The Anatomy Thread of ceruleanvii - 2D

#1

I’ve always loved figure drawing, and after a VERY long hiatus from any kind of drawing at all, I signed up for an artistic anatomy course earlier this year. It’s been fantastic, I’ve learned quite a lot! Earlier in my life I had considered becoming a medical illustrator, which would have involved taking both art and science courses - but chemistry and algebra were my nemesises. I can’t balance an equation to save my life though I can do geometry, trig and calculus, go figure. So I ended up just sticking with art, and got heavily into CG and 3D. But I have missed drawing, especially the human figure. So getting back into it has felt wonderful, though I’m often frustrated by my slow (and painful) progress.

I LOVE gesture drawing, it’s my favorite. I much prefer my gestures to my longer drawings - they have a flow and spontaneity that seems to dissappear the minute I hunker down and start plotting thing out. I guess that’s the nature of a gesture. Here’s a few recent ones, one to two minute poses.

Here are some longer poses, charcoal and graphite - mostly 20 minute poses on average. I’ve brought them into photoshop and tinted them as I never seem to have enough time to work color into the original pose -

This was a really strange one, upside down! It was a great exercise though - everything was so odd that i had to completely throw away my preconceived notions about drawing the figure, and just concentrate on what I was seeing - which is the point, I guess.

back study, longer pose, about 45 minutes.

I’ll be adding more to this thread as I progress, thanks for looking and please feel free to add your comments and critiques!

#2

I did this one for the most recent OFDW and really enjoyed working on it - copy of a great 3D model by Andreja Vuckovic

#3

Hi …Del…:slight_smile:

GREAT START ON YOUR THREAD…:thumbsup:
Looking forward to seeing more of your works and progress…:slight_smile:
TAKE CARE
Glenn

#4

a beautiful start of a thread indeed! Love the sketches :slight_smile:

#5

Thanks a lot, Glenn and Intervain!

some quick studies, after Loomis:

#6

Beautiful sketches, I should say!!:thumbsup: give us more!!:bounce:

#7

Thank you very much, Anand!

These are from an open figure drawing session I attended in the summer, 1 minute gestural quickies from a female model - haven’t had much practice with females lately, the anatomy class model is always male.

#8

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#9

hey nice figure drawings in your thread
i really like those sketches

nice work on your ofdw too :thumbsup:

#10

Thanks very much, Bapke! The OFDW was a great experience, good practice and fun too!
Very nice work from everyone.

I started doing this portrait yesterday. It’s based on a mugshot I found here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/leastwanted/

Don’t have the direct link to the reference image itself - I’ll poke around and post it later. This guy has an
incredible collection of mugshots from last century, mostly the 20s through the 60s. Some
of the faces there are absolutely fascinating - what stories they tell.

This one struck me as particularly poignant, so I’ve started sketching her. Portrait practice - I need it, I tried to
do my son early last year and it came out terrible. So far this one is more succesful in terms of mood
and capturing a likeness. Maybe I’ve improved/loosened up a bit - or maybe it’s easier to draw people you don’t know?
Going to try and finish this tonight. I’m planning on doing more of these, maybe a series.

#11

Hi, you’ve got some really nice sketches here…and I love that wrestler girl, she’s got a lot of character!

I don’t think it’s any easier, but you probably have improved and sometimes you just get lucky and a drawing/painting turns out just right for you…I love it when that happens :smiley:

#12

Thanks Roja! Glad you like the sketches and my girl :slight_smile:

I had my last anatomy class last night, it was basically an open figure session. Here’s two gestures that I liked:

and here are two longer poses, about 50 mins. I see several anatomical errors… I’m curious about some of these super long drawing poses I’ve seen, where the artist has days and days to draw the same pose, they just keep giving the poor model breaks… Chances are good I’d be able to iron a lot of errors out… but would I go absolutely insane? :slight_smile:

And now I’m in a quandry… Trying to decide if I take this anatomy class again in the spring, or wait until the summer session… The more times I take it, the more it all starts to sink in, and drawing from the model once a week just can’t be beat… But I’ve also signed up for the Seegmiller Face and Figure Painting course in the spring, and it sounds like that’s going to be a lot of work. Should I do both or will I be overwhelmed - I do have a full time job/a family/all that.

Kind of talking to myself here, but if anyone cares to offer their opinions, I’d love to hear it - especially if you’ve taken the Seegmiller course. Thanks!

#13

Hi Del, great things in your thread. I like your style. Thanks for the link to the mugshots - seems like a great source of inspiration!

#14

Nice sketches again, I especially like that last one.

Well only you know what you can handle…unfortunately we often don’t find that out until we’re knee deep in work and stress and ahhh! lol. I know I’ve had to cut back on a lot of things I tried to do but just didtn’ have time for. But maybe if your anatomy class doesn’t have any homework and it’s just drawing in class and that’s it then it’d work out. Anyway…that’s just my 2cents. Only you know for sure :slight_smile:

#15

Thanks, batte! Yes, that web site is a treasure trove indeed -

I finished up mug shot woman 58945, here’s a link to the ref

http://www.flickr.com/photos/leastwanted/97446079/

And here’s my version of her - I was trying to capture her general likeness, while exaggerating some of the things that make her look so sad. Comments/crits welcome, I’m going to try doing another one of these soon -

Thanks for your 2 cants Roja, I appreciate it. I have a few weeks to make up my mind, so I’m going to keep mulling it over - right now I’m leaning towards taking both classes and just letting things go however they may.

#16

Now, this was a fun one, quite different from what I usually do. This was done for the DSG, the topic was “Warriors of the Zodiac” - how cool a topic is that? :slight_smile:

I wanted to draw fairly accurate anatomy, yet exaggerated, cartoony - mostly human but with some characteristics of a bull - bulk, mass.

I like his face, just the right mix of animal/human/demonic I was hoping for - plus it frightened my children which is always a good sign.

legs were tough - this always has been my weak area, I know the muscles are off. I was thinking of jointing them like an animal’s but I wanted a more human contruction overall, so I went with a regular, albeit hairy leg.

Anyway, a fun departure from my usual, and a fun draw - c/c welcome as always!

#17

Here’s a detail from another one I did - Scorpio. I don’t really like the overall picture, but I do like the way this area turned out. I had to enlongate the torso to seam into the body. Did I ever mention I hate bugs? This was challenging, all those @#$% legs!

#18

HEY…Del …:slight_smile:

I’m still really enjoying your thread…GREAT STUFF…:slight_smile:
That scorpion critter is a really nice concept, don’t believe I have ever seen that idea before…:slight_smile:
That girls portrait is also really nice…If I were you, I would for sure take Seegmiller’s portrait class, …You seem to have a nak for it already, so his class would probably bump you up to a much higher level in that area, I would think…What you learned from him would also really show up in the drawings that you do in your life classes,…whenever you take them.
That’s just my personal opinion though, and is what I would do, if I had to choose between the two…:slight_smile:
HEY…That wrestler girl is …GREAT by the way…:scream:

REALLY looking forward to seeing more of your work, and progress…:thumbsup: :slight_smile:

TAKE CARE
Glenn

#19

Thanks for your input, Glenn! I’m definitely taking the Seegmiller course, it starts in a few days - should be a great experience!

I’m hoping someone can help me out with the WIP I’ve posted below. This is a crop in of a larger picture - but this is the problematic area. I’ve been working on this one FOREVER. The more I learn, the more I see wrong with it, the more I fix it… But it’s still not right. I’m re-posing the arm, so that’s why it’s so rough - but the big problem to me is the juncture of the head and body. I can’t get the neck right so that they look like they belong together. I’m not sure what’s wrong - is the jawline too hard? The angle of the neck wrong? Or is something I’ve totally overlooked? You can see I’m sketching/painting over and over trying to get it right, to no avail. Maybe some fresh eyes can help me out. I don’t want to scrap it, I like where it’s going in general and want to finish it, but the anatomical errors drive me crazy and keep me from working out the rest. Thanks in advance for any help/guidance you all can offer -

#20

Hi Ceruleanvii, I like your recent characters, especially that Taurus guy, looks cool! It’s possible his waist might be a bit too small for a man though, but he’s kinda twisted so it’s hard to tell. I think you got the overall proportions down well though!

The latest one you posted, first I think the painting of it and the colors are great, but what really sticks out to me is that his head looks like a boy, but the body a man. Plus the head is too small for the body. If you scaled it up that might help it, but I think you gotta work with either one or the other for it to look like the head/body belong together.
Good luck with it :slight_smile: