Traditional art

Human figure & Anatomy

Submission Pieces

New ☆*Life Drawing*☆ Entry's

Human faces

Practice during Enhancement week

After four months without drawing a human face properly, I wanted to practice before our brief to maximize my enjoyment throughout the new project.

I have been to quite a few life drawing sessions at the Drawing Centre in the past four months (as well as setting my own practice sessions at home using the Line-of-action website) to study the human body but those study sessions never went into paying attention to the construction or appearance of their heads - in fact many quick poses were headless...

I’m very happy with the portraits I have drawn and I am relieved that I did not forget how to do them. The first portrait (Raffey Cassidy) on the left was made entirely using a Biro pen (no under sketch). I'm surprised I managed to keep the page this clean using it because I was fully expecting to complete it with extremely messy lines of biro across her face. I do have to owe some of that to such a cheap but useful pen though, which almost acted like a pencil because of how light I could actually draw with it. Despite the minor errors of her drooping mouth and nose being a little too low on her face, and her right eye not being a little higher, I am very happy with it.

The Human Skull

Week 1- Practice Session

Today we were studying the underlying structure of the human face and started by drawing skulls in class. I don't often struggle to draw faces and have drawn skulls a handful of times without much struggle. This lesson, however, was very different and I believe it is because I was no longer drawing from a two-dimensional image so I was struggling to focus on the proportions and perspective. Normally, when I draw something a second time, I also manage to identify and improve what I had gotten wrong, so it was strange how despite studying the same skull three times, the proportions came out looking exactly the same. This told me that what I was seeing was fundamentally wrong and that my perception was biased.

these are the skull studies I did three times because I was unsatisfied with it and wanted to find out what I was getting wrong. I got some help from Kras on skull 2, and skull 3 is the worst proportionally because I spent very little time on it. In all three I can see that I made the forhead much taller, and the jaw much shorter. I also didn't take perspective into account and drew the eyesockets and cheekbones in line with eachother rather than having the right side higher than the left. I drew the jaw with a lot more curvature than it should have and I could have drawn the nasal hole further to the left. Its surprising to see these weak areas because - except for the unbalanced eyesockets and cheeckbones - they were all things I had noticed but was convinced that I was wrong. The forehead for instance; I could see that my drawing had a much larger forhead but refused to reduce it because I thought it would make the skull look more silly and cartoonish than it already did. I thought the eyes looked far too large on the head but was then surprised to find that it had nothing to do with them.

Main point to take away from this;

ALWAYS THINK OF PERSPECTIVE!!! just because it is an organic shape doesn't mean perspective should be forgotten.
A smaller forhead will make something look less cute. I'm not sure why at the time I thought it was reversed. I think it is because I thought a larger head would make the eyes look smaller in comparison and therefore less styalised & cute.
I was too far away to actually measure with my pencil, the skull was the size of my thumb and my pencil almost all of it.... I should listen to Kras next time and not be shy to move forward for my own benefit : I

Try drawing the same skull using a volumetric box and then only using primitive shapes. I should also try adding muscle tissue over that.

I went back to the studios on Wednesday to try and draw the skull again by myself and was surprised to find how easy it was. This took less time than any of the skulls I had drawn the day before and it has better structure than the entire two pages combined. This took less than 20min and I even got some simple rendering in withought any trouble. This was so strange because I had been so convinced I was struggling because I couldn't study from life as well as a picture but now I noticed that I am still very affected by being surrounded by people when I draw. I really hope to get better at this because it's so bad I hadn't even noticed I hold my pencil differently when I am alone verses when there are others in the room. I think it is mostly to do with the fact that I don't get absorbed into the subject I am study because I become more aware of my own surroundings, but even my lines become unconfident and sloppy when trying to unsuccessfully entertain imaginary wandering eyes. The fact that I was much closer to the skull with a better view of it's perspective probably also helped draw it easier.

Exploring Contrast - White on Black paper

Week 7 - Practice Session

This was a really fun practice session experimenting with white pencil on black sugar paper. The white pencil was really powdery so I was hesitant to start at first. I started with the brightest areas of the skulls. It was really interesting to now be seeking the light areas of the subject rather than the darks.

I found it so much easier to draw these skull in correct proportion without much construction and I think this is because we can identify shapes easier in highlights in these highlights unlike in shadows. Shadows seem to be scattered too much to identify as any shape which can distract us from the forms of the object we are studying. Highlights are far easier to track and to spot if it is off. This made the process of drawing them so much more relaxing. The rendering aspect was a little less relaxing because I was trying not to smudge everything or press too hard in areas that needed to be dark.. but even if I went too bright, the putty rubber picked it up well.

I was quite hesitant to add the shadows because I didn't know how it would affect the subject itself, but it turned out so much more visually believable once I did.

Anatomy of the Human body

Week 1 - Lecture

Head to Hight ratio

I wanted to test Andrew Loomis' '7 and a half heads tall' theory on many different people so that I could see the impact for myself. I firstly checked models, and then average athletes. I was really surprised to see the shortest female (gymnast) of 4'8 still reach 7.5 heads even when the taller females only reached 7 or even less. The way the photographer scaled them could be effecting this but I think the more impactful reason could be their poses and differences in skull length; these small difference add up.

Summary;

shoulder width: 3x head
neck length: 1/3 head
arms length : 3x head
ribcage length: 1.25 head
Balancing posture
neck leans forward
Contraposto

average female = 165cm /5'4 (often 6.5 ~ 7.5 heads tall)
average male = 176cm / 5'9 (often 7.5 ~ 8 heads tall)
average proportions : 7.5 heads tall
Idealistic model proportions / fashion illustration: 8 ~ 8.5 heads tall
Heroic proportions : 9 heads tall
Smaller head and height ration the younger the character.

Plaster Head

Week 2 - Assessable Component

I need to reduce the darks drastically. It is far too dark. Also I need to soften her expression. She looks too stern. too much attention to her brow - which is too low.

The cut across her cheek is too sharp and distracting. There are no muscles or fat deposits that act this way so this needs to be softened and/or changed.

Here I was advised to thicken her upper lip, shift the base to the left to make it look more balanced, and widen her head.

I tried to work into my values once I was happy with the overall construction of the head but I was struggling to decide on how I was going to approach it. I tried adding some background colour to my photographs and increase the contrast of the shadows and highlights to try and 'vary value range' as advised but I really didn't like them. I actually preferred the subtlety of my unedited reference - which had very little value range - because it looked light and delicate.

New Plan!! :) I decided to have the negative space behind her neck darker so that it reduces the contrast it gives to the shadows. I want to bring forward attention to her face so I want the highest contrast to be situated there and push back her neck and hair. This could be a struggle with such a bright and high contrasting ear though...

Artist Unfortunately Unknown >:[

By Dorian Iten

Artist Unfortunately Unknown >:[

At this point, I decided to stop working on the piece for a moment. The line weight, proportions, and everything were alright (for now), but I knew that if I continued closely following my reference, I wouldn't be happy with the outcome, no matter how hard I tried with my rendering or how realistic it turned out.

I knew I wanted the lighting to make the bust look dramatic and intriguing, just like the inspirational pieces above. However, my reference and its lighting setup did not satisfy this, and changing the contrast or adding a background wouldn't improve it either. I wanted to change something about the bust itself.

Since we all sat so far away from our subject, the perspective we observed was very flat. If we were to draw our vanishing points, they would be extremely far away. Being so distant, there was little to no distortion of the bust sculpture, which, in my opinion, would make it extremely difficult to make it look intriguing when drawn. There would be no illusion of materiality or form to create, as our reference already looks like a two-dimensional image.

To present my point more effectively, I photographed the bust from both a closeup view (left) and a distant view (right). Both have their own pros and cons. Starting with the left, it looks personal, feels more emotional, real, and you can clearly see forms, plane changes, and details. Despite this, it could also look silly if too distorted, can appear too invasive in other art mediums, and restricts the visibility of its surrounding environment. On the right, it looks dramatic and stoic, but it lacks definition, feels detached, and looks almost isometric; which isn't ideal, in my opinion, as a singular area of interest as an art piece which would be displayed on another two-dimensional page.

The image on the far right is a more interesting angle. Since the viewer is looking up at the sculpt, it appears more dominant, powerful, and important. the size and closeness also allows for better quality details to be shown through. The distortion caused by perspective makes it fascinating, and it's forms can be interpreted with ease.

I'm not really sure what to say about this process since it's very straightforward... I looked for the plains of the face and tried to match their value...

Reflection

This was quite an uneventful piece. apart from the fact that this is the first face we had to draw in our course (which I was excited about) there wasn't really anything new I learnt through it apart from the fact that I LoVe redoing things (I don't). I'm happy that I was looking for different ways I could make this boring sculpt a little more interesting because it allowed me to make a piece that implied foreshortening :)

The process reminded me a lot of my very first trad piece back in block one where we were tasked to study primitives. This was also a subject which has no value variation just like the white blocks so it was interesting to see how I approached this study with the new things I learnt throughout block 1 and 2. I still did struggle to balance the value variation but I think it turned out alright.

I went to the Drawing Centre to light the head in different ways because, at the time, I was unsatisfied with it and felt that I could push my piece even further... but I kind of ruined it in the process and I should have just started an entirely new piece to explore this idea.

Figure Drawing Practice

Week 2 - personal & drawing centre practice sessions

New ☆*Life Drawing*☆ Entry

figure drawing at home using Photographs

10 - 15 min warm up sketches using references from Line-of-action.com. I wanted to take my time on these and instead of trying to complete them as fast as I can, I wanted to be mindful of every line I put down. This made the process far more relaxing and it also produced outcomes which are more proportionately accurate. I am honestly really happy with these sketches. They are a lot more confident than the last time I did figure studies and since I took a little longer on them than the usual 5min, I got to even look at the head, hands and feet (they are often left undrawn or done extremely poorly). I still need to work on simplifying feet well. The legs on the top left sketch is also too thin.

life drawing session at the DC

I could have gone darker here, also worked on the chair and cloth that is near her legs (quite vague there) and FEET..

could improve her FEET and the shadows on her back. Also would be cool if I could draw her tattoos.

I really like the top half of this one :) bottom half needs some work.. legs are too short

All I have to say about this one is feet.. I like the shadows cast on her right leg. Her face is drawn poorly

Today's session was wonderful!! I am really glad I had a warm up at home before coming into the session because it allowed me to remember my usual tendencies so my outcomes therefore weren't effected by the fact that I was surrounded by people so much. I also really liked the lighting studies we did. In previous lighting studies, it always made my figures look muddy rather than it aiding the forms, but in this session I think they turned out quite successful. I also managed to add faces to them which I'm super happy about :) no more headless bodies!! I do need to study feet though. I'm alright with hands, they are quite fun to draw if the time allows it but the feet I draw look goofy and like formless blobs despite trying multiply times.

Finally getting to draw a female figure was a nice change. Her poses where lot more fluid than the males' so that might have also helped me draw more entertaining figures.

Life Drawing

Week 3 - Practice Session

I had done life drawing at home and then at the drawing centre last week, but today we finally did a life drawing session in class! The outcomes weren't as fluid and effective as my last week's poses but I will blame that on the fact I was barely awake at the time. There are quite a lot of searching lines, and I didn't give myself enough time to draw his head properly.

I was drawing his legs a little too short at times because I was trying to combat my tendency to always draw legs longer

Male Figure Drawing

Week 4 - Assessable Component

We did a warm up of 5 x 2min figure drawings before beginning this study.

We did a warm up of 5 x 2min figure drawings before beginning this study. I then started to block in landmarks but I was drawing farrr to big and had to restart.

I drew a thumbnail before I began, but I feel like I didn't plan it so well because he is positioned a little to the left of the page. Anyways, Here I roughly sketched in the landmarks of the body. A few things to correct; His head is drawn far too big and his feet are far too short

Here I corrected his head and feet size with a bit of guidance. I also tidied and sharpened my outlines. I began to add some hatching in areas where I could spot the darkest shadows or highest contrast / highest value change. I have never rendered a human body before so I was a little hesitant on going too dark too soon. My approach is very patchy which clearly shows that I have yet to understand and practice implementing core shadows confidently to my subjects...

This is the result from 2 hours of drawing from life. This is the stage I was at when our in class session ended and I would have to continue the piece without a reference of the pose or lighting. I am quite happy with this at the moment because I have managed to capture the most important areas of the figure, enough for me to fill the gaps in through imagination. I could have suggested a bit more of the shadows but I think I have enough to work with at the moment.

At home I tried to darken my values and introduce higher contrast, but I was struggling to render decisively without a reference to mindlessly copy. The values on his torso is very crudely done. The shadows are far too muddy and the transition from shadow to light is very abrupt, which doesn't suggest much form and doesn't reveal those interesting reflections I could observe in class.

I went in with a light HB/2 to fill in the pale areas that can be seen in the process picture on the left. This helps to emphasise the little areas which are bouncing light directly back at me instead of having an ambiguous white void bordered by simple silhouette outlines. This also helps to push him out of the background. This still lacks visual interest because his entire body is rendered using a very limited value range. Also he is looking too stock and short, and his legs seem too parallel to me, which makes him look stiff and ridged.

As always, I decided to make my life harder by completely restarting a certain part of the piece which I was not happy with; the legs. I had already been told that I had drawn his legs too short for his particular body but I was advised to simply keep that in mind for the future and to continue with what I had... Obviously I could not restrain myself from correcting it as I moved further into rendering. Not only that but the parallel feet really weren't helping make this pose feel comfortable or three-dimensional so I just had to change it!!

Now he looks a lot more relaxed and neutral - which is the vibe I had initially felt when looking at his pose. The feet are no longer unnaturally parallel, and his legs look longer after having extended his knees further out. I started to add some of the shadows in, keeping form in mind. I think this has a much better form read than I had produced the first time so I'm happy I decided to go all out to have a chance to improve it. Erasing such a large portion of the piece wasn't easy.

This time, I really wanted to push the value variety to accentuate the appearance of three-dimensionality. I did this by keeping the limbs that are further away lighter and with less contrast than the libs closes to us; extremely exaggerating aerial diffusion. I am a lot more satisfied with this pose in comparison to the previous, stiff one. The curves repeated across the entire piece helps to exude a relaxing atmosphere, much better than the straight legs that seemed to unnaturally cut the pose in two.

I worked on darkening his stomach and the top of his thighs a bit. I also started to suggest the cloth's form. I am very glad I practiced drawing cloth from imagination in my composition piece from Block 2 because the knowledge I obtained from practicing it there came really handy when trying to draw the drapery on the chair here. I still need to find a way to hide the mark of the stubborn foot I had erased, and bring the piece to an end by completing the cloth, suggesting more of the background, and bringing in some more interesting contrasts on his skin. (specifically the top half).

I got some feedback between the last progress picture and this final one. The suggestions where to get rid of the chair feet and only focus on the cloth, suggest a better sense of depth between the arm closest to us and his torso, and make his clothing more visible so that it makes more sense why his thighs are thinner (clothing causes skin to become compressed).

Reflection

This was quite a fun exercise. I am quite satisfied with the outcome considering it is my first time I ever finish a full body render from life!!! I wasn't expecting it to be a successful outcome considering I would have no reference beyond the 2hour session but I found it quite easy to keep up. The practice we had in our previous block really helped when it came to rendering things from imagination. Apart from this however, I did still struggle to be decisive when approaching my rendering because I hadn't set clear shadow boundaries when in the session. I am glad I tried to correct his legs despite having gone far into rendering because it really helped make the figure look relaxed and cohesive as a whole. I should make sure to change irregularities of the pose that I feel isn't working a lot earlier on (especially if I also receive feedback on it) because erasing such a large area of the piece made it very confusing and stressful to work around because the marks couldn't be erased entirely.

When going into this piece, I really wanted to be able to replicate the shininess of his skin. This was really tricky to create whilst not making it look like a plain change. I think I managed to imply the reflectivity on his head and top of his arm but I didn't manage to capture that beautiful highlight that ran down his torso :( speaking of torso... the torso was so difficult to get right! and I don't even think I managed to get it right even now. His chest is probably the worst technically because I was quite confused with how the light would hit it.

Female Figure Drawing

Week 5 - Assessable Component

For the first thirty minutes, I mapped out the main landmarks and forms. Next time I have a subject that lies predominantly on the left, I should draw my thumbnail on the right (also applies if the subject would lie predominantly on the top of the page; make sure to draw your thumbnail well out of the way; bottom edges). From here, my lecturer helped me notice how I may have drawn her legs a little too short, and I thought her head was also looking a little too small.

I corrected these problems here, and started to add small suggestions of shadows. I was very happy with the torso, but I struggled to balance my time properly to capture her likeness in her face, and getting her hands right; both of which I was drawing too short. I was dotting all over the place which wasn't very helpful because once I finally went back to start finalising the hand that was holding the stick, it had moved and I would have to redraw the landmarks.. and never finish; the cycle would continue.

Since our in-class session came to an end, I didn't really have any more references for her face or hands to work on so I just continued the piece by rendering the shadows. I found this a little challenging now that I had to imply a lighter skin tone. I didn't want to leave areas blank unless they where highlights, but whenever I did try to render the lighter areas, the value came out looking too dark for her skin tone. Also my lecturer pointed out how her feet are massive (which was very funny to notice) but it implied a sense of foreshortening so it wasn't bringing the piece down too much...

started to change her face, add more for the shadow transition on her legs, and introduced a higher contrast in the focal areas. I need to push her left arm (holding the stick) & leg further back by lightly shading it in with the background to decrease it's contrast.

worked on her head, core shadows, and background. I need to work on balancing the values & smoothen the transitions. Also sharpening the rendering on her face & torso. fix her hands, and reduce the scattered noise in the background.

darkened the background, worked on the cloth, pushed the core shadow higher to make her leg look fuller, and worked on hands and face :). her hand still looks like seaweed and her feet are non-existent. I need to clean up the core shadows and smoothen the background gradient.

Reflection

I'm really happy with how this turned out! I definitely see improvement since my last study by the way my lines wrap around the figure more effortlessly :) It looks a lot more delicate than the last piece because the lines aren't so thick and dark and I am also happy with the cloth I drew which compliments this delicateness. I am most satisfied with the rendering on her torso and legs (which is good because these cover most of the page). This leaves the smaller aspects of her body - hands, feet, arms, and head - looking quite out of place in comparison due to their confused rendering.

I'm quite satisfied with her face considering I had no reference. Her eyes might be the only thing I think doesn't really match the model's... and maybe the model might have slightly thinner lips? But regardless, I think I did a good job capturing her likeness because I usually have a very hard time drawing faces from imagination.

I am also happy with how I manipulated her hair so that it looks more three-dimensional. I tried to increase the contrast around her face because it is supposed to be a focus point but this might have flattened it because there is a lack of mid-tonal values that help to transition into those darks and lights. This is why her face doesn't look as round and soft as the rest of her body.

I struggled to render areas such as the collar bone, the feet, hands, around her knees and shins, and outstretched arm. Knees are always quite tricky but it was fun to figure it out using myself as reference. The arm was also much easier to check than with the male's figure because I could use myself as reference too! Of course I could use myself as reference for both genders but when it comes to rendering, since male's have less fat and muscles are more visually pronounced, it's tricky to guess those small details when I can't see them on myself.

I'm not sure how I feel about the thick outlines I put down. I think they are useful to bring an aspect of the body out further but I may have over done it. For instance, I like the use of the outline on the leg where it helps separate it from the back leg but I don't think it should be used so thickly on the area that it is in shadow because it is already being pushed back with it's dark value. Looking at the arm closest to us, I like the line that runs down on the left side to push it out from the background is successful but the line that outlines the inside edge of her arm doesn't help much and should only make use of it's light value to separate it from the shadowed torso. I think the reason I did this was because that little are of negative space between her arm and torso was also light so I was trying to separate them HOWEVER I could have easily just darkened that little negative space in so that the arm can receive the light. Right not, that little triangle is too much lighter than her arm which shouldn't be the case.

Primary Ref

my silly reference to help me understand the shadow placement for her outstretched arm.

I nearly gasped in the train when I saw the perfect reference to help me out with her hand... it was so hard to get a good picture... but what a success :D! too bad I couldn't replicate it well in my piece.

Grade: 85/100 (+5% from Block 1)

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