Christopher’s 100 Day Challenge: Building A Solid Foundation

[Christopher]

Day 23 & 24

[Christopher]

Day 25

Still trying to get back on track. Additionally I hope to find some time again soon to leave some comments (but I still look into most threads regularly)

The more sketchy diagrams aren’t my favorites since I just can’t execute them the same way Erik Olson does which makes them look messy 😅

[Drawer12345]

these are all looking good and this is a good challenge tedious but good. Keep up the good work and I think I’m going to try to work this in my own challenge as well

[Christopher]

@drawer

Thank you 👍

Day 26, 27 & 28

I think part of the problem is that my plan was to progress through the beginner courses within this 100 days but since my goal was to be confident in those early areas it ended up slowing me down because I’m grinding the same excercises and still not being happy with them stops me from continuing. So I think I might need to change something about the challenge or really add a course with a real subject soon to change things up.

[Christopher]

Day 29, 30 & 31

The last days I started thinking of ways to change my approach. I think I just fell into the trap of grinding this excercises to much. In essence they are tools to improve finished drawings and not being finished pieces in themselves.

Additionally I’m going to lean more towards following my gut and what’s enjoyable for me. It’s difficult to find the balance between doing uncomfortable things to improve or forcing them.

For me that means that I’ll add the Portrait course to the challenge and put the russian academic course to the side for the moment. I like the measurement/observation + construction approach too but I enjoy the loose sketchy approach much more, so I’ll follow that and see how it goes. I think it’s much better to focus on one approach and if needed come back to other approaches to tackle weakness later instead of doing everything at the same time.

In the moment it’s just important for me to do more actual subject matter and use the excercises to get better with my tools.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by Christopher.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by Christopher.

[Joshua Jacobo]

Great work here. It’s a rude awakening when you realize that understanding the exercise isn’t enough and that even if you grind it for hours it will take years to master. You have the right idea. Bounce between theory, exercises and putting it all together. Mastering drawing isn’t a procedural process you’re constantly returning to previous stages and bouncing around. You’re on the right track. I would recommend adding imagination drawing and master analysis into your daily drawing routine. That will really help you make these connections and breakthroughs.

[Christopher]

@Joshua Jacobo

Yeah realizing that is pretty frustrating but at least my goals for the challenge weren’t “wrong” just my learning approach was.

Thank you for your time and I’ll definitely try to implement your suggestions.

Day 32 & 33

So it’s like Joshua said. My goals for this challenge will stay the same but my approach will “evolve”. As I said I added the Portrait course as specific subject matter so that I actually have something to put the excercises and the principles behind them together.

I’ll still show line and ellipse excercises if I do them, since I want to continue to show everything I do but I’ll try to follow the loop “theory, excercise & application” and increase the “putting the learned together” side.

Lastly I started adding watercolor for the value and shading excercises. I won’t use color but in my eyes it’s a good opportunity to get familiar with the material while practising those concepts even if it’s not my priority in the moment.

[Bryan Mccabe]

You’re putting in an impressive amount of work on the fundamentals. It will definitely pay off 🙂. Keep up the good work.

[elizabeth hone]

Great stuff. You are inspiring a lot of us to go back to perspective and real basics. Thank you.

[Christopher]

Thank you Bryan & Elizabeth 👍

Day 34

There might be coming more today but I wanted to show work in progress pictures to show what I’m focusing on in the moment.

It doesn’t matter if I do objects like this or portrait stuff, my focus for now is on finding an approach that works for me. In the moment it’s more about observation than imagination but since I like the approach focused on construction I want to find a way to work like that while drawing something from observation.

Instead of just constructing it I wanted to try to focus more on 2D shape for the “lay in” still thinking in 3D and then constructing the inside while observing.

[Christopher]

Day 35

Today I worked from Imagination after watching the first video of Charles Hu’s structure of the head.

It’s really cool how these different teaching styles work together. For me Chris Legaspi’s lessons are more about how to start thinking differently for portrait drawing. Charles Hu’s structure lessons really help to enhance the lay in process.

The only thing I’m unsure about is if it’s a good idea for someone like me who doesn’t know any anatomy yet to get so carried away with designing my own rhythms. It’s so fun to slightly change the learned and making it your own but I don’t want to ingrain anything “wrong” in my process 😅

[Christopher]

Day 35

[Christopher]

Day 36

I’m not that happy about today’s head studies, especially the bottom two look like men but the reference were women.

The middle one is another structure attempt from imagination and the other four heads were drawn from reference while watching Chris Legaspi’s lay in demos.

[Christopher]

Day 37 & 38

Yesterday I tried to research good reference for skulls and the planes of the head. After I collected some material I wanted to start working on those two areas but after I got overwhelmed while trying to draw the Vilppu planes I stopped.

Today I wanted to try the simple side of the Asaro head but that also didn’t work out that well, they always end up out of proportion.

I don’t know if it’s because I wanted to apply the planes on a sketched head with average Proportions I learned or if I have to measure and try to get a correct copy for those type of studies.

I never really did any type of studies like master or anatomy studies before so I have no clue of how to approach/internalize something like this.

I just thought it would be a good idea to internalize a solid system for the planes as soon as possible but maybe it’s just to early/difficult for me at the moment.

[Christopher]

Day 39 & 40

So after the last two days didn’t turn out that well I took a deep breath and thought that I may just need to step back. So I decided to first experiment and find a way to establish the head, face and neck without details like planes or lay in lines. I mean if I can’t even draw a “Mannequin” head consistently how should I even think of succeeding at drawing more complex things?

I arrived at a mixture of different techniques there I think of the cranium and the face as two separate units that also need to be practised separately. Then today I tried the Asaro head again and I’m much happier about how it turned out.

So for the next days I know what to focus on and even if the asaro looked better I still need to understand it. Since I don’t own one myself it’s hard to figure out how light would behave on those planes if you aren’t that experienced yet.

[Author]

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