Sketch Awesome Project 6

Project 6 – Figures

Project 6 was very lengthy, and it involved one theoretical video and multiple videos on how to sketch five other figures and shade them in different styles. 

Initially I thought that portraiture was difficult, but surviving this week brought me to the conclusion that figure drawing is even more complicated and confusing, at least to me. I dropped one figure as I ran out of time as well as space. I can honestly say sketching people is definitely not my thing and did not enjoy it a bit. Will be happily avoiding it at all cost, unless something happens, of course, and I suddenly start to love it.

Saying that, I would still classify this week as being successful, as now I at least know for sure what I like and most importantly what I don’t.

This week project was split into many parts:

2x main, 1x bonus-extra figure and 4x further ideas videos

Part 1 – 8 Heads Figure

I’ve come across the standard proportion figure before, and it was great as it gives a vague idea where different body parts go. 

The main point of the exercises was to get an outline believable resembling a human being. I love precision and detail, and it was driving me crazy. My problem was to adapt the theory to different figure poses and I just could not get the proportions correct. To get a “believable human” only, was just not good enough. I was redoing girl from complete scratch multiple times to the point I got very frustrated and used grid drawing instead.

The shading part was optional, and it was covered in Further ideas videos. I was not following them, but they were inspiring for sure. Shading is something I love and makes me relaxed, so I was enjoying this part very much.

Part 2 – Bonus: More Figure Outlines

Bonus exercise and further ideas videos took us through the rest of figure sketching and gave us some ideas on shading them as well. 

I was very happy with my photographer’s sketch. Umbrella girl was OK till I put a strange face on her head. I was debating whether to leave her without one but thought she would’ve looked strange without it. I’ve added the face after all, but can’t say the face helped her not to look strange. Next time I will just put hair, or some other obstructions over people’s faces, so I don’t need to draw them. 🙂

This week summary

• I still don’t like portraiture nor figure drawing and I admire people who enjoy it very much
• dull watercolour shading does not look dull and looks quite effective
• ink layering is fun and I needed to be remind of that
• would help if the paper was better quality