So I often take time out of my day to do some studies. I feel that's super important if you take your art seriously. Studies are great for a few things:
I often do studies, take a step back and look at what I've done, and run through these points and others in my head. One way I study is to do anatomy studies. I found a fantastic tool here years ago and found it to be a great timed practice session when I'm not sure what to study. Usually I do a 30 second or 60 second gesture drawing study and get something like this:
Now these are pretty ugly and some of them are actually really bad. But the goal is to warm up and get ready for an extended drawing. Something that can take much longer than 30 or 60 seconds. The purpose is to capture the "feeling" and momentum of the pose. I'm not concerned at all with major details. You can see I didn't even finish some because of how being timed can really mess with you. And if you get stuck on one part of the pose, you have to rush to finish it. I try to make a mental note of particular poses that were tough and I try to analyze why capture the essence of that pose was difficult.
Here are some videos where I attempt to explain gesture drawing.
After taking some time to warm up, I attempt to study something for a longer period of time. The nice thing is that often the first step in the long study is to do a gesture drawing. I was getting tired of working digitally at this point so I decided to sketch in pencil in my sketchbook.
I wasn't keeping track of time so I don't know how long this took me, but it started with a very simple gesture drawing and then slowly refined it as I went. I made to so make my marks in the direction of the plain of the body I was working on. I focused a lot on the back, because sometimes the nuanced shapes of a back can be tricky. I realized, and I have known this for a while, that certain angles of the feet are just beyond me. That means, in the future, I should remember to study feet specifically in those angles I struggle with (generally when the foot is turned up).
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