Joseph's shiny new sketchbook

[JosephCow]

Remember not to be to hard on yourself try to put your finger on what frustrate you.

For how to start i advise to start with the larger mass the torso and the head those are in most case your largest form which will creately help other thing be measured against.The limb are secondary but still important to bring balance to your figure.It understanble to feel overwhelm by a full figure.If you don't know where yo go it probably that you work all over the place will you are putting the finer detail.Just try to have a process as they say.Here and example gesture,Large Mass,Connecting the large mass,Overlap,Large Shadow,Medium Shadow,Small shadow,Edge work.

I think the hardest part is probably dealing with how you can group shadow and also estimating what size they are compare to each other it isn't always straight foward.

Construction are nothing but scafold for realism to succeed they are there to support your knowledge of anatomy they are use to simplify what you see so that you don't feel overwhelm by the complexity of the figure once you can visualize them they become secondary.

If i might suggest something it would be to lose your contour if you want even more realism and use your background to create the separation between the subject and the background.You can lay value behind the figure to do so.This post by proko should explain what i mean better

https://www.proko.com/top-5-shading-mistakes/

I would argue that you suffer from the 3# and 2# mention in that post.But maybe your also using bad reference so be careful.

Good luck
-Darktiste

The figure to the right was a study of this drawing. But I've worked on it a little more since posting. The two to the left are sketched from a painting by Velasquez called The Forge of Vulcan.

I'm not totally sure what you mean, though. Feel free to draw over to show more clearly the issue you are seeing.