the 15-second shots were better for dynamic poses, since the model didn’t have to hold them for as long (have you TRIED standing in an action pose for more than a minute?)
Once had a guy hold this half-crouch on top of a chair for like 45 minutes. And he was mostly static. He seemed a tad surprised when we asked him afterwards if he was okay.
In my last life drawing class, we had a final project where we were allowed to ask the model to get into any pose we needed for at least 10 minutes. After watching everyone put him in all kinds of exhausting poses, when it was my turn, I told him to just sit down and get comfortable, lol. I still worked it into my project.
At that rate I’d be better off tracing a 3D model, ’cause honestly these classes don’t seem really accessible if you prefer to draw at a comfortable pace.
Here’s a reverse example of what a figure drawing class is like (you normally start with the quickly crap and work your way up to the detailed bits) https://youtu.be/x9wn633vl_c
They aren’t like that all the time. This is just a warmup. You do real quick outlines of a shape. Then you’ll have much longer sessions of full drawings.
Haha 15 second drawings are FUN. The hard ones are the longer ones. You make a quick 15 second sketch, who cares if you mess up. Keep it loose and energetic. You draw a figure for 30 minutes and you put way too much effort into it to mess up. So you stress over every line you put down.
A lot of people have chimed in, but no one’s explained: the point is to create crappy drawings. Joe’s having trouble keeping up, almost certainly, because he’s putting in too much detail. A 15-second sketch isn’t supposed to be good. It’s supposed to capture a feeling, immediately, and then you throw it away.
The idea is to make you less obsessed with getting it perfect and focused more on actually creating output, because the latter is how you get better. Throw down some lines for 15 seconds, then say, “GOOD ENOUGH” and crumple it into a ball.
As the artists on The Drawfee Show say, “Delete your art!”
That was my reaction, I feel like this was probably something explained on day 1 or perhaps in a previous course that art majors would be expected to have taken, and it might just not have occurred to him to explain this to Joyce and Joe since from his perspective this is just a quick warm up, the important stuff comes later.
I get where Dorothy is coming from, suggesting Joyce attend a life drawing class to improve her art, but practical classes (ie, ones that involve actually performing a skill, rather than just talking about things. inb4 people chime in about how practical or unpractical drawing may or may not be as a skill) are generally not something you can just dive into partway through the semester, even if it’s supposed to be introductory, and according to the IU website a life drawing course would probably be around the 300 level, possibly 200 or 400, there isn’t a course that is specifically life drawing, but there are a number of non-specific seminar credits that a professor could feasibly run a life drawing course as, but the 300 level Drawing II is the closest based purely on the descriptions.
There is a 400 level anatomy for the artist course that focuses specifically on the muscles, bones, and joints for depicting things like hands. I actually modelled for that class by accident because I’m a magician and the professor saw me busking at the Sample Gates on his way to his lecture and decided to just send his students with video cameras to record me doing card tricks (when this was explained to me it sounds like it’s a regular assignment to go get footage of hands in action during class hours, and so when I was there he just made sure to mention that I’d be a good choice given the nature of what I was doing). Those days I always got the best tips since people thought we were filming a tv special and thus drew a bigger crowd, lol
It takes some major anxiety to feel like you’re being judged, or indeed paid any attention to at all, when there’s a naked person posing in the middle of the room.
it’s more than anxiety. i’m not even entirely sure what it is, but i have pretty bad body issues and if someone even mentions certain body parts around me i want to crawl in a hole and live in darkness forever. if i had deluded myself into thinking i could handle a life drawing class then i would be reacting a lot like Joyce.
disagree, although everyone is focused on the model since that’s the class, it is Joyce, making a scene, who they would notice being “off” in some way, if they did notice at all. They’re used to the model (or at least, to models in general), so it would be the newcomer being weird that attracted attention.
To rephrase, I feel like this is like saying in a still-life class “it takes a lot of anxiety to be worried about this when there’s a vase of flowers at the front”
For all my artist pals in here. What’s your favorite length for life drawing?
I’m a fan of 30-seconds/minute. Enough to get the gesture and if there’s time even capture a bit of the light source to add some dimension to it. It’s probably the ideal length of time for warmups for an animator/comic artist since catching the sillouette is so important when doing them.
I’m torn between doing minute studies and slightly longer 3-5 minutes ones. I often find myself wanting to develop minute drawings into something more.
Artist pal who never actually took a class like this. Would love to, though.
I wonder if there are videos online of models doing various pose lengths. I know it’d be only on a screen, and not 3D, and it’s fine if they’re clothed — I’d just love to try this general process out, of anyone knows of a cheap/free resource like that.
https://line-of-action.com/practice-tools/figure-drawing
Check out this site. It has a library of photos of models and you can set timers for how long you wanna look at each pose. You can either set them all to a set time, or do class mode where they get longer and longer over time.
Big fan of 15-30 seconds. I’m the sort who agonizes over everything they draw, but I actually focus way better under pressure. So when I’m given a short time frame to work with it lets me cut the useless fluff out of my head and really hone in on the core essentials of the different poses and how best to bring them out.
Non-artist, hopefully-pal here. I can swap a network switch out like a NASCAR pit crew but any of my drawings that involve more than three lines look like a child made them. I know there’s not a whole hell of a lot I can do besides ‘get good’, but what basics should I be practicing so I don’t just learn how to ape a given art style?
First of all you should ape art styles. Most people start learning to draw by flat out copying a style they like from their comic book, cartoon, anime, etc. Many god tier artists learned to draw muscles as a kid by tracing Dragonball Z! So that’s where I’d start. Find art you loke and try to shamelessly rip it off as best you can. Don’t pretend like it’s your work if you trace but doing that teaches your hand the forms.
In general though if you’re trying to draw humans basic anatomy and proportion is where you start. There countless numbers of books on the subject and free tutorials and resources online for that nearly everywhere. Just google anatomy or type it into YouTube. There’s also perspective which I still struggle with. It’s learning to render forms with illusion of 3 dimensions. Lots of artists struggle with that cause it’s basically geometry.
The most important part though is to just do it. Just try. There is no right way to start drawing. Put something on a page and show it to people. Get critiqued, adjust, improve. Art is a journey as disgustingly cliche as that is to say.
As far as basics you can practice at any time I would suggest shapes. Everything is just a series of basic shapes. Squares, circles, cylinders, triangles. Drawing shapes is always a good rough practice for any artist of any skill level.
Absolutely ape styles. Not a lotta people call me on it but my current style is just Dragonball, Scott Pilgrim and a little bit of Steven Universe all mixed together.
I just retired from IT support and am learning to draw. Watching a lot of instructional videos on YouTube from LoveLifeDrawing and from a variety of comic book artists on anatomy, perspective, action, etc.
But 2 months in, also recommend just massive amounts of sketching. I have schwag notebooks from tech conferences that have become sketchbooks, plus every piece of paper or used envelope that falls within arm’s reach. Have filled up whole books with faces, poses, working on one with hands right now. My spouse is very supportive so far.
Have made some progress but also getting the picture of how far I have to go. And also at peace with that fact and not comparing myself to accomplished artists. Really enjoying this. Income has dropped by half but not missing the constant pressure of ticket resolution at all.
I should add… perfection is not your friend. Be willing to do a bunch of crappy stuff really fast, like 100 faces in a week. You will surprise yourself.
15 minutes. More than enough time to get the pose, long enough to take your time and lovingly add detail if you feel like it, not long enough to get bored.
I haven’t had a drawing since college 20 years ago. Now I just use Illustrator and the pen tool. Easier to just use the mouse to correct it than trying to use an eraser and tearing a hole in your paper. When i was drawing I liked the long ones because I wanted it to be perfect. It never was.
Also, as Jack Reacher said “It is a perishable skill.” So I would probably be terrible at it now.
I like the 30 second draws followed by 10 to 15 minute poses. The last being long enough to get a nice drawing and short enough to prevent me from overworking the study.
Not much! The point is to try to capture a very loose sense of the pose, instead of getting hung up on detail. You’re trying to get a feel of the subject, basically? A living body has a million different angles and motions. You’re trying to use quick, broad strokes to represent the pose or of the movement of the model.
This actually makes me miss the life drawing experience. It’s actually kinda hard to get access to those kinds of life drawing opportunities with live models and analog materials outside of a university. There are many resources online for models and reference but it’s just not the same as a live environment.
There was a place I used to go to in Atlanta after a cursory google search. Granted this was Prior to 2020. I actually did some pretty decent stuff there, found one of my old newsprint notebooks the other day and I was kinda impressed with past me <3
Nice. I used to be able to sit in at a community college on California but Covid put a stop the classes and it’s been a few years and I haven’t heard of them starting back up.
Yeah I’ve been really hoping that life drawing classes near me will start back up, and so far I’ve been very disappointed. But maybe that’s responsible anyway. I don’t know. I just miss it a lot.
I kind of really want to see Joe’s sketches! I genuinely don’t care if they’re stick figures representing the spirit of the 15-second poses exercise, or if he’s trying to put tits on each drawing and he’s struggling to keep up. I am legit curious what Joe’s art brain produces.
Yeah, that’s the idea. Warm-ups. Gesture sketches. Doing a gesture quickly means you’re more likely to actually get something expressive–if you spend too much time, you’re more likely to make it stiff.
That’s kinda the idea. Loose lines in the vague shape of a person. Hell you’re on the right track if you just capture the flow and don’t even bother trying to make it look like someone.
I used to drawing sticks too, I was very limited. But I’ve take drawing classes where I learned about paying attention to the composition of the image, like: shape, volume, light, empty spaces…
Stick figures actually take too long, with 15 secs I just sketch the general outline os the body, or maybe just of one part of the body. No time to draw each limb separatedly
I did this back in the aughties, memories. People kept wanting me to stay late so they could do my scars that were much more colorful back then. I have a couple of good pictures of the huge scar on my leg on my blog, link on the name on the comment, the best picture was in the art contest post.
I always hated the fastest warm up exercises and found they had no use except to make me freeze up and stop participating, as it’d trigger panics (I see you Joyce… and yes I might also be autistic).
Good teachers accommodate and let you sit it out, bad teachers double down with trying to force it as The One Way To Learn. It’s perfectly possible to be a good artist without speed sketching.
The other thing that helped was to start at 15 minutes and get faster from there, rather than the other way round.
Last time I yelled “Dont look at me” was 2 weeks ago mid-panic attack/meltdown at the shops when a security guy tried to tell me I couldn’t be bare foot. Worked wonders. /s
I dunno about none of that hippie stuff, but I would absolutely not trust any store’s floor not to be absolutely horrendous to walk on, without at least sandals. Even if the people keep it pretty clean, a lot of stores have concrete or wood floors, and just the texture alone would drive me up the fuckin’ wall within seconds. Maybe that’s a fringe thing though.
Feet are actually surprisingly hardy or they used to be anyway. Lots of thick skin down there which is why Serra can go barefoot so often in the comic. Shoes kind of nerfed our foot toughness a bit though. We used to easily tolerate walking and running barefoot on rock and gravel. Wood or tile floors would be luxury.
For a while I couldn’t wear shoes. Like, I could handle brief stints with completely flat shoes but not long enough to walk where I needed to go. Can confirm tile tends to be quite pleasant. Don’t recall walking on wood floors specifically but it would probably be the same, except with more potential variation on the joins.
I was very embarrassed about it though, so I had open shoes (called flip flops here) I could tolerate for very short distances for when I had to go into town, and I’d generally walk to and from town (or anywhere else) barefoot. Eventually I got it into my head I could actually see the doctor about it and got some exercises, thankfully when winter truly hit I could manage to wear shoes again.
Anyway it was a whole thing and it actually wasn’t too unpleasant. Embarrassing as hell and sometimes awkward but manageable. Heightened my awareness of my surroundings in a way I could manage with my autism which is an interesting side note.
(Another side note- for anyone wanting to toughen their feet up, apparently short periods being barefoot on gravel is the way to do it.)
Toughness is all well and good, and probably pretty useful when the ground is uncomfortable. I’m thinking almost entirely in terms of texture though. I can barely tolerate most forms of carpet, stone, or even hard wood without at least thin socks on, so more power to anyone who can go barefoot for longer than it takes to find the nearest
pair of knee-highs.
could be worse, i feel like book 1 joyce would’ve covered up the model
i assume they’re fairly ‘standard’ looking too , i wonder if joyce would make another shocked face if they had nipple or genital piercings lol
seems inconvenient if it happened at random too, idk if she was ND but one friend i had was in the middle of telling a story and got self conscious halfway through like “Why are you staring at me?” “becausey ou’re talking to us?”
Try having a nice chat with friends that happens to be on a train and then getting startled by somebody else joining in laughing with you guys, then a little kid asking their parent for elaboration on something you’ve just said and realise you’re the friggin’ in carriage entertainment and everybody’s still staring even though you’ve gone quiet with embarrassment now…
I’m curious how Joe’s sketches are coming out, I’m expecting Joyce to expect them to be focused on the nudity and I’m guessing they won’t be whatsoever. Like when they do the longer sketches I’m guessing they’ll be focused on the shape of the arms or hands on the curve of the neck. I hope we get to find out!
I could understand getting up and leaving. I could understand bending over, hiding the head behind the counter, nervously doodling things that have nothing to do with the model waiting for the class to be over. I might also understand fainting from the tension. But wrap your head like this no. I can’t t understand this. It’s just absurd. They need to find a way to calm Joyce or is better than Joe walk her out of the classroom.
Honestly, it seem an esagerate exaggeration to me. I’ve done life drawing for almost 10 years, seeing someone reaching like Joyce would have been extremely sad and painful to watch.
A lot of the comedy punchlines in comic strips DO push into the realm of absurdity, it’s true. It’s a real blow to the cinema verite approach I think Willis is going for i suppose
Just now I searched up some life drawing poses and did a half-dozen fifteen-second drawings. Sort of stick-figure-y but they came out surprisingly OK! Gonna do a bunch more.
Loving this story line because I’m hoping to take a life drawing class soon.
Envious of artists. I can draw a few things, I’m ok with stuff like spaceships (if I use drafting tools) but all my attempts to draw living things end up looking something between Lovecraftian and Cronenbergian.
If I can share some experience with you, I only started to draw little better when I became adult, and after I took one semester in drawing class. And I’ve said little better, because I got only the foundation concepts, like composition, lighting…
Drawing is a challenging skill, and it take time.
Those 15 second gestures are probably the hardest part of a drawing class. Just when you get done drawing the outline of a head or arm, you have to switch already. But on the other hand, it gets you just drawing and not worrying about doing it perfectly. They’re good for clearing your mind once you’ve done it a few times.
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then it turns out Joe’s stuff is even better quality than Malaya’s
Joyce’s look exactly like her comic
the 15-second shots were better for dynamic poses, since the model didn’t have to hold them for as long (have you TRIED standing in an action pose for more than a minute?)
Once had a guy hold this half-crouch on top of a chair for like 45 minutes. And he was mostly static. He seemed a tad surprised when we asked him afterwards if he was okay.
L
In my last life drawing class, we had a final project where we were allowed to ask the model to get into any pose we needed for at least 10 minutes. After watching everyone put him in all kinds of exhausting poses, when it was my turn, I told him to just sit down and get comfortable, lol. I still worked it into my project.
Do you really have to be THAT fast?!?! 😵
At that rate I’d be better off tracing a 3D model, ’cause honestly these classes don’t seem really accessible if you prefer to draw at a comfortable pace.
Seriously. That pace would give me an instant panic attack.
1. warm-ups
2. you don’t have to draw a FULL RENDER, stick figure is fine
Here’s a reverse example of what a figure drawing class is like (you normally start with the quickly crap and work your way up to the detailed bits)
https://youtu.be/x9wn633vl_c
It’s a warmup exercise. Probably just intended to draw something like stick figures, the strongest lines of the body and pose.
You have to do the oval head with the crossed lines on the face too, right? Otherwise it’s just not drawing class.
oh, absolutely.
It’s just a warm-up exercise, some quick and shitty drawings to prepare for the assignment proper
They aren’t like that all the time. This is just a warmup. You do real quick outlines of a shape. Then you’ll have much longer sessions of full drawings.
Haha 15 second drawings are FUN. The hard ones are the longer ones. You make a quick 15 second sketch, who cares if you mess up. Keep it loose and energetic. You draw a figure for 30 minutes and you put way too much effort into it to mess up. So you stress over every line you put down.
15 sec gestures are great and fun. The important part is getting the energy of the pose down.
A lot of people have chimed in, but no one’s explained: the point is to create crappy drawings. Joe’s having trouble keeping up, almost certainly, because he’s putting in too much detail. A 15-second sketch isn’t supposed to be good. It’s supposed to capture a feeling, immediately, and then you throw it away.
The idea is to make you less obsessed with getting it perfect and focused more on actually creating output, because the latter is how you get better. Throw down some lines for 15 seconds, then say, “GOOD ENOUGH” and crumple it into a ball.
As the artists on The Drawfee Show say, “Delete your art!”
Kinda sounds like the prof isn’t doing such a good job of explaining this either. But maybe that was off panel haha
This isn’t the first drawing class of the semester, though. Presumably he already explained that sort of stuff the first time they did this.
That was my reaction, I feel like this was probably something explained on day 1 or perhaps in a previous course that art majors would be expected to have taken, and it might just not have occurred to him to explain this to Joyce and Joe since from his perspective this is just a quick warm up, the important stuff comes later.
I get where Dorothy is coming from, suggesting Joyce attend a life drawing class to improve her art, but practical classes (ie, ones that involve actually performing a skill, rather than just talking about things. inb4 people chime in about how practical or unpractical drawing may or may not be as a skill) are generally not something you can just dive into partway through the semester, even if it’s supposed to be introductory, and according to the IU website a life drawing course would probably be around the 300 level, possibly 200 or 400, there isn’t a course that is specifically life drawing, but there are a number of non-specific seminar credits that a professor could feasibly run a life drawing course as, but the 300 level Drawing II is the closest based purely on the descriptions.
There is a 400 level anatomy for the artist course that focuses specifically on the muscles, bones, and joints for depicting things like hands. I actually modelled for that class by accident because I’m a magician and the professor saw me busking at the Sample Gates on his way to his lecture and decided to just send his students with video cameras to record me doing card tricks (when this was explained to me it sounds like it’s a regular assignment to go get footage of hands in action during class hours, and so when I was there he just made sure to mention that I’d be a good choice given the nature of what I was doing). Those days I always got the best tips since people thought we were filming a tv special and thus drew a bigger crowd, lol
Stick figures ftw.
It takes some major anxiety to feel like you’re being judged, or indeed paid any attention to at all, when there’s a naked person posing in the middle of the room.
Also, EVERYONE ELSE is looking at her
just like youunlike you okay maybe there’s something to be embarrassed about.Nobody else inside the story is paying attention to her, then.
Except Joe, a little bit.
And her name is Joyce!
it’s more than anxiety. i’m not even entirely sure what it is, but i have pretty bad body issues and if someone even mentions certain body parts around me i want to crawl in a hole and live in darkness forever. if i had deluded myself into thinking i could handle a life drawing class then i would be reacting a lot like Joyce.
disagree, although everyone is focused on the model since that’s the class, it is Joyce, making a scene, who they would notice being “off” in some way, if they did notice at all. They’re used to the model (or at least, to models in general), so it would be the newcomer being weird that attracted attention.
but then I do have anxiety
To rephrase, I feel like this is like saying in a still-life class “it takes a lot of anxiety to be worried about this when there’s a vase of flowers at the front”
no, no, this is good. she’s working through it
They haven’t even needed to break out the Clockwork Orange eyelid clamps yet.
all things considered she’s doing okay
Even though she’s got a hole the size of Texas deep inside of her heart?
I was surprised they’d started class work so little preamble but then I realized we’re past the first day; Joe and Joyce have missed the syllabus day
For all my artist pals in here. What’s your favorite length for life drawing?
I’m a fan of 30-seconds/minute. Enough to get the gesture and if there’s time even capture a bit of the light source to add some dimension to it. It’s probably the ideal length of time for warmups for an animator/comic artist since catching the sillouette is so important when doing them.
I’m torn between doing minute studies and slightly longer 3-5 minutes ones. I often find myself wanting to develop minute drawings into something more.
Artist pal who never actually took a class like this. Would love to, though.
I wonder if there are videos online of models doing various pose lengths. I know it’d be only on a screen, and not 3D, and it’s fine if they’re clothed — I’d just love to try this general process out, of anyone knows of a cheap/free resource like that.
https://line-of-action.com/practice-tools/figure-drawing
Check out this site. It has a library of photos of models and you can set timers for how long you wanna look at each pose. You can either set them all to a set time, or do class mode where they get longer and longer over time.
Perfect! Thank you ^^
Big fan of 15-30 seconds. I’m the sort who agonizes over everything they draw, but I actually focus way better under pressure. So when I’m given a short time frame to work with it lets me cut the useless fluff out of my head and really hone in on the core essentials of the different poses and how best to bring them out.
I like the variety, it’s challenging.
15 second drawing, 5 minutes, 25 minutes, inside one session.
Range of 5 – 15 minutes. Less than that triggers panic attacks unfortunately.
I’ve always been a slow sketcher, so my 5 minutes result is someone elses’ 60 second result.
Non-artist, hopefully-pal here. I can swap a network switch out like a NASCAR pit crew but any of my drawings that involve more than three lines look like a child made them. I know there’s not a whole hell of a lot I can do besides ‘get good’, but what basics should I be practicing so I don’t just learn how to ape a given art style?
First of all you should ape art styles. Most people start learning to draw by flat out copying a style they like from their comic book, cartoon, anime, etc. Many god tier artists learned to draw muscles as a kid by tracing Dragonball Z! So that’s where I’d start. Find art you loke and try to shamelessly rip it off as best you can. Don’t pretend like it’s your work if you trace but doing that teaches your hand the forms.
In general though if you’re trying to draw humans basic anatomy and proportion is where you start. There countless numbers of books on the subject and free tutorials and resources online for that nearly everywhere. Just google anatomy or type it into YouTube. There’s also perspective which I still struggle with. It’s learning to render forms with illusion of 3 dimensions. Lots of artists struggle with that cause it’s basically geometry.
The most important part though is to just do it. Just try. There is no right way to start drawing. Put something on a page and show it to people. Get critiqued, adjust, improve. Art is a journey as disgustingly cliche as that is to say.
As far as basics you can practice at any time I would suggest shapes. Everything is just a series of basic shapes. Squares, circles, cylinders, triangles. Drawing shapes is always a good rough practice for any artist of any skill level.
Absolutely ape styles. Not a lotta people call me on it but my current style is just Dragonball, Scott Pilgrim and a little bit of Steven Universe all mixed together.
I just retired from IT support and am learning to draw. Watching a lot of instructional videos on YouTube from LoveLifeDrawing and from a variety of comic book artists on anatomy, perspective, action, etc.
But 2 months in, also recommend just massive amounts of sketching. I have schwag notebooks from tech conferences that have become sketchbooks, plus every piece of paper or used envelope that falls within arm’s reach. Have filled up whole books with faces, poses, working on one with hands right now. My spouse is very supportive so far.
Have made some progress but also getting the picture of how far I have to go. And also at peace with that fact and not comparing myself to accomplished artists. Really enjoying this. Income has dropped by half but not missing the constant pressure of ticket resolution at all.
I should add… perfection is not your friend. Be willing to do a bunch of crappy stuff really fast, like 100 faces in a week. You will surprise yourself.
15 minutes. More than enough time to get the pose, long enough to take your time and lovingly add detail if you feel like it, not long enough to get bored.
I haven’t had a drawing since college 20 years ago. Now I just use Illustrator and the pen tool. Easier to just use the mouse to correct it than trying to use an eraser and tearing a hole in your paper. When i was drawing I liked the long ones because I wanted it to be perfect. It never was.
Also, as Jack Reacher said “It is a perishable skill.” So I would probably be terrible at it now.
I like the 30 second draws followed by 10 to 15 minute poses. The last being long enough to get a nice drawing and short enough to prevent me from overworking the study.
he’s biting his tongue 😛
I liked it better as an emoticon, not an emoji. gonna try again. :P
I still don’t believe in Hyde’s art teaching ability. Not yet.
IIRC Hyde is heavily based on a teacher Willis had in college, and he’s aware of his cartoon counterpart.
I can’t find it now, but he shows up when Marcie’s trying to get Malaya to notice her, and “substitutes” for the model in their life drawing class.
It might have been a bonus strip two-parter.
This bit of info was either in the reader comments or the author comments printed under the strip in the book.
His character tag only includes two appearances prior to this arc, so you’re probably thinking of a bonus comic?
Yup! I found them. Book 7, page 209, the bonus strips for April 2017.
the hell can you even do in just 15 seconds ?
Warm up your hands, draw the direction of the movement, and possibly get your verbal worry-brain to ease up a lil bit. Swoosh!
Not much! The point is to try to capture a very loose sense of the pose, instead of getting hung up on detail. You’re trying to get a feel of the subject, basically? A living body has a million different angles and motions. You’re trying to use quick, broad strokes to represent the pose or of the movement of the model.
Either I would A] draw the most prominent body parts in every pose change or B] sketch like a seasoned cartoonist
Note to self: Joe’s a lefty lug.
This actually makes me miss the life drawing experience. It’s actually kinda hard to get access to those kinds of life drawing opportunities with live models and analog materials outside of a university. There are many resources online for models and reference but it’s just not the same as a live environment.
There was a place I used to go to in Atlanta after a cursory google search. Granted this was Prior to 2020. I actually did some pretty decent stuff there, found one of my old newsprint notebooks the other day and I was kinda impressed with past me <3
Nice. I used to be able to sit in at a community college on California but Covid put a stop the classes and it’s been a few years and I haven’t heard of them starting back up.
Yeah I’ve been really hoping that life drawing classes near me will start back up, and so far I’ve been very disappointed. But maybe that’s responsible anyway. I don’t know. I just miss it a lot.
I kind of really want to see Joe’s sketches! I genuinely don’t care if they’re stick figures representing the spirit of the 15-second poses exercise, or if he’s trying to put tits on each drawing and he’s struggling to keep up. I am legit curious what Joe’s art brain produces.
Same.
Speaking as a non-artist, I feel like I would need some sort of remedial tutorial of HOW to do this class before I could actually take this class.
Same. Though maybe I’d feel less like that if I started on the first day of class.
It kinda feels like that’s what we’re getting here!
Joyce IS sitting in on a class, and not starting in a 101 class.
Dude, at 15 seconds, I’d be drawing stick figures.
I mean he said it’s a warm up exercise in panel 1, I dont think he’s expecting much beyond stick figures here
Yeah, that’s the idea. Warm-ups. Gesture sketches. Doing a gesture quickly means you’re more likely to actually get something expressive–if you spend too much time, you’re more likely to make it stiff.
That’s kinda the idea. Loose lines in the vague shape of a person. Hell you’re on the right track if you just capture the flow and don’t even bother trying to make it look like someone.
I used to drawing sticks too, I was very limited. But I’ve take drawing classes where I learned about paying attention to the composition of the image, like: shape, volume, light, empty spaces…
A stick figure can be very expressive, depending on what you’re trying to communicate.
Stick figures actually take too long, with 15 secs I just sketch the general outline os the body, or maybe just of one part of the body. No time to draw each limb separatedly
I did this back in the aughties, memories. People kept wanting me to stay late so they could do my scars that were much more colorful back then. I have a couple of good pictures of the huge scar on my leg on my blog, link on the name on the comment, the best picture was in the art contest post.
And there’s the scene.
love to see joe participating
I now Joyce is Joycing, but I used to get some exercises in life drawing, that consists in drawing looking to the model and NOT to the paper.
Did you have this variety in life drawing, beyond the gesture length?
I always hated the fastest warm up exercises and found they had no use except to make me freeze up and stop participating, as it’d trigger panics (I see you Joyce… and yes I might also be autistic).
Good teachers accommodate and let you sit it out, bad teachers double down with trying to force it as The One Way To Learn. It’s perfectly possible to be a good artist without speed sketching.
The other thing that helped was to start at 15 minutes and get faster from there, rather than the other way round.
Joyce, I’ve heard the best way to manage your anxiety here is to imagine her in her underwear.
This brings back memories. I really liked the fast switches between poses.
I love how into it Joe’s getting. Old Joe would have been too distracted by the presence of a nude woman to get any drawing done.
As an AuDHD with massive anxiety issues I can confirm that yelling “DONT LOOK AT ME” is an excellent way to get people to not look at you.
Probably out of embarrassment, but hey.
Last time I yelled “Dont look at me” was 2 weeks ago mid-panic attack/meltdown at the shops when a security guy tried to tell me I couldn’t be bare foot. Worked wonders. /s
You were shopping barefoot? 🤨
Nobody would bat an eye if it weren’t for folklore rooted in anti-hippie policies.
I dunno about none of that hippie stuff, but I would absolutely not trust any store’s floor not to be absolutely horrendous to walk on, without at least sandals. Even if the people keep it pretty clean, a lot of stores have concrete or wood floors, and just the texture alone would drive me up the fuckin’ wall within seconds. Maybe that’s a fringe thing though.
Feet are actually surprisingly hardy or they used to be anyway. Lots of thick skin down there which is why Serra can go barefoot so often in the comic. Shoes kind of nerfed our foot toughness a bit though. We used to easily tolerate walking and running barefoot on rock and gravel. Wood or tile floors would be luxury.
For a while I couldn’t wear shoes. Like, I could handle brief stints with completely flat shoes but not long enough to walk where I needed to go. Can confirm tile tends to be quite pleasant. Don’t recall walking on wood floors specifically but it would probably be the same, except with more potential variation on the joins.
I was very embarrassed about it though, so I had open shoes (called flip flops here) I could tolerate for very short distances for when I had to go into town, and I’d generally walk to and from town (or anywhere else) barefoot. Eventually I got it into my head I could actually see the doctor about it and got some exercises, thankfully when winter truly hit I could manage to wear shoes again.
Anyway it was a whole thing and it actually wasn’t too unpleasant. Embarrassing as hell and sometimes awkward but manageable. Heightened my awareness of my surroundings in a way I could manage with my autism which is an interesting side note.
(Another side note- for anyone wanting to toughen their feet up, apparently short periods being barefoot on gravel is the way to do it.)
Toughness is all well and good, and probably pretty useful when the ground is uncomfortable. I’m thinking almost entirely in terms of texture though. I can barely tolerate most forms of carpet, stone, or even hard wood without at least thin socks on, so more power to anyone who can go barefoot for longer than it takes to find the nearest
pair of knee-highs.
I’m the opposite. Just socks is just… wrong somehow.
Agreed there. In most cases, just socks feels weird. Maybe really cold days – if I’ve got a cold.
But then I go barefoot fairly regularly, though not as much as I did in my college days.
could be worse, i feel like book 1 joyce would’ve covered up the model
i assume they’re fairly ‘standard’ looking too , i wonder if joyce would make another shocked face if they had nipple or genital piercings lol
seems inconvenient if it happened at random too, idk if she was ND but one friend i had was in the middle of telling a story and got self conscious halfway through like “Why are you staring at me?” “becausey ou’re talking to us?”
Try having a nice chat with friends that happens to be on a train and then getting startled by somebody else joining in laughing with you guys, then a little kid asking their parent for elaboration on something you’ve just said and realise you’re the friggin’ in carriage entertainment and everybody’s still staring even though you’ve gone quiet with embarrassment now…
“As a matter of fact, I won’t look either “
I like how Joe is getting into it. Not only that, he’s even checking on Joyce. Fella’s doin’ great.
Right? He’s being a good friend here.
Honestly, she’s doing better than I imagined.
This is going almost exactly as I expected.
I’m curious how Joe’s sketches are coming out, I’m expecting Joyce to expect them to be focused on the nudity and I’m guessing they won’t be whatsoever. Like when they do the longer sketches I’m guessing they’ll be focused on the shape of the arms or hands on the curve of the neck. I hope we get to find out!
I could understand getting up and leaving. I could understand bending over, hiding the head behind the counter, nervously doodling things that have nothing to do with the model waiting for the class to be over. I might also understand fainting from the tension. But wrap your head like this no. I can’t t understand this. It’s just absurd. They need to find a way to calm Joyce or is better than Joe walk her out of the classroom.
Well, that would be the comedic exaggeration, no?
Honestly, it seem an esagerate exaggeration to me. I’ve done life drawing for almost 10 years, seeing someone reaching like Joyce would have been extremely sad and painful to watch.
A lot of the comedy punchlines in comic strips DO push into the realm of absurdity, it’s true. It’s a real blow to the cinema verite approach I think Willis is going for i suppose
Stick figure with boobs, stick figure with boobs and stick figure with boobs, bent over
If there’s one thing I’ve learned when trying to paint one time as an adult, it’s that no matter what I do I hate what I did. Lol
Just now I searched up some life drawing poses and did a half-dozen fifteen-second drawings. Sort of stick-figure-y but they came out surprisingly OK! Gonna do a bunch more.
Loving this story line because I’m hoping to take a life drawing class soon.
I’m getting wonderful flashbacks to all those art studio classes. Many of us who were Art Majors started out like Joe. Good times.
I am also getting flashbacks to my art studio classes. Big studios, lots of light, lots of graphite! #artmajorlife. Good times.
Way to make it awkward, Joyce.
This must be Joe’s dream date; looking at a naked woman while Joyce slowly dies of embarrassment.
the 30 minute pose is gonna kill her.
Envious of artists. I can draw a few things, I’m ok with stuff like spaceships (if I use drafting tools) but all my attempts to draw living things end up looking something between Lovecraftian and Cronenbergian.
If I can share some experience with you, I only started to draw little better when I became adult, and after I took one semester in drawing class. And I’ve said little better, because I got only the foundation concepts, like composition, lighting…
Drawing is a challenging skill, and it take time.
If drawing were easy, nobody would get paid to do it 😛
I’m not sure it’s been properly recognized yet, by the way, so please consider this a Joe’s Lil Blep Appreciation comment.
is that hood from her actual mini vest? it’s bigger than i thought lol
Those 15 second gestures are probably the hardest part of a drawing class. Just when you get done drawing the outline of a head or arm, you have to switch already. But on the other hand, it gets you just drawing and not worrying about doing it perfectly. They’re good for clearing your mind once you’ve done it a few times.