[Ramona]

Thank you Jean-Pierre for your encouraging words!

I think this week was a little bit out of focus and I spent most of my drawing time today with not drawing, but researching another learning method. Most of my pages are also filled with incoherent notes, so I can only present another attempt of the 3D torsos (similar to day 8) and one quick imagination torso,

Day 35:

[Ramona]

Today is my basic day – so I tried to do some basic perspective stuff (and failed at a few attempts pretty badly as you can see). I also tried to do two torso poses from imagination with pastel chalk.

Day 34:

[Ramona]

I think the volume of the forms and your use of values have improved already!

[Ramona]

Today I practiced my structural approach to the figure. It’s still rather awkward and I think I might have in general difficulties with my spatial sense, but on the other hand it will hopefully get better with more practice. I also reviewed the general landmarks of the torso (the ones in the middle were drawn without looking at the structure first) and had a few aha moments during my session.

Day 33:

 

[Ramona]

There is a lot of progress going on here, keep it up! Especially the last one looks really good!

[Ramona]

Gesture Monday and this week’s focus is on the torso in perspective. I tried to do some simplification exercises while maintaining the gesture and it has not really sunk in, but overall today was just a big warm up for the shapes tomorrow.

I also noticed that I really have no good control of my lines and I should definitely work on that.

Day 32:

[Ramona]

Thank you Joshua for the advice! This makes totally sense and I will definitely take it into consideration when drawing my next skulls.

I had not too much time to draw today, so I did a quick Croquis Cafe session with inspiration from the art of Chris Glib. A few attempts turned out rather mediocre, but I liked the other few of those pretty much.

Day 31:

[Ramona]

Lazy Saturday: just a few random studies of a skull.

Day 30 (already, wow!)

[Ramona]

Thanks for your detailed reply, Paul! Growth happens outside the comfort zone, right, so you you chose the right path with tackling gouache.

I think you do already a good job on these, but I bet you can improve even more as the challenge progresses.

Thank you, I will definitely try gouache colors at some point, maybe I’ll find some affordable colors until the challenge ends!

[Ramona]

Hello Iliya and thank you so much for the draw-over, that was unexpected! Really helpful, thank you so much! My drawing studies go in circles, so the torso will certainly reappear on my to do list, so this will be very handy!

Jean-Pierre, thank you for your kind words! I like to switch the medium from time to time, I think it makes the process more interesting.

Paul, thank you as well so much, much appreciated! I always wanted to deep dive into drawing and art, but never really got the motivation for it, because I thought maybe I just lack the skill and do not know where to start. But by this year, I started to look into more resources and also came across NMA, and this helped me a lot! This challenge is also a really good opportunity and was really a good start to develop a daily drawing habit.

Today is Portrait Friday! It started out really wonky and seemed like a “not so good” art day, but I used this opportunity to analyse my outcomes more closely. It’s actually nothing special that I discovered, but my little experiment from today really shows the importance of structure. I mean, I heard it several times in the instruction videos, but I guess learning by doing will have a different effect on my memory.

So, to explain it briefly, I started by simply drawing from the reference, but noticed that I just copied the image and it looked pretty bad. Therefore, I tried to redo it with a more structural approach, which in general looked better, but the proportions were still off and it had little resemblance with the reference. Lastly, I drew the same face from imagination and  – it looks pretty close to the first one, doesn’t it? I concluded that all these distortions were caused by my lack of knowledge of the skull. Accordingly, I did some live studies of a skull and in the last step redrew the picture without the original reference, but based on the angled skull. And voila, it looked more similar to the reference than the other attempts. I mean, this might also be caused by the fact that this was my fourth attempt, but I’m convinced now that knowing the underlying form really makes a difference.

Sorry for the long text, but this was my small epiphany of today :’D

Day 29

[Ramona]

Gouache is a medium I was always interested in, but never tried using! Your studies look really good, I liked the transition in the portrait with ink to gouache.

[Ramona]

I think hands and feet are such a difficult topic, I try to avoid drawing them all the time!

I think you’re doing a good job so far! You said you want to improve your understanding of rendering, and I’m not familiar with this topic yet, but in theory, I thought Beginning Figure Drawing Part 3: Light & Shadow with Steve Huston was quite helpful! Maybe you have looked into this resource before, but if not, it might help you!

[Ramona]

Nothing too wild for today: I focused on perspective explanations.

Day 28:

[Ramona]

You really have a nice rhythm in your figure drawings!

I also find it more difficult to draw males, I personally think that its easier to achieve a good flow with female bodies

[Ramona]

Thanks Joshua for your encouraging words, I am also convinced that it takes time until all of these different concepts are internalized and can be used without thinking too much. Today was my Basic Wednesday, so I drew a bunch of ellipses and boxes. My perspective skills are not very good, so I decided to engage in an extra round of perspective practice tomorrow.

 

I received new pastel colors today and decided to do a test drawing with it, I actually used this medium for the first time. I like the result (drawn from a Croquis Cafe reference photo). Has someone advice on how to do tiny details with pastel chalk? I had to draw the finer details with an ink pen, but I’m not very satisfied with how it looks.

Day 27:

[Author]

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