Bonus post: Lighting stuff

I know that I call this blog Go Figure and that is primarily because it's goal was to help me improve my understanding of anatomy and the human figure. However, it is also a digital sketchbook, akin to the one I keep at conceptart.org. As such I'll share some of the other things I work on to improve my skills.

I had a lot of fun with the one on top especially and learned a bit more about doing lighting in my images in the process. 

Unit 4: Portraiture-Lips and some portraits

This isn't quite the way I'd wanted to return to the blog but lips are an important part of the face and some study of them is necessary. Especially since I didn't do that good of a job :(

More practice to come on the subject.

Then I've got these guys. A couple of portraits just done in pencil. I admit I had more fun and think I did a better job capturing the likeness of the female subject than the male (the male was found via doing a search for asian male models) and frankly the woman was just more fun to draw (though I think I got her head leaning a bit. I'll do some full paintings soon that'll hopefully demonstrate some portraiture improvement.

Unit 4: Portraiture-eyes

You know what are fun to draw? Eyes. Also, I'm actually rather proud of the top right sketch on the bottom image.

Unit 3: Limbs cont'd feet and Unit 4: Portraiture

 

Okay guys, heads up here's a brief summary of both why posts haven't been coming lately, and why that's changing now in a big way.

I recently quit my job with Walgreens and I realize just how much of my energy the place was sapping. I hadn't been drawing or taking care of myself because I hated what I was doing and hated my situation so much. I'm back to trying to keep things in order and I feel so much better. Now it's time to start doing what I do best again. On that note...

Hands and feet man. Two of the hardest things to draw in existence. I know more than my fair share of artists who are scared of attempting to put too much focus on either of these areas because they're so easy to make look weird. In all honestly I could spend a month just learning to draw these well and I've put nowhere near the focus on them they need. I will likely return to these at some point.
 

Part of the reason I admittedly rushed this important but easy to overlook segment of the body is because I also have another area that is both extremely important, NOT easy to overlook and is an area I've struggled with in the past. The head and face. 

If there's one thing to be on guard against with drawing the face in my opinion, it's drawing what you think is there instead of what is. Everyone spends a lot of their lives looking at faces and while we instinctively know when something is wrong, it doesn't mean we instinctively know how to make it look right. Also I've noticed I have to be on guard for my lean (something that sometimes happens when objects seem to distort and "lean" in a direction. For me, usually up and to the right since I'm right handed. 

These are planar drawings of the head to get a general idea ow how the big shapes are connected. Next up are the features of the head and portraits. I expect I'll do more than a few portraits. Here's one as a baseline before I leave. Let's see if I improve and how quickly. 

Unit 3: Limbs Cont'd-Hands

Okay, it's been a long time since I've posted anything here. Too long and frankly I'm a little irritated right now as one of my other sites I post things is giving me fits again so I'm going to start by posting what I need here and seeing if it works.

 

I promise if I get this to do what I want, I'll give a bit of an update on what's been going on. 

Unit Three: Limbs

Well here's the thing, I love Bridgman's life drawing for MOST of the body. That being said, he's a real let down when learning to draw legs. I'm having to rely on my other books pretty heavily and of course, the references I've got. Also I'm going to have to spend some time drawing my own legs. 

I seriously thought I'd have more to say here. I wish I did but I don't. The limb unit is finished and I think I'm ready to move on to the hands and feet. Something I've wanted to tackle (because they're important but very hard) and now it's time. 

Unit Two: The trunk cont'd (retroactive)

Why retroactive? Because I found some studies I forgot to upload. 

Unit Two: The Trunk Cont'd

Okay. It's been a bit since I've posted but I warned you that was going to happen. Anyway, continuing the ongoing improvement of figure drawing skills with a study of the trunk of the body.

The first things I worked on for this entry were some muscular studies. I was working on something else (I think it was another study for this blog) and realized that part of my difficulty probably stemmed from not having a solid grasp of what the musculature under the skin was doing. To remedy that I thought some musculature studies similar to my skeleton studies would work. Above you see the pages from my sketchbook and below you'll see some details.

These were a lot of fun and knowing what I know about the skeleton now seeing how everything attaches is really interesting. It also demonstrates how and why armor design so closely resembles musculature. As the muscles protect the organs by layering and interlocking, so does armor. For example, I've always known the pectoral muscles connect at the sternum but was unaware of how they connect to the deltoids, the muscles that make the semi rounded shape of the shoulder. In the back muscles wrap around sort of like a vest from the mid back to the sides of the pecs. All interesting stuff. 

I did fewer studies this time than last, partially because of the detailed nature of the muscle studies but I wanted to do some work on twisting and the back of the trunk. Also, I wanted to do a study with a different skin tone. I did my black and white underpainting and I'm not sure how I feel about it. I'll try again. 

On the subject of doing these studies of the back I think it goes without saying (though I'll say it anyway) one must learn to draw the human body from all angles. These exercises of course remind me of what one of my teachers said. You have to learn to make a sort of 3-D model in your head of what you're trying to draw so that you can rotate and manipulate it in your head. Seeing in the round essentially. A skill that serves sculptors of every sort infinitely but is also remarkably helpful to an illustrator doing representational and or figurative work. 

So I need to be able to build my objects in my mind from the inside out AND make the final 3-D image in my mind manipulatable? 

Why does it sound like I'm training to use a Green Lantern ring? Admittedly, second best super power for an artist ever. What's the first? 

Making your drawings come to life. Duh 

:D

See you next time. 

Unit one: Skeletons continued

No gestures this time. Don't worry, there will be more. There'll have to be. Sigh. Anyway continuing the skeletal studies has been most enjoyable. Getting a better idea ow what the internal workings of the body are like has been very, very helpful. All images in this post are scanned directly from my sketchbook and were done on the 3rd and 4th.  

Perhaps a bit too helpful. I'm starting to notice a kind of funny side effect. I'm starting to be able to see how the skeleton is positioned when I look at someone standing. It's only brief flashes in my mind, but it behaves like a really weak and unreliable form of X-ray vision right now. Like, for the briefest moment I'll look at how someone is standing and then all of a sudden I won't be seeing them but their skeleton. Something similar happened during my first painting class when I couldn't help but look at something and see how it would be taken from a drawing to a finished painting. 

Anyway, moving away from my unreliable but developing superpowers the above studies are from one of my books. Specifically The Human Figure  by Vanderpoel. My notation for those unable to read my chicken scratch:

"A part of a person's size and dimension is obviously determined by the shoulders and ribs (implying the skeleton as a whole). Varying these must produce varying body types."

Obvious notation is obvious yes but it is a note that I need to make sure I study many physical types. I like fantasy art but it has a habit of being rather homogenous with its body types. Especially where women are concerned. 

More stuff from the gesture drawing tool in the image right above this one. Now remember when I said no gestures this post? Well I kind of lied. Forgot that these started with me trying the new gesture drawing technique I picked up in Anthony Ryder's book and THEN doing the skeleton on top of it. I tried to keep things loose here. Multiple colored pencils helped me to care less about perfection and more about the character of the pose. 

Again, stuff from the gesture drawing tool. The skeletal stuff is sort of finished as its own unit. You'll see elements of it in all the drawings of course but it's time to move on to the trunk. For the purposes of practice I'm defining the 'trunk of the body' as the neck to the upper thigh. A part of this is so that there will be overlap when I move to the arms and legs and it'll be easier to mentally put a whole figure together in the end (I hope. I'm partially making this up as I go admittedly). 

This was mostly me trying out a couple of tricks I remembered from my figure drawing class in college and a couple of new things I picked up out of Ryder's book again. He's got a technique called using an envelope that I'll outline in a later post and I'll use it to develop a figure from reference and imagination for anyone interested. Every time I do a session there is always a dud drawing. A runt of the litter as it were and the female planar study is that this time. I think the twist threw me. I was also starting to fatigue. Hitting that one dud drawing is usually the indicator it's time to take a break. 

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.

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.