Unit Three: Limbs cont'd

Continuing on with some gestures and then getting back to arms and legs.

Gesture drawings are an important part of your balanced art breakfast. They also taste like fish oil vitamins. Trust me if you've never taken fish oil, that's not a compliment. 

It's an "Arms Race" oh lord do I need to stop making puns. I should go to confession "forgive me father for I have punned." Nah, wouldn't work, not Pun Catholic. Anyway, just some reference drawings from one of my books. 

References but from imagination. Did a couple of large people arms and some regular ones. Fun times, fun times. 

Coming soon, legs, in original recipe and extra crispy... okay I'm done I'll go sit in the corner and think about my life choices. 

I wish I had more to say today but I don't. Conceptart.org is being frustrating but otherwise things are about the same as always. Lousy but livable. Gotta keep working toward the goal.

Unit Two: Trunk Cont'd-planar stuff

New stuff today. I wanted to put this up yesterday but life has a nasty habit of getting in the way of making art.

I got blindsided by my store manager at my job and my schedule got changed without my knowing. I was in the middle of a drawing when I got a call from my manager wondering where I was since I'm always on time (early in fact) and I was supposed to be there about a half an hour ago when he called.

I, however, was unaware I was supposed to even bee at work! Needless to say I was pissed. I'd been planning on going to sleep within the next hour when he called and then ended up having to do an overnight shift out of nowhere that I was not physically or mentally prepared for.

Anyway enough of that nonsense. Drawings!

Gesture drawings to start. While I'm still not a fan of these they're getting easier and I'm hating doing them less (if only because they look less like hen scratches now. 

Next a up, a paltry pair of planar practice pieces: Try saying that three times fast. The bottom one is actually what I was in the middle of when I got the call and I was NOT happy. I was planning on getting a couple of other things done that night and the next morning but like I said, life. It's a four letter word for a reason. 

Finishing off this post with a couple of body type studies. Not as fun and far more technical than my last body type blast but still educational. 

I think after a couple more digital paintings that are hopefully coming next post we'll move on to some of the limbs. I'm thinking arms since I've been cheating a bit on my trunk definition and drawing them anyway and they're easier to work on at work since I'm cut off from my other references and without a lot of down time. 

Unit Two: The Trunk-back and gestures

Did I mention lately how much gesture drawing infuriates me? 

Just a few today and as usual you can see our dud for the bunch. This time firmly on the left hand side near the bottom. Poses like that are frustrating. 

Anyway onto a few other explanations. The obese trunk study is sort of a follow up from yesterday when I did the various body type studies and is referenced from a study in one of my books, a bit of imagination and lots of pics to try to get it right. Needless to say I think it feel more than a bit short but it misses being the dud this time. 

Okay, these make me feel a little bit better about myself, mostly due to feeling like I learned a bit more from them. These are studies from one of my books where I try to understand the planes of the body a bit more by wrapping contours around them (except for the drawing on the top that's again from the body type studies the other day. I feel like these are helping to prepare me for the painting side of things later. 

Unit Two: The Trunk-Body type studies

Before I head in to work today I thought I'd do something with Celia M's comment earlier and add some variety to the body types studied.

As I may or may not have pointed out here on this blog earlier, fantasy art has a tendency to go with the classical ideas of "ideal proportions" and has a tendency to homogeneity in its body types. I personally think this has something to do with the Greco-Roman tradition inherent in the mindset behind the training necessary to represent a relatively accurate version of the form but that's just me.

Enough philosophizing though. Here's a little something to tide you over until the next image blast.

I really need to remember to give myself some more warm up time though. It's especially apparent in the upper two on the left and right but my lean came back. Mostly eliminated in the later ones it did show up a little bit today. 

All models here are actually pics found around the internet and used for educational purposes. 

Let's Begin: Gestures and starting studies

Alright folks. Post one to begin this. After this, the blog is officially fully live. How should be begin? Well, frankly, with gesture drawings. 

 

 

If I'm perfectly honest, I hate gesture drawings. Not because they're not useful. They are. Immensely so. It's just they're also incredibly frustrating for me. I hope that changes as I do more of them. They always just look so bad. I know the point isn't necessarily looking good but it always bugs me. Only blind contour drawings get to me worse than these.

Not all of these are done in the same session and they're not all the ones I do, just the ones that made me want to chuck them in a fire the least :) Okay, after warm up I move on to some other things. Usually full figure studies only going 5 to 10 minutes. They tend to be things I'm a bit happier with and I feel like I learn more from them.

Here are a couple from relatively recently. Take a gander if you will.

You should know I've discovered I really loved toned paper.

The drawing here was 15 minutes but I was working toward something specific. I'll explain in the next post.

Note: Because I do not have access to alive model at this time, all poses are from the gesture drawing tool unless otherwise stated.