Forum posts by Aunt Herbert

Whatever you have done, it worked.

Still stuck

My tip to first steps towards drawing heads and portraits. Start with an abstraction. Usually the Loomis abstraction is regarded as the simplest abstraction of the head.

Here is one video that details the method: or you could even work from the old OG source: https://archive.org/details/andrew-loomis-fun-with-a-pencil/page/n35/mode/2up

The idea is, that unlike in gesture drawing, the distribution of facial features is pretty much determined by the skull, which is a single bone. Once you internalized the average proportions, you will have much less of a struggle to draw an individual head.

So, your daily practice would be to draw the Loomis head several times every day. First attempts will likely take 10 minutes, when you get more practiced, it will go down to approx 5 minutes. So, if you want to draw 30 minutes daily, do 3 to 6 repetitions.

At first, don't bother much with capturing an individual reference. You can use reference as "randomizer", but only for different perspectives (and to keep the page counting your practice time). You don't really need reference at this stage, though, as your goal isn't to capture a specific face.

Just keep drawing Loomis heads, until you know by heart, which lines you are supposed to draw in which order. That way you develop an internal map for the human head in general, the major proportions, where the features of the face are supposed to be. Circle for the head, cut-offs at the side, brow line, center line, chin line,....

Once you repeated drawing a Loomis head often enough, that you feel really confident doing it, THEN you can start individualizing it and start switching from the idealized form to modifying the features to express emotions, or to start wondering where the proportions of the individual on the reference maybe deviate from the idealized proportions, that you now have practiced.

Bit of a warning with Loomis' OG material. It's really old, and some of his caricatures are quite outdated in regards to sensitivity to stereotyping people.

Someone wrote down a lot about proportions of the hand here: https://sweetmonia.com/Sweet-Drawing-Blog/the-various-proportions-of-human-hand-fingers-arm/

My question for you would be, do you study hands, because you actually want to draw full feature sized hands, or because you feel insecure about hands in your gesture drawings? Because in my experience, hand studies can be a bit of an overkill for that purpose. Sooooo many extra details to keep in mind.

Usually it's far more viable to simplify the heck out of hands. Often, you can just use a rhombus to indicate the whole hand, especially if the fingers are closed.

If the fingers are spread, it's usually enough to indicate the forefinger, the pinky and thumb. The great thing about indicating stuff: the human eye will give you a lot of credits. If you just indicate the overall shape and size correctly, the observer's mind will just assume, that you mastered all the details and just fill in the blanks correctly for you.

So, don't just jump ahead in adding details to hands, just because you want to prove, that you learned how to count to five. Keep working from general simplified abstract forms over the whole body, until you just have to add the details, because there is still time on the clock, and nothing else left to draw. And at that moment, you will find, that you have established so many landmarks, that finding the shapes and proportions for the last remaining details has become really easy.

I like, that you find long and decisive lines to depict the poses. Some of them look really cool, telling a lot of story with few lines.

A problem, that you probably may want to overcome overtime is, that a lot of them don't look extremely naturalistic. Expressive, yes, but the proportions are strange. And I think it stems from you not having developed an understanding of how chest, hip and spine work together, and where the major joints for the limbs exactly need to be. Which won't be an easy fix, but it starts with becoming aware of the underlying structures of the body.

I found helpful advice on youtube on lovelifedrawing and proko. Both channels/artists have over time developed and published their own versions of how to develop an underdrawing that provides you with proportions and perspective.

Michael Hampton is also quite popular, but he is very purist in his quest to start the gesture from understanding movement over understanding the body. I find him definitely extremely aestethic, but personally struggle to embody his visions on paper.

I mean, yes, redoing every pose with a mannequin is awkward and time consuming, and some poses you will never be able to accurately copy with it.

The mannequin is a nice toy, that can very effectively introduce a beginner to a certain type of simplification of the form. I feel it has an in-built expiry date. You buy it, you use it a few dozen times or so, you get the message, you gradually stop using it. In the end it mostly stands around on the desk or a shelf, until every now and then you really struggle with a specific problem of foreshortening, and take your chance of maybe triggering your brain better with the mannequin.

Given that a mannequin isn't crazy expensive, I think it's fair to have one, even if you won't be using it forever or very often.

What I don't see is how a 2-D set of shapes would do a better job than a mannequin. They will just be even more constrictive in their use cases, and they won't even look decorative on the shelf.

Still 302 hours 39 minutes

Thanks a Lot!

Under "My Studio">"Practice Log", there is this calendar with daily practice and underneath a box, that displays lifetime practice in hours. My lifetime practice currently shows 302,40 hours, and does so since I first spotted it several days ago. Now, I remember vividly, that I got my bagde for 300 hours total spent on this site on 20th of June, and I have been quite busy since, as my daily entries show. Still, the "lifetime practice" display does not seem to budge. Is it supposed to keep track in real time or to refresh periodically? Because it does not seem to do either.

I once again realized, that I really love their photos. Not necessarily beginner friendly, but utimately rewarding if you can crack them, because of the crazy way they play with lighting, perspective and human poses. I would definitely buy an extension pack for them, to have more of their photos in my feed. Ideally even some portrait references?

But, I was looking around on the webs, and it turns out, that Hong Ly is a quite common name, and I found at least half a dozen artists and/or photographers called that. Do you have a link or something, where I can check whether the OG from this here site has extension packs for sale?

Your drawings look cute. Your mass approach to the audience is a bit overbearing, though. Scrolling through 300 sketches takes a lot of time, and when I read your title, I immediately had the strong impulse of "I don't know if I want to do that". That is frankly the reason, why it took me a while to answer.

Maybe you should presort your works a bit, and then only present a dozen or so at once. Maybe the ones you like best, although I know, that it's hard to pick your favorite children. Maybe some, where you tried to focus on a specific thing you wanted to achieve, or even some, where you approach something, that you find challenging to draw.

Also, your quality is very high and consistent. Which is off course a good thing, but it is also a sign, that you are well within your zone of comfort, and probably not exactly discovering a lot of new things doing it. You love your shorties, but how would you develop them, if you spent more time on each drawing? These are all 30 seconds, what would you do with a whole minute, now, that you have established your first steps so firmly?

If you occassionally try out 5 minute or 10 minute sketches, that would also give you a feedback on your shorties: Can I start a long drawing with eactly the technique, that I train with the shorties, or do I have to modify the initial lines and use another setup, because I don't get enough proportions developed to spend a longer time detailing them?

Click the crossed out circle that looks like a traffic sign all on the right of the icon list. You'll get the option to snooze for 30 days or to remove the image permanently.

I try to stay slow even at the first poses, and work methodically through the figure. I vary the exact method from time to time, starting with a different construction for example, (mannequinization versus boxing are my 2 main methods currently), but once I decided the method, I try to stick to a more or less fixed order of what I measure and draw on all the poses. Like, find the jugular, find the solar plexus, connect them, find the lower bound of the ribcage, etcetera...

Deciding the method before I even start the class helps me to prevent hyperfocusing and overworking details early on. I will sometimes use early landmarks to help getting the proportions of the longer lines to match, but the details have their spot on the priority list, after their frame is already firmly established. It's a bit a question of trusting the process. Yes, that particular shadow has a very nice shape, but that shape will still be there, when I am done with construction, and it will be even easier to precisely match it.

My idea is to not hurry the shorties at all, and try to always draw as slow and precise, as if I intended to start a long form drawing.

30 seconds, I am usually not finished with properly constructing the main masses, but 30 seconds for me aren't about finishing anything but warming up to look for the proper lines and indicate them.

1 minute, I have the masses constructed and a first indication of the limbs.

5 minutes I usually have outlines and details of face and hands, and start to look for the shadow edges.

10 minutes usually allow for most of the hatching and details, that almost make the drawing feel finished.

With the 25 minutes+, I must admit, I share your insecurities to some extent. I have done maybe a dozen or so by now, on a lot of days, when I feel, that I am having troubles to get even the 5 or 10 minutes look clean, I won't even bother trying, and rather restart another 30 minutes class. The trigger to go for the 1 hour class is when the 10 minutes look pristine, but still beg for additional detail.

When I do 25 minutes, I am a lot more picky with the reference. I won't spend that much effort on a reference that just feels meh to me, I will skip through references until I spot something that really grabs my attention. Then I will usually slow down even a bit more, like in taking more deliberate breaks to analyze the reference. Around 10 to 15 minutes in, I will usually be done with really every possible detail, and focus on rendering. 25 minutes are usually also enough time to include a background structure of some kind, to give the pose a semblance of being at an actual location, not hovering in mid-air on a white page.

I have finished so far a grande total of 2 (two) 35 minute poses. The decision to go for longer poses isn't 100% deliberate, it comes when I have a phase, when at the end of 10 minute poses I repeatedly discover, that the construction still is precise enough to allow for more detail. If I tried to start one right now, it would become a frustrating mess, and I would probably abort the attempt way before the timer runs out.

The 50 minutes and 1 hour+ stuff to me at the moment still feels like science fiction. I guess, at some time in the future I will be confident enough with the 25 and 35 minute poses to push on, but sadly I can't phone future me, and ask me, what to look for in those.

And, off course, all of the above is only true on a good, productive and focused day. A lot of days, I will end up changing the method with every whim and produce just a lot of messy pages. I guess, that is why some people call drawing a spiritual exercise, you get to learn a lot about yourself.

Yes, the shift went great, as in "I don't remember a lot". It was weekend, though, so had I had two shifts a day the next day, too, and was quite sleep deprived and left in a bit of a manic mood, when I first read your reply. A state of being which is actually quite helpful to get the shifts done, and process long lists of clearly predefined tasks, but isn't a good mindset for a serious conversation, as the grandiose terrorist in my head will be all in control and constantly running off on tangents, that will be quite confusing to everybody. As I would love to keep the conversation going instead of scaring you and any potential reader away, I decided to postpone my answer until I could catch up on a bit of sleep and mellow down a bit.

My theory so far, given that spending a lot of time drawing be unquestionably a good thing.

I observe that I have a hard time drawing for more than a very limited time per day, while I don't seem to have the same problem spending time on other tasks. Also, obviously people exist, that are able to focus for hours every day on drawing without suffering from my issues, namely including pretty much everybody, who can actually be called a professional artist to some extent.

So a prime curiosity for me is, what is the critical difference between those tasks? Why do I feel too tired and confused to continue drawing, let alone upkeep an amount of focus that is necessary for quality in one case, while I can pretty much partmentalize and ignore exhaustion in a structured work environment, or even anticipate at least a promise of relaxation and relief when it comes to computer games? If demand avoidance plays a role (which it likely does), why does it trigger in one case, when I try to execute self chosen, creative, highly autonomous tasks, but not in the other case, when I just unquestioningly process taks, that are almost completely externally determined, either by my job description or a game designer?

What is the actually exhausting part of drawing, and can I change something about it, so it stops being exhausting? Does both working shifts and killing pixel tanks provide extra incentives to overcome that exhaustion, that I am missing out on in designing my creative tasks?

I love your suggestions to look for greater purpose, self expression and fun, as they are very naturally appearing and intuitive. I just don't think they can really work, as they all rely in a hidden way on outside circumstances.

Let's start with fun, inspiration, joy. Great to have them, but what do you do, if you don't "feel" them? Take a break, hope for them to reappear on their own term, divert to some other task to provide you with the "fun" you need to execute your art? Pharmacological enhancement, family therapy or spiritual exercises to get back in touch with your "real self"? All of them have one thing in common, they pretty much focus on NOT drawing.

What about finding the fun in work itself, from getting into the flow?

Yes, but experience shows, that work flow does not start with having fun, it starts with working, whether you feel like it or not, trusting the process, and then experiencing how the process succeeds. You don't go from fun to success, the direction has to be from process, then success, to fun, or everything bogs down and you just end up in stagnation and frustration, and in a consumer mindset, that will at some point put you in the situation to pay for all the outside input that you need to consume. Needing carrots to keep going always has the drawback, that carrots aren't free.

Self expression is a term often associated with art. There is that behavioristic explanation, that we were born as completely helpless infants, and the first vital skill we have to hone is to garner other people's attention to our needs. In extrapolation artists are mere crybabys, that can't stop investing immense effort into getting seen? I see that as a flawed diagnosis. That is what narcissism is about, not art. And while being an artist and a narcissist certainly aren't mutually exclusive, they just aren't exactly the same either.

The difference between a mere narcissist and a functional artist is, that while the narcissist sees themselves as the sole important center of the universe, the artist is keenly aware of the competition. All of them. 8 billion living people, who want to express themselves, about as many or a few more deceased persons (I am not so sure how the exponential math works out on that) and a hard to estimate amount of people yet to be born before the heat death of the universe. That's a lot of crybabies, and that makes infant cries ultimately mindnumbingly annoying and boring, unless you have already an emotional bond to the specific child in question.

I think skill in art is far more important, and I will introduce an example from a youtube video. Just a person, stacking empty plastic cups to a pyramid. But they do it incredibly quickly. Objectively an incredibly useless skill, and it doesn't really express a lot of personality, as all speed stackers share pretty much the same range of motion, at least as far as an outside viewer could discern. But if you see a speed stacker for the very first time, you still can't look away. Because it seems so highly implausible, that a human being could do it at that speed. The feeling for the unsuspecting observer is pure awe. The very emotion, that Augustinus starts his proof of divinity with, the perception of an existence beyond your own finite scale. It looks inhuman, supernatural at first glance.

And I do postulate, that everybody that has even a fleeting interest in art has had that exact feeling of awe when looking at someone else's masterpiece. Michelangelo's David? No effing way a human being could turn a slab of rock into THAT!

Art at its core isn't about trivial Freudian goals of impregnating the old lady that once gave birth to you, or killing the old chap, that broke his back paying your bills. Art is about killing God and impregnating the universe, and that is not a quantitative shift but a whole different quality. Art is not about expressing boring old "self", but about transcending it. It is also a scam, because no artist ever truely became more than human, but boy o boy, are master artists adept at pretending.

Now, I admit, this is an extreme take. Do you want to kill God, just because you crotchet a particularly nice blanket for your loved one? And my answer is still. kind of yes, the difference is only in the scale of peers you take into account. If your interest is limited to impressing a tiny group of people, that already know you, then breaking their current expectance of you is fully sufficient to produce that feeling of awe. "I would have never thought they could do that, I certainly can't" But the temptation of art keeps scaling. People adjust their expectations, and you have to up the game to keep impressing them, and even if you have a particularly complacent group, that has already accepted, that you regularly display some superhuman abilities, then you yourself will get bored with your audience and look for a more demanding one. In extrapolation it will always become grandiose, as there is never a boundary that will tell an artist, that they succeeded and can rest now.

Self expression without skill isn't art. It's just boring and inflationary. Some audiences got confused by 20th century avantgardists, who apparently suceeded with "naive unskilled" expression, but they never truely abandoned the measure stick "skill", they just discovered a whole new set of skills to explore, and to flabbergast people with.

Phew, I must point out, that these are my thoughts, when I am not in a manic episode, so once more the reason why I took a bit time to mellow out, before I answered. I am still afraid it might scare people away from reading through my rants.

Now, to the third part of your answer, overarching purpose versus specific technical exercises, and for my explanation why I currently prefer focusing on one over the other I have to mount down from that mountain of grandiosity and return to the very practical lowlands of having that pen in your hand, that reference and paper in front of you, and suddenly feeling far too tired or distracted to proceed.

I still don't completely understand, why and how that exactly happens. I haven't got a working theory yet, just observations from experience.

I know, I can work all day, because I do not keep reflecting about the general purpose of my work. Paying the bills is axiomatic. Following the bounds of my job description as I am contractually obligated. All the tasks that derive from those axioms follow automatically, to quote Kraftwerk: "We are the robots". Exhaustion, tiredness, distraction may occur, but ignoring them is just one more skill I acquired during my professional training.

I can certainly waste incredible amounts of times in video games, and again, the question of purpose is almost completely excluded. Achieving that digital badge, completing that arbitrary collection, earning bragging rights before a group of people, that I will never see in person, and going from the way they interact on the internet probably would neither like nor respect as persons? How is that important? But as long as I can keep ignoring the question of purpose, I can tirelessly perform the mentally quite demanding tasks that are required to get high scores or special titles.

So, yes, you are absolutely right, that the answer I am looking for must be somewhere in the dichotomy between task and purpose. Just, purpose doesn't seem to be the solution, apparently it is the main problem.

As long as I succeed in ignoring all doubts about purpose, I can turn into a highly productive automaton, find my salvation by immersing in the process, be autonomus from outside demands, transcend the banality of my biography and neurological setup, leave the grandiose terrorist inside my head happily in charge of operation.

Until doubts about purpose emerge, and leave me staring blankly at the equally blank page in front of me. I don't like that. How can I overcome it once and forever?

Hi Jolty Beans. Great, that you fixed that imgur link. Scrolling through your sketches was the perfect start to my after-work hours today.

First impression: great, clean lines, always a good start!

Second impression, aww, that one is cute. And that one too, and that one!

You clearly succeeded in depicting most of those critters with very few lines, and you clearly know how to take all the liberties with the reference to max the effect, chosing a focus, simplifying the heck out of shapes, and cropping everything that could distract. Good convincing move, I'll consider thieving that from you and sacrificing the OG frame on the reference more often to celebrate my own best lines, instead of always being completionist and including every outstretched finger and toe for every pose.

On a few of those images I had the suspicion, that you went quite far with the liberty, and straddled the line from drawing from reference towards drawing losely inspired by reference, but hey, I am not gonna snitch you out to the art cops.

Presentation: the strong anime frame acts as a nice contrast to the a bit more naturalistic-ish style of the series, contextualizing the reductionist nature of your shorties, and emphasizing the fun you had while drawing. Also a good choice, that wouldn't have immediately come to my own mind.

Lots of fat thumbs up from me, looking forward to see more of your adventures in future.