AuthorTopic: Official Anatomy Thread  (Read 403851 times)

Offline dead_pool

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Re: Official Anatomy Thread

Reply #160 on: April 19, 2009, 02:44:03 am
Thanks for your comment Dr D. I can understand your idea on my arms and torso. I think I went for too much detail and not the basic structure. I have a bad habit of that, since I've never tried to learn anatomy in my life...until now. I'm used to drawing what "feels good" which is a terrible habit I must break. I'm practicing now the "8 heads method" for proportioning things correctly and not just drawing what my horrible habits institute.
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Offline EyeCraft

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Re: Official Anatomy Thread

Reply #161 on: April 19, 2009, 03:16:13 am
Thanks ,Eyecraft, for the great edit, criticism, and guidance.

You're welcome.

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I think i have a severe problem with drawing legs  :(. I get so frustrated I want to be able to draw correct anatomy, but everything I draw is so bad. I practice all the time, but I can't see my progress. Does everyone feel like this at some point or am I alone in this?  :P

You've just described exactly how I feel  ;). Well not exactly, but I understand frustration brought on by the inability to nail down some area of the figure.

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EDIT: Also, can anyone suggest any books for noobies in anatomy. I tried some pretty complex stuff I saw on a blog, and it was way to complicated for me. It was on a much more advanced level, for someone who already has a pretty solid understanding of anatomy.

http://www.alexhays.com/loomis/Loomis%20Figure%20Draw.pdf

from page:
http://www.alexhays.com/loomis/

Offline dead_pool

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Re: Official Anatomy Thread

Reply #162 on: April 19, 2009, 04:43:42 am
Thanks for reference to the Andrew Loomis book. I actually already found it though, and have been reading. I've retried at constructing a male again, I think I've done better after reading some of Andrew Loomis' work. Critique once more please.

"I can see the whole of time and space, every single atom of your existence and I divide them"

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Offline dead_pool

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Re: Official Anatomy Thread

Reply #163 on: April 24, 2009, 03:44:46 am
I hope double posting is ok...  :sry:. Anyways, this is another anatomy try. This time no reference used. Critique please.


"I can see the whole of time and space, every single atom of your existence and I divide them"

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Offline Ai

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Re: Official Anatomy Thread

Reply #164 on: April 24, 2009, 10:53:38 am
Anyway I was wondering what is the best substitute for not having a live model?  Is pose maniacs really that good of a anatomy drawing aid?
Go draw 10 of their figures a day and then tell me :) Seriously.. it has helped me a lot. It's definitely true that real people have all sorts of proportional variations -- for instance I'm a tall man, but my proportions -- eg hip to shoulder measurement -- are relatively feminine.
A lot of the fun in drawing people is in these little (and sometimes big) quirks. So I recommend Posemaniacs for polishing your really rough points anatomy-wise.. and to also do some other drawing from photos of real people, and play with the proportion between these two according to how sorely you feel your basic anatomy skills to be lacking.
BTW, Posemaniacs doesn't only provide overall body refs -- they have eg. 3d scans of actual hands in various poses which can also be quite helpful.

One strong point of Posemaniacs is of course its 3d-ness. It's helped me far more in 3d construction than drawing from photos ever could (since they are 2d regardless of how a skilled photographer might mislead us to perceive otherwise.)


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  I want to draw a lot more but I want to make sure if I start again that I will be on a linear track to getting better.
Oh well, start anyway. Nobody's track to getting better can ever be linear, as far as I've observed; You can only keep giving things a good try and periodically discarding things that aren't working. And it follows from this that you can only know what things are really worthwhile after getting back into the game.

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  I'm willing to put in the work and the time but I don't want my soul crushed when I find out I've been doing everything wrong(that has happened a few times before)
It happens. Your current approach is quite incorrect, though it is instructive; I've found this is a very reliable truth that can be applied no matter where you are (and presumably, no matter who you are or when you are.). It's just the way life works. It's uncomfortable only in direct proportion to the magnitude of your misplaced arrogance.

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Another question I have for you guys/girls is, "Is drawing fun for you?  Do you enjoy drawing?  Also where do you draw, is it at a desk, your bed(someone elses bed?) the floor, a chair, standing up, etc? 
Even when I feel burned out drawing-wise, drawing is fun for me. At such times I just push on through the frustration to find the fun,  and use a Lojban based concept generator I wrote to decide on subjects and perhaps find a spark of inspiration.
I mainly draw sitting down, but suspect standing up would be better. I prefer it when circumstances permit.

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Finally my last most important question.  Does anyone here draw in photoshop?  If so isn't it hard to get really crisp lines like you would with a pen or a pencil?  Whenever I try drawing in photoshop all of my lines are blurry.  I drew the picture above exclusively in photoshop and the only way to get the lines looking nice was to carve them using the eraser tool.  However doing that takes a large amount of extra time.  Which in turn just rips out whatever vitality the drawing used to have in it.  Anyway to sum this up "Whats the best program to do line art digitally?"
I don't use photoshop, I do use GIMP... IMO the tip about the pencil tool is good and I imagine it operates pretty much identical to GIMP's pencil tool, which I also prefer over Paintbrush.
I've done plenty of sketching in GIMP and find it is not too soft, if anything too hard sometimes. It all depends on your brush settings really, like someone else said.
However, if you really want pencily-ness, consider something like MyPaint [1] or Opencanvas which actually tries to mimic real drawing media.
Both MyPaint and OC provide a pseudo-'infinite' canvas, which is great for just reeling off multiple quick sketches (as you might with PoseManiacs)


[1] I luuuuuuv this <3 Both for sketching and painting, it is powerful, approachable, and simple. (
http://mypaint.intilinux.com/)
« Last Edit: April 24, 2009, 10:56:44 am by Ai »
If you insist on being pessimistic about your own abilities, consider also being pessimistic about the accuracy of that pessimistic judgement.

Offline dead_pool

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Re: Official Anatomy Thread

Reply #165 on: April 25, 2009, 02:36:01 am
A problem I am having is emulating a good paint like effect. I use Corel Painter X and I know its a suitable choice for this, but I think I am lacking in the necessary skills for creating this desired effect. Everything I usually render has a very paint bucket look to it, or for lack of a better explanation, MS Paint look. It doesn't have that pizazz that paintings look like. I don't want my art to have a totally "digital" look about it, but instead like an artist actually painted it. If anyone has any advice, please give it.

EDIT: I just tried Mypaint and I seem to have a problem with the brush tool. It doesn't pick up every stroke with either my pad or mouse. It has random chops throughout a stroke. Any way to fix this?
« Last Edit: April 25, 2009, 03:13:27 am by dead_pool »
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Offline Ai

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Re: Official Anatomy Thread

Reply #166 on: April 25, 2009, 02:59:07 pm
EDIT: I just tried Mypaint and I seem to have a problem with the brush tool. It doesn't pick up every stroke with either my pad or mouse. It has random chops throughout a stroke. Any way to fix this?

mm, it's probably a bug in GTK+ on Windows, for some tablet setups on Windows, GTK+ has problems.
OTOH it could be a MyPaint bug that only shows up on Windows -- the main development platform is Linux, naturally.
possibly relevant:

https://gna.org/bugs/?12018
"This is a GTK bug. To fix this someone has to build a new Windows version of MyPaint using a fixed gtk+ version."
^^ the above sounds the most likely to me.. do the described symptoms match?
If you insist on being pessimistic about your own abilities, consider also being pessimistic about the accuracy of that pessimistic judgement.

Offline Atnas

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Re: Official Anatomy Thread

Reply #167 on: April 25, 2009, 03:02:15 pm
Quote
A problem I am having is emulating a good paint like effect. I use Corel Painter X and I know its a suitable choice for this, but I think I am lacking in the necessary skills for creating this desired effect. Everything I usually render has a very paint bucket look to it, or for lack of a better explanation, MS Paint look. It doesn't have that pizazz that paintings look like. I don't want my art to have a totally "digital" look about it, but instead like an artist actually painted it. If anyone has any advice, please give it.

It looks like whatever you're using isn't set to track opacity based on tablet pressure. If you're using painter, try out the other brushes and play around with the settings. When I used it I liked one of the pastel brushes that I modified. But you shouldn't worry about this too much, just try for the opacity, because completely opaque strokes aren't for everyone.

Offline dead_pool

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Re: Official Anatomy Thread

Reply #168 on: April 25, 2009, 03:45:08 pm
It looks like whatever you're using isn't set to track opacity based on tablet pressure. If you're using painter, try out the other brushes and play around with the settings. When I used it I liked one of the pastel brushes that I modified. But you shouldn't worry about this too much, just try for the opacity, because completely opaque strokes aren't for everyone.
Sorry for not being familiar with this term "opaque strokes." I've been messing around with with Painter's brush settings, but can't find anything I'm really satisfied with. I think part of my problem, as I said before, is I'm not really skilled in the painting area. But for now, I'm not as concerned about the painting issues, because I'm just trying to get anatomy down first.

mm, it's probably a bug in GTK+ on Windows, for some tablet setups on Windows, GTK+ has problems.
OTOH it could be a MyPaint bug that only shows up on Windows -- the main development platform is Linux, naturally.
possibly relevant:

https://gna.org/bugs/?12018
"This is a GTK bug. To fix this someone has to build a new Windows version of MyPaint using a fixed gtk+ version."
^^ the above sounds the most likely to me.. do the described symptoms match?


As far as the Mypaint issue, symptoms are the same, but no fix has been figured out for it yet.
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email me at (tim.blake.navy@gmail.com)

Offline Atnas

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Re: Official Anatomy Thread

Reply #169 on: April 25, 2009, 04:20:29 pm


Your brush is set to be opaque like the one on the left, while a lot of artists use ones with varying opacity like the one on the right because they simulate natural media in that the intensity is based on pressure.

Though that's based on if you have a tablet... I couldn't tell based on "It doesn't pick up every stroke with either my pad or mouse." but I assumed you had one because the lines aren't uniform in width in your last image.