no no no. your original piece is much preferred to your latest sketch. the linework isnt at all bad, but the anatomy is all bunched up, it looks like the anatomy of a hobbit of sorts. its muscles are also very masculine making it hard to distinguish it as a female figure. Id say stick with your current piece as a good base and work in any updates on that imo.
Yes, it is true the study lost the feeling of the original. I've had a bit of sleep between now and when I was caught up in it last night, and I can see now I was getting carried away with it
"Let's completely restart the piece from scratch!"
That was not the purpose of the study, though. The purpose was to bring more rigor to the work flow. Every time I look at the piece I say "yes, it captures the movement I want, but I fumbled my way to get there." This was not entirely a deliberate departure from realistic anatomy, I was not mindful of what I was discarding. So I want to do studies of various poses that are similar and find out exactly what should stay and what should go.
Only then can I rest easily.
As for the hobbit proportions, I fell victim to drawing to fit the canvas. I've expanded the canvas out to give much more room for the entire torso. The bunching up of the shoulder to the face I will reconsider.
As for the masculinity; a problem I continue the have. I construct from basic bones, and often greatly exaggerate the muscle bulk to help remind myself of the structures in play. Everyone ends up looking like body builders of some degree.
Not sure if you're working from reference but I suggest you do, especially with the face, you probably struggle with female faces like myself so it might be best to find some reference.
Yeah... I guess I wanted to give the pose a shot without reference first just to see how lacking my knowledge is. Find the limits. I actually really like her face, though. Got a bit of a Ripley mouth, I notice now, hahaha. I will attempt to hunt down reference, though I can find it tedious.
I'm with st0ven here. I really like the curve of the neck and the overall composition/stylisation. To me it's far more interesting than having a realistic anatomy. Lots of masters in painting are modifying the human proportions in order to achieve a better feel of the model personality or effective composition (Ingres come to my mind with this particular painting ).
I tried anyway to do a sketch, you will have to rotate the head a bit in perspective or hide the chin behind the shoulder, didn't realize it was a woman. I think there's some body parts which are hard to convey viewed from a particular angle and even aren't worth the challenge, like a side view of a hand for example.
Great avatar !
Haha funny you mention that. I had a piece with a bunch of hands a while ago and it had a side view hand that drove me crazy!! Thank you very much for the edits. You have sketched out two concepts I probably would have spent an eternity on.
Yeah, like I said, masculinity abounds in all my figures, much against my will. In the original my entire treatment of the hairline and hair contributed largely to the ambiguous gender. But something about that appealed to me at the time. It's yet another aspect of my lack of rigor leaving me asking "what did I unconsciously discard?" So I intend to make the studies decidedly more feminine.
Thank you all for the perspective!
Further studies will come.
