knight of wands

hi !!!! thank you anon!! please keep in mind that I've been doing live model drawing on and off for almost ten years now. progress takes time so please be patient with your own work.

That being said, i do have some advice!

Drop the boxes:

This is somewhat controversial, but in general i find that over using theses makes your drawing feel unnnatural. People are not made out of boxes, and while these structures can be somewhat useful for a very stylized artstyle, they are not in a live drawing session.

HERE is a pretty good breakdown of body structure. highly recommend giving the whole thing a read, especially if you don't have anatomy lessons.

Focus on using more organic shapes to separate the torso and the hips. don't forget that those arent stuc to each other, and have a space between them that squishes or extends with movements. Same for arms and legs, try to avoid straight lines. body parts tends to be at least somewhat curvy EVERYWHERE.

Focus on movement:

At first, don't focus on correc anatomy, or perfectly replicating the pose. feel the movement(s) and roughly replicate it. While i've never done this personally, i know people who used lines of action at first to get a better feel of what they should draw

here is a breakdown of what a line of action is

Studies:

While live drawing and studies are diferent skills, they feed off one another. When you take half an hour to draw a figure, and take the time to consider the muscles, joints, and other boily stuff you're feeding a muscle that will come back to help you during live drawing sessions.

Don't do these at the same time, but implementing a study routine is always helpful

A type of study i did at uni was using a transparent sheet over a picture to trace various forms/anatomical parts over a body. It's a good exercise to familiarize yourself with how you should represent moving body parts

Where to start your drawing?:

Don't start your figure from an extremity. (while this usully means hands and feet in this context i mean anything that is the furthest from the center of the figure.) Usually the torso is a good place to start. Essentially this helps you to keep your proportions in check, and to fix mistakes.

Drawing material:

When doing live drawing, especially for shorter poses (5 minutes and below), I'd recommend using "rougher" pen, brushes, crayons, whatever. This will stop you from adding too much detail to your work when you're supposed to focus on the general pose/movement

The tombow funosuke has been my favorite for a couple of years, but i also like using a 4B pencil. You don't need expensive stuff, but experiments with whatever you can find. Like at some point i had an old drops container i filled with ink to draw with. get creative, and buy a bunch of cheap stuff at first

Something that i found useful at first was not raising my pen at all if the medium allowed for it. It made me build volume and movement in a smoother way

I also prefer using non erasable techniques. If there's a mistake, roll with it. don't lose time trying to fix it.

Negative space:

When looking at a model, also look at the space they're NOT using. This will give you a better sense of how they're situated in space.

Observation:

When doing a longer pose, take a minute to look at the model. compare their limbs to one another by tracing straight line in your head. you can also use a pencil (always held with your am fully extended and as paralled from the ground as you can) to to this. You can also use the pencil to compare different body parts' sizes.

Practice:

Live/figure drawing is a skill. It takes times, effort, and consistency to build it. My first year at uni I walked around with a shitty sketchbook and anytime i sat for like five minutes I started doodling the people aound me.

Put in the practice however you want/can, and remember that it will take some time to see improvement. Write dates on papers, and keep them somewhere (een if you don't like them), it'll give you the opportunity to make fun progression fresque.

- when they really want to say “faggot” but they know it’s a slur they shouldn’t say

- when they really want to say “f*mboy” but they know it’s a slur they shouldn’t say and let’s be real 90% of the time they don’t know or care that it’s a slur they shouldn’t say and they say it anyway used as a synonym for twink meaning faggot

- just straight up transphobia. misgendering and masculinizing transfemmes, feminizing transmascs, forcing a largely gendered term onto nonbinary people etc.

- describing any skinny man of any sexuality with enough traits that are deemed “feminine” or “androgynous”, often straight or maybe bicurious, very little regard for anything else about appearance or presentation (typically standards rooted in white supremacy and misogyny, and homophobic stereotypes)

ways people on the internet don’t use “twink”

- to mean “skinny white hairless young gay guy, historically typically white and blond”, which is the least nuanced but most common actual definition of the term

Focusing my answer on antiblackness:

No one wants to take off the rose colored glasses and realize just what their "normal" is built on!

And to an extent, it's understandable. This shit will drive you insane, it's like a daily dying by a thousand cuts. It's HARD, to a point where you might choose to numb yourself against it when you're Black. But we can't fight what we don't acknowledge. We can't excise a cancer that we refuse to admit is there. And so, I might not be able to excise the cancer by myself, but I feel like it's my responsibility to speak on its existence. As painful as it is, maybe if we all spoke on it more, if we addressed it, the pain could stop.

or, to quote Malcolm X:

"I will never say that progress is being made.

If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there's no progress. If you pull it all the way out that's not progress. The progress is healing the wound that's below, that the blow made. And they haven't even begun to pull the knife out, much less pull, heal the wound...

The doctor scraped out a bit of earwax to have a better look inside.

I was sent a bill for $200 PER EAR for this 5 second procedure which I did not give permission for them to do.

That was key- they did not ASK me if they could do this "procedure". And, as I OWN a medical practice (it's me. The medical practice is me, sitting in my house on video calls) I knew to call them when this bill came in to be like "You did not obtain informed consent for this procedure, and it was not en emergency procedure. You had full ability to gain my consent and didn't. I'm not paying."

And the massive hospital who owned the bill said "yuh-huh you do have to pay."

And I said "I own a practice. I know these laws. I do not owe you money for this."

And they conducted an "internal review" and SURPRISE! Decided I totally owed them money and they had never done anything wrong ever.

And so I called my state's Attorney General office, and explained the situation because, as I mentioned, I know the law. The AG got in touch within a couple days to say they were taking the case and would send the massive hospital conglomerate a knock it off, guys letter.

Lo and Behold, today I have a letter where said hospital graciously has agreed to forfeit the payment.

"How not to get screwed over by companies" should be part of civics class.

Know your rights and know who to call when they're infringed on. This whole process cost me $0 and honestly less effort than I would have expected.

Civics class wouldn't help most people in this case because the AG will not take on all these cases and most people cannot afford an attorney in this instance or more importantly, the hit to their credit.

Were they going to get into a lawsuit over my $400 bill? No obviously not. But they printed up a letter on fancy letterhead to say to stop and it worked. They followed up with me the next day to be sure, and so ask how much money they had saved me.

They use dinky cases like mine to track habitual misbehavior of large scale companies to build cases they could actually go to court over.

And because people are shocked- I never spoke to the AG of my state directly. He operates mainly by overseeing a whole crew of people. And this is what those people do.

This didn’t happen because I’m special because of my tiny therapy practice.

This happened because this is what the AG office is for.

“The problem is systemic” doesn’t mean “and there’s nothing you can do”.

Then you've been trained well by "The System".

Yes, that System you say can't be fought? Where did you get that idea, huh? Who taught you that "small" acts of illegality don't matter? Who made you think that there's no point in fighting back because it will all come to nothing?

Might it be the same entities that benefit if you believe all that?

Gonna pause and let you ponder.

Never. Ever. EVER.

EVER.

Let companies or corporations or hospitals or organizations or any business big or small get away with screwing you over without a fight. Maybe you personally don't win every fight, but you lose 100% of the time you don't try. You'll win more often than you think you will. I know cuz I've done it.

So have others. Attorneys General offices bring lawsuits against businesses all the time. They do so because citizens contacted them to say "someone is doing a crime" and the crime doers did not stop when told and got into way more trouble than if they'd just stopped. FAFO. The Find Out can't happen if you don't even bother to report the Fucking Around.

On that note, as OP said, please know your rights! And, in a situation where you don't but suspect something is hinky, ask! The people of the internet can help! So can librarians! So can many others. Find out what is and is not okay for them to do. If it's not okay, report them! See something, say something.

Don't let the System win by default.

If you believe The System™️ is only for Them™️ and not you, it will only ever be so.