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I’m going to do at least one moderately rendered figure (or rarely portrait) drawing every day. I’ll take no less than 1 and no longer than 3 hours per drawing. My goal is to improve my edgework, especially my firm edges in the light. To that end I’m going to be working tonally with charcoal pencils on medium tooth drawing paper, laid paper, and occasionally bristol. Normally I do my figure drawings in a painterly large-stroke way on smooth newsprint, which means I often end up focusing more on the light/shadow pattern and abstract shapes instead of construction and modeling form. I’m going to try to do the reverse here. Should be fun! 🙂
First figure, she came out looking pretty dubious from a construction standpoint. There are some very “”interesting”” things going on with that shoulder, the forward facing leg is too short, and while I did get some nice S curves in there, the pose is really lacking power from a shape design perspective, especially in that arm. You should feel the weight of her whole body in her arms, and you don’t. Aside from the construction issues, the edgework in the light, which is what my primary focus is on, is pretty poor. There are a couple places in there where I feel like I’m close to “getting it” so to speak, but mostly the supposed-to-be-firm edges look either too hard or too soft. Overall, not really an acceptable outcome for the two hours I put in to it, but it’s not bad enough that I’m overly embarrassed about it.
Hi John,
First of all from my point of view and considering my current skill level I see the things you are talking about but would be happy to be able to create such things, so don’t be to hard on yourself.
You have a simple but clear goal so try to stay positive. I mean it was the first day so you set the ground to work from, that’s also a accomplishment.
I can’t give you that much of a critique but I’ll still try to suggest what’s in my mind so evaluate for yourself if it’s of any value to you.
The forearm looks a bit short. You said one should feel the weight so I don’t know if the arm is supposed to be straight (I think it is) but I would consider maybe bending the arm, therefore converging the upper and forearm more so that the upper arm/elbow looks like coming towards us and the forearm/wrist like going away from us. Maybe that would strengthen the feel of weight compared to a straight arm but to be honest I don’t know if that’s possible because I don’t know enough about anatomy to know how that would affect the shoulder. Edit: I was so focused on the arm that just realized that bending it would probably kill the feel of pushing which is also giving a sense of weight so I think the above is nonsense, sorry 😅😁
Another suggestion is to maybe also consider playing with your contour edges within this challenge if your focus is on edges. You could maybe try to incorporate lost edges or experiment with how strong the edges/lines of the none rendered parts should be.
Overall I really like this one and while being jealous of your skill I can’t wait to see your next pieces 😅👍
Hey thank you for the crit Christopher, and I appreciate the compliment, but I don’t think there’s anything here to be jealous of! Just the relatively mediocre results of a few years of practice. The forearm is definitely too short, and the shoulder being improperly placed doesn’t help with that either, because it boxes in rest of the arm. As for incorporating lost edges or focusing on the thickness of line, I’ll do those in the future, but only once I can consistently make good edges in the light. Should only be…a few hundred more hours of practice. 😉
Here’s day 2’s drawing, took the full 3 hours this time. It’s terrible! I’ll probably give poor Rajeev here another shot, he really deserves to be portrayed better than this. The only thing that isn’t nightmarish from a shape perspective is the face. Circular shape design always makes me happy! I’ve noticed that this paper gives a sort of grainy texture on camera, which is unfortunate, and that it’s very time consuming to remove the texture in the shadows. I think I’ll just keep leaving them textured, despite it being a really incorrect use of texture, which should imo exist primarily in the midtones. There’s no sense of visual hierarchy here, which really isn’t a problem in this case, considering the purpose of these studies. As for the soft edges in the light, this one actually has worse edgework than the last; what a disaster! TBF I think this isn’t a result of me not understanding what to do, just being technically and mechanically incapable of applying what I know I should do.
Day 3
Not again! Poor Rajiv, look how I massacred my boy! :'( Took me ~2 hrs, really phoned this one in. I genuinely didn’t want to stop and draw figures today, which is rare. I was having so much fun doing head studies on this ancient piece of parchment paper I found lying around. It’s bad. Really bad. Nothing else to say about it.
I’m moving to bristol, or maybe laid paper, for day 4. I love drawing on this paper but it’s inexplicably grainy on camera.
Day 4
This one is straight up unfinished, not just that “halfway done aesthetic” that the other ones had, despite my taking the full 3 hours here. I suppose I really would need about six-seven hours to do a full figure like this. Not being able to complete this drawing on time made me realize that doing this kind of thing, meaning full figure drawings, really is impeding my progress with edges. I can’t even get to the point where I can practice the edges I need to!
I’m going to start doing just torsos and arms, no reason to include anything below the waist or above the neck. That’s where the soft edges I’m looking for are, anyway.
Day 5
Decided to do some more focused studies, a torso and two arms. There are some extremely dubious things about them (that right arm on the torso, eughh), and they look less impressive than the previous studies, especially that first one which is retrospect looks OK. Still, they were more effective for learning, and I feel like I actually made some progress with edges today. I really liked using this toned paper and pastel pencil, though! Im going to find a color combo that I like and start doing that more regularly. Also, the edges on that arm on the upper right are pretty good. In fact, they’re about exactly what I want from my edges.
Day 6
Nothing to say about this one other than that it looks very much like extreme discount off-brand Steve Huston. Also I need to get a new phone, the graininess is clearly from my camera, not the paper.
Really nice drawings, have you studied anatomy? And what Pastel pencils are you using?
I especially like the sepia drawing, the white adds a lot, you yould even push the highlights a bit more.
I dont know mutch about edges, but your figures feel a bit outlined. Personally what I like to see in drawings are edges, that get stronger to emphasise volumes and overlaps, but get almost lost on parts of less importence. Id try to add outlines only on the parts you want to draw the viewers attention to. You could also experiment with an background, istead of outlines to get your edges.
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