the torso and the pelvis yet and I
would like to wait for it, till I reach the according lesson. I still try to
take some of your tips in consideration and try to apply them, especially the
overall impact of the muscles on the contour, but I think your diagram will
help me more in a later stage, where I gladly will use it. Until then, I try my
best with the limited knowledge I have now mixed with a little bit of the things
you showed me.

The time for the Gesture drawings rose for this week again and now I have two minutes per pose. This gives me enough time to finish every body part in the gesture steps and mostly, also have 30s to one minute left, in which I try to draw the ovals for the torso and pelvis over the gesture and try to connect them. Since I didn´t have much experience with this step jet and not too much time left, I often struggle with the size of the ovals and especially with the connections. This I think will get better with time and practice, when I’m more accustomate with the process and need less time to think how I best place the forms and lines for the connections.
The picture below is todays try.

New this week is the 7th assignment of “Nude Figure Drawing”, where we have to draw the full figure from reference with the help of measurement techniques, Marc shows us in the video. Marc mentioned in the video, that this exercise is hard and for me this comes very true. Even if I measure everything and then double check it, I greatly struggle to keep the correct proportions and forms. Regardless, I am going to do this assignment as carful as possible and decided that, although it doesn’t show on the schedule again after this week, at least for term 1, I will do it after this week one a regular basis. Bellow is also my attempt from today. Here I spotted a mistake I made in all my first try’s. In short, for lengths which were shorter than one head or the scale I used, for whatever reason, took the rest of the length to the full head and not the actual length. For example, when I measured the length, I needed was 1,75 heads, I took the remaining 0,25 heads instead of the 0,75 heads.

Also new this week was assignment 5 for “Nude Figure Drawing”, which I also worked on but doesn´t have enough for posting yet. I am going to show some of my attempts for this assignment on Sunday.

For perspective this week, assignment 2 remained as daily exercise, but with the twist, that instead of isolated boxes we should draw stack of boxes or boxes arranged in patterns. Here is today’s attempt. This variation of the exercise is for sure more challenging than its basic form, but I think it is still manageable.

Lastly according to the schedule, this week the studies of 5 characters from movies/games/… we like should be done again. For this I won´t post anything, because I still try to figure out, how to best do this studies and therefore there isn´t anything I have to share except a bunch of bad lines which roughly resemble the character I try to study after it was hit by a train (Ok, this part is purposely exaggerated and I take my shortcomings here with a lot of humour).

To finish this week, as usual, here is my second posting for this week.
Like Wednesday, I will start with the “Gesture Drawings”. I think I got a little bit faster to identify the ovals for the torso and the pelvis, and the connections between them, on simple, upright standing poses, so that I was able to get to the centre line for these poses. Next week, the time for the gestures will rise to 5 minutes, and I think I will focus on the connections for the first half of the week and then see on what I will work from there. Bellow is my attempt from today.

On Wednesday I stated that assignment 7 (drawing a full pose using measuring) is very hard and my attempts had a lot of errors. Until Friday I didn´t see any improvements in for this, but yesterday and today, I changed my strategy for this assignment a bit. Instead of measuring everything by heads or other fixed lengths I could find, I know rely more on angle sighting and triangulation with only a bit of measuring now (mostly to check if I triangulated right) and I think it worked better for me. Even if there are still a lot of errors, overall, my attempt of today, which is shown bellow looks better to me. Doing this assignment, I also realized, that my ability to place lines with the right length and the right angle or reference points in general are not so good, and I could profit from getting better at it. I looked for some exercises for this and found some, which look promising, and I plan on doing them a few times per week about 15 minutes as warmup.

Next is assignment 5 of “Nude Figure Drawing”, for which we should draw 5 simple skeletons from reference or from imagination. Doing this exercise, my biggest problem was, to draw the primary line of action, which is the foundation for the volumes. I also did struggle with the right size and perspective of the boxes, when I used them as substitution for the head, torso and pelvis.

At last, here is also my attempt of the boxes in perspective. After trying stacks of them in one point perspective yesterday, I focused on two-point perspective today.

Today I haven´t much to show, because there aren´t a lot of assignments for this week.
According to the study guide, we should do exercise 3 from the perspective class, but I am still working on it and will show my try on Sunday.
The only thing I can show is my attempt of the 5 Minute Gesture Drawings, of which you can see today’s attempt. I still try to improve the forms and connections between the torso and the pelvis and sometimes, when I get a bit quicker trough the pose, I also try to refine the legs, but most of the time here I have next to no time left, so that it remains a quick try.

Really nice Marco! Went through your posts and I'm actually gonna try to replicate how you practice the different exercises... really neat looking :blush:

I like the emphasis on the torso section with the darkened lines on the 5 min gesture drawings

You're doing great work Marco! I thought you might've been studying Hampton, happy his approach has worked so well for you! I could never get the hang of it, but I was studying his approach prior to enrolling here. I think he does a great job of breaking down the forms. I'd like to revisit his approach at some point, but my gosh you're nailing it! I also like your pages of boxes, I might try something like that to kind of mix some things up and add interest to some of my exercises.

Keep up the great work, can't wait to see what else you accomplish!

Hi olashamala,

thank you and sorry for the late reply, but I was very busy with private stuff outside drawing and didn´t have much time to show for replys.
Regarding the Gesture/Figure drawing, I modeled my methode mainly after Michael Hamptons Method for the initial Gesture and for the forms of the torso and the pelvis I add a lot of Brent Evistons method to the mix, but in my opinion Brent Evistons method is very similar to Michael Hamptons but I only understand Hampton after I worked in Evistons course on Skillshare.

Hey Alex,

also thanks to you and sorry for the late reply.
Regarding Hampton, like I wrote in my reply to olashamala I also took Brent Evistons class on Skilöshare and only after this I understand Hampton´s initial aproach to Gesture and his Method of connecting the Body parts. I still struggle with his approach to substitute the torso and pelvis with boxes and have to put some more work to this.

For the pile of boxes the sudy companion guide for week 5 said we should draw simple structures from boxes like stacks of them and this was the result of my tries.