Assignment 1: Gesture

I went for the ballerina shape since its flowiness resonated with me.

Figure that - image 1 - student project

Assignment 2: Head, Eyes and Eyebrows

I wanted to capture a sad emotion, like a dancer who is no longer happy with dancing the dance but has to do it anyway. I'm not sure about the positioning/angle of the eyes and irises since her head is tilted and she's meant to be looking slightly down. I did my best to capture that, but some more advice on how to draw things that are not straight on or 90 degrees rotated would be really helpful! Figure that - image 2 - student project

Assignments 3-5: Nose, Mouth, Ears, Chin

All the features of the face have now been added! I deliberately left the initial shapes on here, but I've been practicing since. I really enjoy drawing ears, it's amazing how with a few simple lines it starts to take shape and look real. Mouths, less so, I find it difficult to figure out how much detail to use from drawing out all of the lips to drawing just a line or two - I'm sure I'll get more comfortable with it in time.

I think it would be really useful to have a section on different expressions conveyed via the mouth, just like we did with eyebrows - sad, pouty, confused, angry, grinning and so on!

Figure that - image 3 - student project

Assignment 6: Hair

Okay, I LOVE drawing hair. Before today, I could never draw a hairline properly, especially with hair that was pinned/gathered up in some way. Now I have a much better idea of how to do that! I made about 12 different hair styles to practice, and added colour as well just to make things pop a bit more - and because it makes it easier to see what bits of hair are covering the fae and which ones are behind.

Figure that - image 4 - student project

Figure that - image 5 - student project

Then I added hair to my sad elf. I thought I'd add some braids because it almost feels mandatory to do when drawing elves, but I wanted to have the rest of the hair really loose and flowy to match the dynamic pose. Not sure what the final colour composition will be, but this'll do for now.
Figure that - image 6 - student project

And with that, the head is finished!!!

Time for the torso!

I was feeling a bit apprehensive of this because while practicing drawing just torsos 'in void', I wasn't getting a good feel for the basic shapes and things kept looking wonky. Furthermore, I knew my pose had a curve to it so I was worried about how to make the necessary adjustments. I rotated the entire sketch so it would be as 'straight' as possible. I drew the 'four heads' but I carelessly did not follow the line of the body with them well enough, so while the torso ended up looking passable, it did not fit the gesture at all. Instead of just trying to rotate it and adjust it to fit the head, I decided to start over because I wanted to practice more.

Figure that - image 7 - student project

As suspected, applying the 'four heads' method at the right angles was the key to my initial problem! I then found the reference points and and drew the reference lines through them, even though they were not all parallel to each other. This actually helped a great deal in figuring out how long each part of the torso should be in this specific pose.

Figure that - image 8 - student project

The final lines almost drew themselves, the underlying sketch really helped. I rotated everything back to the proper orientation, and ended up with the result below. While writing this update, I was looking at it, and feeling like something was off. I realised the chest looks disrpoportionately large compared to the stomach area. I drew the reference 'head' (above) too long, which kicked everything a bit out of proportion! Oops!

Figure that - image 9 - student project This time I opted not to redraw anything because I did like the overall shape, so I just reduced the width of the upper chest area. Arms might be a bit narrow now, but I'll fix those if and when necessary (and when I learn to draw arms!). I'll need to adjust the hair a bit but didn't want to start fiddling with it before drawing the entire arm. Pretty happy with the final result, third time's the charm :)

Figure that - image 10 - student project

Next up: Arms and hands!

I was excited to finally exit the Venus de Milo stage and get some limbs! The arms were fairly easy to draw, they are not too complicated shapes and I practised them a lot. Hands, as we all know, are a lot trickier. I was really struggling to find the basic shapes and not end up with sausage-fingers, especially given that some fingers are more bent than others. So instead of going the basic shapes-detailed sketch-final lines route, I was looking at the reference images and trying to draw more detailed sketches from the beginning - it seemed to make more sense in my head that way - but might be bad practise, I'm not sure, since it's going to be harder to replicate the same basic process for different hands.

Figure that - image 11 - student project

Legs!

I thought that since in principle it's fairly similar to drawing the arms, that drawing the legs would be straighforward. However, given the leg positioning in the pose it was not as easy as I thought - her front leg is turned up until the knee and then it's head on, while the opposite is the case with her back leg - but looking at the reference image helped set things straight and I figured out how everything should be rotated and where her back leg should start poking out from behind her front leg. One more.. step.. and we're done!

Figure that - image 12 - student project

And finally... the feet!

Drawing the feet was more fun than I thought it would be. Initially I was going to go with toeless feet as though she was wearing ballet shoes. However, I wanted to challenge myself and see if I can figure out how to draw pointed toes. I thought it looked passable for a first attempt so I left it like that. And with that, the figure is FINISHED!

Figure that - image 13 - student project

Final remarks:

I've had a lot of fun doing this course. I have not drawn anything since kindegraten so I was suck on the 'stick figure' level of drawing skills, but decided I wanted to learn how to draw people. The way the different body parts in this course were broken down into basic, unthreatening components made it easy for me to follow along and replicate them. Since I started the course, I've been waking up each morning feeling exited about learning more. But now the real work begins - practising and keeping at it! I'm just glad I didn't feel discouraged at any point while following along, and that I got an end result I'm happy with. Thank you, Patricia, you might see me in some of your other courses soon! <3

Réka Nagy

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