Volodymyr G. - Art School Journey

[strelok_2012]

Well, I suppose I should finally get out of my shell and start posting.

Well hello, I'm Volodymyr (or Vlad). I've started doing art semi-seriously sometime mid 2022 after my friend suggested I do something that I've wanted to do for a long time.

So far I've got a decent grasp on basic shapes and construction from another site called DrawaBox. Though I followed the course content there for a while it was at the start of this year I had properly defined my artistic goals.

Currently my first major goal is to draw female anthro characters with accurate proportions, anatomy, etc (no clothing for now) in any pose. Following this goal I have several others but I think it to be best to avoid overwhelming myself.

As of today, I've finished watching Nude_Figure_Drawing of the term 1 pack of Art school, and did a quick 30 minute practice session without a timer. I really struggle with finding the movement and translating that onto a canvas, so I welcome any advice.
I'll also be skipping some of the assignments in the Nude_Figure_Drawing assignment sheet, mostly the construction and perspective exercises.

I've also thrown together a weekly study schedule for myself to try and reach my first goal but I am currently unable to share it (new user).

Anyway, here is the results of my first 30-minute gesture study:

Hopefully with time and experience I will be able to give critiques to other students.

[strelok_2012]

Oh and I should mention that my username is Strelok_2012, not Uraniumpuppy (that's an old username I used when I was younger).

[mitsuki-youko]

welcome to the forums!

[strelok_2012]

Continued study/practice of gesture, even after having a rather crap day. I tried to take my time and try placing assymetric curves where possible. Gonna have a look at Michael Hampton's figure drawing and see if I can get some better ideas there.

[snakker]

These gestures are looking good!

Cheers

[gregorya]

Hello and welcome @Strelok_2012 These are pretty good studies.

[Pattu_w]

Welcome to the forums, these gestures are looking good, keep at it

[Lockenheim]

Welcome to the forums Vlad! I am also a fan of draw a box! I look forward to seeing more!

[strelok_2012]

Aaaargh, 3 days without posting, noooo....

Anyway, In addition to learning art I had to figure out some life stuff. But now I'm back.

Tried timing my gestures and it looks like I'm in the intermediate stage where I can identify the gesture within a given time, but still struggle. I'll have to attempt another 30m practice session untimed.

30s, 1st page

2nd page

1m, 1st page

1 min looks much better, which is to be expected. Even managed to add contour lines in some of the gestures.

My thoughts so far are to maybe try shorter lines to try and add some repetition in areas where there are more sudden turns.

Maybe in a couple weeks I'll move onto figure drawing.

[Lockenheim]

Looking good on these one minute gestures! In terms of line length I think one line per curve is generally the way to go, there are many ways to do it, the main thing is keeping that line confidence up which you did a really nice job with here! Keep it up!

[strelok_2012]

Trying untimed gesture again and trying some new things I picked up from Michael Hampton's Figure drawing book.

Turned out fairly well, around the middle I started getting some repetition and timing in my lines. Last gesture was a mess because I didn't identify the line of action first.
Otherwise I've gotten more loose with the lines but need to work on line confidence first to avoid hairy lines.

[snakker]

Yo good work on these gestures, it’s always a good idea to analyze what’s working and what’s not. Hampton’s book is great too! Just make sure you don’t neglect practicing measured figures and cylinders or 3D forms. In other words - don’t seek perfection in one aspect of figure drawing before “moving on” to the next aspect. Rather, I feel each aspect helps the other and in the end as you do all three things your gestures, forms and measured proportions will all improve together and thus your figure drawing improves as a whole - don’t let anything hold you back

Cheers!

[strelok_2012]

Hm, alright. I'll give it a shot today or tomorrow.

[strelok_2012]

Ack, life is biting back hard. I barely have enough time to do my studies and art in general but I am undaunted.

These are the untimed gestures I did on 23/02/2023 (took anywhere between 2-3 minutes):

Now I know I promised @snakker that I'd try the measured figures and cylinders, and I will still do that. Right now on top of common responsibilities I'm trying to get out of my dead-end job and get something that pays a lot better for the skill that I have. So I have an incredibly tight schedule each day which only gets tighter with my dead-end job trying to pull me down (by giving me extra hours, which I can seldom refuse given my financial situation).

tl:dr;

I'm getting my ass whooped by life but I'm still getting back up, Strelok out.

[strelok_2012]

Missed yesterday due to having too many things to do.

Untimed gestures done today, roughly 1-2 minutes each.

And then I switched to 30s timed:

@snakker I'm going to have to do the cylinders tomorrow, I've watched through all the Term 1 videos so now I can make a start on the other assignments. I'm also revising my own personal study schedule as I go.

[strelok_2012]

Alright I gave the Nude figure drawing assignments along with the Photoshop one as suggested by @snakker.
I'm not 100% sure on whether or not to do the Image editing assignments, given I'm working in Krita.

Pen Control

Action lines and skeletons (over photo reference)

Cylinders in perspective

I'm still working on the skeletons with cylinder limbs assignment. I should have it posted tomorrow.

[strelok_2012]

Gah, work and distractions. I had little time today to draw so I'll have to post a WIP of one of the assignments. I understand these are meant to be done daily and I'll have to refactor my schedule to revolve more around Art school and less around whatever my current self-learning method is.

For now here is the Draw over photo reference assignment I'm working through:

Oh and I should mention that I managed to get in touch with an artist I admire , which has really put some wind in my sails.

Tomorrow I'll hopefully have the finished assigments for today and tomorrow.

[gregorya]

These are pretty good.

[snakker]

Looking great! Keep at it, these simple seeming studies are actually super effective for initial gains. Do pay strong attention with cylinders if the limb is straight (perpendicular to the viewer with no perspective) or tilted and try to be a bit more careful placing the thorax and pelvis, something I didn't realize til later. It helps to get a good understanding of the relations of those three masses (head chest hips) and paying special attention to 1- how the pelvis tilts with respect to the weight bearing limb
2- how the chest tilts vs the pelvis making a notch

Seeing that and seeing exactly or as close to exactly as possible where these masses are and how they are oriented in space is super helpful

Cheers!

[strelok_2012]

Didn't have time to post my finished homework from yesterday. I'm finding that I have a hard time getting the art school assignments done according to the weekly schedule published by Marc. I'm of course still working through them whenever I can but my focus is split which makes it difficult.

2nd attempt at Pen control

Finished 2nd page of action lines and skeletons

2nd page of cylinders in perspective

3rd page of action lines and skeletons

Next week I'll be moving onto the 3rd week of the schedule which includes the pen control exercises from Marc's youtube video, gesture drawing and lineart of artist I like.

Now, there's a problem. The characters I'm going to be studying are NSFW. Which I think would violate this forums policies. So I doubt I'd be able to post my studies here.