The skeleton + cylinders exercise continues.
I received good feedback. The cylinders from before, their base were a bit too "pointy", giving a feeling they were too flat and not adding enough volume to the piece.
I drew the piece above before reading that feedback (unfortunately) but I can clearly see how that is the case for the first top ones. Tried to round 'em up more on images 4 and 5, but there is still a lot of improvement to be done.
Anyway, will keep on trying 
Still going on the skeleton + cylinder exercises.
I've applied some feedback I received on the cylinders (on image #6 - plus watched the lesson a few more times over) and I'm happier with the results. It seems the cylinders now have more volume to them. Marc's brushes are also more forgiving in terms of how the lines end up, so it gives you a bit more freedom to play around with circular shapes.
Hi there, I found your art journey as well 
!
I can really see great improvement for each skeleton you've drawn. I really enjoy how you've made the divisions inside the cylinders as well, they really do make it easier to follow which direction each appendage is moving towards !
May I ask where you found the models you used for this exercise? If you have already mentioned this, and i have missed it, please forgive me ^^ !
Good luck with future works !
Hey @alexandra.d.93, nice to see you here!
Thanks a lot for the message 😃Really appreciate it!
For the models: If you go to the website https://www.proko.com/, at the bottom of the page you can sign up for this newsletter and you'll get a Free Model Sample Pack as a bonus. It has a decent enough amount of poses and some of them are the same Marc uses on the videos
Other users also recommended this website here:
Haven't used it yet tho, but also good to keep in the "toolbelt" for future reference.
I don't know if you'll see this message here so I'll drop a comment on your thread as well.
Cheers,
A few more rounds on the skeleton and cylinders. I end up investing a lot of time doing the cylinders properly because now I'm scared they won't have enough volume, altho I need to get used to the fact that, depending on how they are "tilted" to the viewer/camera, they won't have a lot "roundness" to them.
I'm still tracing them, but looking forward to trying and do them only by reference.
If you are reading this: any tips or tricks on how to go about the process a bit faster? How much time are you investing in doing those exercises?
Thanks and cheers,
Hi, Thank you kindly for the advice for the poses !
As for your own question in your latest post, the way I decided to tackle this while using photos as a reference is to make a very rough skeleton and using the the different joints as reference to where the arm was in relation to the knee and so on. When I got confused I'd move my skeleton over the photograph to see how far off I was and then adjust the limbs where needed. Usually I'd get angles and sometimes the lengths wrong depending on the foreshortening. So far I've made one from fantasy/memory and two from reference, but this took very long as I think I tackled a certain pose I used in the wrong way ^^ !
Of course I'm not saying my way is right, just that it was the first I came to think of 
!
Heyoo, @alexandra.d.93
No problem
And thanks for the answer. Your approach makes a lot of sense. When moving the skeleton and noticing you had to adjust things, would you make the adjustments on top of the photo? Or you would move the skeleton off the picture and try again?
Almost done with all skeleton + cylinder exercises (before moving to the reference one) and also being able to move on with the video/lessons.
Getting the hang of the cylinders. And getting more "lose" as well, not so afraid of just doing rough sketches instead of "perfect" lines. This helped me get the proper volume to some of the cylinders in the last pose.
I always moved my sketch away from the photo reference once i noted the differences . This way I would force myself to note the actual difference in angle and position. Although sometimes I had a hard time getting the hang of certain limbs, which resulted in me moving my sketch over the photo very often. But for each pose it got easier as I started to learn what I needed to think of !
The way you're tackling the skeletons so far is very smart though. I put so much time in trying to make the lines/shapes and everything in between far too detailed which has been eating away at the time it takes 
. Making them more loose, like you mentioned, lets you get more poses done which potentially lets you get better faster . Great job so far !
Gotcha.
It makes a lot of sense to move the lines away from the picture, this way you kinda "force your brain" to observe and hence you'll learn better. I finally finished my tracing exercises and will start the lines from reference. Will definitley try to follow the same approach as you.
And yeah! Honestly, once I stopped trying to make the perfect, "no shaky" lines, I started to finish the drawings faster. Since this is just the base for the forms and shapes, I don't think we need to be that detailed since we will, on a later stage, worry much more about the details and cleaning up the lines, than now.
Thanks for the reply!
I'm glad I could help !
I wish you the best of luck with your practice !
Thanks @alexandra.d.93,
The same to you
Started with the study of the proportions today. Still going with the male Since I have a "time-boxed" study time in my day, I was able to watch the full male part of the video but couldn't still reproduce in full, but was able to start at least.
Still working on the proportions. Probably will spend the full week (maybe even a bit more) to be sure I memorize this right. Overall, quite happy with the male one after I cleaned up the lines a bit. It's been very interesting to draw the female proportions, too 😊
Still drawing proportions so I can recall them from memory. This time I let the video playing in the background while trying to draw just listening to the instructions and recalling the visuals from memory. It's not terrible.... (I think.... 😅)
One more to the cookie jar 🍪
Slowly getting the hang of things. It was easier to recall from memory where each reference mark needed to be.
Also got a bit curious to see how things would look like without the grid lines:
