Monday, April 8, 2013

What I've been up to since November, Part 1

Yes, it has been a while! I have been working on a commission, I will post about that in a bit.

In the meantime, here are photos from another project. The Art Student Association of the University of Alaska hosts figure drawing sessions on weekends. Recently they added anatomy study sessions on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday mornings. We do 12 hours of drawing a week, wonderful!

We pick a part of the body, study it anatomically and structurally, and follow up with master drawings, drawings from photographs, drawings from memory, and drawings from live models. It is good to get together with people who are as enthusiastic about drawing as I am, and as interested in improving figure drawing skills. We share a lot of reference material and tips. Below are some of my drawings, copies, and references .

 Classic Human Anatomy, The Artist's Guide to Form, Function, and Movement by Valerie L Winslow, is very useful for its clear diagrams and text.  Some pages I worked from:



Below are my drawings. If you want to learn something, you can't go wrong by making a drawing.




On the page above, I also copied a drawing by the French 18th -19th century artist Jacques-Louis David.

Arnold Schwartzenegger's The New Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding is a bodybuilding classic. I use it for the photographs. Bodybuilders don't look like the rest of us, but the muscles are easy to see. On this page: my copy of a photograph of the young Arnold's back.  Below that is my copy of a drawing by French 18th c artist Joseph-Marie Vien.  You can see how copying different references makes sense, if one's goal is to depict the figure well.



 Below are some recent drawings from live models. Compared to earlier efforts, my drawings are coming through with more energy and accuracy. I look forward to more improvement.



I'm also having fun experimenting with different mediums. The above drawing is  group of quick pen and ink sketches. The one below, from a longer pose, is conte pencil.



More on all this in the next post.


1 comment:

Linda Hill said...

When I was studying to be a Massage therapist we had an anatomy coloring book. Coloring in the body parts was a great learning tool. What a great endeavor for you and your sketches are great.