Headless Figures

Inktober Day 3 - Birthday Card idea

Inktober Day 2 - Sci-Fi Scene

Inktober Day 1 - Robot.

Anatomy

This is a bad drawing.

The musculature and structure of the back is completely muddled in this rendering.

This is a little better... but we're still just guessing here.

Let's take a look at a master copy I did from a Da Vinci study 

with some muscular and skeletal overlays.

Sometimes it's better to just learn from the masters and practice fundamental anatomy.  Just because a layer of skin is covering up all of those muscles and bone doesn't mean we can ignore the architecture underneath the figure.

Line

The best lines in figure drawing I think are calligraphic.  Varying thickness, directional, and confident.

Even the quality of the lines you use to draw "through" the body to establish form is important

This was a good experience of not just resorting to faded chalky soft lines.  I reviewed with my professor about the portrait and he added a few of the distinct, dark lines.  I added the rest and it really made the whole composition more defined and more confident.

Poses

Going into these kind of classes, I was expecting nice stationary, simple poses for our sustained drawings.  But I soon found that being able to draw the body in all sorts of poses and tackling that beast of a burden we all know as foreshortening is an essential skill set.

In short, I hate foreshortening.  But I can handle it.