[Koen Rutten]

Hey Daniel!

Pro art and Strathmore both make good newsprint. Irrespective the brand, you’ll want the smooth variety or you will not be able to get the soft gradations you’re after. When applying the charcoal make broad strokes using the side of the lead, while maintaining even pressure. Hope that helps.

[Koen Rutten]

Thanks Daniel! You’re spot on with the proportional issues. My bad for rushing the block in to get to the modelling. I’ll probably do another version of this bust sometime, hope I’ll get it right then!

[Koen Rutten]

Hey Carlos!

 

As you were kind enough to give me your feedback I thought I’d thought I’d return the favor. I can’t really speak to your abstract work but hopefully some of the below will help you with your figure drawing.

1. Perspective. I don’t have the reference number but I figure that if the model is resting on his left arm, the torso would be tilted to the left. However this doesn’t square with the position of the right shoulder in your drawing. With these complicated poses, it might be helpful to use a box shape rather than a sphere to clarify alignment

 

2. Contrast curves with straights to add dynamism and flow to your gesture.

3. Use wrapping lines sparingly! Focusing on communicating alignment in space. Connection points are natural places to put these wrapping lines. Drawing through the form helps with placing wrapping lines correctly.

4. Use straight or curved wrapping lines to indicate whether the volumes are cylindrical or box shaped.

5. Emphasize anatomical landmarks like the asis, 7th verbetra of the neck, spine etc

On the whole, slowing down, focusing on design, place,ent, proportion and line quality will help a lot. Speed will then come naturally.

Hope that helped, keep it up!

 

Koen

[Koen Rutten]

Not fully rendered but I like where it’s at right now.

[Koen Rutten]

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!

[Koen Rutten]

Thanks Carloz! Appreciate it.

[Koen Rutten]

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.

[Koen Rutten]

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.

[Koen Rutten]

Thought I’d post my effort here

[Koen Rutten]

This thread seems pretty dead, but if anyone’s up for reviving it I’m game. Would be great to have a group to discuss each others work, share resources etc.

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