Open to all, Artwork Practice (Gesture Drawing)

[AcetheSuperVillain]

Hey, what's up, I was just thinking about art practice and maybe sharing the experience with you on the forum. I feel like there's often not enough art stuff on LoK.

One of the fundamental exercises for figure drawing is making gesture drawing. A quick, loose sketch to capture the mood and proportions of the character and pose.
Before joining in, check out this video for an idea of what we're going for: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kK71t-I-2w

Although the video discusses drawing from imagination, for this practice session, I want us to draw from reference.

Here are 4 pretty basic super model poses. Let's try to draw them as gesture drawings.

Spoiler (click to show/hide):

For advanced practice, trying drawing these poses from different angles, or drawing them as different characters.

When you're done, post your drawings here and we can help each other figure out what to work on.

[AcetheSuperVillain]

So here's my first attempt. Model #1 in original form and as a reindeer. I should have said so before, but I'm not wild about the squiggling thing that the video does. Do it if you want to, but it's not a requirement.

gesture_practice.jpg (56.64 KiB) Viewed 2032 times

[AcetheSuperVillain]

Number 2 as an alligator. I decided to try more of the squiggly style. And then some textured shading for no reason because I never do that in final drawings, but whatever, check it out.

[Jumbo70]

Spoiler (click to show/hide):

Tried to mess with the 3rd image. That one was a hard one!

Was going past the hour mark on the third, so i left it as it is.
The hands are horrible but didnt really have the time to fix em.

[AcetheSuperVillain]

It's pretty good. One thing I notice is that each upper arm, lower arm, upper leg, lower leg, etc, look like they have been stitched together, rather than flowing smoothly through the body. But this is something you can fix in later steps, so it's not necessarily something you need to worry about when gesture drawing. I'm familiar with your work and I know you usually get that right. But try and give some attention to the joint transitions, shoulders, elbows, wrists, knees, hips, and so on.

[Jumbo70]

Aye i do a lot of stitching and glueing during sketching phase. Joints and stuffs im learning on atm, along with shading, coloring and pretty much everything else

As for your stuff.
The deers boobies have a bit of plastic look in them, being a bit too proud so to say. Also the belly/waist area might be tad bit too thin.

For the lizard, only thing i can see currently is the arm shes resting on. It's too short, or the opposite of foreshortening isnt visible enough. Otherwise cant find anything else to improve on it at this moment.

If no one grabs on to the last model, il do it in some time (tomorrow probably).

[AcetheSuperVillain]

Personally, I like a nice barbie doll figure in my animal porn. It does look like the gator's hand is in the wrong place though. I guess opposite of foreshortening would be aftshortening? Not that I've ever heard that before.

I also made the gator's legs too long. You can see the knee goes higher than on the original, and if she's a gator, she should really have smaller than average limbs. I noticed this while I was drawing, but I decided to roll with it. Wasn't real happy with her snout either.

[Jumbo70]

Each to their own quirks

I read somewhere bout forelengthening but that just gets hard to spell and pronounce.
Agree on the legs being a tad too long.

Spoiler (click to show/hide):

Theres me doing again something, this time the last one.

didnt get as far as you since i dont wnat to spend more than 1 hour on these things.
Gave myself a bit of extra challenge by looking at the reference for about 5 minutes and then took it away.
Abdomen area is still hard for me to get right, but im getting there im getting there.
tried to get a bit less of a cut and glue feeling on this image.

Should have spent more time with the legs.

[AcetheSuperVillain]

An hour seems like way too long. The way that they actually taught me to do it in art school was to aim for 60-120 seconds, for the basic pose. Granted, I haven't been doing that either, it's far too tempting to take the sketch and turn it into something more complete, which obviously should take more than an hour. The point of gesturing is to practice your quickness.

I did take a stab at #4 here:

gesture_practice3.jpg (50.05 KiB) Viewed 1966 times

[AcetheSuperVillain]

New list of references, more variation I think:

Spoiler (click to show/hide):

To challenge myself, I gave myself a 3 minute timelimit for each gal. Here's what that looks like:

Spoiler (click to show/hide):

[Jumbo70]

I've never been a fast one at drawing, neither during sketching, lining, shading or coloring. That might be a weakpoint on me tbh.

I'll try to give myself a smaller time limit to speed things up, start to get the right line on the first, second or third time, not the 50th time.
I also really should get back to pencil drawing too. Been too long since i did them (need to get a new eraser).

Also never been good at drawing filthy human faces Should get more into that too.

All my art is "homegrown" so to say, never have taken any art or media classes. If not counting tips n tricks from youtube that is.

Cant find anything to comment on other than the gut area of some of the drawings seem to be a bit too long and on the foreshortening one with the camera holding thing, it's a hard one to get right quickly.

Once i have some time il pop in again and try to do some more actual proper quickies.

[Trninja2]

Took a shot at a couple from the 1st post.
1 took 30min
and the other took 7min.
I knew I was bad at drawing but.......ugh, neither one looked better than the other.
Now I see why i'm not an artist lol.

[AcetheSuperVillain]

I also really should get back to pencil drawing too. Been too long since i did them (need to get a new eraser).

In case you thought so, none of mine (here) are pencil drawings, I just have the digital brush set up to act more like a pencil. It makes feel more like I'm sketching, more free to make mistakes and build slowly. If I use an ink-like tool from the beginning, I get hesitant to adjust the drawing.

Also never been good at drawing filthy human faces Should get more into that too.

That's interesting, for me I've always been interested in anthro character, but for a long time I couldn't make anthro faces look right, so I stuck with humans.

All my art is "homegrown" so to say, never have taken any art or media classes. If not counting tips n tricks from youtube that is.

I absolutely feel like art school has made me a better artist. But honestly, a lot of my lessons from art school were youtube videos that are available to anyone, so that's probably a fine way to do it. But it does have to be proper figure drawing lessons. In middle/high school, it was always a lot of "right-brained art" stuff, which is really not helpful if your goal is to make art for games, animation, comics and the like.

Cant find anything to comment on other than the gut area of some of the drawings seem to be a bit too long and on the foreshortening one with the camera holding thing, it's a hard one to get right quickly.

Doing torsos has often been problematic for me. Maybe I should do some heavy torso training....

I knew I was bad at drawing but.......ugh, neither one looked better than the other.
Now I see why i'm not an artist lol.

Don't be discouraged. It just takes practice. If it's something you want to do (or need to do) anyone can learn to draw.

Gesture drawing is not exactly a beginner level exercise. Try following these books: https://www.slideshare.net/jefffarias9/ ... 02phpapp01 and https://www.slideshare.net/saudi507/chr ... my-8834128 Between the two of them, you can come up with any style you want.

For you, Trninja2, since you are doing a pixel-heavy game, try doing some pixel renders of these subjects. Personally, I think pixel art is just as difficult as "normal" art, but it can be a more comfortable place for beginners, and I think it helps if you feel like you're doing something relevant to your current projects, rather than just grinding for some far off goal. Try starting with a silhouette and then filling in some features.

[Trninja2]

It's funny you mention pixel art cuz i used play around an edit sprites all the time
and while they aren't the greatest but look fairly decent.
I seem to be able to do better at working with and changing things that
are already made instead of trying to start from scratch

[AcetheSuperVillain]

It's funny you mention pixel art cuz i used play around an edit sprites all the time
and while they aren't the greatest but look fairly decent.
I seem to be able to do better at working with and changing things that
are already made instead of trying to start from scratch

That's frankly why it's important for any artist to work from reference or at least study reference. It's always easier to add a little bit than make the whole thing from scratch.

[Trninja2]

Now i understand why the drawing books have you start with
drawing shapes instead of going full throttle.
This may be why i have never improved in skill even though i was
constantly drawing pictures when i was younger.