Ramona’s 100 Day Art Challenge: Figure Drawing

[PaulDidier]

Hi Ramona,

Great challenge you picked. Figure and portraits are probably my favorite subjects. Good job on these. I’m going to enjoy watching your progress.

[Ramona]

Thank you Paul for your nice words!

Today I did a little bit of everything: Continued with the 3D model studies from yesterday, went over to a more loose approach of figure drawing (geometrical and with as few lines as possible) and also did a few sketches from imagination (in the middle).

Day 9:

[Ramona]

Day 10: First time with water colour and from imagination.

My faces are still stuck in symbol stage and the anatomy is definitely not perfect, but it was fun to play around with a different medium!

[Joshua Jacobo]

Whoa! Awesome work. One thing when working from imagination that most professionals do is iterate. Do several drawings and work out your composition, anatomy, etc not all at once. But after several attempts. Really impressive work!

[Shazad Madon]

Ramona, this last drawing is really beautiful. Bravo.

[Ramona]

Thank you Joshua and Shazad for your encouraging words, I’m glad you like it!

And as always thanks for the helpful advice! It makes perfectly sense to iterate, I’ll definitely make more sketches to test out the anatomy and composition the next time. Hope that I can do more coloured attempts from now on.

More studies today on day 11. Started with Croquis Café in the morning and with some instructions for basic value exercises. In the evening,  I followed another video by Glenn Vilppu and it was interesting that although I didn’t directly follow the demonstration and did the assignment on my own, the pose that was analysed beforehand was much easier to approach. On another note I wanted to say that I’m really glad that I joined this challenge, because I noticed that it gets easier to draw day by day.

[Ramona]

Day 12 started with a lot of motivation, so I could follow a few anatomy explanations while sketching along in the morning.

In the evening, this motivation went downhill though, so here is today’s gestural anticlimax (left was still motivated to the sleepy right):

[Ramona]

I noticed that my motivation has already reached a slump within 13 day, so I figured out a more rigid training plan with all the materials I have on my hand for the next couple of weeks. I tried to split the different fields regarding anatomy and basic drawing knowledge and will try to do the more complicated stuff in the morning and to end the day in a lighter manner. Hope that this will help to organize my 100 day challenge better.

In the evening, I tackled the Michelangelo master study from day 7 a second time, this one was done digitally. Can’t wait to try to understand light and shading better.

Is it just me, or am I not able to enlarge the pictures in this thread?

Day 13:

 

[PaulDidier]

Hi Ramona. Don’t be discouraged. We all feel occasional slumps. You seem to be working through it well. I find that, as you did, switching mediums often really helps. Your day 10 from imagination piece is awesome. The other pieces on this page show a lot of growth.

[Joshua Jacobo]

Ramona, hang in there. It’s not important that you feel like working but it is important that you do it. Your progress will be your reward for powering through the bleh days.

We pulled out our image compression until we can get it working right so currently your images will show at full resolution. Once the thumbnail and enlargement functionality is dialed in we will bring it back.

[Ramona]

Thank you Paul for your encouraging words, I’m glad you liked the piece from imagination! And switching the medium really helps to keep it going sometimes!

Thanks Joshua, that’s totally correct. It’s better to keep drawing even if it seems that nothing comes out right! And thanks for the explanation of the thing with the image compression!

Here is day 14, today was a better day! I tried to tackle the basics of foreshortening and also studied the very basic fundamentals of light and shadow to know at least the principles. The light and shadow deep dive will follow at some other point though. In the evening, I managed to do timed foreshortened poses, and it was fun! A few went terribly wrong, but that’s part of the learning process.

 

[PaulDidier]

These are good! I personally much prefer a figure pose with foreshortening to a long side view. I feel it’s much more interesting for, not just me, but the viewer. The top middle and lower left figures are particularly good.

[Ramona]

Thanks Paul for your comment! I also think that the foreshortened poses are more interesting!

Therefore, I basically did the same thing as yesterday, but with a more “risky” brush pen. I also watched a, interesting video about the principles of light and shadow by Steve Huston, but I could not bring it to any actual practice in this field yet.

Here’s day 15:

[Ramona]

Manged to listen to some podcasts for creating a figure drawing skill road-map in the morning. I want to flesh it out tomorrow and make a plan for the next week.

Saturdays are from now on my experimentation days!

Day 16, drawn from reference:

[Ramona]

Day 17 was a mix of different things. For my post, I chose very short timed poses. I think I like the flow of the 30 second poses better and hope that I can incorporate a stronger fluidity in my drawings from now on.

 

[Author]

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