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Hi folks,
Joined NMA after deciding to get serious about drawing at the tender age of 38. I’m currently working through Iliya’s Russian academic drawing course, which I genuinely think is just about the best content I’ve seen on any arts platform. It is tough going, but the struggle is definitely worthwhile. Like a lot of folks here, I’m having trouble staying consistent with my practice while juggling a job and kids, but hopefully this sketchbook will serve as an incentive! If you’ve the time, I’d very much appreciate any feedback that could help me improve. Of course, also happy to provide my two cents on any of your work!
Hello Koen, I’m working through the Russian Drawing course too – but I’m not as far along as you!
With that in mind, one thing you might want to experiment with is edges. I’m looking mostly at the ear and nose drawing, and the shapes are almost all outlined with hard lines – you might consider prioritising harder edges for the focal point of your drawings and ‘releasing’ the viewer’s focus with lost edges in less important parts of the drawing. Use line weight to tell a story. For instance, if the tip of the ear is in the highlight and it’s set against a plane also in a high value, then any line describe the rim of the ear should be light, maybe even disappear, to reduce the contrast between the two shapes. If that makes sense? This principle can be applied elsewhere.
Similarly, a lot of your terminator shadows are quite hard. That is, it transitions to the light-family quite quickly. For sharp edges, this is desirable – like the corner of a cube, or perhaps to play up the angular facial features in a portrait. But if you want to show curvature and softness, then gradations of halftone are required. You always keep shadow and light separate with a well-defined terminator, but gradated half-tones can show a more volume. I think this would help emphasise the lobes of the ear, or the curve of the nostril. Worth a crack.
Good work! Keep it up and keep us updated how you’re getting on with the course 🙂
Hi Jac! Thanks for taking the time to help out and provide your feedback. I think you’re absolutely right. Up until this point in my studies I’ve focused mostly on placement and proportion, but edges, line quality and value transitions are indeed a weak spot of mine. This is more true even when cross-hatching, where I find comparatively more difficult to maintain control of values and edges.
First thing I noticed was how on point your proportions were and arguably getting this right is of more fundamental importance than the rendering you place on top. The Russian approach seems to be all about analysing form – turning subjects in planes, then into organic shapes, and so on. So proportion and positioning are key.
I struggle with hatching too, Iliya makes it look so effortless! I tend to wimp out and just use soft patches of tone that I can control, but this creates the opposite problem as drawings often then lack structure or sense of firmness. All part of the practice.
One thing I would recommend, and it’s just personal preference, but is to use the 3d reference model to draw the same subject under multiple lighting conditions. I figure cast drawing is probably a dedicated year of study at Repin (which the course is based off), so it makes sense to take your time with each cast. Anything to delay getting to the anatomy sections 😀
Cheers, Jac
It was exactly the structural approach, along with the particular Russian aesthetic (which I think owes a lot to the cross-hatching) that really attracted me to this course in the first place. Before, I’d primarily been studying the Reilly method and using shadow mapping. While that helped me create decent lay-ins, I found myself out of my depth when trying to introduce form. The analysis presented in the Russian drawing course certainly help a lot, but the technique demonstrated by Iliya eludes me. Like anything else, it is probably a matter of many, many hours of deliberate practice.
However, style is a secondary concern at the moment. Rather, what I’m after now is a systematic procedure by which I can get consistent results in figure drawing and portraiture. With the Russian drawing course there is fair amount of interpolation necessary to piece together a full recipe for a successful drawing, and while there are other courses with a more articulated approach, I have found that mixing instructions more often than not leads to poor results.
I fully concur with the idea of repeating the exercises, and introducing variations in angle and lighting conditions is a good way to ensure that I don’t fall back to straightforward copying. And while I actually quite enjoy the prospect of delving into the anatomy section, I don’t believe it is nearly as important as a good command of the fundamentals.
Hey Koen , Impressive your decision “despite” your age and yeah I agree this is such a great platform. ;;)
Hi, Koen,
First of all, I admire your dedication to studying even with a job and kids! I don’t have quite that much going on and I’m still struggling to keep up the studies! 🙂
Second of all, like Jac, I’m also not as far along on the course as you, but I do have some drawing experience–here’s hoping it’s helpful.
One of my favorite things about cross-hatching is how the lines can show the direction of the planes and plane changes. I see you capturing this in parts of your drawings–for instance, in the first one of the ear cast, on the side of the cast’s flat base, you have the hatching lines following the perspective lines of the top and bottom of the plane to emphasize that this plane is receding into space. In other parts of your drawing, I don’t see this as much–for instance, in the second drawing of the nose cast, same place on the side of the base, the lines are more vertical and don’t show the “receding-into-space” aspect as much. Which doesn’t seem to hamper the sense of form here, especially since your more-vertical lines show the zigzag shape of the side. But I think adding some hatch lines that follow the top and bottom edges of the plane (just like in the first drawing) would create more depth. I also think some forward-slanting hatch lines on the bottom of that nose cast base would help to show how that plane recedes.
That being said, I love how careful you are with the lines and shapes–it does look like you’ve put a lot of effort into proportion, which I’m struggling with right now.
Keep up the work ethic!
Sincerely,
Grace Mounce
Hi Grace, thanks for taking the time to look at my work and provide feedback! That’s a great point about using stroke direction to emphasize form. Bernard Julien for example uses this to great effect. I generally just default to whatever direction is most comfortable for me, but that’s indeed a missing an opportunity to make the drawing more expressive. I’m planning on redoing some of these exercises, and will certainly keep your advice in mind!
Thanks Koen! I struggle with stroke direction myself, so I’m going to check out Bernard Julien 🙂
Keep up the good work!
Wow. The sculpted quality of form you’re getting with that gentle blending is beautiful. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my short time trying to figure this stuff out, it’s that subtlety is king (and also the destroyer of many). From some of the other things you’ve posted, to this last drawing, it’s clear that you’re starting to figure that out. Some day, I’ll probably hit you up for tips, because I’m currently clueless in that arena; I’m actually about to post a few crummy drawings I did on newsprint that are horrifically textured. Hoping some of y’all can help me understand what’s going on… Looks like you’ve got it figured out, so uh, maybe help lol!
Thoughts on the eyes:
Coming at it with a fresh perspective, I can see that her right eye is a bit off (the eye that’s on our left as we view the drawing). The way I’m thinking about it is, if she turned her head to face me, would that downward slope toward the bridge of the nose carry through, or would it continue to point down at that rather severe angle. Feeling confident that it would point down more than you’re wanting it to. In the same vein, I did a quick measurement with the end of my pencil and it looks like the distance between the brow of her other/outside eye and the top of the lid is considerably larger than the same gap on her inside eye. It actually looks to me like you’ve got the eyebrow descending into the bridge of the nose a bit too low on that outer side, which is potentially contributing to some of the relational/positional notes around the eyes, in general.
Perspective looks great, in general. My biggest problem so far seems to be making the nose too big, so I can appreciate how perfect yours appears to be here ;-D Not sure who the bust is of, but if she’s supposed to have a sort of sultry, smoky, confident countenance, you’ve nailed it.
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