We did some croquis at class in previous weekend. We used inks, which was a quite nice change from pencils or charcoal, for the life drawing task.

I have not done much of, nor practiced croquis, with live models or from photos, so my approach is not the best. I quickly sketch the form, try not to fiddle with details and then splash some values in the end if time, but I do end up drawing a full outline to form the object.

I love how some can draw the pose with as few lines as possible and considering the action lines. In the rush of the moment I just end up doing what I know and how I usually draw without any time constraints, but I should really try new techniques to simplify and capture the essential in croquis.

So here are some of my croquis, the drawing times started with 10 min and then varied between 2-4min, time shortening towards the end (you can see numbers in the images, it was the order of the drawings, I did not mark time as it seemed a bit random depending could the model keep the pose longer or not):

I suppose these are better than the first trials a year ago, even if I have not practiced croquis but I have otherwise been painting and drawing. I have practiced figure drawing simply by drawing models from magazines or advertisements and for simple/small portraits I often check inspiration via sktchy app. Recently I’ve mainly done portraits in watercolors, not any human figures.

Good sources for figure drawing lessons/tools and/or just references that I have come by:

• Proko
  • https://www.proko.com/
  • great place in general for drawing lessons, courses and also reference materials
• Line of action – figure study tool
  • https://line-of-action.com/practice-tools/figure-drawing
  • figure / gesture drawing tool where you can define what to draw in what time intervals
  • note: nudity, but can opt for covered references in settings
• Quickposes
  • https://quickposes.com/en
  • figure / gesture drawing tool where you can define what to draw in what time intervals (you can also flip image up side down!)
  • note: nudity
• CroquisCafe
  • https://www.youtube.com/user/onairvideo/videos
    • figure drawing classes in youtube (note: need to log in to confirm age)
    • note: nudity
  • https://vimeo.com/croquiscafe
    • figure drawing classes in vimeo
    • note: nudity
• Grafit studio
  • https://gumroad.com/grafitschool
  • image reference packs for figure drawing and other illustration needs
  • note: nudity, but also clothed poses and themed images

I decided to note on nudity in linked pages, although it it quite normal in figure drawing, but just in case. Drawing human figure is quite good to learn forms and of course anatomy. But e.g. in my old tumblr blog my nude session charcoal drawings posts got blocked and I had to request them back and one I reposted with censoring. (I have imported the old posts to wordpress as well)

However now in our lessons the model was clothed in theme with the performance and I found the latter ‘baggy clothes’ the model had, quite challenging to measure and see forms. In the beginning it was a bit of disheartening and I got distracted and the few minutes just flew by. (in the green tinted images the model was in a long loose tunic)

As I mentioned the session had a theme, dance, but I will post more on that in a later post as I finish a painting assignment on that theme 🙂

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