art tips

Here you will find all of the art tips and tutorials I’ve written a post about!

4 ways to master drawing poses

21/02/2023
art tips

post outline.

I got asked by one of you on TikTok to explain how to draw poses from references so here I am! Let’s get straight to it.

Quick Poses.

Drawing from a reference can be overwhelming, especially with poses. The proportions, the right placement of everything and if you mess up in one place then you need to fix the other and it’s just a never-ending loop of bad fortune.

But don’t worry! There is a way to overcome it.

The answer is Quick Poses. Or as some people might refer to it – gesture drawing. (Although it’s not really the same thing.)

You might have heard of it, but to those that are new to this, I will quickly explain.

The idea behind Quick Poses is just what you are probably assuming from the name. You draw the poses quickly. I mean like 10/15 s quickly. On a small piece of paper. Two or three poses on an A5 piece of paper. If you’ve never done that before, you might be thinking this is ridiculous. I know, because I thought the same.

‘No one can draw a good and complete pose in 10 seconds!’

But that’s not the point. You aren’t supposed to produce a full quality, incredible, masterpiece in 10 seconds. You are supposed to look at the pose quickly, gather from it everything you need, put it on the paper, not overthink and move on to the next one.

The incredible thing about this exercise is that it really works. When I first started with it, I was overwhelmed. I didn’t know where to start, the poses were too complicated and the shadows confusing. But the time was ticking and I was getting increasingly more frustrated.

But after a third or fourth pose, with me being completely unable to put even two lines down, I finally started to approach it as ‘screw it, I’ll just do it.’ And that’s when I switched my mindset from trying to produce a perfect pose to just doing it.

The first line on a white sheet of paper is always the most difficult, after that, you start to kinda wing it.

Drawing Quick Poses is supposed to let you get into that flow of painting. If you do this exercise every day for a week or two, I guarantee you the 15 seconds will start to feel like it’s too long.

Of course, you need to be critical about your work to some extent, to make sure you are improving. But for the most part, you just need to let yourself produce a lot of ugly drawings.

Now, let me tell you about 4 different ways you can draw the Quick Poses. I recommend trying all of these methods. Some might feel easier than others and they’re all just techniques. None is worst than the other but they all will teach you different ways of looking at a reference and translating what you see to the paper.

Lines.

The first technique, and probably the most obvious one, is doing Quick Poses using a pencil and just sketching it down. However, you want.

For most of us, this is the most familiar way and it can be something you’d want to do when you begin. That’s how I approached it. However, there is some downside to it. Using a thin pencil (or a brush if you are drawing digitally) can cause you more problems than solutions during this exercise. The reason for it is that a thin pencil is designed for drawing in the details and in 15 seconds of drawing you don’t have time for any details. You will be lucky if you managed to sketch in all of the limps.

The solution to this could be using for example a Koh-i-Noor pencil, that is thicker than a regular pencil which allows for more dynamic strokes. Or use charcoal.

This being said, I’d recommend starting this exercise with the next technique.

Silhouette Drawing

In this technique, I’d definitely recommend getting a black (or any colour you’d like) paint and a bigger brush. The point here would be to focus only on the silhouette of the person you are referencing. This is a good approach because you will be less likely to get caught up in the shadows and all of the other unnecessary details.

Using a bigger brush will also limit your ability to control how much detail you put in. It’s a good way to force yourself to look at the whole pose, instead of focusing on smaller parts. This way you will start seeing poses as these singular big shapes.

Negative Silhouette

Another similar exercise is using the same paint and brush but now instead of painting the silhouette, you paint only the background. This technique is pretty much the same as the one above. The difference here is that you are forced to look at the pose in a slightly different manner, which might help you understand the shapes better.

Sometimes when we know what we are painting, we tend to forget that we are supposed to paint the shapes. By painting the background instead of the silhouette, you will be forced to stop looking at the reference as a body and focus on the shapes in a more abstract way.

Shadows Only.

Here, you’d draw in only the shadows. Forget the outlines and silhouette. The only thing that matters would be the shadows that you see. You can definitely limit yourself to the shadows on the figure only, or the shadows that are also surrounding the body.

In this technique, I definitely liked to use charcoal the most, because it allows you to place big strokes in a very fast manner, but using paint or the Khor-i-Noor pencil also works.

Here again, you will be forced to look at the pose in a more abstract way, however, you will need to have some understanding of the pose anatomy already. That’s why between these exercises it is always beneficial to study human anatomy. You need to understand human mechanics to some extent if you want to get better at drawing poses.

Final Exercise.

And if you feel like you’ve painted enough of these tiny ugly drawings and you feel confident in them, you can definitely pull out a bigger piece of paper and do a longer study session for an hour or two. Even three. Hopefully, after drawing quick poses, you will be able to look at the reference with a better-trained eye. This shouldn’t be overwhelming as much as before.

And if the big piece of paper is looking very scary, remember that you can first sketch the pose on your small piece of paper, to see if you understand it and then slowly draw it on the bigger one

Conclusion

You know if you do this exercise every day for a week for just 10 minutes, after 7 days you’d have drawn 280 poses? That’s quite a lot. I think you’d need like a whole sketchbooks for that. I know you have some empty ones laying around. We all buy them thinking that we will make them pretty one day. But you know what’s more fun than a pretty looking sketchbook? A sketchbook with 300 poses in them, where every pose is better than the previous one.

Anyway, all I’m trying to say here, is that this really doesn’t take that much effort for the amount of improvement that you can achieve in such a short amount of time.

I highly recommend this exercise. It helped me a great deal.

Here’s a picture of my sketches from my first ever sketchbook I did.

And here is a pose study I did after these exercises. (A3 format)

useful websites

And lastly. Here are some of my favourite websites where you can practice Quick Poses.

Thoughts on Art Block & how to hack it.

15/03/2022
art tips

I see a lot of people post about ‘art block’. It’s like an ongoing inside joke within the art community and I definitely use it as an excuse sometimes as well. Don’t get me wrong.

However, the truth is, I don’t think that art block is that much of a deal.

Let me explain.

As soon as art becomes your job, you can’t just say to your client or your employer: ‘Today and for the next two weeks I will have an art block, thus I will do no work.’ With or without a struggle, you still need to produce good quality work. That’s the reality.

But maybe, first, let’s first try to define the infamous art block. Because what does that really stand for? Lack of inspiration? Lack of motivation? Lack of ideas? Lack of energy to create? Self-doubt? Skill limitation? Dissatisfaction with the work we’ve created? Frustration over the way it looks?

Art block can be caused by many factors and usually will result in the artist not producing art. But again, when you are a hobbyist or a beginner, you can allow yourself to not pick up that pen for 3 months (although I’d advise against it), however, when you are trying to pursue art as your career, you need to find ways to not let an art block affect you. Ever. For the most part, you simply won’t be able to afford it.

And perhaps that’s one of the key differences between a professional artist and a hobbyist/beginner artist. A professional artist will deliver quality art, often on a very tight schedule (depending on the industry) and still manage to come up with creative solutions.

Disclaimer: don’t misunderstand. We are all human, we have our highs and lows, moments when we are more or less creative. The professional artist, however, will tend to get over their lows in a fast manner. Once it’s your job, you are forced to find a way out of it fast.

So, what do professionals do?

Well, first you need to identify the reason for your art block and then attack that specific issue. Let’s go over some of the things I’ve mentioned before.

lack of ideas/inspiration

Lack of ideas is relatively easy to tackle. However, I think we’ve all been there, scrolling through Pinterest for 3 hours, only to close the drawing app with frustration. In that case, you need to stop overthinking it. Good exercise for this is my abstract painting method. You can watch the short video on this here.

The idea is that you put mindless and abstract strokes on your canvas until you start to recognize some from. This can lead you to very interesting outcomes and, because you will paint without expectations, you will be less likely to be disappointed with the outcome of your painting. It’s also a good way to focus on the creative process more, rather than trying to achieve some sort of outcome, like you’d do while painting from a reference.

Of course, another good practice would be going on ArtStation but, what also works like a dream in these situations, is watching speed painting videos. Every artist has a different technique, so sometimes just by observing, how they start a painting, how they put down colours etc. can easily inspire you to try it on your own.

lack of motivation

This one of course is a bit tricky. If you work for someone and you have any sense of responsibility, you won’t struggle with motivation much, because it’s just the things that need to be done. And even if you will struggle to do it, you will still do it because you have to. (Unless you perhaps want to debate quitting).

Different things will help different people. When it comes to art block, I usually try to go to websites like Artstation or film grab and look for inspiration. Finding a nice reference photo with interesting shapes also spikes my interest and motivates me to paint.

If these things don’t work for you, maybe you need a routine to put yourself in a creative zone. Perhaps through music or podcast or going out to a cafe or a different room in the house. Or maybe you work best with a clear schedule and all you need to do is set up that you paint every day at 8 pm for two hours before bed. I did it during school and it worked wonders.

Some people will have to go outside and try to experience something different to get that motivation. You will have to experiment on your own.

self-doubt/skill limitation

Pro or not a pro, we all sometimes forget how to paint. And it’s just because painting is difficult. You should practice every day to keep your skills consistent. So when this art block gets you, try to do studies, break down the forms, focus on observing. Stay loose with your sketches, don’t fix anything, let yourself experiment with different brushes and brush sizes.

You can also do painting studies of full images. For me personally, I found that the less detailed the work is the better I find my way back to my art flow.

Try to limit the time you spend on your studies, you want to avoid thinking too much. If you want to practice poses, this is a good website for it. Set the timer for 20/30 seconds. Definitely no longer than a minute and let yourself make mistakes. The whole reason for the short timer is that you should not have time to start fixing your drawing. Draw it quickly and move to another one.

frustration with the way your art looks

And here, finally, all of the above and master studies. When this frustration kicks in you need to take a step back, stop comparing yourself to other artists and instead put all of your focus on how they got their art to look like this. Not only it’s a great learning exercise but it will also open up your perspective on a lot of different techniques. Here is the time to go into the details. Analyse all of the brush strokes, colour, go with a colour picker over these paintings and take note of everything.

You can create a board with examples of work that you find incredible. Go over them and make notes on different things you notice that they do. Compare between them. Ask yourself: WHY and HOW. Why do you like it? Why does it evoke this feeling in me? How did they showcase this subject? Why not in a different way?

Save that board and go back to it from time to time whenever you feel stuck or uninspired. This is actually good for any sort of art block because it allows you to go inward and really think about what you want your art to look like and where you want to take your art next.

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Remember! Art is great but it’s difficult. It requires a lot of time to master, so don’t beat yourself up whenever things aren’t exactly going your way. Take every failed attempt as an opportunity for a lesson.

Every professional has once been a beginner. Dealing with art block and overcoming it is something every artist had to learn at some point in their lives. Unless they have the privilege of working whenever and however they’d like. Most of us, however, have deadlines and schedules, people in the team or clients, that you have to deliver to. It’s all part of the journey.

Happy painting x
Tori

These two paintings I created using the abstract method. I did not expect these results whatsoever but the painting process was very enjoyable.

How to practice perspective drawing

15/03/2022
art tips

How to practice perspective drawing! Easy exercise for beginners.

I never really had to practice perspective drawing as much. I could say I had an eye for it and intuitively I could get pretty far with just sort of faking it. But that can only take you so far.

When you want to paint backgrounds and be comfortable with them, perspective is something you can’t avoid. Unless you want to become a slave to 3D and trace your scenes from them (I’m guilty of this).

I already posted a TikTok about how to practice perspective drawing and you can watch it here. But I want to elaborate a little bit more about it because a 1-minute video isn’t long enough.

I will take you through the perspective drawing exercise that will help you understand space and objects within it quickly.

Step 1. Pick a photo & analyse it.

Picking the right reference is an art form in itself. The best pictures for practising perspective would be the ones where the lines of the ceiling and the floor are visible. Now, why? Because these are the structure lines that, if noted right, will lead you to your vanishing points. Why would potentially a bed or a chair not be the best option for finding the perspective lines? Because these objects can be rotated within the space, they can be uneven or tiled. If you follow an uneven edge it won’t lead you towards the correct vanishing point.

While doing this exercise you need to look for clear photos. Don’t over-complicate it.

For example. This photo is nice. You could definitely find two vanishing points and mark them correctly. However, if you are not experienced with perspective drawings, this photo has a lot of traps you could fall into.

Let’s take a look at the traps before I show you the correct way.

First of all, the ceiling is diagonal. This automatically eliminated the number of lines we can use to track down the perspective lines.

The bed has a lot of stuff on it, which makes it difficult to see the edge, thus finding the line.

The rug covers up the floor. It has an edge that could identify our vanishing point, however, we can’t be sure if the rug is actually perfectly rectangular.

So if I was to paint in the perspective using these guides, it would look a little bit like this.

As you can see, everything fell apart. Let’s discuss why.

The first mistake is, as I mentioned before, using the bed and a rug as a guide for the blue and pink lines. The bed especially has very unclear edges, which makes it difficult to correctly place a perspective line. That’s why, in most cases, it’s pointless to do it.

Another reason why the lines ended up being misplaced is that I used lines that are too thick. In this exercise, you need to be precise with where you place your lines. Lines that are too thick will naturally cover the edges that you are trying to follow, which can result in being less accurate.

Now take a look at this photo.

Because I’ve done this enough times and I know where the traps are I was able to track the perspective lines correctly. Notice how I’m using thinner lines that allow me to have more precision.

I only use the edges of the room’s construction. These can be the panels on the floor, the window frame, the railing outside or the wooden beams on the ceiling. They are usually the safest bet.

In conclusion, a photo like this still can be analysed but it’s more difficult than a photo with clearly defined floor and ceiling lines. Especially if you are just starting out, avoid complex references. Start simple and as you will get better you can move on to the less obvious examples!

Here are examples of easy photos.

( extra tip: Look for ‘minimalistic room’ on Pinterest!)

Step 2. Add more lines to your photo!

Because I’m trying to convince you to use simple photos, I redid the analysis and so here it is.

The next step is to add more lines to the vanishing points so that we can draw in some additional objects.

Remember that the lines need to be straight. Wonky lines won’t work!

Step 3. Draw in the objects.

This part is completely up to you and will depend on what kind of photo you chose for yourself. My suggestion is, again, to keep it simple. You can draw in just boxes at first and just see if they feel like they actually belong to the space.

Don’t start with complicated objects that have lots of curves or diagonal lines, because they might confuse you. The objects I’d start with would be a drawer, a bookshelf, a table, a bed frame, picture frames or posters on the wall, a rug. Anything that has a simple form.

And once you have your guidelines, you can clean it up a bit and have fun with adding details!

When you will get comfortable drawing these objects, you can switch them to some complex ones, like round sofas or office chairs.

The point here is to not overwhelm yourself with this exercise. Going from simple to complex is the way to slowly ease yourself into the idea of perspective drawing.

The whole reason why we are also using reference photos is that it’s a beginner-friendly exercise. By having that references you don’t need to worry about constructing the room from scratch and, thanks to that, you are eliminating the possibility of learning it wrong.

Ending notes.

I really hope this exercise will help you quickly understand the perspective drawing in action! I remember when I started out I understood the theory but I couldn’t quite put it into practice. I found the proportions and vanishing points confusing. By analysing the photos like this and testing myself by drawing in the objects I was quickly able to understand the logistic of it.

If you try it, let me know your thoughts! And if it’s not working out for you, also let me know, so maybe I could address it and help you out!

Happy painting! x

Tori