some sketches from a live session this past weekend. the model is apparently a dancer, which is not uncommon in this “field” but she wore a g string and six inch see thru heels which made the whole thing feel a lot pornier than i wanted. it would have been less risque if she had been completely naked, inversely.
Looking through older threads, I've seen a lot of people recommend Hampton, Vilppu, and Huston for figure drawing. But I'm really not sure which one I should choose, and I'm left with a bunch of questions that I have no one to ask.
To me, Vilppu's and Huston's figures look pretty chaotic, fluid, and appealing, which seems more 'friendly' towards curvy figures. Hampton's, on the other hand, look more rigid, simple, and easier to understand, but appear more difficult for curvy figures.
If I decide to go with Hampton, will I actually struggle more with drawing curvy bodies? Is there one that's generally more recommended for a complete beginner, someone who's never really picked up a pencil before, like me? Do any of these approaches translate better to digital art?
>>7918292 why choose only one? try them all, take what you like and leave what you dont like, you're going to struggle no mater what so just choose a teacher and learn what you can, reaching your goal wont be a linear path
>>7918309 good advice for someone that isn't a total beginner. He will just give up and quit.
>>7918292 Just pick the one that has the art you like best. The rest is irrelevant. Though I must say that being a total beginner (i.e. not even a single drawing) is kinda not the best place to start with figure drawing, because it's not an easy topic. Expect massive struggle and failure in the beginning (everyone has this as a complete beginner).
>>7918302 this is all really lazy and low effort perversion. poor construction, no faces, shitty hands, shitty feet, no color, no shadow, no discernible attempt to improve upon the craft or expression.
one gets the sense that you want to be applauded for having a boner, and the idea is, frankly, laughable.
>>7917284 drawing very light straight lines along the common landmarks will help you with alignment issues. its also a good way of making sure your perspective is alright.
>>7920288 Increase the time limit or turn it off entirely, take your time measuring until you can get it right enough intuitively. Speed comes with practice.
>>7921999 Burne Hogarth, Glenn Vilppu, Michael Hampton, Steve Huston, you say you figures/gestures look like shit, also find a goal and aim for it, identify figures/gestures that you enjoy and study them
>>7922179 looks good to me. you could maybe try to indicate some connections a bit more -- how limbs connect to the main trunk of the body, how lower legs connect to upper legs etc. even if its something as simple as indicating the corner of a knee or a quick line connecting pec to arm, i think it's worth considering during this initial stage of the drawing.
>>7920288 Walt Stanchfield recommends 2 things: 1 Mark making and order of operations. For example, instead of drawing the arm starting from the upper arm, first mark where the hand is placed. This makes it easier to see how everything overlaps and fits together. 2 Draw in parallel, draw a little of the arm, then move to the feet, then to the chest, and so on.
>>7921999 Go to X and search for “Gesdraw Party.” Copy work you like, and do the live sessions as well.
>>7922179 It all depends. what was your goal? What did you like about that reference? Did your work capture that?
For example, in mine, I didn’t like the torso, so my main goal was to push the break between the chest and hips. Secondarily, I wanted to find a more appealing pose.
>>7922492 one thing i find helpful that you could try is putting in a quick indication of a ground plane. it takes no time at all and it really helps with the sense of perspective, especially when you're working with full figures in distorted views.
>>7922606 nice to see you pushing yourself a little bit.
Been experimenting with ink and brush, took it to a figure drawing session and it's great fun. Challenging to get the brush juuust wet enough but not too wet. This is one of the 30 drawings I did in the session. Just india ink and just one brush.
Don't know how to get the waves out of the paper though. Maybe mist it and stretch or flatten it.
>>7923289 >>7923289 mix in some water with the ink to dilute it and have a sketch layer, focusing on the shading shapes as well. and when you draw the outline over it with just ink, it'll look cooler and you have a frame of reference to make it more precise
make sure to use crepe tape to fasten your paper tight to minimize waving and let it dry like that. higher quality paper will also help of course.
>>7918363 behold the ego of the academic artist, his skill of turning cute strippers into ugly cubes in full bloom. with enough practice he may one day even learn to rotate his image before posting it
>>7918292 Okay so to be completely honest Hamptom is not good if you want to draw curvy figures. Frank Frazetta, Vilppu, Huston, and hell even some Disney artists would be better than Hampton if curviness is your goal
>>7924591 Gesture exercises usually don't have faces, he's adding a hint of a face, an even facial expression too. That anon's skill is clearly above most artists here.
>>7924746 a high school basket ball player with an erection may be better than a layman at shooting hoops but that doesn't entitle him to you going to bat on his behalf, nor does it reduce or justify his empty perversion
that said, he's trying harder after i shamed him! i'm proud of you, my pathetic gooner son
>>7924746 Anon please. He's adding shading and composition framing lines, these are clearly not "gestures". Good flowy lines but he could definitely improve his work if he started paying attention more to the structure and centerlines of his forms.
all these moot arguments without a drawing attached. tsk. git back to work! here's an older one just because i'm working on something else today. i'll do some new figgies starting monday. also, at least coomers have a goal. their perversion is an enormous driving factor.
>>7925396 >thank you, same, always love your compositions with bold contrast and silhouette Thank you so much! You're the best anon! Thanks for posting these figs! I used the one on the second row as ref here >>7918575, but it didn't come out as I wanted it. I'll try that ref pose again later. >>7926023 Amazing hands!!!! >>7924353 GREAT STUFF >>7922492 These are excellent! >>7920037 Another beautiful figure collage SAVED >>7925205 Loved it, that first figure's pose, is stellar
>>7926182 >thank you anon, glad you enjoy them I love them! I tried that pose again. >>7926121 >Thanks anon, it’s nice to see your perverse, heavily stylized work yet again Thank you anon! Do you have any request? >>7926293 Yes, but this is an artist's board, all of the others are no draws normies just mindlessly sharing random images, they don't care if it is AI, CGI or even screencaps from movies or random videos, it feels horrible to feed that soulless self-eating machine. Here at least I'm sharing with people who actually cares about the act of drawing and creating something. And I'm an art amateur trying to fix and improve my lacking skills as well. Also I never actually draw torture or sex, I just write some little story text to add something extra to a simple figure.
>>7926428 Okay, a quick Ari for you then.. Given this is the /fig/ general I should have made her in a more realistic style, but I rush it up, as always.
>>7927745 you don’t need to do anything except drawing the thing you want my dear friend. if you have trouble with executing what you envision then there are certain exercises to try to alleviate that. one of the solutions to a problem you might encounter is practicing times gestures. this is true for any exercise and/or education material. best of luck
>>7927750 hmmm makes sense. I have no reason to do gesture drawings for now. I'm just trying to figure out why people do this every single day. Does it make figure drawing magically better or something
You're right I need to draw things I want. I don't want to get burn out again.
>>7927764 >https://line-of-action.com/practice-tools/app/figure-drawing >https://www.sketchdaily.net/ In these sites there is this class mode thing. I clicked it to see what it does. It first starts with short-length gesture drawing, then increases the time as it goes on. >https://web.archive.org/web/20260120080559im_/https://hackmd-prod-images.s3.ap-northeast-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/upload_27644a96eedad523bc67949ae2ca286b.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIA3XSAAW6AWSKNINWO&Expires=1768896659&Signature=08b4ZRlx7S6948fsHm%2BYy4hnHHY%3D I was browsing some anon advices, and I found this ^ it says the reason 30s gesture drawing does is to warm up and appreciate the longer interval. I'm not sure about that, that's why I asked here.
People say my figure drawings have wonky, weird proportions/anatomy. So I thought doing gesture drawing might fix it. IDK actually.
>>7927779 I'd focus a lot more on proportion and anatomy studying. I would recommend 2 minute gestures for 5-10 figures per day, because that forces you to make quick decisions. Then, look at your reference and your drawings. Compare and contrast, especially the areas you want to focus on most. For anatomy, it genuinely just takes a lot of studying, not just how the muscles look, and how they're connected to ligaments and bones but also how they stretch and contract with movement. Gesture drawings are mostly done for movement, it's so a piece can feel lively. I highly recommend drawing over gestures with muscle groups you are currently focusing on. Anticipate how the muscles will need to stretch and contract, based on how that gesture is moving. This is just my idea however, we are all on our own journey, so do what helps YOU the most.
how important is it to learn so much of the skeletal anatomy compared to muscles i understand it's important to learn the major masses like the skull, ribcage, and pelvis but trying to go through tom fox's anatomy book and i feel overwhelmed with trying to learn some of the other parts
>>7927889 It’s extremely important, more so than muscles. Dont try to learn exactly how they look but more so the important landmarks and their lengths and what muscles connect to what bone
>>7927873 >>7927874 >>7927878 What resourses you used to get to this level? Kinda reminds me of morpho, great job Also, do you have somewhere else you post your stuff?
>>7927999 thanks! nice trips >What resourses you used to get to this level? Scott Eaton for anatomy and Glenn Vilppu for figure drawing >do you have somewhere else you post your stuff? not really right now
>>7928047 NTA I love your figure drawings, and I hope to reach your level someday. I had never drawn before and just started a few days ago. Should I start with Eaton or Vilppu first? I also noticed that Vilppu has several courses. Which one did you use?
>>7928377 try it, if you're just starting out you may need to cut your teeth before you can grasp Villpu or are patient enough for Eaton's lectures, God knows I didn't like them when I was starting out >Which one did you use? this one, I downloaded it from the mega thread ages agon and now I don't know where you can find it anymore other than russian youtube https://vkvideo.ru/playlist/-144612710_14 I'm sure the /ic/ torrent thread has it
>>7923289 great the light shapes look good. Try mixed media paper, it doesn’t warp as much or even kraft paper (even though it bleeds through the page way too easily). But then again, this is for practice, so I wouldn’t mind the warping.
is anyone familiar with steve huston? his head method partially confuses me. i see it's usage for profile but as soon as the head starts to turn i don't really get how you work and construct off of it, especially so if the head is tilted back or forward
not much time for drawing, just some quick figures to test some stuff out
>>7936544 Watch his streams and lectures, he uses methods other than the sailboat shape, depending on the situation. You have to keep in mind that he’s a pro, just because he explains one tool doesn’t mean it’s the only thing he uses.
>>7936544 Yea I have his book. He’s good with taking an abstract approach to figure drawing that doesn’t rely so much on raw anatomical rules. Just keep at it and it’ll click eventually
>>7938089 i dont know that i have a favorite one to study. ive looked at lots of american illustrators from the 1930s-60s. lots of rockwell drawings, not that i think its evident in my art.
>>7938096 do lots of studies of various lengths. alongside that learn about construction from loomis, hampton, bridgeman, morpho etc.
>>7938146 >So if I just spam 30s-1min gestures eventually I'll get good? >Every time I start with a quick gesture the proportions are fucked, curves are fucked. Then fix them?
>>7938146 what are you practicing by doing quick gestures? what's your current biggest issues in your drawings? how do i fix these issues and are there any exercises for it?
answer these questions yourself and see if the answer to the first and last question is the same :)
>>7938365 I'm not trying to be difficult. But isn't the point of the 1min that it becomes intuitive to do if you do a lot of them? Because I can make a pretty "good" 1 min gesture if I spend 4 minutes fixing things. But I hear people say that you're spending too much time on details and proportions if you do that.
>>7938501 Nigga the gesture takes minutes or seconds, after that you are supposed to fix them with and without seeing the reference, try to make it as anatomically correct as possible. Spamming gestures helps a lot but knowing how to draw the owl is the most important step.
Some people just starting out wanted tips from me for whatever reason. So I got them into figure drawing. We did a series of timed poses together to get them used to the idea of blocking our basic forms/ideas of poses without getting too caught up in the details, and I taught them about negative space and thinking about light as a way to construct. They took to it really well, so I'd like to think I did t fuck up too bad, even if my own work is kinda /beg/
>>7938502 YouTube. They say doing them fast will cause you to disregard the details and focus on capturing the movement or gesture or whatever. But for me it just looks fucked up. Like the body is always bigger than the head. Sometimes the "hips" are too high/too low.
>>7938896 Off the top of my head proko talks about doing lots of 1 min gestures as an exercise. Obviously they're already good. So that's why I ask you guys if it's true and you eventually break through
>>7939210 Yes but the figures are ugly as fuck clearly made by a mentally ill mediocre european artist, we are talking about old man heads on a fat woman bodies with a neovagina. But yeah the information is correct.
>>7939796 not yet. recently began drawing traditionally though and once i get a bit more comfortable with it i plan to layer in some painting sketches.
>>7941163 I mean it depends on what you want to do but it’s a good idea to work on clothes a lot, they help you understand the figure more. Shading is good but very complex and not always necessary unless you want to have a style that has lots of rendering
>>7940234 I still think the Anime style is holding you back. the figures with more realistic faces look phenomenal (top right corner) I think you're naturally inclined to a more realistic style, so having big anime-style bug eyes on the figures has an inharmonious effect.
>>7940256 Thanks, desu my quality varies sometimes. >>7941187 I like drawing realistic faces from time to time but it's just I simply have much more experience with them. Did a shitton of realistic face studies.
>>7941165 >>7941170 sorry for being late, did not expect anyone to reply to be frank uh i just want to make some decently rendered bodies is all but don't want to only focus on them alone
>>7918363 Ironically the two of you suffer from the opposite problems. The other anon’s figures look like balloon animals because he’s using gesture as a crutch to cover his lack of anatomical knowledge, but gesture uninformed by structure is just goop. Your figures on the other hand is just box-logic applied to photos. Construction without interpretation becomes mere copying. When it comes to expression that other anon has an edge over you
>>7943574 Your figures give me a Korean art style vibe and I really like them! Would you mind telling me what resources you used to learn to draw from when you first started until now? I mean things like books or courses. Sorry for my broken English!
>>7943661 bold move asking that of someone who dislikes his own art
just copy and trace drawings that you like (with clear lineart). I got most gains from that. brush doesn't matter, I picked mine on a whim and stayed with it, line weight too hard. look for shared symbols / similarities in how different artists describe same parts of the body, and with time you will accumulate a library of symbols you can build figures from. like, as an example, in my figs, I use the same lines for clavicles, just move them around a little to fit the orientation of the chest and shoulders. does every person have defined clavicles? no. but my thought process is "artists put these lines at the top of the chest, so I do it too"
and get basic knowledge of construction, doesn't matter which book you get it from, they're all similar. a blob for the head, chest, and hips, crosses on top of them to indicate orientation. just so you'd know where to put your symbols. I wouldn't recommend any books or courses. I've studied vilppu, hampton, morpho manuals, but they didn't give me much improvement. and here you're are >>7944134 >stop being unsatisfied with your skill and seeking improvement, stay content in your mediocrity
>>7944143 It’s not about being unsatisfied with your skill and not seeking improvement . It’s about seeing your journey as independent from others. Their weaknesses aren’t yours and your strengths aren’t theirs. Focus on your own work and your wishes will come true, but the comparison is ultimately pointless.
>>7944164 Shame most artists abhorrent human beings. Comes with the territory i guess, full of trannies and women that wasted their lifes doing the same loomies and the same garbage over and over brute forcing their way.
>>7943574 stupid shoobert, stop being so self loathing. a little delusion can go a long way at improving not only your art but yourself as human bean. theres a balance to be struck with self critique and love for the shit you put out. now quit whining and git back to werk
>>7944268 >a little delusion can go a long way at improving
Fucking thank you. Holy shit. I wish people here understood this more. You will NOT make it in this craft unless you’re a little delusional about what you want.
>>7944295 well, its more of a notion about wanting and accepting that you are an artist and you are amongst masters and will be a master eventually, which is likelier to happen with a mindset that is aiming towards it. if you think of yourself as drawer, you will think like a drawer, no? >oh i'm just a hobbyist... i do something sometimes when i find the time heh ngmi
>>7918363 >>7942383 the coomer is visibly the better artist here desu. i dont think it matters that much in terms of actually progressing but sexual energy has always been tied to creative energy in western culture starting with le greeks, autistically trying to remove it from the process is unproductive
these took me 3 and 4 hours respectively. left fig ended up having a fridge body >>7957887 no wonder >>7944524 dude that red fig looks amazing. are you sure you calling isn't academic figure drawing?
>>7957939 and morpho 'studies' you can see the quality drop when I switch to a thin brush >>7954464 wtf is happening with her chest btw, did anyone figure it out. she looks broken
>>7957925 why should i make fun of them, we all started somewhere >>7957939 why no wonder ? and your studys look more rusehd and messy, i guess thats the reason why u think the quality dropped, its prob not the brush
tried drawing a pose that needs more foreshortening and i couldnt get it right what should one do to fix that? Also proportions, seriously I don't get the cube method
>>7957988 >and your studys look more rusehd and messy, i guess thats the reason why u think the quality dropped, its prob not the brush truly? I don't think it's that simple. let me self-analyze:
- obviously time is partly at fault here, I didn't spend multiple hours on each morpho copy, unlike I do with my fig drawings. but why? I guess I decided to go for quantity, rather than quality, since I'm less likely to burn out that way. and people have told me multiple times that I'm too slow, so I hold myself back from polishing and draw on a single layer.
- another reason might be that, when I draw figs, I not so much 'draw what I see', but interpret them into a stylized / simplified version, and often resort to symbols. with morpho I'm trying copy someone else's work.
- why are the copies bad, then? beyond my poor copying skills and hand / eye coordination. I assume the drawings in morpho books are trad scans, while I draw in digital. I cannot copy the strokes with my pixel brush one to one and so they become unconfident.
- I've become too dependent on thick brushes and use them as a handicap. instead of making five thin searching lines, I put down one fat line, and it ends up looking prettier.
verdict? ngmi talentlet with a learning disability
>>7958054 just because you want to go for quantity, should not mean that you need to be super fast. You are also way to harsh with yourself, you are already better than most ppl on this board
>>7958104 I've exaggerated the last line for comedic purposes. it's gonna take some time to get used to a thin brush, will prob get better by the time I'm done copying the book
>>7957942 >you can see the quality drop when I switch to a thin brush I think you do a disservice to yourself when you do the exercises with a brush without line weight. The exercises are designed to be done on paper. You should use a brush as similar to pencil as possible.
>>7959004 focus on one thing at a time if you want to improve. i would skip trying to do lighting, and i'd skip drawing figures from imagination -- at least for a while.
if i were you i'd do more stuff like this >>7956728 but sticking closer to the reference, trying to get the basic angles and distances right, the aim being to get better at judging proportions.
is there ever a moment in all your figure drawing journey, where you can draw a somewhat decent body all from imagination? ive been figure drawing for more than a year and i have some inklings of it, i guess i just gotta bridgeman maxx
>>7959243 When figure drawing without reference, I find that the only part of the process that requires "imagination" is the pose/gestural stage. Everything else is inferred, based on experience and my own design cliches, each built on top of one another. I impose forms, proportions, and anatomy based on the pose. Those things follow rules, so there's actually not much imaginative going on. Frankly, I don't even like the word imagined, as it implies I clearly visualize a pose before committing it to paper. It's more of an exploratory process.