#figuary23

[pioneeroverc-my-5000th-sideblog]

Figuary - last day

top-bottom, left-right: beginning of Feb 2022, end of Feb 2022, beginning of Feb 2023, end of Feb 2023

Fell off super hard and ran out of energy so I actually only did 27 days, but I'm just DONE with this lol. Also didn't sleep last night so that doesn't help... it's making doing a writeup of the month pretty hard...

I still really don't like how I simplify legs with that weird back-of-calf curve. It looks like too many bits. Need to check how Hampton does it. I also have noticeable problems drawing curves for the shoulders and also not placing the shoulders on a horizontal line instead of at an angle, which flattens the pose out.

My poses are still very stiff, which I'm guessing means that I am not getting accurate angles for stuff like hip tilt yet - I am slowly getting a feel for this though. Maybe it's time for me to start trying to exaggerate angles as well. I understand how the torso curves work sometimes intuitively but I would say this happens about 30% of the time - I definitely need to trace over photos like I said I would before being exhausted. Maybe two photos a day for the next month? It would be five minutes tops - I could set up a Krita document with a bunch of premade photo layers to make it as easy as possible too.

Overall, I'm not happy with the amount of progress I made this month, but then I never am (and I did try to fix some mistakes I noticed, even if I only tried the fixes the day after and then didn't repeat them). So... whatever haha

[pioneeroverc-my-5000th-sideblog]

Figuary day 26 + weekly

Ups and downs this week. Still feel like I'm not trying hard enough to improve and just 'going through the motions', to be honest, even though I have been trying to identify things I have trouble with. For the next few days, maybe I'll try to spend 15-20 minutes isolating the problem areas AND doing tracing over photos (thinking I could do this for shoulders and torso lines at least).

[pioneeroverc-my-5000th-sideblog]

Figuary day 25

Tried taking more breaks to see if it helps my learning. I guess we'll see in the next couple of days. About 10 minutes in I had to refer back to the same video to see how he handles shoulders - I think I saw some improvement after that.

Now having trouble connecting the ribcage and pelvis together with Flesh. Also still trying to keep my diagonals directional - I've found that I tend to draw very symmetrical curves (as in the midpoint is equidistant from both ends) and that I reeeeally want to hook the curve that represents the active/compressed side at the top. This does not show any kind of energy or form and I need to stop doing it

Things I am happy about: wasn't sure which direction to draw in for one of the 10min poses and tried out both ways as small quick gesture sketches instead of just picking one and going with it. Also keeping up the construction instead of drawing over bad guidelines.

[pioneeroverc-my-5000th-sideblog]

Figuary day 24

Really stretched torsos for some reason. to keep an eye on

[pioneeroverc-my-5000th-sideblog]

Figuary day 23

Accidentally played video games until 3AM yesterday so didn't do a video - will try to learn some more anatomy today to make up for it or something.

I THINK I'm improving being able to see the angle of the pelvis, ribcage etc. Heads are still always too small and I really don't know how to draw everything else in proportion after drawing the initial sphere

[pioneeroverc-my-5000th-sideblog]

Figuary day 21

Felt like absolute shit today but I was a lot faster at doing these - hopefully it's not because I skipped steps again (I feel like it might be oops)

[pioneeroverc-my-5000th-sideblog]

Figuary day 20

Still learning painful lessons lol

At least am getting over the 'I need to make this look pretty in 5 minutes so I'm going to skip stages' mindset because I set clear goals for each time limit (good job me!)

[pioneeroverc-my-5000th-sideblog]

Figuary week 3 compilation

This week, I tried to construct with boxes over the gesture and also to push my diagonals more. Doing the construction feels like a big step backwards details- and speed-wise but it is definitely something I need to work on! I also set out some expectations for 1-, 2- and 5-minute poses in the last two days which helped me not rush as much.

I keep coming up against the problem of not knowing anatomy because it *still* has an influence on how you mannequinise stuff... but there are just soooo many muscles and bones I don't know and it feels like an insurmountable task. I have a bunch of random 'this should go this way' thoughts from just drawing mileage but they don't always connect into 'this is actually a muscle group which performs this task'. Is there some kind of simplified anatomy cheatsheet that also gives functions or do I have to work it out myself? (I know the answer to this lol)

Tomorrow's goal: look at shoulder anatomy, keep trying to push/wrap directionals