03-10-2014, 06:34 AM
Yeah what will improve your understanding of the figure is a lot of time spent studying and drawing the human figure. No way around it. Life drawing classes are hands down the best way of improving your figures, I highly recommend you start going to those. You would probably benefit from tutored sessions more, but if you are comfortable with it, just go to the open ones with no tutor and do your best. Also from now on everything you draw should be from observation, life, photos, movie screenshots, whatever. You need to start building your observation skills more before your imaginative work will improve.
One tip besides the videos is that I noticed you use hundreds of little lines to draw your strokes. You should be practicing to get the action of the figure in longer smooth lines. It becomes more dynamic and captures the rhythm of the figure better. Also it's the overall action, balance and pose of the figure that matters in the initial gesture stages, whereas you are clearly thinking in terms of drawing outlines with tentative strokes. This is probably a fear thing ; Fear of getting it wrong.
Free yourself from the fear by making bold (bold in intent, not necessarily strength of the line) marks. It's better to try the same bold stroke a dozen times erasing each time until you get it right, than making a hundred different tentative strokes on something that has not captured the essence of what you want.
What would probably also help is basic sketching exercises, like, drawing a hundred freehand circles, a hundred triangles, a hundred freehand squares,parallel wavey lines, crosshatching. Practice drawing basic 3d objects and their shadows, cubes, cylinders, balls, pyramids. All of these exercises may not be that interesting but they will improve your hand eye coordination and increase your ability to get the line in your mind that you want to draw, down on paper. It's a bit like training before the fight...except that it's all a battle really !!! :)
Keep going, keep trying and most of all have patience. There's no quick easy way to knowledge and skill.
One tip besides the videos is that I noticed you use hundreds of little lines to draw your strokes. You should be practicing to get the action of the figure in longer smooth lines. It becomes more dynamic and captures the rhythm of the figure better. Also it's the overall action, balance and pose of the figure that matters in the initial gesture stages, whereas you are clearly thinking in terms of drawing outlines with tentative strokes. This is probably a fear thing ; Fear of getting it wrong.
Free yourself from the fear by making bold (bold in intent, not necessarily strength of the line) marks. It's better to try the same bold stroke a dozen times erasing each time until you get it right, than making a hundred different tentative strokes on something that has not captured the essence of what you want.
What would probably also help is basic sketching exercises, like, drawing a hundred freehand circles, a hundred triangles, a hundred freehand squares,parallel wavey lines, crosshatching. Practice drawing basic 3d objects and their shadows, cubes, cylinders, balls, pyramids. All of these exercises may not be that interesting but they will improve your hand eye coordination and increase your ability to get the line in your mind that you want to draw, down on paper. It's a bit like training before the fight...except that it's all a battle really !!! :)
Keep going, keep trying and most of all have patience. There's no quick easy way to knowledge and skill.