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Thanks for the paint-overs Rebecca, they’re very helpful.
I’ll be studying them and keep them in mind for the next sculpt. ![]()
Time for my drawing abilities to bring down the quality of the thread again. 
A few new sketches done on monday…
Both of these 20 minutes:

Ande this one about 1.5 hours:

More to come soon.
Really Nice
Great to see your clay work!..I am also learning this art lately…so very nice to see your progress here!..
Nice, nice work, DivideByZero,
Sketches are not bad at all. One of the ways I start a quik sketch, is to think of the big forms underneath. Ribcage over the hip box, etc. Sometimes I use circles as a quick understructure placement, B4 I build the muscles above. Then it sorta has something to lay on. Once I kept this in mind, my drawing began to solidify.
I think you have a nice example of a head study in post #8, last drawing. Good solid form.
Props on the sculpture! That’s the way to gain knowledge, in the round.
Great to see your progress here. You have a nice eye for detail but maybe a bit more time spent on the proportions and measuring up the overall figure could help before launching into a piece.
I very much like your clay piece. I think Rebecca’s advice could be very helpful especially from the back but it’s hard to tell without seeing the model. Nice work.
Thanks for the comments, crits, and support Tonik, AztcFireFlower, and CgIcecube!
I’ll definatly be keeping them all in mind for my future attempts… hopefully with a little bit of luck i’ll be able to look back at these works a year from now and see a huge difference.
I’m also in the process of making a Flash VR Rotator for my sculpture, so everyone can actually see the sculpture from all angles and get a better sense of its form - look for that in the next week or two.
Here one more fast sketch for today.
Created this yesterday for International Self Portrait Day on Nov 1.
My first attempt at a self portrait - about 1 hour:

It’s a little wonky, but the resemblance is there. 
More to come soon.
the nose and the eyes resemble well, probably the mouth too but I can not tell from the spherized photo I’ve seen of yours:) Really nice thread you’ve got going on here, I’m really enjoying your stuff. Keep up the good work:)
A much stronger drawing - I suggest doing studies of elbows, wrists, and hands - anytime there is an area that you’re weak on, try doing a detailed study that is larger than the area would be in the context of a full figure - arms can be particularly difficult because the transitions can be hard to see, particularly on models that lack musculature or clearly defined features. This is why master copies are so important, as they supplement the deficiencies of working from sometimes lacklustre models. Life drawing is great to get the essence, but to really understand form in depth it requires more in depth study in terms of master copies and anatomical drawings / paintings.
Happy New Year everyone… heres to a happy 2007 full of accomplishments.
Thank you for the always helpful comments Rebecca and others, the insight is helping with each new drawing.
Sorry for the brief hiatus in drawings. I’m back in my weekly class and ready to keep in practice.
Heres a new one for this week: (Note to self - take a ‘heads and hands’ course ASAP ;))

Hey DivideByZero
Same to you. May 2007 be a very warm and enjoyable year!
Try to accentuate the curves here and there if you can. They will really bring your subject forward. Check out rebecca’s article on Opposing curves. The link is in her signature “Article (Nudity)”. I think it will really help you to push your art to the next level
so refreshing to see sculpture - I was thinking about getting into it but I’m somehow put off by the prospect of making the armature :rolleyes: - blah all that wire cutting… What type of clay did you use?!
Thanks for the comments!
Intervain: Dont be put off by the armature - In that sculpture, only the arms and fingers are supported by the armature wire, the rest of the body is pure clay. Its a cheat, but it works. If you want a very good DVD that’ll teach you to make great armatures, the first Gnomon DVD for sculpture with John Brown is a resource. The clay is just some pottery clay that I should probably ditch soon cause its very difficult to work with on small areas.
Akin,
Something that I think would really help with getting more energy and expressiveness into the lifedrawings is to do a few master copies - try a Rubens or a Michelangelo master copy, in charcoal on newsprint or bond paper, and really just loosen up and see the big forms.
I think that what the practice of master copying drawings does is to help you to see how the greats translated form into line - since line technically doesn’t exist in terms of form, learning how to translated form into line is really the essence and the challenge of drawing.
An example of a Rubens drawing (actually, it’s a master copy /he/ did, I believe) is:

An example of a drawing by Michelangelo:

[left]The linework is in these drawings is really expressive but also very consciously constructed in terms of the opposing curves to make the form work. It’s taken me years to be able to even get the rudimentary nature of this principle into my drawings, but after doing many master copies, I think I can at least see some of the underlying construction principles behind beautiful and unmatched drawings such as these - I think you might really enjoy doing some copies as well. 
Cheers and Happy 2007!
[/left]
Oh I have watched all the gnomon sculpture dvds
I love them - very instructive… hmmm interesting - never thought of going fully clay and no armature, especially for the main corpus! I thought it simply would not hold up… 
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