3D week 07 – Anatomy

Hello

This week we have been talking a lot about anatomy and how important it is to know how the body works in movement and muscles and so on to create realistic models and drawings.

This is my basic skill level of drawing “correct” anatomy humans:

Note: the sketch on the left is from today, the right one is a few weeks old and the small one is a few years old, just to see the progress.

 

I know that I can accomplish pretty “correct” volume in my body sketches, and that I can do a pretty good main body. The upper legs and arms also often turn out okay but when it comes to feet and hands I start to struggle pretty bad. Hands and feet are known for being generally hard to draw and I think my problems are based in their complex shapes and many moving parts and joints.

I also struggle with the face anatomy. I know where to place the parts that a face contains but they don’t turn out that great anyway so often I don’t paint them at all (yeah, that’s the way to get better at stuff ;p).

We brought up our sketches in class to get feedback from our colleagues, and over all they sad pretty much what I already have said; they thought that the base body look ok but that I need to go over the fundamentals of the anatomy for the outer parts of the human body to fix those things that do not turn out correct. And well, I can’t do other than agree, I know my flaws but I tend to work around them instead of fixing them, which results in never getting better at them.

To fix my flaws I think I do need a bit reading on the anatomy of the human body. I do know some of the tricks like “how many heads fit in a body” and such but I think it would be great to know all of them. Fully understanding the human anatomy will hopefully fix those proportions problems I have and result in a better drawing or model. For the smaller parts like hands, feet and face I think I, in addition to the reading, just need some more focused training and those parts will be no problem.

All my life my 2D artwork has been oriented towards the perspective type of drawings like environments, cars, cities, landscapes etc. And as my drawings have been focusing on those types, the drawings of character have fallen into shadow. I know I cannot draw soft surfaces like flesh or textile as good as I can draw a house or a car and that is not so good. So my plan is to from now on spend more time on drawing biological and characteristic subjects, reading and practise to increase my anatomy knowledge and skills.

First of I would like to get the face right, as that often is the part of the picture that people look at first. If that part is incorrect they won’t keep on looking on the rest of the picture. Second I would move on to the hands and feet’s, as they are so hard to master. And last of I would improve my overall anatomy skills to get a correct drawing and after that just move on to learning drawing hair and clothes.

That’s it for this post!

-Lui