Unit one: Skeleton and some digital stuff

Okay. Time for post two. Probably shouldn't burn through my material like this so fast but I've got a back log and I feel like this will help encourage me to keep working. Anyway, when I planned this blog I knew I'd need a plan to drive my self education. I created a plan to keep myself organized and learn to build my figures from the inside out.

Step one was working on the skeleton. The longer drawing at the end of the last post was me prepping mentally for that. Anyway... skeletons!

 While drawing the skeleton was fun it was a bit frustrating to discover I'd made it just a bit too tall. The average male is about 8 heads high and this ended up being 9. Gotta work on that. I found a great skeleton reference and spent some quality time studying that.

The overall plan here is to use this unit focused on skeletons to improve the overall knowledge of how the body twists, bends and moves in space. There will probably be several more skeleton gestures before moving on to the other units which focus on other skills and aspects of the body.

This one was a bit trickier and required a technique I picked up when I read Bridgman's life drawing in school. I'm expecting my own copy in the mail soon. 

Skeleton and then musculature on top of it studies. Fun times. I even went ahead and used some charcoal. I hate charcoal with a passion. You have no idea.

I felt I'd close out today with some digital studies I did as well. Again, these aren't all done on the same day. 

These last two are kind of special in a way. I have a hard time solving color and value problems at the same time. My brain just has difficulty with it. I know a couple other artists who struggle with it and so they're processes have evolved to compensate and we wall pretty much do the same thing. Do a value under painting layer and then work the color on top of it. I decided to push myself on these last two and try to solve the two problems at once. 

They came out okay. I'm not happy about them but as one of my old teachers is fond of pointing out I shouldn't ever really be 100% happy with anything I make. They're better than I've done in the past and that's the real goal here. I hope you enjoyed these. There will be more coming in time. 

Side note: Yes I know my hands are really rough and I'm thoroughly embarrassed by that fact. I like drawing hands and lately I just haven't been doing them well. There is an entire unit dedicated just to them and arms but it might need to be moved up in line. We shall see. 

Again, all figures are from the gesture drawing tool unless otherwise noted.