Motion studies

POSEBOOK

POSEBOOK

I've been using Posebook by Stephen Silver for the last few months.

Mainly during my commute, holding my phone in one hand and drawing with the other on a more or less bumpy train ride.
There are two versions of the app: one with male poses and one with female versions. Besides the pose references there are a number of short instruction videos from Steven and some other info.
The functionality of the app in displaying the references are a bit weird. They are stored in sheets. So you view about 9 poses at the same time and have to zoom into the one you are interested in. This takes a bit of time. Not much, but if you do it many times on a daily basis for months, it adds upp. The references as such are mostly rather good. The poses are expressive and fun to draw.  However many of them are less interesting since each pose have been shot as turn arounds, making many angles less useful. There's also facial expression references as well as hand references. Same goes for those, some useful some not.

Besides the galleries there's a potentially great functionality of timed poses. This part lets you pick number of images (1-10) and the amount of time (30sec to 10min) each image should be displayed. I use this all the time for warm ups. Doing ten of them at 30sec is a great way of loosening up. However, this function could be improved in so many ways. For example by adding choices for which albums to include or to upload your own images.

The app is fairly expensive at $9.99. It also has a seriously annoying bug that shuts down all music you might have playing in other apps. It does this just for playing a warning sound during the timed poses. Even when exiting the timed poses it still blocks other apps from playing music.
Still, despite the negative aspects I find the app to be a good tool for improving my drawing skills.

(examples of 30sec warm up drawings)

    

Missy

Morning doodle

The Chef

THE CHEF

A cartoon I made for and of my brother, who, quite obviously, is a chef :) 

Character Studies

Character studies

Another type of exercise. This one is more about trying to capture the essence of the reference, exaggerating features that best explains whats going on. 

I'm lacking in my own visual library of clothing styles and such, so I try to draw people that have a unique look.
Using Mischief as usual :)

I found the photo on Pinterest. Not sure who the photographer is.

Gesture Drawings

GESTURE DRAWINGS

This is another invaluable exercise that you hardly can spend too much time on. The point of these quick drawings from a nude or clothed model is to capture the essence of the pose. Weight, balance, expression and flow (or "action" as Glenn Vilppu would say) should be the focus, not correct anatomy or pretty lines. 

These are all 1 or 2 min drawings. 30sec to 2min is generally a good time limit I've found. With longer poses I usually start paying to much attention to detail, and the exercise becomes something else.
Since I seldom have access to visit a studio I often use digital references. One excellent source for this is New Masters Academy's video channel on Youtube. 

As ususal, when I don't draw with pen and paper, I'm using Mischief. 

Happy Easter!

Happy easter everybody!

Schoolism on Kickstarter

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I recently supported Schoolism's Kickstarter. They are going to start offering their courses for a low monthly subscription fee. Much in the way of what companies like Lynda and Digital Tutors are doing.  How they plan to solve instructors giving feedback to students I don't know, but I guess it will be in a similar form to what they already have.
Anyhow, it does seem like you'll get a lot of value from your money.
So, go check it out. Still 47 days to go (as I write this).

Color studies

Here are some examples of my color studies. I try to make these as often as I can since I constantly find that I learn new things from doing them.
Noah Bradley inspired me to start doing this exercise, and here's one of his great videos on the subject: https://youtu.be/kQfF-P70V2Q
I used the software Mischief for most of these drawing. A couple are made with Photoshop.
The drawings are kept small on the screen. Maybe 10cm in width (about 4 inches). And I use broad strokes relative to the size of the drawing. The idea being to not focus as much on the details as on the relationship of colors and especially on your own ability to estimate which colors to use. So, I don't use the color picker at all, except for the last stage were I compare my result with my reference to see how far off or close I got.