Traditional Art

Animal Anatomy

Outcomes

Think Tank Science Museum Trip

Week 1 - Practice Session

We visited the Birmingham Science Museum to practice drawing animals from life using the taxidermy exhibition. It was a rewarding experience, though I’m not used to drawing animals - especially from life.

I naturally gravitate towards birds, so I spent most of my time sketching them. Their colours, feathers, unique beaks, and varied shapes and sizes fascinate me. While I’m not particularly proud of my work - due to poor rendering and inconsistent line quality - I feel the proportions are at least satisfactory.

Foreshortening was especially challenging, as certain angles made the forms feel unnatural. My favourite sketch was of a toucan, which I attempted twice to refine its proportions and line of action. I prefer my second attempt, a smaller sketch, as it has a more confident silhouette and better shape language, making it closer to my reference.

Animal Anatomy -

Week 1 - Final Piece Practice Session

Goals for this task:

Demonstrate good understanding of animal anatomy - focus on proportions and muscle structure.

Compelling impression of texture, and lighting. High level of realistic detail

Stretch Goal:

Include composition elements of the animal's natural environment!!!

After being extremely indecisive about what animal I was going to commit to for this task, I finally chose the pangolin. I had seen one at the taxidermy exhibition last week and was drawn to its textures and colors. The intricate scales seemed like a fun challenge and a great way to practice pattern and surface properties, which we focused on last block.

I hesitated at first because this task emphasizes muscle structure -something not visible on a pangolin. However, I can still demonstrate realistic detail, proportion, lighting, and texture. Hopefully, I can focus on muscle structure in future tasks while also experimenting with colour in this piece

Thumbnail Sketch

Sketching this animal felt a bit too close to my comfort zone which made me question whether I should have chosen a more challenging subject, like a horse (note to self: I’ll try drawing a horse next time!). After mapping out the direction of the scales, I used a mechanical pencil to define the closer parts of the pangolin, such as its head, arm, and the top of its arched back. As I was set on using colour but didn’t have colouring pencils in class, I didn't have much to do but look for background ideas, analyse colouring inspirations, and research tips on using coloured pencils - because I have a lot to learn.

COLOURING & TEXTURES

Rendering inspiration!!! Although I have never really been much into using traditional colour mediums or drawing animals, these pieces by Fabrizio Caforio really inspired me. Although I know I have struggled with colouring pencils in the past, these pieces have made me want to step outside of my comfort zone and give them a go again. Since this won't be an assessable piece there is less risk if this doesn't turn out the way I want it to. For artworks depicting animals in particular, I feel like a lot of their appeal comes from the use of colour. If you can't see the beautiful subtle hue shifts it doesn't feel as alive and captivating. I especially love the environments he has framed the two animals in, almost more interesting than the animals themselves. I definitely want to try and render a background inspired by these to these environments above. I chose a reference shot which looks down at the Pangolin so I won't be able to include the wonderful sky gradients he has used but I can definitely try and create other interesting gradients of my own through other means.

Grasslands

Savanna - dirt, shingle & twigs

Savanna - sand, large rocks & foliage

Waterhole

Pangolins live in a variety of habitats: from savannas, to grasslands and swamp forests. To choose what kind of environment I will draw in my study, I collected a small selection of references with closeups on their textures.

I'm drawn to the last two environments. The vibrant red sand contrasts nicely with the fresh greenery. The waterhole is also refreshing and has beautiful reflections which will be fun to recreate. I will try to combine these two environments for the backdrop of my pangolin :)

I took my time, patiently building up colour. Since colouring pencils don’t erase well, every mark I make is almost permanent. Because of this, I started on the areas that require the darkest values, that way, any mistake I make will still be light enough to draw over and hide at a later stage. I could have been a lot less hesitant with the pressure here to speed up the process but I haven't worked with colouring pencils for a long time so I am still getting to know how to layer colours effectively. I used oranges, browns, and yellows to try and recreate the delicate earthy & peachy tones of a Pangolin's scales.

I think at this stage I am pretty happy with the focus point, shadows, highlight grouping, and anatomy so I think I can speed up the colouring from here. I can block out the pangolin's body more confidently because I am happy with the anatomy and don't believe there needs any changes. I should also commit to placing the darkest shadows down so that I know how deep the mid-tones should be.

To reduce the grainy texture, I started pressing harder to eliminate the visible paper underneath. I also used a white coloured pencil to blend the colours, but it still looks a bit too grainy and could benefit from bolder tones.

I haven’t rendered the background yet - partly because I was worried it might diminish the aerial diffusion, which I was already losing during the rendering process. Adding a background in a similar colour group felt risky, but despite not brining it to the finished state I would have preferred, I’m glad I pushed myself outside my comfort zone to experiment with coloured pencils.

Animal Anatomy - Skeletal Study

Week 3 - Final Piece Practical Task

Goals for this task:

Demonstrate good understanding
detailed tonal study of a skeleton from observation. aim for good composition, accurate perspective, and anatomically correct structure of the skeleton. measured drawing is important. Your shading technique(s) should be suitable for a realistic representation of shape, tone, form and surface detail of the bones.

I loved this graphite study of the horse so much that I want to incorporate elements of its rendering method into my own work.

The two pieces on the side are also among my favorites, but when comparing them to our live reference, I notice the bones appear brighter in reality. To achieve the same effect on paper, I could either darken the bones to make them stand out against the blank page - altering what I see for clarity - or keep the bones true to life by darkening the background, as seen in the piece above, to make them shine more dramatically.

I chose to study the cat skeleton in class because I'm thinking of sculpting a cat with clay in our next few lessons. I started off as usual, jotting down a simple sketch of what I could see. I had to redraw the back legs a few times so that it would look accurately foreshortened so on the left you can see how the back feet are a lot further down on the age than in the image on the right.

I moved the pelvis higher to make the body sit taller than the head, creating a sense of space with a slightly elevated viewpoint. With the structure adjusted and I was finally happy with it, I refined the bone outlines and began rendering the darkest shadows closest to me. Since the bones were very pale, I decided to shade the background to enhance contrast - but this time instead of cross hatching, I am lightly smudging.

Inspired by the horse study, I used a thicker, darker outline in key areas to draw attention. This increased contrast between the dark background and light bones, helping those areas appear closer and more defined.

I also replicated the study’s smooth background shading. Normally, I use cross-hatching, but this time I smudged the graphite to create soft gradients. This worked far better for this piece, as it allowed the bones to stand out more. The high contrast and sharp details in the bones, against the softer, lower-contrast background, created a stronger sense of depth and focus

I'm happy with the outcome, as I feel I’ve captured the depth of the bones and the light source well. The contrast between sharp and soft lines helped the skull and front part of the cat skeleton stand out from the page.

I could have refined the back feet bones a bit more, but I don’t think it detracts from the piece since the focal areas—particularly the skull and spine—are well-executed with a strong range of values. To take this study further, I could overlay muscle tissue using tracing paper for a more in-depth anatomical exploration.

Animal Clay Sculpture [Day 1]

Week 4 - Creating the wire frame

I chose a cat for this study because it connects to the skull and muscle anatomy work from our last practical session. It also shares some body proportions with a raccoon - the subject of my sculpture in game production -though not in terms of fur, which is key since I want to emphasize muscle structure in this assessable piece.

While raccoons are larger and fluffier than cats, both have arched spines that allow them to curve upward to appear bigger and more intimidating—though this trait is more pronounced in raccoons. An interesting difference is that raccoons’ tails always curve downward, whereas cats often hold theirs up for balance.

or my cat sculpture, I’m combining features of a Sphynx and a Siamese. I love how the Sphynx’s lack of fur makes its muscle structure highly visible, while the Siamese has a sleek coat that will be easier to sculpt in clay compared to a fluffier breed - especially for my first attempt. I arranged my reference board so all the cats face or walk in a similar direction. This makes it easier to compare their structures, highlighting both their differences and similarities in each image.

Here I was looking at animal sculpts made by artists to analyse what I liked about each one and WHY they were so effective. They all have a clear line of action that flows across them all and within the detail and muscles, there are some really interesting sharp shadow shapes created which highlight the effective textures they have made.

WIRE ARMATURE & TINFOIL BASE

Today was an interesting lesson. We started off with twisting a single piece of wire (folded in half) to build a sturdy spine. Starting at the head, we twirled the two sides of the folded wire to kame the neck. Once it is long enough to reach the shoulders, we separate the two sides and twirl it with another piece of wire. I spent a long time trying to get the pose right. I wanted to think about an interesting pose which remained sturdy (three limbs in contact with the ground?), but had an intriguing rhythm which revealed the cat's flexing and extension muscles in the torso, legs, and neck. After that, We used tinfoil and masking tape to cover the wire to make a sturdier base to lay our clay on for next lesson.

9 cm = neck

3 cm = clavicles

14 cm = legs

14 cm = torso's spine

14 cm = tail

The masking tape doesn't stick particularly well (since the whole point of masking tape is for it to be removed without ruining the surface) but what masking tape is good for is the rougher texture it has which will be better for the clay to grip onto later.

I want to remove and cut down the tail and front paw because they’re too thick with tinfoil and masking tape.

Animal Clay Sculpture Day 2

Week 5 - Adding the clay

In this lesson, we added clay to the sculpture, focusing on building up the basic forms by pressing the clay firmly onto the masking tape-covered armature. I started to see the drawbacks of using so much tape and tinfoil from the previous session, as the armature ended up being too thick. This made it difficult to trim down certain areas I wanted to refine because the bulkiness of the armature restricted my ability to shape it.

A key takeaway from this lesson is to always score the surface when adding large amounts of clay so it sticks properly. Additionally, it’s easier to remove clay than to add it, so it’s best to start with large quantities and cut down from there.

Animal Clay Sculpture Day 3

Week 6 - more clay

Kras please can you send me the images :)

In this session, I tried adding muscle definition and we worked on the head and ears. My lecturer helped me with the ears by taking a long section of clay, sticking it firmly onto the top of the head to ensure stability, and then curving the ends into ear-like shapes. This method ensured that the ears were sturdy and wouldn’t fall off.

I still feel like I’m working against my armature rather than with it. I keep trying to remove sections and end up revealing the tape underneath, which isn’t ideal and makes the process more challenging.

Animal Clay Sculpture Day 4

Week 7 - adding details

My first attempt XO

The right side is where my lecturer helped me with the face and the left side is what I had done previously. The one on the right looks a lot more cat-like and includes the eyeball in the sculpt.

In this session, I focused largely on the head and face. My first attempt at sculpting the face was looking too human-like because I added eyelids. My plan was to add eyeballs afterward, but this workflow was problematic as it would distort the eyelid shape once I pressed clay into the socket anyways.

When my lecturer came by, he pointed out that cat eyes don’t have human-like eyelids and suggested using clay to create a smooth transition from the forehead, eyelid, and nose, making the shape flatter and more uniform. This advice was really helpful. After refining the eyes, I also worked on the ears, shaping them more sharply.

Later, my other lecturer joined me to refine the face again, focusing on the nose tip and adjusting the eye shape to get closer to the correct cat anatomy. In an attempt to make the legs look longer, we also cut off parts of the sagging belly and added more to the top of the spine. This certainly helped as a method of working around the limitations of the armature.

To finish it up I used a paintbrush to firmly press against the smooth clay whilst moving it in short flowing lines to create a very subtle indication of fur. This was the better alternative to using hatching lines using a skewer.

FINAL OUTCOME

Glaring atchu

This clay project has been both fun and challenging. I’m happy with how my sculpt has a dynamic pose and a clear line of action running through it. Overall, I'm satisfied with my outcome having it be my first attempt, but I’m not quite where I hoped to be by the end of this block. The sculpt looks satisfactory from some angles, but not so much from others, especially in areas where I couldn’t make adjustments due to the armature's limitations. Getting the details was particularly difficult, and I found that using a toothpick and paintbrush really helped create textures so I wish I had picked them up sooner in the process.

Looking back, the main thing I should have done was choose a single reference image and followed it through completely. Using multiple small images didn’t help, especially since this is my first time sculpting something other than a skull. Having one clear reference of a pose would have made the process much easier and led to a more effective outcome. For instance, I could have based my sculpture on a single pose like this one on the left, but I was too focused on my other projects and didn’t recognize the mistakes I was making in my process.

If I were to do this again, I would have made the armature more stable by ensuring all four feet were tied to the ground, making the sculpt sturdier. I’d also make the armature skinnier, allowing more flexibility with the clay. Lastly, I would have made the legs longer. You can always adjust the belly to make the legs appear shorter, but you can’t extend the legs after the fact to achieve an elegant, balanced look

I’m happy I approached this block with a willingness to experiment. I got to try out colouring pencils, explore blending through smudging to explore different levels of sharpness, and even work with clay! It’s been a great opportunity to push myself and try new techniques.

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