Official Anatomy Thread

[0xDB]

Anatomy aside, I still can't get a good feel of 3d forms in general - when drawing simple 3d primitives I still end up with distortion and crooked angles, and any attempts at foreshortening without any reference end up in total failures Any advice on this?

I guess it just takes a lot of time and practice until one can accurately render 3D volumes from scratch. I too am struggling with that.

For foreshortening without reference, there's a constructional approach in which you draw the object from a simple side view first and then use parallel lines emerging from key points to be able to tell where these key points would end up when foreshortening the depth of the side view into a new depth which goes "into the paper".

Here's a primitive example I just drew illustrating that:

I was trying the 2nd website wishie posted, but all the times seem to be off for me.  atleast for the longer poses I noticed them only lasting about half of what theyre supposed to.  Anyone else have this issue?  MAybe Ill post my stuff later but I cant scan it right now.

Had not measured the times while I was drawing but sometimes it felt like some poses didn't stay as long as they should have which I attributed to losing the feeling for time while drawing... odd.

[0xDB]

[0xDB]

Been slacking over the holidays, slowly resuming studies.

Drawn from inaccurate clay skull model:

[0xDB]

New year, same problem, the time is never sufficient to make correct measurements and always runs out while I'm in the middle of the rendering phase. 

[Lachie Dazdarian]

The last body reminds me of my girlfriend. Mmm....

[Ashbad]

Does anyone have any good resources targeted towards facial anatomy construction?  I'm finding posemaniacs wonderful in covering many other aspects but definitely not that.  I've definitely produced a few pages of studies so far, but nothing huge -- mostly just modeling certain parts of the body that I don't understand at all in different angles, such as ears.  Hopefully I'll soon have something worth C+C here this week.

The last body reminds me of my girlfriend. Mmm....

Sounds like someone's going to have an "anatomy study" tonight

[0xDB]

Lachie, heh, has she been posing for that site?

Ashbad, read Andrew Loomis "Drawing The Head And Hands" or start with "Fun With A Pencil" for a less technical approach towards head/face construction.

Todays doodles (the time limit, it does not like me but I think I'm actually making progress though when I compare the logged times and earlier doodles, it seems that my doodles in the 5 to 11 minute range are getting better... better as in, more correct (still off but more correct) in less time).

These copies are somehow distracting me a bit from the goal of gaining a better understanding of bulk/volumes though since I'm not constructing and just trying to quickly capture what is seen within the given time limit.

[Ryumaru]

Dennis, this is good work. You will find that you will continue to have that problem for the rest of your artistic career. You will always have multiple skills that are lagging behind the others and it is difficult to choose the strategy in which you deal with them. I'm having problems with it too, currently.

some hands and such:

[Ryumaru]

Not quite daily's. I don't like feet.

[0xDB]

Dennis, this is good work. You will find that you will continue to have that problem for the rest of your artistic career. You will always have multiple skills that are lagging behind the others and it is difficult to choose the strategy in which you deal with them. I'm having problems with it too, currently.

The main problem is distractions and too many options/activities which beg for my attention. There are always 100 different things I'd like to pursue and I never find the discipline to follow only one of them at a time. I also don't have an "artistic career", never had an art job, never made a single cent from anything I've created.

I had a good run with that last streak of almost daily practice sessions which went on for a couple of weeks but as always I eventually ran out of steam, this time it was caused by having to stay sick in bed for a week. During that week I didn't feel like drawing anything and afterwards I somehow didn't pick up the pencils again either... weird. Currently addicted to Starcraft II again, so I've got nothing new to show.