Ink Skull Studies

Because you can't practice enough from life (or in this case, a cast.)

Hunt 102 nib, brush pen.

Focusing on Figures

I've mostly been on a life drawing kick lately. My archive of life drawings has grown to an unwieldy size and the few that I think stand out from the pack are getting lost in the noise. So, I've added a new Figures section to my main gallery page, which features just a few of my favourites.

On a related note, processjunkie (AKA a blog run by Alberto Ruiz) posted an article featuring his favourite classic figure drawing books with handy links to download them in electronic formats.

Anatomy Phase I: Complete!

So I've gone through the first 74 videos in The Structure of Man. And I can now do the following from memory:



Well, about 90% anyway. There are some details on the hands and the radius & ulna that I'm still a bit hazy about. Before I move on to the muscles, I'll try to do a few exercises putting the skeleton in 3D and in a variety of poses.

Bones

So rather than just talking about it, I've started going through the anatomy lessons I posted about previously.

    

Along the way, I'm gradually building my own anatomy reference book. I'm not quite at the point where I feel I can leverage this skeletal knowledge much in my figure drawing; it's a lot of work and the muscles are going to be even more work. And after that it's going to be even more work to get comfortable drawing this stuff from my head and putting it in perspective. But it is something I feel I should've put the time into learning many years ago. Better late than never I suppose.

And I was just thinking

about how I needed to learn more about human anatomy, and how to apply it to figure drawing.

This drawing gave me all sorts of trouble, trying to figure out how the obscured hips and right leg would look, and how the legs would attach.



Lucky for me then that I should stumble upon Riven Phoenix's The Structure of Man - 170 sequential videos freely viewable on YouTube, teaching you classical techniques on how to draw the figure from your mind. A fantastic project! I have a feeling this will become a staple of modern, internet-enabled art instruction. Thank you Riven Phoenix for creating such a valuable resource.