07-22-2017, 01:57 AM
Below are 2 examples of exercises I do regularly every day now. The first is a proportion exercise:
1. Pick a reference photo (mostly frontal views, not too much foreshortening) and trace over it. Mostly draw outlines, but you can also include anatomy of muscles and/or skeleton. Take the head on a separate layer and use it to measure things in relation to it (figure height, length of limbs, width,....anything). All that is done very focussed, not on autopilot, that is very important or it won´t do anything!
2. Remove the tracing and do a study next to the photo. Just lines, nothing fancy, but again, focus and try to memorise
3. Remove the photo and the study and redraw from memory. You can also wait for a certain amount of time to make it more difficult and see if longterm memory got the figure.
After that, repeat with another reference photo. I usually don´t bother saving these drawings and delete them after the exercise.
Second one is a lighting notan study. Take reference and just draw the overall shape and focus on the terminator (the separation of light and shadow) to get a better feel for light and shadow shapes by using only 2 values. If that simple separation shows you what the drawing is, the main task of lighting is done.
1. Pick a reference photo (mostly frontal views, not too much foreshortening) and trace over it. Mostly draw outlines, but you can also include anatomy of muscles and/or skeleton. Take the head on a separate layer and use it to measure things in relation to it (figure height, length of limbs, width,....anything). All that is done very focussed, not on autopilot, that is very important or it won´t do anything!
2. Remove the tracing and do a study next to the photo. Just lines, nothing fancy, but again, focus and try to memorise
3. Remove the photo and the study and redraw from memory. You can also wait for a certain amount of time to make it more difficult and see if longterm memory got the figure.
After that, repeat with another reference photo. I usually don´t bother saving these drawings and delete them after the exercise.
Second one is a lighting notan study. Take reference and just draw the overall shape and focus on the terminator (the separation of light and shadow) to get a better feel for light and shadow shapes by using only 2 values. If that simple separation shows you what the drawing is, the main task of lighting is done.