■ Practice, structure and regiment
Nov. 22nd, 2022 02:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lukadian
I’ve been referencing several YouTube tutorials and channels breaking down gesture, structure and basic shapes, things I never really… properly learned when I first started drawing, self taught as I am.
The end goal has always been “I wanna draw anime style!” Or “some day I’m gonna be a mangaka!” As were probably most of our middle school aspirations. But, public school art credentials never really made basics very fun, and failed to connect them to what I really wanted to draw (animes). So I feel like I’m coming to a lot of these art “fundamentals” much later in life and am only just now connecting them to what I want out of my art.
Even the anime artists I admired as a kid and continue to emulate in my art as an adult have a basic, foundational understanding of anatomy, structure, and various other things that go into drawing figures, paneling comics and creating sequential story telling!
So, in my attempts to create more intentional, structured practice and study time into my routine, I’m gonna just ramble here a bit and try to come up with a schedule or method that works best!
■ Warm Ups
A friend had told me quite a while back that they usually warmed up by drawing ten boxes and ten circles every day before drawing anything. For a while I tried this but I failed to see any proper improvement. But this past week while going down art tutorial video bunny holes on YouTube (as one does) I finally clicked upon an intentional use of an exercise like this!
I am, frankly, terrible at basic shapes! Much as I am a visual and hands on learner I have the hardest time groking things in three dimensional space. I’m also, obviously very unpracticed in the art of drawing things like cubes, cylinders, spheres and such in multiple points, angles and levels of depth and dimension. But a lot of these things go into putting structure to anatomy!
The more I’ve been able to connect and spot these shapes in the art I enjoy and find inspiration from, or in photo references, the easier it’s been to connect these “boring” shapes into the dynamic designs and more exciting story telling I want to pursue!
So an adjustment to this wam up: ten cubes and ten cylinders, just as a warm up, no worrying about making them perfect or shaky lines or how long it takes, just slow down and really focus on making practical, believable shapes in three dimensions to use as short cuts and building blocks!
Another little tidbit I’ve held onto for years but have only slowly begun to find a practical use in comes from an old DevArt tutorial from years ago supplied by, I believe Nyan-something (Edit IT WAS NSIO, the figure skating bit on this page). Loosening up my lines, remembering to draw with my whole arm.
I’ve had a bad habit of working in “cramped” conditions for a long time, I zoom in a lot, and often fail to draw the whole picture, getting lost in details both in visually parsing things out and in rendering, it’s been hard to zoom out and use not just the whole canvas but my entire arm as well.
I’m hoping to literally loosen up my joints and strokes by making wider ellipses, curves, infinities and strokes to activate the whole arm as a drawing muscle.
My plan is to create infinity loops in larger increments of size, slowly branching out and activating my entire arm, making larger and wider loops and passes. Trying to keep my lines consistent and continuous until I start going off track or lose momentum.
Currently I can successfully go between 20 and 80 rounds before I lose momentum! I want to increase or maintain this momentum of passes for larger increments of space and size at a fuller canvas to really train my arms and hands in reaching every portion of my canvas without zooming in and learning how lines look when zoomed out!
Also this literally just loosens shit up for me haha!
■ Gestures
Next is gesture, according to this video gesture practice should be between 40 and 60% of my practice time, and I do often see a direct correlation in fluidity to my lines and forms after getting in some solid gesture practice! Presently I’ve really been enjoying the New Masters School video series of nude and clothed timed life drawing videos in addition to my usual go to of using Adorka (formerly Senshi) Stock’s sketching application! The set time of the videos I think also keeps me a little more structured and focused as well. Their models also feel a touch easier to read/visually parse at times! (I love the literal range and diversity in Adorka’s photos but every so often they can feel very…stiffly posed! A little unnatural, a little too staged.)
So, new intent: work on gestures for at least a solid 40% of allotted practice/study time!
■ Studies
Studies can mean and be a lot of things, but in terms of bulking up on structure and breaking down the drawing techniques of some of my favored artists I want to intentionally narrow my studies to certain artists, review videos of them working, trace and break down their art to learn from it, reduce it into shape language, redlines, etcetera! Particularly I’ve been taking some leaves from this guy’s videos which resonated with me a lot, his video on gestures and learning through tracing/breaking down the shapes of other artists in particular felt very validating to where I was leaning in terms of more intentional study!
So, to wrap up, for intentional structured practice time I want to accomplish the following. I’m gonna ball park it and set an intentional study time on weekends (Saturday most likely!) as being approximately three hours (180 minutes)…
■ Warm ups - no more than 15 - 20 minutes starting out, warm ups shouldn’t take too long!
- Infinity loops on 100% canvas or lower (NO zooming in)
- 10 x Cubes
- 10 x Cylinders
■ Gestures - 40% of my allotted time, roughly 1.2 hours or 72 minutes
- completing about two New Masters timed Daily life drawing videos.
- interspersed with some adjustable timed Adorkastock sketching app work.
■ Studies - rest of my (intentional) time, focusing on deconstructing and pulling out the shapes and structure of favored artists, from photo or reference books and taking notes or attempting to replicate their styles and forms. In particular I want to focus on the figures of Ohagi-San (Endou Okito), Oyari Ashito (Gnocchi/Ink Pot), Akihiro Yamada, Toshihiro Ono, Yun Kouga, Yana Toboso, Kentaro Miura, Mentaiko Itto, Gengoroh Tagame, Nagabe, Toshihiro Ono, Rui Araizumi and Ryuusuke Mita.
These artists and styles are all mutable and exchangeable with whatever it is I want to focus on at the time. I’m slowly accumulating a collection of art, photo, and instructional books related to areas I want to improve in such as certain stylization (retro future which takes notes and cues from anime art popular in the 1980’s and 90’s for instance), aspects of anatomy (musculature) and erotica (shibari poses and ties!)
Primarily this practice regime will focus on figures drawing, anatomical structure and character design.
I don’t yet know how sustainable this regiment will be, I can already see that gesture is gonna be a fuckton of time and that was going on the lower end of the recommended percentile or intentional practice. I know I’ve often gotten bored and frustrated as few as ten minutes in before wanting to move on, but I think part of that is due to combination not being in practice with this kind of drawing and method and ADD brain hopping around haha!
It will take some trial and error for sure, and things will get refined I think based on sustainability, energy, motivation and ability to stick with it. It’s easy to theorize and suggest a lot of stuff but rarley does it quite pan out the way you planned!
Only time and actually trying this plan will tell!
no subject
Date: 2022-11-22 11:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-11-23 04:24 am (UTC)Putting the art thots to paper (or DW haha) I think helps me commit a little more to acting on them and feel like I’m a actually plotting something achievable more so than just *siiiigh* why can’t I just be [insert Fujo/H Artist/Mangaka] and not doing anything about it XD