Drawing the Human Figure...Not So Easy, Actually.

Hey all! I apologize for the long hiatus this blog took. The class that I was taking ate up a lot of my time and, quite frankly, I didn't feel that any of the drawings I did should ever be posted. Not that they were completely horrible, but I didn't feel that they were on a par with the rest of the drawings that I have posted on this site. Nevertheless, this blog is intended to document my progress, so I need to swallow my pride and post what I've done. This post will deal with the regular weekly assignments (the gesture and timed drawings), and I will post another entry later that will deal specifically with the final project and the various drawings that were part of it. Anyway, enough talk! Now for the drawings.

Week 2

Gesture Drawings: Basic shapes - These three drawings were part of the second week's assignment. Building off of the basic concepts we learned in the first week, these drawings gave me a chance to practice my proportions and get the basic shapes of my figures. There are several mistakes in these, but considering the fact that I was just learning the techniques, I didn't do too bad.

Gesture drawings, timed: 1 minute - After practicing the art of adding basic shapes to a linear skeleton, it was time to practice speed. These drawings represent several different figures drawn in 1 minute.

Gesture drawing, timed: 3 minutes

Gesture drawing, timed: 5 minutes

Week 3 

The following fifteen drawings are all part of the same assignment. Like the one from the previous week, we were required to create 15 gesture drawings. Unlike the previous week, they all needed to start displaying characteristics of real human figures, like faces, hands, etc. As you can see, drawing people is NOT my strong point.

Gesture drawing, timed: 1 minute - Another timed drawing assignment. 

Gesture drawing, timed: 3 minutes

Gesture drawing, timed: 5 minutes

Week 4

Gesture Drawings - More of the same, really. As you can see, my figure building has improved somewhat, but all in all the poses are still not 100%

The next 15 drawings were yet another timed assignment. The first 5 were 1-minute, second 5 were 3-minute, and the last 5 are 5-minute.

Week 5

Gesture Drawings: These following drawings were gestures that placed an increased emphasis on the position of the head. At about this time I got a Ken doll, which I used for modeling. This helped me see the proportions much more easily, and I think it shows in my drawings.

Gesture drawing, timed: 1 minute

Gesture drawing, timed: 3 minutes

Gesture drawing, timed: 5 minutes

Aaaand that's that! I'll post another blog soon with the final project. See you soon!

Until next time.

Life Drawing for Animation: Primary Shapes and part one of final project

Hello again! Sorry about the wait. I kept meaning to post my new stuff, but I forgot. Ah well, better late than never! I have two more assignments to show you, so hopefully you like them!

Adding primary shapes - If you remember from my last update, we were required to draw linear structures of people.  The next assignment went one step further, by adding primary shapes to the arms, legs, and torsos of 5 of our favorite drawings.

Final project part 1: Basic layout - Our final project in this class will consist of a 30-frame "animation" of a person doing full-body twists, running, and jumping. For this assignment, our goal was to create a 15-frame "overview" of what our final project would look like, using linear structure.

That's all for now. We are going to start getting more detailed starting this week, so hopefully I'll have some better drawings for you!

Until next time.

Life Drawing for Animation: Linear Structures

Hello everyone! Sorry I didn't post as much as I said I would over break. Being able to do absolutely nothing after several weeks of work and school proved to be too tempting to pass up. Luckily, I'm back at it now and am starting a new class, Life Drawing for Animation. This class is going to give me the skills necessary to draw the human figure in any pose, so I'm pretty excited to see how it goes!

The first project required us to create 25-30 linear structures of a human body in various poses, focusing on proportion and realism in the pose. The 25 drawings that I created can be seen below.

As you can see, the poses began somewhat awkwardly and were not completely proportional, but repetition soon allowed me to proportion correctly while simultaneously creating a more dynamic pose. I also experimented with foreshortening and relative size (the best example of this being the middle drawing on the second page). Overall, the drawings came out well.

Tonight I have a new assignment, so I will be posting that after I finish.

Until next time.

The Perks of Being an Art Nerd

Hey all! Hope you had a nice holiday season. Sorry for the long absence, but I was busy celebrating in my own way. However, school will be starting again in 4 days for me, so I figured I'd better get back on the horse and start drawing again. To help aid me in this venture, my gift to myself this Christmas was a VisTablet Graphics Tablet, and let me tell you, I am LOVING this thing. It's much more effective and precise than a normal mouse, and allows me to have a lot more control over the lines and things I draw on the computer. After installing the software, I fired up Photoshop and played around with it. The following drawings are the result of my experimentation.

Self-caricature: I've always had fun watching webcomic artists stream their drawing process, so this drawing was an effort to capture that same cartoony-ness in my own style. I really like how it turned out.

Mutton Chop(s): After finishing the caricature of myself, I started to experiment with drawing different facial structures and hairstyles. I also increased the resolution on the drawings (the caricature was drawn at 72 dpi, which is normal for print rather than for web use). This was my favorite of the bunch, only partially due to the pun on the guy's shirt.

Going With the Fro: When I finished the Mutton Chop guy, I realized that all of my characters hand been in 3/4 view, which simply means that they are turned so that their body is angled towards one side or the other of the camera. I wanted to draw a person in full portrait view, looking straight at the camera. Soon after I finished outlining, I thought it would be fun to experiment with color and shadows. I hope you like it, because I think it turned out great!

That's all for now! I might post some more tablet drawings as I finish them, but if not, I'll see you when class starts!

Until next time.

Hands, Feet, and the Human Face, plus a foray into animal drawing

Hey all! Sorry it's been a while since my last post. I kept meaning to put up my new stuff, but I always was working on a new project and never got around to it. Oh well, better late than never! I've got a lot of stuff to show you, so I'd better get started!

Skeletal and Muscular system of the Foot - Like the title implies, I explored the skeletal and muscular system of the foot in this drawing. The muscle sketch is kinda hard to interpret, but I think the skeleton turned out well.

Skeletal and Muscular system of the Hand - This one turned out much better , in my opinion. I attempted some rudimentary shading with the skeleton, but I hadn't practiced it in a while and the result wasn't quite what I hoped. Ah well.

Human hand, part 1 - This is the first in a series of 3 drawings of the hand in various action poses. Knowing the difficulty I've had with hands in the past, I was pleasantly surprised at how easy hands were for me after studying the anatomy of the skeleton and muscles. 

Human hand, part 2 - This one is my personal favorite of these drawings. I had a lot of fun drawing these two hand signs.

Human hand, part 3 - This drawing is the only one that I used another person's hand as a model.

Human foot, part 1 - My first foot drawing, I struggled somewhat with the shape of the toes and the foot. 

Human foot, part 2 - Still struggling somewhat with the shape, but beginning to grasp the subtleties of shading. Didn't show a pronounced arch, which could be part of the problem.

Human foot, part 3 - A more complex angle, still not quite perfect, though.

Human foot, part 4 - I started to become more comfortable with the shape of the foot and experimented with the shading to make it more realistic. I think it turned out well.

Human foot, part 5 - The best of the lot, in my opinion. I  put my focus on making the shading as realistic as possible, and I think I succeeded.

One-minute sequential drawing - This series of drawing was an attempt to show a series of movements using sketches that were drawing in 1 minute. Tough, but I think it turned out well.

5-minute sequential drawings - This series of drawings were to have the same purpose as the one-minute drawings, just with more time to get the figures drawn. While it's nowhere near perfect, the drawings show a much better sense of proportion than the early drawings do.

Human Skull front view - After studying the hands and feet, it was time to study the head. Because the face has a myriad of muscles, we were not required to do a musculature, but we were required to draw a front and side view of the skull. The front of the skull was the first that I had drawn, and I worked hard to incorporate the subtleties of shading that I had learned by drawing the feet. I originally drew the skull too short, so that the top was closer to the eyes, but I fixed it for the final portfolio.

Human Skull side view - After hearing from the other students and professor about the inaccuracy in my first skull, I tried something a little different for the second. I drew a box on the paper that I used to measure where the eyes would be in relation to the top and bottom of the skull. This technique helped immensely, and I feel that this view of the skull was my most successful drawing of the course as a result.

Portrait - Using a picture of one of my friends, I drew this portrait. While it's not entirely accurate, overall I feel that the drawing looks pretty good. I particularly like the hands, for some reason.

Expression sequences - After drawing portraits, the next step was to begin understanding the transitions between expressions. This was my first attempt, but while the expressions looked good, the faces changed with each drawing. 

Expression sequence, take 2 - I have always had trouble keeping the face consistent, so I decided to try  a different approach. I drew 5 boxes of equal size, then drew guidelines to show where the eyes, nose, and mouth would be. The result is a series of drawing that looks more consistent than the first attempt. I still have a lot of work to do, though.

Animal drawing, front - Now that we had learned about drawing humans, it was time to experiment with other creatures. Our final drawing project required us to draw a front and side view of an animal. I chose my dog, which was no easy feat considering the fact that he does not like to stay still. This drawing wasn't quite to the level I would have liked, but it showed many of the main features of my dog, so it was good enough for me.

Animal drawing, side - Drawing Max from the side was frustrating, because it took me several tries to get his shape right. Once I got it, though, I had no problem in adding shading and getting some muscle definition. For the final drawing, I feel that it does a good job of ending on a high note.

And that's a wrap! I don't have another class until the 10th of January, but I intend to draw some more over the break, so please check back! Thanks for reading, and I hope you've liked what you've seen!

Until next time.

Getting a leg up. And an arm. And the torso.

Hey all! It's been a few days, and since my last post I've been hard at work getting more familiar with the human bone and muscle structure. This week, we worked with the legs, arms, and torso. Here are the fruits of my labor!

Skeletal arm - This is one of my first attempts to draw the human arm. As you can see, the humerus is slightly too short for the rest of the arm, but overall I'm getting the hang of structure.

Muscled arm - Time to add muscles!  This was a fascinating experiment, because I actually began to see how the muscles started wrapping around the arm.

Skeletal leg - Like the skeletal arm,  this drawing gave me the opportunity to learn more about how the leg bones fit together. I feel this is probably one of the best drawings this week, simply because of the level of detail I was able to fit into the drawing.

Muscle leg - One of my favorite drawings this week, the leg muscles were probably the easiest for me to draw. The muscle shapes  flow really well, and overall it's a very well constructed design.

Skeletal torso - This one was a bit tough to finish. About halfway through, I realized that the source I was using was inaccurate, causing me to start over. A couple of the proportions were off, but overall I feel that it is a very solid drawing.

Muscular torso - This was my last (and least effective) drawing. I originally went back with a softer pencil to help define the different muscle groups, but in the end it just looks two-dimensional. Ah well, live and learn.

That's all for now! I'll have some more stuff for you in a few days. 

Until next time.