This blog...

...was initially for pieces done on a computer, but has since become a free-for-all. Here you'll find process work (digital and otherwise), sketch pages and studies, sometimes with commentary.

You can see the rest of my work here.

Remember kids : if you can't make pretty designs, at least make pretty lines!

-Paul

Sunday, February 26, 2012

lifedrawing log - 02.25.12

Gonna do something different this time.  Gonna talk about what's going through my head as I'm doing these 2-10 minute sketches.  It's usually nothing profound, but here goes!

Because my understanding of anatomy is still infuriatingly shallow, I'll sometimes give myself a "dumbed down" way of understanding a certain region of the body.  Here, it was the hollow of the back, just above the butt.  To me, it looked like it had been scooped out with an ice cream scooper.  Vivid shit, right?



The scooped out part was apparent here, too, so I ghosted it in with a little guitar pick shape, so I'd remember it.  At lifedrawing, I'm not interested in anything I won't remember later.  This is why I typically omit light patterns, as they're erratic and non-transferable to my other work.  I'll bet that if I DID focus exclusively on light play, I'd begin to notice useful recurring patterns, though.  Hrm...



On this one, I was paying attention to how this guy's elbows (corner points on the body) were at rest on his knees (also corner points).  I talk about this phenomenon in greater detail on Babe Lab.  It was something I picked up on late last year, and now I see it wherever people are being idle.  (My elbows are on my knees as I type this.)



Here I was thinking "This guy has a dangly weiner."



I also thought it was interesting that [above] his nipples were practically at the bottom of his pecs, like gorilla's.  I watched a series of UFC fights later that evening, and couldn't get this image out of my mind : Two gorillas in an octagon, beating their chests and taking mad swings at each other.

The pose below kinda blows my "corner" theory out of the water.  See his right hand hooked over his left shin, right in the middle?  Oh well.  His left hand is still on his left knee.  Unrelated : since he was sitting, the bottom of his right leg was drooping where it wasn't in contact with the stool.



On this one, I could see that his right hip was clearly higher, meaning the right leg was the one supporting most of his weight.  Higher hip means higher buttock, so the left sinks below it.



Corner theory was kinda at work in this one.  Elbows on knees.  Left hand clutching left elbow.  Left hand clutching...CURSES!  Foiled again!



It became really apparent that drawing a burly dude means making his upper toso almost triangular, with a teeny-weeny waistline.

Drawing this twist required a calculated "stacking" of parts, to make his right arm look more forward and his left more backward.  To drive the latter home, I scribbled a little black over the left arm.



I was fixated on the weight-bearing leg below.  I wonder, since even a staight leg is still slightly bent, if the lower thigh, knee and shin can always be thrown into slight shadow in standing poses.  Depends on the source of the light, but still...curious to see if this resurfaces.



Here he was with his gut sucked in, all manly-like...  (straight)



...and when he let it hang.  (curve)



On the symmetrical poses below, I intentionally moved away from his center to give myself a non-redundant view.  Full frontals and full backs are borrrrrring, plus I could see too much of his nutsack, and nutsacks are gross.



Gross!



Big lean. Hands on knees.  I thought the sweep of his left leg was beautiful.  Yeah, that's right, I said beautiful.  So see?  I can swing both ways.



Boring laying-down poses.  I couldn't do anything interesting with them, so I focused on something I'm weak at, namely hand plants.  You can see I'm still struggling with subtleties here.



This one, I think, was 20 minutes.  I tried to get the hands to a more respectable level than I normally do, and while the feet still gave me sass, I noticed that the shape I was seeing on the toenails was more like a triangle than a parallelogram.  Portraying a thing authentically has more to do with getting its shape right than its exact proportion.  I'm going to force myself to get really real about the primitive shapes I'm seeing from here on.



Last one of the session.  Figured I'd copped out on the previous two reclining poses, so had to give this one a go.  Moved around the model until I had a view I liked, but still couldn't do much with it.  That's my fault, for the record, not the model's!



This post has been a bit self-indulgent, but I hope you enjoyed the play-by-play!

4 comments:

Stacy LeFevre said...

Very cool Paul! I love how you invent names for the shapes you see and it reminds me that I need to break down the human form more, waah. Thanks for this!

Sirscribblesalot said...

This was great! I hope you do more of this in the future! Learning more about how you approach your work is very interesting, and a great way to learn. Can't wait for the next update!

Unknown said...

Fantasti Draw!!

Kungfoowiz said...

Thank you for you taking the time to explain your life studies.