What's the issue with this drawing?

[frgmnt]

...well, I don't mean to humble-brag or flex on anyone, particularly artists who have less experience I'm just frustrated with how difficult drawing is for me, despite doing this for years. But I know publicly talking badly about my work is not going to make anything better. I could've phrased the thread title better... (in fact I went and changed it.)

[anon34283405]

I used to be a lot like you. I used to hate everything I drew, & get very frustrated cause it'd all turn out the like the same garbage. But you see art is supposed to be fun. But contrary to popular belief getting better isn't the asnwer. Because no matter how good you get you'll never be good enough in your own mind

My REAL advice is to take a spirit journey. Learn to love yourself, learn to loosen up and not take life so seriously. Allow the feeling of frustration to flow through you instead of resisting.

If you want to know more about the journey within I'd be glad to help.

[amortelito]

I can relate to a lot of what you are saying, I have the same problem with either having an elaborate construction in the sketch or none, no middle ground and and I'm not happy with either . Trash talking your own work is not going to solve anything, but at the same time, you are allowed to feel the way you feel and that's okay too. The positivity train is not about telling people to stop complaining, it includes letting them to express their negativity and support them.

I admire that you are here open to feedback and seeking to get better I hope you found some of the advice helpful or at least know that people are here to help!

[Ordinaryaverageguy]

I notice most comments on the mouth criticize her smile. I don't see a smile. To me, this looks like she's in the middle of speaking.

[konori]

Your drawings actually look fine to me. Lately I've come to accept that even though I can clearly see the flaws in my drawings, most of the time my viewers won't notice them, the same way that I'm not noticing the flaws in your drawings unless you point them out or if I stare at them long enough.

I've been struggling with drawing realistic proportions, and in the beginning I used to sketch/draft out the poses and body proportions in detail like how you do in your examples. What I found is that more often than not, those drafts stress me out even further because I felt obligated to follow the draft exactly and not leave myself any room to deviate from the draft. In the end, it resulted in my characters looking stiff, which was worse than what I had envisioned. Now when I draw sketches/drafts, they're not too detailed (unless its for a complicated pose) and I don't strictly follow the sketch and just treat it like a general guide. Sometimes I end up with poses different from my draft just because I felt it looked better. I just go with my instinct/gut feeling to come up with something that looks appealing.

I'm just going with my experience and it may not work for everyone, but maybe you can try drawing using your gut feeling and not rely too much on your sketch. You can try making some stress-free drawings of stuff you won't mind looking like crap until you get comfortable drawing again.

And one more thing I want to add is that it's alright for you to mindlessly copy references sometimes, because it builds up the instinct or gut feeling of drawing that particular thing. I can't be expected to remember and memorise every part of the human body so the best I can do is to keep drawing those parts (using reference if necessary) until it becomes part of my drawing instincts.

[Kaydreamer]

Sounds like it could be helpful (and maybe fun?) to give yourself some permission to be clueless and do things that "look bad" in the interest of trying something you wish you could do. It's clear that you're not a beginner from your drawing . But it might freshen things up for you if you let yourself be a beginner at trying a different method?

THIS, this, this. This is good advice. It's the best advice here. I bolded the best bits in it. I'm going to expand on those with advice I give my own students.

We do not improve by being safe.

We improve by trying new things, failing at them, trying them again, failing at them, and doing that a whole bunch until parts of those things become comfortable, and start to look okay, and then find themselves reflected in our style.

If you find you're bad at life drawing, that's a reason to do it more. If you find you're bad at drawing without guidelines, that's a reason to do that more, too. Same with exaggerated expressions, 'squished' faces, and so on.

You won't be creating comic pages or full illustrations out of practicing any of these things. That's not the point. It's practice. A singer doesn't jump up on stage to recite her scales at an audience. But she's pich-perfect because, every night in her own home, she practised her scales. It's the same with an artist. My figure drawings aren't that good. But that's not why I draw them. They're like scales. I practice them because, after a session of figure drawing, the next three days of character drawings I do in my regular style look far better.

I'm not saying 'keep practicing'. (I did read your opening post.) It's not about practising more, you're right, that's beginner stuff. Now, at your level, it's about practising smart.

Oh, one last thing. If you typically draw digitally, or draw small, go grab some charcoal and a book of A3 paper and just go to town with big sweeping gestures, and really loose, totally unplanned figures. Draw them fast. Draw them bad. It'll look terrible. Do it anyway. Churn through three pages a night. Use some figure reference if you're stuck for ideas, and translate that into toon proportions on the fly. That dynamism and energy you're looking for in your sketches will come from doing this. It works magic.

I hope some of the ideas above help you expand your visual repertoire. You will get out of the rut you're in, we all do eventually. But trying some of this stuff, and committing to sticking with it for a while, will help you come out of that rut faster and stronger!