[Christopher]

Ohh seems there went something wrong with my post, sorry for that.

And a big thank you to everyone for your kind words.

@Nick Hausman
If it’s about arm control I really aim to be versatile and confident. So mixing all this different approaches is really challenging, since I always get exposed to a movement or technique that’s new and therefore uncomfortable for me.

@Chris_Legaspi
Thank you! My plan is to expose myself to these excercises while working through the courses and then throw one of them randomly in as daily warm up.

@Jessica
You are welcome. Another thought was -even if it might seem mundane in the beginning- that it would be interesting to see where I came from looking at my progress after a while.

@rizk.christopher
As Chris Legaspi said: Always flex those drawing muscles!

Day 2.

Again nothing special to look at. First the last recap excercise of the first perspective chapter + the first excercise of the second chapter. Then some more course excercises. Especially the “perspective ellipses” are difficult since I either get smooth but imprecise lines from the shoulder or more accurate but ugly lines from my fingers /wrist.

I would like to do more “real” things but it’s suprising how time consuming those exercises are.

[Christopher]

Hi Paula,

it’s really sad you haven’t got any comments the last days. Your drawings are really fun to look at. Maybe people are intimidated because the animals look so good.

So even if you are waaayyy beyond my current level I’ll give it a try. One thing I’m noticing you could potentially focus on is proportions. For example the reindeer on top in profile of day 52 aswell as the coyote on top in profile of day 57 look like their torso’s could be to long but I might be wrong.

Anyway your work is pretty inspiring. And if there would be more to critique I assume it would be about design or composition which I’m not confident enough in to be able to judge or even see if there’s something wrong.

So keep up the great work and even if you don’t get much visitors in your thread I’m pretty sure there are alot of people here in the forum that really enjoy looking at your work, just like I do! 👍👋

[Christopher]

My post didn’t show up earlier today. So after waiting a few hours if it shows up, it seems like I have to write everything again 😭

——-

Because I often draw at night I’m going to be a day behind from now on, meaning I’ll post what I did the day before. That way it’s easier to find time for posting and there will be less yellowish photos 😅

Day 4.

Yesterday was kind of a perspective day. Having less pages then usual makes me feel like being unproductive but watching the videos + drawing along and understanding the information takes some time.

Additionally since (beside the perspective diagrams and the cubes from day 3) everything I did until now was “dexterity” stuff so I started to think of/evaluate what I’m most uncomfortable with.

While moving forward in the courses and therefore having less room to do every excercise everyday I have to shrink the amount of them. So pinpointing the weakness and focusing on them seems to be the best thing to do.

In my case that includes the curved lines, the long lines from the shoulder and point to point, ellipses that have to fit for example in a plane and finally shading while staying in the frame.

That’s four, so I can rotate and do two of them each day

[Christopher]

Sorry for the double post, I don’t know what the cause is but now even my post’s with just one picture also get eaten by the forum 😅

But I can see the image in the recently uploaded graphic …

[Christopher]

If you want to stick to your goal of 5 per day (which is good) but want to mix up things, you could for example try a different medium on each head. Or you could change the level of finish, so that for example 3 heads are just carefully drawn structure studies without features and the other 2 are small but fully finished portraits. You could also add, if it’s about structure, a skull studie from time to time.

If you really want to force yourself into thinking about and sticking with your mark’s, Ink is also an option.

Just some ideas, maybe one of them helps to freshen things up again 👋

[Christopher]

Hi Jaylene,

you definitely got some mileage here, impressive!

It’s funny that while I was looking at your thread I was thinking to suggest that you should maybe try to mix it up and draw bigger studies … and what have you done just today? Exactly! 😅

You are also getting close to day 50, how do you feel about your current progress and the goals you were setting up in the beginning?

I’m curious about seeing your progress on day 100, so keep going 👍

• This reply was modified 3 years, 11 months ago by Christopher.

[Christopher]

Hi Elena,

I really like your gestures from day 12 aswell as your current paintings from day 14. Especially the top and bottom right ones really convey a sense of light.

Just out of curiosity because I mostly see hard edges in your watercolor work, are you working mostly wet on dry?

Anyway keep going there’s definitely some progress!

[Christopher]

Hmmm let’s say you finished the line work of a portrait which means you haven’t shaded it yet. If you now start to just separate the parts of the face in light from the parts in shadow that’s basically value grouping. Think of a value scale for example one from 5 (darkest dark) to 0 (white of your paper).

The next step would be to further separate/develope the values inside the light family, therefore light to mid values and inside the shadow family (dark values).

It’s hard to explain the principles just with words but I hope that it’s kind of clarifying.

Knowing some structure and, or the planes of the head would further clarify that process since you would know exactly which part of the face are hit by the light and which not, therefore which parts would be a light, mid or dark value.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 11 months ago by Christopher.

[Christopher]

Thanks Bryan,

I got kind of a love/hate relationship with perspective. Hate because I really struggle with it which makes the process really time consuming and mundane. On the other hand I like how perspective opens the door I want to walk through in terms of being able to execute every idea through being able to manipulate and rotate objects in space exactly how I wan’t to. It’s also fascinating how much other fundamentals like light & shadow or composition are affected by perspective.

Oh and if I start to talk about books the conversation gets endless 😅 But even if those line excercises are from the russian academic drawing course I know what you mean since I also got this book. His YouTube channel is also quite useful even for people that don’t use ink.

[Christopher]

Hi Bryan,

I just used a little break to look at your thread and however you might feel about your work, just go back to your first page/days and look at the difference! Just stick with it your perseverance will pay off.

The biggest difference for me is the renderening. I don’t know if it’s because of the medium but especially your last paintings look a lot cleaner and thought-out. Your application of color seems to be much flatter and shape driven like some suggestions mentioned.

And the next time you tend to be hard on yourself don’t forget that you are juggling two balls at the same time with not only learning to paint the figure but also drawing it.

I might not be able to give you a helpful critique but I can say thank you! Your perseverance is really motivating.

[Christopher]

Hi David,

first it’s nice to see someone else working through the beginner course and there’s definitely some progress! Looking at these makes me excited to catch up to the same excercises.

After looking through your thread my advice would be to work on your accuracy/execution. I don’t necessarily mean measurements but if you look at your copies they look much cleaner. I could be wrong but it looks like you would do the copies real carefully but if you try doing something on your own you rush through them.

So if I’m right just try to slow down a bit if not forget everything I said … 😅

[Christopher]

Hi Myriam,

like other’s have said I really like that you experiment with different mediums. Even without the references most of your portraits look like they are fairly accurate.

Critique wise I would consider practising structure and value grouping. If you don’t quite know what that means just search for terms like “planes of the head”. For value grouping you could watch Bill Perkins video’s from the beginner course about major and minor keys.

[Christopher]

Hi Paul thank you!

I also ended up taking more breaks and in general splitting my practise in multiple session’s rather than one 2 hour+ one.

Additionally I started exercising my arm/wrist/hand to strengthen my arm.

[Christopher]

Sorry for the double post but as explained above, posting more than one picture leads to problems.

Day 3.

Two more perspective diagrams and besides the usual there are also some cubes. I found myself having trouble with measuring from observation. I don’t know if it’s my set up (table easel) but my arm is really “unstable” while trying to measure. Besides that this process isn’t really fun to me and seems to be really exhausting for me. After like 10 minutes of trying to concentrate and trying to transfer those measurements my brain feels like I was part of a math class for 20 hours straight.

[Christopher]

Sorry for being late. I don’t exactly know what the problem is with my posts besides not being able to post more than one pictue, but since my Day 1 post appeared a few hours later I wanted to wait if my Day 2 post also needed to be approved. That was more than 24 hours ago.

Anyway,

first a big thank you to everyone who took the time to visit this thread!

@Nick Hausman

If it’s about pen/arm control I want to be as versatile and confident as possible. That’s why I think it’s good to expose yourself to all these different approaches from the courses. There’s always an approach/movement I haven’t seen before that I’m therefore not used to.

@Chris_Legaspi

Thank you! My plan is to expose myself to the excersises while working through the courses and then choose two or three randomly every day as warm up.

@Jessica @rizk.christopher

Thanks! It’s like Chris Legasp said, always flex those drawing muscels!

 

Day 2.

Again nothing special. More excersises from the courses and the last and first excersise of chapter 1/2 from the perspective course.

[Author]

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