WEEK 12 - CONSTRUCTION MY OLD FOE, WE MEET AGAIN

As many of you know, I am currently doing courses through Schoolism Subscriptions (online art courses). I recently finished my Gesture Drawing Class with Alex Woo which highlighted all sorts of drawing weaknesses.

I have now moved on to do Fundamentals of Character Design by Stephen Silver. The great thing about these courses is that you can see feedback that the instructors give to other students which is incredibly useful. As Stephen Silver critiqued each student the theme of construction kept coming up again and again and again. Initially I almost turned it off because I use to construct a lot and all that would happen is that my characters would look robotic. I pushed through and listened to all of them and I realised that the way he was constructing was not robotic at all so I paid attention. Apparently, I don't hate construction after all. Apparently, it can make your drawing stronger. I'm being a bit facetious as I have always known the purpose of construction was to strengthen a drawing, I just didn't think it worked for me personally so kind of stopped bothering. Also, I now understand where 'drawing through' comes in and just why it is so important.

Silver advised one student in particular to practice construction from photos of real life and I thought that would be a good thing to practice too. See below: