04-13-2020, 01:58 AM
Child-rearing is a massive undertaking. I hope your kid(s) haven't been too challenging and that it hasn't been too hard to get back into drawing! Regarding how to best participate, there's really nothing to do but keep posting in your sketchbook, and leave feedback in the threads of other people if you want to. You could always post in the Seeking Critique forum if you want critique on a specific picture ASAP.
First of all, I love the painting of the elfish character in the forest with a unicorn. Lovely lighting and details of plants in the foreground; they're like botanical illustrations. This makes me think you already know what to shoot for in a painting, so I have no pointers to give in that area. There are some nicely defined forms in your self-portrait, too.
I get the impression that you have the most trouble with drawing full-body images and unusual angles of faces, especially since you start the thread with figure studies. There's nothing about your figures that I'd call incorrect though (unless I were to get nitpicky). Things like clavicles and other anatomical details are in basically the right place; there are just some shapes and proportions that look strange, but there are parts that look good, too.
Obviously I can't outright tell you what to practice, but I can tell you what has worked for me personally. Note: only listen to me if you think I know what I'm talking about based on my sketchbook posts. You don't want to follow false leads!
The most important thing is that any sort of figure drawing practice helps. 30 second sketches, 30 minute sketches, whatever. It's not strictly wrong to focus on one kind of practice, but doing a lot of something like gesture drawings can only help you so much when it comes to making fully detailed drawings. I've also found it helpful to focus on whatever's causing me the most trouble (e.g. drawing figures with blank heads when I'm having trouble with bodies, or focusing on limbs by themselves when I'm struggling with them). When studying from photos, what has worked best for me is not to look at the picture while drawing, but try to draw it from memory repeatedly.
When it comes to things like determining lengths of foreshortened body parts and how to make the thickness of them look correct, when I do not simply wing it like a lazy bastard, I often use techniques described in Burne Hogarth's Dynamic Figure Drawing book, some of which are also described in Andrew Loomis' Figure Drawing for All it's Worth. Since you asked for things to read, I recommend both. Just keep in mind that Hogarth was a comic artist and does not aim to teach you to draw realistic figures; he just describes ways of getting figures to look "right" when drawing from imagination.
If you think you need to work on anatomy more, I think that a good book for artists is Atlas of Human Anatomy for the Artist by Stephen Rogers Peck. It describes a lot of specific muscles but is not overly technical, and it contains pages full of neat little comparisons and simplifications of bone and muscle shapes that make them easier to remember.
First of all, I love the painting of the elfish character in the forest with a unicorn. Lovely lighting and details of plants in the foreground; they're like botanical illustrations. This makes me think you already know what to shoot for in a painting, so I have no pointers to give in that area. There are some nicely defined forms in your self-portrait, too.
I get the impression that you have the most trouble with drawing full-body images and unusual angles of faces, especially since you start the thread with figure studies. There's nothing about your figures that I'd call incorrect though (unless I were to get nitpicky). Things like clavicles and other anatomical details are in basically the right place; there are just some shapes and proportions that look strange, but there are parts that look good, too.
Obviously I can't outright tell you what to practice, but I can tell you what has worked for me personally. Note: only listen to me if you think I know what I'm talking about based on my sketchbook posts. You don't want to follow false leads!
The most important thing is that any sort of figure drawing practice helps. 30 second sketches, 30 minute sketches, whatever. It's not strictly wrong to focus on one kind of practice, but doing a lot of something like gesture drawings can only help you so much when it comes to making fully detailed drawings. I've also found it helpful to focus on whatever's causing me the most trouble (e.g. drawing figures with blank heads when I'm having trouble with bodies, or focusing on limbs by themselves when I'm struggling with them). When studying from photos, what has worked best for me is not to look at the picture while drawing, but try to draw it from memory repeatedly.
When it comes to things like determining lengths of foreshortened body parts and how to make the thickness of them look correct, when I do not simply wing it like a lazy bastard, I often use techniques described in Burne Hogarth's Dynamic Figure Drawing book, some of which are also described in Andrew Loomis' Figure Drawing for All it's Worth. Since you asked for things to read, I recommend both. Just keep in mind that Hogarth was a comic artist and does not aim to teach you to draw realistic figures; he just describes ways of getting figures to look "right" when drawing from imagination.
If you think you need to work on anatomy more, I think that a good book for artists is Atlas of Human Anatomy for the Artist by Stephen Rogers Peck. It describes a lot of specific muscles but is not overly technical, and it contains pages full of neat little comparisons and simplifications of bone and muscle shapes that make them easier to remember.