More Figure Drawing

I was able to make it out to a scanner and I now have some more figure studies from my week to show you. I'm unsure if I should show some of the other exercises I've done but I'll consider it for the future.

 This first one is just studies from Bridgman's Life Drawing book and some sketching from reference to get things going.

This little batch were all from reference. I've come across some wonderful reference things lately and I've been trying to use them more. Each of these had their good and bad in the practicing and I think I'm improving in the understanding of light and how it works on the body.

















 

I find that I like sketching in erasable colored pencil. It for some reason it helps me get into the zone and work the problem more effectively. I wanted to work on angles and likenesses with the portraits. I think that will be a good and regular use of the day during the week I have allotted to that time.

In the end, these last couple of weeks have been good for helping me establish exactly what I need to do with my practice. the exercise sources I'm using feel good, the practice feels good and the allotted time feels right to keep me learning without burning myself out and I think I can improve this way.

If you're looking at these, please keep checking in and follow along here or on my deviant art or Facebook pages.

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. 

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.