STUDIO_PRACTICE: figure drawing

On a tutorial with Patrik, we were having a conversation regarding my concept and comic book ambitions. we spoke how figure drawing is a key element to both practices. Patrick suggested that I start a project to focus on figure drawing. we decided that I'll spend one day a week drawing figures and to explore media and to practice with poses and proportion of the anatomy and how proportions are distorted with composition. this project is to exhaust myself one day a week to really push my understanding and my skill level with figure drawing.

I feel that to push my understanding of figure drawing and my level of skill I shouldn't just explore new things but to recap on what I do know. from previous projects I have felt that my drawing figure abilities had dropped a lot, I'm not saying that my figure drawings are rubbish I just know they are not as good as they used to be.

so the best thing is to introduce the basics. to start a sketchbook of life drawing, iv been life drawing for the best of 10 years before the illustration course and there is where I learnt the most about figure drawing, proportion, the perceptual skill of drawing, gestalt linear perspective and most importantly eye level. So this is something I'm intending to practice again.

also when I had a tutorial with Teresa, before my tutorial with Patrick, with in a conversation about concept art she had suggested that I should start a task that focuses on lighting. experiment with light sources and the angles they hit the form and to play with more than one light source in a piece.

with the directions my tutors have suggested to me, it seems that this is to better my practice as a concept artists. So I recapped on the feed back from the emails that recived concept artists that i have contacted. and im going to aplly the suggestions they made with the suggestions from my tutors.

below are comments from a couple of artconcept artists that i contacted and i feel will help me me push my practice forward.

feedback from concept artists Renaud Roche

feedback from concept artists lorin wood

but the bottom line is what is the tools you feel you can work with the fastest, to produced the highest quality in the shortest amount of time.

the best advice is to draw ALL THE TIME. carry sketchbook with you everywhere you go. study reality and be able to mimic it first. what that does is build up muscle memory so when you create something fantastic it will be imbued with relatable details and a sense of reality. also have a good foundation of the fundamentals, proportion, things like that.

I started by reading and researching figure drawing by reading parts of these books from the library.

I did this as part of touching up on what I already know. saying that there was a lot that i forgot so I'm glad i made the effort of research a topic that I thought I could just start drawing right away.

I dedicated about 4 hours of my time on drawing classical figure drawing, again this is where I learnt most of my drawing techniques. i plan to carry this on for the next few weeks. or i might fill a sketchbook full of classicly drawn poses nudes and cloths models.

I started by drawing the female form for a number of reseans. lets get it out of the way...yes becuase i enjoy drawing them. in my opinion drawing and mastering a female nude is like the foundation of any other figure drawing. if you can draw a female form you can draw male, child, fat thin what ever.

obviously i want to walk away with this project with a stronger ability to draw figures in a concept scene and to be able to say 'ive mastered figure drawing' but i want to walk away with that and have a body of work that shows that. i want to have a sketchbook/sketchbooks showing that iv practiced and studied this hard and i want to some nice rendered work.

so i decided part of my daily task is to draw a pose of someone a nice rendered piece.

i got the strong good looking pfffttt....i cant lie to save my life. i got Tom from our class to stike a pose so i could draw it.

below is my pencil design for the piece, i didnt like the idea of him sat on a chair so i played around with the idea of him sat on barrels or a petrol canister...somthing to fit the look. tom looked veryy urbon this day i might add.

once happy with my pencil work i inked the line work. i used the light box to ink the line work. ever since my traveling man project i feel that the light box gives my work a better profestional finish, its more cleaner. as you can see a dog has apeared. i know this is a figure task but the more i was drawing tom the more i was getting lost in an idea of this urban lad sat with his Dog. (the dog was penciled in before i started to ink it)

im glad i put a dog in there becuase its more character and more menasing feel to it.

i added textures by dragging a semi dry brush across the ink and i used a touth brush for the flicks.

i used white gouache to remove the unwanted flicks and drips.

this is somthing that i use alot of in my practice. i think it gives it a very gritty feel to it and it brings a realistic element to the piece.

finaly it gets digitally coloured. i coloured these in the way i would paint a figure drawing, block colour overlapped by loose and straight stiff strokes. I had tom sat on a rock to fit the look of the piece.