Anatomy Thread of VHASE

#1

Hello I’m VHASE.

  I feel very frustrated about my anatomy skills. I can draw from reference, but when it comes to drawing directly from my mind I just can't seem to get satisfying results. Sometimes these paintings look good, but they turn out to be lucky accidents, because when I try to redefine  details I screw the hole thing up.
  
  I want to gain real anatomy knowledge. I don't want to train drawing from references, that's not satisfying for me because I want to be able to express myself without being forced to rely so much on such things.
  In this thread I will attempt to understand the real concept behind the body of an animal or human.
  
[u]  Practice plan:[/u]

[ol]
[li]take reference picture, analyse proportions (visualize them)[/li][li] make one drawing based on this picture[/li][li] try to draw the pose again but without reference[/li][li] analyze result and compare proportions[/li][li] maybe do another drawing to improve proportions[/li][li]=> repeat step one to five[/li][li] from time to time draw a complete new pose and analyze proportions[/li][/ol] I’m not yet sure if I should also stress colors here, because although it’s an important topic it’s not anatomy. So tell me whether or not you are interested in some color-analysis.

[u]  Here is a set of drawings/models which represent my current skills:[/u]
  [img]http://www.bv-design.com/cgtalk/introduction01.jpg[/img]
  [img]http://www.bv-design.com/cgtalk/introduction02.jpg[/img]

…except for the last one, made without reference.
I guess it’s easy to spot that I am struggling, although not every attempt is ment be a serious anatomy drawing. If you want me to show more you would mostly just see faces drawn out of the same perspective with the same expression. I really want to be able to do more than that.

  So why do I put my exercises on CGTalk?
  Because I want to meet people who have a strong interest in this topic too. I hope for some helpful and honest replies.  And maybe this thread turns out to useful for others too.

I have some other things to do, so exercices won’t be added immediately. I mainly wanted to have this thread ready to rock :slight_smile:

#2

Hey hey! Welcome!

I’m having the same problem with drawing/painting from imagination. It is always very daunting for me. I think the cure is learning anatomy very well and doing a lot of studies and also trying to draw from imagination from time to time to see if your skills got better.
I am not doing a lot of imaginational drawing. But whenever I do them I feel I’m at least a bit better then when I was doing it the last time. Lots and lots of studies help me.
Another thing in drawing/painting from imagination is not to rush forward. Taking your time is good when we’re at this early stage of it. What I want to tell is that a piece might not look awesome after 15mins, after half an hour, but putting more work into it will make it better if you know what you’re doing.
It’s great when you don’t have to guess why are you doing one thing this way and the other thing another way.
In my opinion, when people say that they’ve overworked a piece, it only means that they’ve come to stage where they don’t know how could they improve but still kept going, without knowing what they’re doing.
Life drawing helps a lot with imaginational skills. Go out to the city and draw people or attend a life drawing class. My choice is drawing at the city, because there are no life drawings classes around me.
Then do lots of studies after masters. Don’t just copy but try understanding why and how the master did what he did.
When I started looking at art seriously, which was less than a year ago, I was given a suggestion like this, to do loads studies. And there’s no faster way in doing this, take your time as I’m taking mine.
Visit the BEFORE/AFTER thread, where people show what they’ve learned in a period of time. Really great to see.

Ok, now you should be pretty bored after reading this, so go and draw :smiley:

cheers

#3

Hi…ben…:slight_smile:

Along with what RAZZ has stated, you might want to buy all of the Burne Hogarth books that you can get your hands on. In his books, he explains all the princables needed to be learned for drawing the figure corectly from imagination. Don’t just copy his drawings, but rather memorize the princables that he demonstrates, and try each princaple out in a drawing created from your own imagination. You will find every princable that he demonstated contained in every master work that you see and study. Once you memorize those princables, you will be able to spot them at work in the old masters works, and this will give you a better understanding of how the master work was achived, and what makes it a master work…:slight_smile:
His books can be found and bought on the internet…AMAZON. COM ect.
LOOKING FORWARD TO SEEING MORE OF YOUR WORK, AND PROGRESS…:thumbsup:
TAKE CARE
Glenn

#4

First of all the (quick)sketches I did since Friday:

Most of them are done with pure imagination. For some of them I used a book by Gottfried Bammes which is quite the standard for anatomy where I live. To be more exact I used some of his drawings where he simplified the human shape so that you can easily understand human proportions.(the 2 guys on the bottom left)
I noticed that I have a lot of problems when I try realistic shading, so I am going to stress this in my next drawings. I guess that will push my understanding a bit faster.

So yeah for now I won’t to too serious stuff. Mainly some posing, which rough proportions so that I get a feeling for the human body in general.

@razz: Hey. Thanks for all you advice. I can mostly agree with you. The most important thing is to practice. And you really need to use what you’ve just learned.
I can try to remember every city of the world, but if I won’t need them in my daily life it’s very likely that I am going to forget most of them. The same thing is with anatomy. Only learn it if you really use it. I think I won’t do a lot of copies because that not really practical.
From the first day on I should think of my own poses and try to solve problems on my own. Because if I do it that way I can say from the first day on that my paintings really represent my skill and that they are the result of my creativity.
All these books and master paintings should only be used if they can directly help you to solve your problem.
Otherwise people seem to think “If I draw 10 picture of each body part I know the human anatomy”. I don’t think that this works. As you try to paint without reference after all this “practice” you get really frustrated. The only good thing left are your master copies. A lot of people use these copies for their portfolios then although they do not represent their actual skills.
I want to be proud of my work from the first day on. :slight_smile:
So as you say, life drawings are the right way to go. (luckily I attend to an art course where we do life drawings from time to time)

I also liked your part on overworked paintings :slight_smile:

@SpiritDreamer: Thanks for the book recommendation but I will stick to my book “Menschen Zeichnen”(drawing humans) by Gottfried Bammes for now. :slight_smile:

#5

Hi,

nice thread so far… some interesting things being said here :slight_smile:

What really helps me is “thinking 3D” while drawing from imagination.
When I draw an arm I don’t just get “arm” from my memory and draw an arm but I “invent” it, every time…

(ofcourse I’m a beginner at drawing from imagination, but it seems to help…)

#6

Hey it’s coming up really nice. Keep it up.

I agree with NR43, thinking in terms of 3d forms rather than shapes help a great deal. And once you have the techniques learned to transfrom those 3d forms onto paper you will be ready to draw anything from imagination. You should be able to visualize the form in your mind and be able to translate on paper. That’s it.

#7

Hi Ben
I’m just a beginner in this field of figurative art…and frm wht i have gathered till now is that life drawing is the antidote to the problem of drawing from imagination…
some gr8 artists suggest that first is figure drawing from life, then comes studies of master’s art and then drawing from imagination…
thats what i have learned and thats what i m goin to do…lets c if this advice helps or not…
just wanted to say this coz i liked the different point of views presented in this thread…
and also what Johan said, to look for the 3D Form while drawing from imagination…i feel if you study master’s art and break down there figures into simple 3D forms that would also help alot as you’ll be “seeing” through the figure and knowing its form…this is what Vilppu suggests to do…

hope this helped…coz it helpd me!
RD

#8

…it’s exactly why drawing from life is so important… whether it’s nude models, office desk objects, plants and trees in your garden or anything else…
when drawing from life you are observing a real 3D form and you are trying to put it on paper, which is 2D, in a convincing way… so you are forced to think 3D when drawing from life.

To avoid drawing humans too flat, Rebecca has a great article on Opposing Curves. There is a link in her signature… check that out, it will definetely help!

#9

A good start, and I don’t believe I have anything to add to this that someone else had said… Wait a second! Persistence and FUN! Any good artist in the craft will quote me on this in their own words! Have fun with the craft and enjoy it or else it will feel like it’s just work and, I can not stress this enough, WORK SUCKS to the power of a quadrilion (I draw to get away from work… Its the bit of joy that helps me through the mind numbing days)

If you persist in improving yourself and aquire knowledge to help you have more fun, the more you will enjoy persisting and aquiring knowledge and so on… excetra… yadayada…

NR43 has a great point to boot…

#10

Wow a lot of cool thoughts :slight_smile:

@NR43 + theflash: Agreed. It also helps a lot for shading and for drawing crazy perspectives. I thought a few times that perspective is the basis for good anatomy and that I should have started with it first. Anyhow we are no robots. :slight_smile:
As I said in my last post I will stress shading more, because I need knowledge of the shape to achieve convincing results.

NR43, good thoughts on life drawing. I forgot about that, but my subconsciousness knew that photos are a bad thing :slight_smile:
I have done a few life drawings and I didn’t like one thing. We had to sit on chairs and don’t move because the the room was so small. So I wasn’t able to take the actual advantage of life drawing to look around. I really like go around things and touch them to comprehend their shape…

I will check Rebecca’s tutorial later a bit closer. Looked interesting on the first glance.

@rdsarna: Makes sense. I guess it’s first life drawing to gain your own experience and then studying master’s art to correct the distorted imagination of the human anatomy we tend to build. Although I think that masterworks are also not perfect.

@TheCrazyDudeSRD: Work sucks if the results suck :slight_smile: But yeah we humans are lazy folks and we like to rest on our achievements, no matter how small they are.

Now I go back to the VHASEbunkers to practice more.

#11

I believe their might have been a mixup of thoughts here man… the type of work I was talking about is like working for major corporate conglomorates ala McDonalds (6 years of mind numbing, gut wrenching, stupid, idiotic, contradictory, vile, overly stressfilled, underpaying, craptacularness incarnate) or Wal-mart where your not really a person, your a decimal point called ‘Labor Cost.’ This is the work I was talking about… the stuff that makes you say “…it pays the bills.”

I wasn’t implying that hard work on your drawing skills won’t get you anywhere (that’s the persistence I was talking about)

I hope this might clear things up; if I’m just rambling on about crap, just ignore me…

#12

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