Anomily's Sketchbook

[Anomily]

Use the top of your subject head without the hair(can be tricky with people with afro) to the bottom of the chin.This will be a measuring unit you can refer to.

After that Look for visual checkpoint and if possible try to visualize thing that allign spacial.

For example here you got window which are perfect measuring tool generally due to the fact they are man made a trick is to find man made object with 90 angle those are your best visual measuring guide which you should already be looking for before you draw anything else most of the time.There also that flower pot tutor which would also make for a good visual measuring tool careful not everything is as horizontal or vertical as they seem so compare them against the frame of the picture.Generally it best to find vertical and horizontal line first but if you can't find any you can try to find diagonal instead remember that you can plan ahead of time a make a frame for your picture which can be use as a measuring tool by using the vertical and horizotal of that frame if you don't want to create a frame you can still use the paper itself to compare the verticality or the horizontal quality of a line.

Once you got most of your visual checkpoint and guide establish you can start to look for negative space and big shape to simplify the complexity of the subject.Since your after big shape don't only think in term of anatomy look for highlight midtone or shadow area that occupy large portion of image and try to squint to ruffly put them down.

Remember to try to look at the reference regularly to avoid building on mistake.

Using your head measuring unit and count how many head you can count from the top of the head to what ever part that touch the group.This is mostly useful for measuring body part that don't experience extreme foreshortning if you know the human body proportion.

You don't need to put everything you draw into the final drawing so don't hesitate if it help you to draw extra detail if it make your work faster because time is money.But erasing can be time consuming also so don't over do it it can be a waste of time if you work traditional a good way to minimize the wasted time would be to have a underdrawing made with graphite and than once thing are ready to be rendered outside the outline going in with a marker paint or ink and than erasing the graphite afterward.

Don't feel bad this is a really organic subject you took with alot of curve which are much harder subject to capture than hard edge subject such as cube. Here it almost a study on curve.

Also don't rush to put in color make a solid linework and take the time to check your visual note.

I hope this was helpful or atleast a reminder as to how you can think will doing those study.It still surprising sometime how we can get overwelm by complex subject that why structure is a good thing to have.Remember that proportion and shape is atleast in my mind n.1,n.2 in term of priority but you can also aswell think in term of value shape.

Also remember that you can always create a layers for your underdrawing when drawing digitally it won't kill you to have 2 layers and you can always lock the layers so you don't mix them up will drawing by locking the layers you will get a message if you are trying to paint on the lock layer. Try thing i think the last thing you want is to be stuck in your way of doing you can always go back to whatever feel comfortable later on and built with whatever you found useful to your process.

Thanks a lot for your feedback, as always. I'm overly reliant on using negative space and other tricks to draw figures, and not enough measuring/marking. I thought everything except the head was going in a positive direction, so I may go back and give it another attack.