Proko Video: Sketching People with Stephen Silver

Online figure drawing teacher Stan Prokopenko recently produced this 15-minute video, wherein he observes and talks with acclaimed character designer Stephen Silver while Stephen sketches people in public. I found the whole thing informative, entertaining and chock full of useful tips - it got me just in the right mood to go out and draw people of all kinds in their natural habitat.

© Gina Florio Sous 2016

Proko Figure Drawing Series

Hi all,

Stan Prokopenko, the master of simultaneously entertaining, enlightening, and FREE Youtube videos on drawing the head and the illusion of depth (who I've talked about before), is FINALLY starting a long-awaited figure drawing series.

The videos will still be free, but there will be extra content for paying viewers too. I have bought Stan's Portrait Drawing Fundamentals DVD and I will probably take the plunge for the premium figure drawing access as well - his content is just too good. I'm really excited to see what he has to offer in this series.

Visit proko.com/figure to learn more about the figure drawing series, which will start "airing" on June 17th. For all of Stan's current videos, check out his YouTube channel, ProkoTV.

© Gina Florio 2013

Daily Sketches Weeks 8 - 9

Last couple weeks of work.

Feb 18 - practicing values and compositions with Copic markers

Feb 19 - how to draw an elephant head

Feb 19 again

Feb 20 - sketching my perspective class professor Gary Meyer in action

Feb 21 - more elephants

Feb 21 again

These elephant doodles were actually shape exercises from a great workbook that Aaron Blaise posted online from his time as a story artist on the canceled animated film 'The Legend of Tembo.' I encourage you to check it out if you have any interest whatsoever in drawing elephants, or even animals in general. He does an amazing job of simplifying the shapes of an elephant's body, and showing you how to caracaturize them as well. Not that I have too much to show for it, but, you know. Practice, practice...

Feb 22 - a sunset watercolor from memory

Feb 23 - some of the many characters in Los Angeles

Feb 24 - Oscar night

Feb 25 - head practice

Feb 26 - more head practice... have looots of trouble with those extreme up and down shots...

Feb 27 - practicing drawing some friends from Facebook photos

Feb 28 - more Facebook photo practice... top right picture actually looks like him, so I'm calling that a semi success

Mar 1 - eye practice

Mar 2 - quick gaming/drawing session with Dave

I've been asked by my friends who are in a 90's cover band to design and draw a poster for their upcoming show in April, so a lot of time these past couple of weeks was devoted to learning photoshop painting (finally). I've been spending a lot of time with a book called 'Beginner's Guide to Digital Painting in Photoshop' which I highly recommend. You should also check out the band, Becky Kramer's Brother, if you're in L.A. and/or into 90's music. They're really good! (And I'm not just saying that because they're my friends - they are actually impressively good. And, yes, their website is supposed to look like that.) As far as the poster/digital painting goes - I've done some of work on it already, but decided not to include it here. I'll do a final making-of post when it's all finished.

A lot of the above sketches were done with the help of ProkoTV - an artist named Stan Prokopenko has been producing some highly entertaining and informative (and FREE) youtube videos on how to draw the head and various parts of the face. I've been going slow with them so far because I've been really trying to practice and absorb them as I go, but I really recommend checking them out. There's an example below, but I'll link to the other ones I've been using.

Other videos:

How to Draw the Head - Front View
How to Draw the Head - Side View
How to Draw the Head from Extreme Angles
How to Draw the Eye - Structure
How to Draw the Eye - Step by step

That's it for now. Hope everyone has had a great weekend!

© Gina Florio 2013