Thursday 1 September 2011

Flow Rider







I'm in Florida! It's hot and humid and  I'll be updating MUCH less frequently, but still aiming for once every 2-3 days.

Animals are a LOT easier to draw than people...


I've completed a lot of figure drawing sessions recently,but these are the 2 sets while I feel are most presentable, with the first image showing some 30 second figure drawings and the latter showing 60 second animal drawings.

With only 30 seconds to capture a whole drawing, you really force yourself to learn what's important about a pose. Going in the classic Western style of top left to bottom right along the rows, you can probably see that, even in this 10 minute study, I made quite a bit of improvement. Most noticeable in the fact that some of the earlier pieces are grossly out of proportion or missing limbs all together...

I learned near the end that one of the best ways to ensure your figure has the right look and proportions is to draw the curve of the back, and if needed, line out the shoulders and hips.

Drawing directional lines on the face in the later images of the human figures also helped give a better sense of mood.

The animal drawings were another 10 minute study, though the order of these is more mixed up. Technically, it went Butterfly -> Colt -> Dog -> Bird -> Monkey -> Elephant -> Crab -> Horse -> Parrot -> Fish.

The parrot looks by far the best and that's 100% due to it being the most simple shape. 2 lines power over the entire piece and, after those 2 lines are drawn, the rest of the image was blocking in the detail, to the point where I had time to do the eyes and patterns, which are what I always leave till last.

Also, that IS a crab, not a spider. I'm afraid I'm terribly arachnophobic, and I was unlucky enough to encounter an image of a spider while doing this exercise. As such, I just skipped over it to the next piece which happened to be the crab, thank god!

I do most of my figure drawing from free, online sites these days. I still hope to go to more figure drawing classes in the future, but these are still a great way to practice from the comfort of your own home. And better yet, they're free!

Human Only: http://www.posemaniacs.com/thirtysecond

Creature or Human: http://www.pixelovely.com/gesture/animalanatomy.php

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