It sounds like the new approach you are looking for is exaggeration. Look at what you are already doing, contrast it in your mind with somebody standing perfectly straight, and then test out how far you can go in the opposite direction, how extreme you can tilt the masses and twist the joints, before the pose really starts to break apart and look goofy.
A good measure would be, that about half of your drawings indeed should start to look goofy, as that indicates that you are actually max-testing and pushing the limit.
And then look at the half that does not look goofy and marvel about what is possible. That way your stuff will definitely stop feeling "stiff".
Don't aim at recreating the reference, you are better then a meat-based photo filter. People looking at your pics will never rate them by how closely you stayed with the reference, but how easily they could read what is going on. You are skilled and disciplined enough to do the photo filter job, you don't have so much left to proof by repeating it, now push beyond it.
Oooor maybe it was a problem on my end, that went away after I repeatedly fiddled with Norton Password safe. We apologize for any inconveniences!
Thanks. I haven't had much of a mind into this for quite some time, but it is nice to hear that someone is still reading it. I hope to get back more to drawing outside, when the weather becomes less harsh.
Obviously I am currently logged in. Despite that, the "Draw" feature insists on treating me as an anon. I get offered the option to Log In, but despite Autofill from Norton active the Login procedure does not seem to complete.
Again, I had 30 minutes monday, and 34 minutes tuesday, now I have 1h 4m monday and a gap on tuesday.
It is still happening. I did not practice almost 2 hours on thursday, but I did practice at least 30 mins on Friday.
thank you. If anything strange happens, I'll report back.
I love your lines and your style. They are clear, clean, exaggerating muscle physiology quite a bit, but with beautiful curves.
The problem with giving you advice is, that where you are makes sense. There are other places you could be, but they would not be clearly superior, just different. So sadly, the burden of finding your way through art space stays squarely with you.
You could start playing some more games to challenge you:
You could go for less details and bigger shapes, to see if you can reduce the number of lines and get towards more graphical elegance via a lower line count.
You could focus more on construction, to get from drawing from observation more towards drawing from imagination by manipulating point of view or finetuning poses.
You could pick a specific artist you like and try to imitate their style....
Those are just suggestions for games you could play. About what you should do.... meh, if I knew that.... maybe prepare for an actual finished piece, one you put a frame around and present it to others.... so you get a better idea about specific roadblocks between where you are now, and where you want to be.
Fixing my current streak doesn't matter so much, as it is rather small at the moment anyways. The problem is, this is already the second time it happened, which kind of defeats the motivational impact behind the streaks themselves. First time I was confused, but didn't think so much of it, as I had other things going on anyways. This time, you can see the 3 hour 20 minutes on 26th of october, they were definitely spread over 26th and 27th october, and the switch happened on 29th or 30th of october, so clearly after the dates were already established.
Something weird is going on with practice log, since maybe a week or two. It kind of randomly rearranges the amount of times for prior days. I tried to go for a longer streak again, but then it randomly changed from 9 days streak to 2 days streak, apparently adding the drawing times of two adjacent days together and leaving one day free?
-
Kim
edited this post on November 1, 2025 12:44pm.
I think that user deleted their account themselves. The OG post is from almost 2 years ago. What happened in between would be anyone's guess.
I applaud your showing off. Well done!
Just my idea, but I think your gestures could benefit from producing a series, where you only draw the hips abstracted to a 3-d block, and the chest, either also as a block, or as that flat half-egg shape.
Not to continue doing that for all time, but to get a firm grasp about the distance from hip to chest, the angles they typically have to each other, and the graphical effect that produces.
It's not that you have no clue of that at all, or that you are horribly off, but to me it looks like it is the part of the gesture, where you are insecure and winging it, so focusing at that for a short while might help you tighten some screws.
I don't understand your intended process towards a finished product.
Am I correct in assuming, that you chose digital tools to plot spheroids and tubular forms, all with a lot of contour lines to indicate volume? That does produce a lot of lines, but they rather distract from simplicity. And, well, why do you even bother plotting a 100% precise foundation? How will that help you render the final lines?
If you draw manually, you have a chance to pick up proportions and rhythms on a haptic level. I am not aware, that digital drawing does this, as you are mostly placing ready objects.
Or, if you draw manually, you can have a slight foundation, that you can draw over with the final rendering, so the foundation helps, but vanishes into the background or is fully deleted in the end. I am generally not aware, why such a step would be necessary in digital drawing, as you can just manipulate the intermediate lines?
I mean, the fact, that I have no clue, what you are trying to achieve does not equal you are doing something wrong. Maybe I am just stupid or unable to jump beyond my comfort zone. That fact might give an indication, though, why you might not get a lot of reactions: the likelyhood, that others feel about as buffled as me is decently high.
