Month: May 2025

This card is from SVS Figure Drawing for Illustrators.

This lesson is about about a simplified form that can be used for gestures. We make a silhouette first, then draw the simplified gesture form. This is my 3rd hour in 3 days on this lesson. The homework was to do 20 gestures and they were taking me about an hour for 6 figures. So this time I timed myself and did the silhouette in one minute, then gave myself 5 minutes to do the gesture. I typically went a little over on the silhouette, and then finished a few seconds ahead of the 5 minute mark. Somehow, speeding up actually made the gestures come faster. I couldn’t take too much time and had to keep moving, which was good. I used the references I have already in my folder for this class. Having a sheet of references ready was a big help. Also having a grid to help me size the figure helped. I’ll keep these in place for my next practice. I’m feeling a little better with overlaps this time. I feel like I am understanding it more. I’m ready for the next lesson.

Next time I will work on keeping my lines softer! I go in too heavy too early with my lines. I need to keep them softer until I have a good feel for the whole figure.

Photoshop using Huion tablet.

I did 30 minutes on the first five, took a short break and then another 30 minutes to complete the other five figures for this image.

This card is from SVS Figure Drawing for Illustrators.

I repeated this lesson from yesterday due to time constraints and wanting to get more practice. Lee wants you to do 20 of these before moving on to the next lesson. I am doing only 6 per hour, and I think I can speed up. I’ll try to do 10 of these in one hour next time. Actually, timing myself on these will be helpful. 10 per hour means 6 minutes each for both the silhouette and gesture. I’ll give it a try and see if that helps. I get bogged down in the details instead of doing quick sketches, so maybe that will be a good thing. I’ll try that next time and see if it helps or not. If feel like these are decent figures, and the silhouette continues to help me see a good position for the figure. I do wonder what you are supposed to do for twisted, more compressed figures, is that just bad to draw since it’s confusing? Of course, these are for simple drawings, so maybe that’s different.

Next time I will time myself on this. One thing that will help is having all my references ready to go. I’ll do that before starting next time.

Photoshop using Huion tablet.

I did 60 minutes practice to complete this image.

This card is from SVS Figure Drawing for Illustrators.

This lesson is about using a very simple base figure for gesture drawing. I really like this method and found it’s easier and more expressive than the box mannequin. It has you looking at flow and weight instead of just structure first. I really like the new lesson here which has you do the small silhouette first, then go on to the larger drawing. The silhouette reminds you to make a good clear silhouette first, and adjust the pose to make a better silhouette before moving on to the sketch. This has been a real eye opener for me. Lee wants you to do 20 of these sketches, but I was only about to complete 6 in the hour of time that I did. I imagine it will come easier with time, but for now, it’s taking me time to do these.

Next time I will have lots of good action references before starting. Finding good reference was time consuming. I’ll make that a side project in my down time. Otherwise, I need to continue on more overlap practice. I am having trouble seeing where the overlap happens.

Photoshop using Huion tablet.

I did about 60 minutes of work to complete this image.

This card is for finished art pieces of my own. I am tracking these as part of my 10k Hours because if I work on one of these, it often means I don’t have time for a lesson that day.

This lesson is about taking an idea for a piece through steps of concept, thumbnail, sketches, pencil, ink, and watercolor. I should also add to my list a set of what I want to work on in this piece. I am trying to add more thought ahead of time to my process. For example, I did thumbnails and sketches on this enough times that I was able to do the final sketch from my own sketches instead of from a screen reference. I knew the piece by the time I was working on watercolor paper. But there were some things that I missed, such as deciding on a light source, deciding how to depict things like grass and stone bricks. The sketch was good, but then I kind of just filled in the lines with color and didn’t really think about rendering or lighting. Now, this is fantastic, because I can recognize what’s missing! But, for now, it’s missing from my process. Eventually, I will learn how to do these things and it will become more ingrained. I won’t have to think about how to depict a grassy slope. But, while I continue to learn, I need to think about those things.

Next time I will follow even more of a process to make sure I have more things decided up front of how to light and render things.

Micron fine liner and Koi watercolors on Canson XL Watercolor paper, 7×10 inch. Image is 5×7 inch.

I did 1 hour making thumbnails and sketches, 1 hour testing watercolors, then 2 hours sketching, inking and painting to complete this image.

This card is from Dylan M’s class on Skillshare: Sketchbook Fillers Club.

This lesson is about a framework for approaching your sketchbook. Mostly it’s about how to get over the hump of starting by helping you run through a few quick qustions about the subject and design. One interesting thing is that Dylan includes Refection in her process. I started this in my 10k Hour project with the prompt of “next time I will” which has been hugely helpful to me. It means that I actually stop and think about things for next time so I have something to improve or build on. She does the same thing by thinking about what worked well, what didn’t and if anything is useful for something else in the future. For example, a sketchbook spread might have turned out just ok, but can turn into a bigger project for later. It was a great class. I’ll keep it here in my list even though it’s for sketching because it’s a good framework to learn and come back to.

Next time I will create my own list of doorways that are useful to me and make up a card I can tape into a sketchbook for reference.

Col-erase pencil, fine liner, watercolor, tombow brush pens in a few different sketchbooks.

I did 30 minutes practice to complete each image.