A into G

Wow over a month without posting. I get distracted way too easily... the little bumps in the road are seeming more like temporary road closures. I'm way behind on emails but I'm getting through them now... I'm sorry!

I haven't really done anything portfolio worthy (since starting this whole endeavor) and I think even though my skills aren't anywhere near where I want them to be... I have to get some portfolio pieces going, because some of the stuff I still have in my portfolio is from 2005 which is more than just terribly embarrassing.

Fortunately the time of year has come where the sale is ending at the game store I work at and it will soon be open to redecoration. As part of that I'm painting a bunch of cardboard cutouts of game characters from existing games and from my own imagination. I'm going to use this as a chance to design some characters that might be worthy portfolio pieces. I had probably better try to do a makeshift redecoration of my website and some business cards in the hope that maybe the cutouts might generate some interest.

Here is my first, a Hydralisk from StarCraft for the upcoming release of the game. This is copied so the art isn't mine.

And I've acquired even more sketchbooks..so I have all of these random sizes and formats now..  Some of these are really embarrassing. Sometimes I wonder if posting /everything/ is a bad idea.... I guess I have been doing a fair bit, but not learning... just redrawing the same mistakes over and over.

Anatomy Sketches 07

Some head studies and stuff. I always have trouble with the shape of the head! I usually make the face too small and low. I want to do some male vs female skull studies soon as well because my females sometimes look masculine and my males look girly.

I painted a skull in watercolour, but again stopped paying attention and went into automatic copy mode.. argh.

Daily Sketch Group sketch and Eye Studies

The first pic is just some quick roughs for the Daily Sketch Group topic: "CREEPY HULKING ROBOT HAS SMALL, PALE, HUMAN-LIKE FACE"
 
The other pics are some studies (of eyes in particular). I tried drawing in pen as knox suggested, it was quite fun actually and is a whole lot cleaner. I'm pretty happy with the eyes (not so much the heads) because most of them are my own, not copied.

Anatomy sketches 03

I did some more anatomy studies from posemaniacs. I'm still unsure if they are helping or not. I've been doing them in under 90 seconds and when I look back at them I can't really remember drawing them (sounds odd!) but I think what is happening is the I'm focusing on the shapes and negative space so much so, that I don't look at the overall figure and think about how the limbs relate to it. It's like I'm seeing it as an object to be drawn and not a human figure. This is a great method for people beginning to draw because if encourages you to draw the shapes that you see rather than the symbolic shapes you have established in your mind. I think the difficulty I'm having is switching back to that symbolic way of looking at things, only the symbols I need to remember are the shapes of the human anatomy and how they relate to each other in a 3D space and as an organic whole.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that when somebody untrained begins to draw, usually they are wired to the left side of the brains. To copy and image accurately, it becomes important to draw using the right side of the brain (Betty Edwards has written a famous book all about this) but when if comes to drawing things from your mind, you have to use the right side of your brain the recognise information and store it for the left side of your brain to use later when drawing without reference. I'm so used to copying images that my mind is not really actively studying what I am drawing.. so I think some slower-paced anatomy studies will give me the time I need to make those associations. Also, like any learning, some activities based on what I've learnt will help. I'm currently participating in the character of the week activity at conceptart.org which will encourage me to put what I've learnt about the human form into practice and also give me the opportunity to receive some feedback.

Anatomy sketches 02

I did some more anatomy studies and a bit of a focus on hands. I find myself sometimes looking for 2D shapes and negative space when sketching these, when really I should be focusing on the 3D form of the underlying bones and muscles. I've got to try and shake that habit and concentrate.

Argh, sometimes I also feel as though my art has gone backwards! Some older drawings will have a really well drawn hand or face and I wonder if I just fluked it or if I had a better understanding of anatomy back then that I have since forgotten from a lack of practice?

Anatomy sketches

I tried to get some anatomy studies done. Pose Maniacs is a great reference tool for anatomy drawing, especially when you can't decide what to draw.

I don't know if it's obvious to anyone else but I changed the way I thought about drawing the anatomy on each page. I think this top image (the last one I drew) came out the best, I used few strokes and thought about them more carefully before drawing them. I do wonder though if the rushed nature of the studies allows me enough time to absorb what is really happening with the bone and muscle positions.

I did some facial studies as well from a book- at first not worrying about how they looked or if they even resembled a symmetrical person's face. The last one was supposed to look a bit more like the model in the photographs.I don't feel like they helped me much - I seem to have no problem copying things but absorbing the anatomical information is another thing.

I'm sure even in copying a lot of images though, you brain will start to remember the shapes and invent shortcuts which means they are being retained somehow.