2 hour practice session focused on the legs

Done as part of a 2 hour class. My current goal is: Better understand human anatomy, so I can render imagined poses

Kim - Site admin January 6, 2022 7:22am

You are getting stuck into shading much too soon. I know shading is fun, and it can often help you to feel like you have a more finished or presentable piece. But once you start shading, it is MUCH harder to adjust proportions! Remember, not every practice piece you do needs to look like something to other people at the end -- you just need to have learned something from the process. Don't start on shading until you have the entire body/pose captured and corrected enough so that the proportions match each other.

I can see here that the upper body is a very different size than the lower body. They don't seem to match each other. Before you get to shading, spend some time measuring different parts of the body against each other. For example, how do the feet in the photo measure up to the width and height of the skull? What about the palms of the hands vs the face? Checking your body parts against one another will help you to get the whole body down on paper in a wholistic way. Once your proportions are correct and make sense together, only then begin with shading. :)

Rashuneagle January 6, 2022 7:30am

Ok will do!

Do you have any suggestions or exercises I can do to help me measure different parts of the body?

Kim - Site admin January 6, 2022 6:16pm

The way I was taught to measure things was with a pencil. Close one eye, and extend your pencil out with a straight arm in front of you. Hold the tip of the pencil so that it is essentially "touching" the tip of the index finger, then choke up your grip so that your other hand marks the wrist. Then move your arm so that the pencil tip touches another part of the body, like the toes, and see how that compares. Are they roughly the same size? Slightly bigger or smaller than each other? You then try to render this sizing comparison on your page.

To be clear, your pencil never actually touches the model (or the computer screen, or ipad, etc.) it just is held at the end of your arm. Using a straight arm helps to make sure you aren't getting confused by having your elbow at different angles and making your hand closer/further away from you and changing up the measurements on you due to perspective. :)

youtube.com/watch?v=BavOGXGcR1o

Rashuneagle January 7, 2022 3:06am

Kim that's really helpful. I'm definitely going to try it when I practice tonight

Cooped January 6, 2022 8:48pm

It's great you're taking time to work on specific secttions of anatomy. Right now I think the thing that stands out the most to me is it looks like the drawing is a little stiff. I think because you had a lot of time to work on this piece you lost some of the gestural line quality you typically see in figure drawing. Also I know you were focusing on the legs, but if you are going to include other areas of the body like you did, I would try to make them more proportional (Head should be larger, arms should be thicker and longer)

Polyvios Animations January 7, 2022 1:52am

Hi again, Rashuneagle.

Great job, consistently, on your legs of the human form. Way to go on your bones and muscles. My tiny, littler suggestion is that your organic human bone and muscular structure is not fluid and gestural enough to me. Would you kindly loosen up and lighten up your lines of the human legs with your very first 1 hour class of the figure studies, all flipped horizontally and not horizontally? The truth is that if you do this approach, then your observations and feelings will become more alive and the most motivated from within. For more tips and tricks, check out links 1, 2, and 3.

Good luck to you, and I hope these links all help you out.