UNIT TWO: Dynamic Figure Drawing | Day 1 – Explore figure sketching techniques/simplification

I’ve been actively avoiding working on this challenge all day. I feel like it is because it is so damn overwhelming. It took so much for me to even just sit down and start working on this.

But now that I have sat down and am working on this, I want to create a mini lesson plan for today.

Since today is about exploring figure sketching techniques and simplification, I shall design a lesson plan to make it impossible not to get good at those things. As I’ve said before, lesson plans let me connect to the present moment, on one task at a time. This in turn helps me work through the feeling of being overwhelmed.

Mini syllabus for: explore figure sketching techniques/simplification

Total time: 90 minutes (est 30 min per unit, 10 min per part)

Mini unit 1: Research

• Part 1: OpenAI and Bing
• Part 2: Google
• Part 3: Youtube

Mini unit 2: Experiment

• Part 1: School of thought 1
• Part 2: School of thought 2
• Part 3: School of thought 3

Mini unit 3: Practice

• Part 1: Simple poses
• Part 2: Dynamic poses
• Part 3: Foreshortened and perspective poses

Mini unit 1: Research

Part 1: OpenAI and Bing

Part 2: Google

Why You Should Start with Armatures When Learning to Draw Figures (artistsnetwork.com)

How to draw figures without a model – Artists & Illustrators (artistsandillustrators.co.uk)

Draw Heads On Any Angle, From Your Imagination (howtodrawcomics.net)

Part 3: Youtube

Main school of thought to try out:

• Basic armature
  • Circle head, half for nose line, half of that for mouth line
  • line for neck
  • line for spine
  • line for hips perpendicular to spine
  • line for shoulders perpendicular to spine
• Head shapes
  • circle with lopped side for skull
  • cut cube for face
• Sketchy woodwork for finding pose
  • Keep scratching until a form emerges
  • Erase or lighten then refine
• Advanced shapes
  • triangle tricep
  • triangle forearm
  • teardrop thighs
  • diamond calf
  • box pecs
  • triangle delts
  • pen tip torso

Mini unit 2: Experiment

Part 1: School of thought 1

I practiced basic armature and it looked pretty bad. I think I started to improve when I moved the hips a little higher.

Part 2: School of thought 2

Things started to improve a little here. I really like the method of simple shapes for the head. I felt like I understood the geometry much better.

Part 3: School of thought 3

This is when I used the sketchy woodwork carving out a pose and when I refined it, I used the advanced shaped coupled with everything else I learned. I really really like this method. Gives me dynamic poses without losing the anatomy.

I didn’t get to Unit 3 because I feel complete and it is 2AM and I want to go to bed.

Very happy with today’s progress. I feel like I killed it at the figure drawings and I feel much more confident drawing figures.

It’s been a full week since I last drew for this drawing competition. I’ve been feeling a lot of dread because there are so many details in drawing Sova and I don’t feel any closer to getting better at him because it takes so long to draw a full figure.

I drew for a full hour but didn’t get very far.

Here was the reference:

Here is my rough sketch:

And here is my lineart:

The lines don’t feel that confident and don’t seem to be creating forms, more just tracing lines.

I feel that I need to slow down. I like the idea of the exercises but I feel that they need to be broken down further into smaller syllabi. Since I don’t have much time to draw every day and each task every day feels a bit daunting and overwhelming, I need to break them down further to learn at a fast rate.

I also wish I could draw from the live model, but the issue is that you can’t hold an active shot (like shooting or doing the ultimate).

At the same time, I said I would embrace failure and I did. I still believe in my overall plan and I believe when I look back, this will actually be helpful even though its painful right now.

UNIT ONE: Sova Model Studies | Day 2 – Half Body

Today I was supposed to work on the upper body, but I found a really cool pose and decided to work on that instead. Unfortunately, it took a very long time to sketch out and I was also very exhausted from drawing until 4AM yesterday. I also had a lot of travel and work coming up so I was a bit stressed and overwhelmed.

I feel sometimes that I put too much on my plate for a challenge. I definitely felt overwhelmed coloring a drawing with this much detail.

This was the rough sketch:

And this was my attempt at more refined line art:

And for reference I used this pose:

UNIT ONE: Sova Model Studies | Day 1 – Portrait

Since this unit was all about model studies, I went into a custom game and used the model as a reference for drawing sova portraits.

I started with this side view of Sova.

Then I did colors:

New rough sketch of Sova:

Followed by a more refined outline:

Then by a painting attempt:

Something wasn’t clicking. I still didn’t like the painting job. I decided to try again and learn from another tutorial on shading.

I tried to color again.

This time I felt something clicked with using large soft brushes and the lasso tool. I used the soft brushes to create nice gradients and the lasso tool for the clean edges. Looking closely at the painter I see that he also uses the smudge tool a lot.

Today in the King’s council, part men’s group, part coaching session, we talked about setting goals.

I didn’t have an idea of what my goals are but a couple of visions came to mind:

1. Coaching is a large part of my life. I saw about 3 coaching conversations with clients or potential clients every week.
2. Youtube challenges being a large source of energy in life. I saw myself dedicating a little time every day to focus on an active challenge. This could be writing about the challenge, doing the challenge or shooting videos and thinking about the final video.
3. I imagined feeling a lot more confident and in control of my challenges. I saw this as having successfully editing and posted a single challenge to youtube.
4. I saw myself being outside and having a lot more energy. I would spend different parts of my day in different places.
5. I saw my work-life come alive again. This meant posting posts on Linkedin every week, and engaging with people at work about my life outside of work.

I need to choose three main ones for the intention of the Kings Council.

I will choose the following goals:

1. To have a powerful coaching conversation with three more people.
2. To have one paying client.
3. To have produced three challenge videos and posted them to youtube.

I’ve been meditating on productivity and I was curious as to a more taoist approach. I’ve come up with a couple of ideas:

• Make things more empty
  • Pursue each task with the goal of emptiness
    • Focus on one thing at a time and do work to make everything feel empty
  • Look to make your to do list more empty
    • Delete things off the to do list
    • Schedule time sensitive things
    • Clear off small tasks immediately
    • Moving it to tomorrow
• Reduce the size of mountains
  • Create simple steps to kick off each task
• Seek balance
  • Seek out more risk when things are stale
  • Seek out more structure when things are too risky

Prompt: How good are you waiting for what you really want?

I remember the psychological test where they said that they could predict the success of children in later in life, just by how much self control they have for delayed gratification, and I wonder what child I am. Am I the type of child who grabbed the marshmallow, despite being told to wait by the researchers the minute they left the room? Probably not, when I was a child I was a stickler for the rules. But what if they gave the choice to me? What if there were no rules? Well I suppose it would feel like a cruel test, to believe internally that I would get two marshmallows if I waited long enough but one would never come.

I think now that I’m not good at waiting for what I want at all. But really what I am, is not good at avoiding distractions when I feel extreme discomfort. Am I running from discomfort? Or do I really want something and are not willing to wait for it? The answer isn’t clear to me.