Spyronite's Art Journey

[spyronite]

Hello! Long time lurker here. I have been thinking about starting a blog on here for quite a while, but I have never been able to figure out a study plan for myself that could help figure out a path in my art journey. After giving it some thought (mostly procrastinating) I've decided to dedicate this entire year to anatomy. I want to become a visual development artist with a focus on characters, obviously that will require more than creating interesting characters. For now I'll focus on anatomy. I am studying by myself using a combination of books and videos resources, some from here like Art School, and also a from New Master's Academy and Schoolism.

My study plan as of now is:

Anatomy

It will be combination of gesture, structure and rendering.
As of now I have studied considerable amount of drawing the face and upper torso. I'll make checklist here for reference in the future

• Face and Skull
• Ribcage, Spine and Shoulder Bones
• Pelvis
• Arms
• Legs
• Hands
• Feet
  (Muscle structure included)

Perspective (Scott Robertson's H2D)

I noticed that keeping to one subject matter when studying does cause burnout so I'll be occasionally be posting some exercises that I'm doing from How to Draw.

[spyronite]

Lets start with #JuneStudyJam. It was an art challenge created by one of my favorite artists, Noah Bradley, to help build up the discipline of drawing daily. This really was the catalyst that lead to me making this journal. I'll upload all 30 sketches as there's really nothing complicated about the sketches. But feel free to give feedback, I mean, that's what we are all here for right?

[malcom]

I look forward to seeing your improvement over time.

[PeterH]

Hello and welcome! The various head angles are a good practice, I keep on having trouble with top down myself, even though I'm 6'4" so that's the angle that I wind up looking at most people from anyways.

Good stuff, I look forward to seeing the H2D stuff too, those are great books.

[spyronite]

Yeah drawing the head, or anything for that matter, from an extreme angle of up or down is quite daunting. It wears me out mentally quite fast. It all become easy for once I actually went through the intro chapters of H2D and ModernDayJames' gumroad video on dynamic drawing.

I used to hate perspective drawing, always thought it was too technical. I mustered up the courage to go through the first and second chapter of H2D and I have to admit, I'm loving it. But at the moment, I'm focused on anatomy but understanding the concept of perspective and being able to breakdown everything to simple 3D shapes really helped drawing these. I'll be uploading some work at the end of the week (I'm thinking this should be a weekly thing, to keep myself studying consistently. Thank you for taking the time to comment!

[spyronite]

NOTE: I have already done similar sketches for the skull and rib cage. This is what follows from that, drawing the shoulder bones and arm bones.

A couple of things to note of what my mindset is when I'm doing these drawings:

• I'm drawing the bones over a model reference.
• Trying to keep the shapes as simple as possible
• Paying attention to show the shapes of the bony landmarks (example: epicondyles, deltoid tuberosity)
  • I'm drawing just enough so that I can note how the bones connect, which sides the Ulna or Radius should connect with the Humerus and the Wrist.
    I have noted the drawings numerically to see how I've improved from one drawing to the other. You can see the change in my observations, from simpler shapes to more a detailed drawing. w
    
    When it comes to anatomy I'm currently following anatomy videos by Proko, and simultaneously using Stephen R Peck's Atlas of Human Anatomy for the Anatomy (why does it have to be such a long name?) and Michael Hampton's Figure Drawing books. I'm studying the muscle structure as well, but I think its best to first be comfortable with drawing the skeleton before starting to layout the muscles.

Then I'll follow up with the pelvis and leg bones. I'll probably leave out hands and feet last, as they are probably the hardest to draw and also my weakest points.

[spyronite]

A couple of sketches I did about studying the spine and its relation to the skull, ribcage and pelvis.

[spyronite]

Spent the entirety of the last week continuing with anatomy by practicing the pelvis. The first 2 drawings were drawn as explained by Proko, but I felt as though it was little too simple. From the 3rd to 5th are the from Stephen Rogers Peck's book of Anatomy and how he explained (very detail oriented while breaking down the landmarks and points of consideration). All of these starting from the 6th are drawn on top of reference models, with a mix of male and female. It became pretty clear after a while, you really don't need to know all the details but instead knowing where the landmarks and the variations in the genders were good enough. I think I definitely went overboard with trying to nail certain details.

[spyronite]

Instead of trying to draw as many dynamic poses as possible, I thought I'd take a crack at drawing the default pose using Marc's anatomy proportions layout. Its basically the same as the Loomis method, except I prefer the Cranial by Robert Beverly Hale.
You can definitely notice my lack practice when it comes to muscle anatomy especially in the abdomen area. Having watched Rey Busto's class on anatomy, I'm familiar with where the origin/insertion points are and what are the general shapes of the muscles. The most difficult area to nail was at the point where the Serratus, Obliques, Lats and Pecs overlap. I should definitely do more drawings that is specific to my weaker muscle points instead of sketching whole poses.
Another of my mistakes (or lack of awareness), was correct scaling and by that I mean when I first sketched the male figure, the body overall was very narrow. This probably due to the fact I've gotten a lot more comfortable drawing female than male anatomy, and subconsciously sticking to the proportions of drawing the female figure (example: the ribcage is two cranial units wide, but in the male its usually 2 and half cranial units, to account for the wider thoracic arch). In this case however went with one and half cranial units wide for the female and two cranial units wide for the male. There's definitely a lot more I learned from this, but I don't want to drag this out for too long.

[spyronite]

Its been a while since I posted here. I took a month's break travelling back home. Taking a break was something I didn't realize that I needed but it helped me reflect on the work that I was doing and how I need to slightly shift my direction. I was gone for the month of August and here are some of the drawings I did in July (it was quite the slow month, thus the need for a change). I feel as though doing these gesture/figure drawings didn't really help in as many ways as I would have liked it to. I was expecting it to help me understand anatomy and its motions, but instead I think I need to focus on separate muscle groups as I find myself often going back to the anatomy resources or even forgetting things that I haven't learned because I haven't put enough time focusing on different anatomical parts.

[spyronite]

Value/Portrait study. I often get distracted from completing a painting when I get lost in trying to recreate the reference as it should be. This was a painting I started last year but gave up halfway through as I found the overhead lighting rather difficult AT THE TIME. I came back to this a month ago and was able to finish it up without much difficulty. I think I could have done more with rendering the hair, add highlights and give it better form. Rendering hair (especially short and messy) is definitely one of my weakest points.

[spyronite]

Another portrait drawing. At this point my goals here are values and rendering. I think the complexity of facial features make for a great exercise in practicing rendering form. Obviously it is important that you are able to breakdown the forms into simple 3D shapes when in the drawing phase, which for some reason I still prefer doing traditionally. Surprisingly one of the hardest features to render for me is the nose.

[jonsu72]

I really like how confident your lines appear to be. Big fan of your studies esp. the pelvis ones. Super crispy and inspires me to do more studies.

[spyronite]

Thank you! I highly recommend looking up Mike D. Mattesi's Force: Dynamic Human anatomy. It's not cheap but its well worth the price, I'm only a few chapters in, but it has tremendously helped in understanding how to make lines that have purpose. As for the pelvis, you can thank Proko for that. I may have gone overboard with the details for a skeletal landmark that barely has an visibility through the skin.

[chris_r_art]

heyyy I really love all your sketches and also this last post! ^^
I think you got all the shapes, and they work pretty well together, maybe try and make the value changes less dramatic, as this reads a bit metall-y.
keep it up

[spyronite]

Its been a month since I've uploaded any new work, with my final year of college started, I haven't gotten around to do much. I've been doing a lot of studying of Scott Robertson's How to Draw and I feel as though those exercises aren't worth uploading. If think I should, let me know. On the anatomy's side, I've been studying the arm, which is something I'll definitely upload. I really didn't have much of a plan for the following sketches thus why they may not look as polished. There's definitely some proportional errors but I still wanted to show something for the time I haven't been as active as usual.

[malcom]

Nice figure studies either way. Not much to add seeing as you already pointed out what needs work.

[spyronite]

For while I've been studying Scott Robertson's How to Draw and I thought I'd upload some of the exercises I have done from the chapters I've completed so far. It's nothing fancy but studying perspective has really changed the way how I observe and break down subject matter. These are not all the exercises just some I thought was worth uploading. Does anyone have good ideas to practice perspective aside from drawings boxes and spheres in space? Most reference material I find are too complex.

1. Mirroring Technique
   

2. SImple 2 Point Perspective with subtraction and Duplicating Curve
   

3. Mirroring Offset and Mirroring Tilted Planes. "X" marks incorrect drawing.
   

4. Mirroring Curves using the different methods
   

5. Practicing Tilted Planes and Curves
   
6. Combining Mirroring Tilted Planes and Curves
   
7. More of mirroring curves and Tilted Planes
   
8. 2 Point Perspective, drawing the primitive shapes.
   
9. One Point Perspective with a mix of subtraction/addition and primitive shapes
   
10. 2 Point Perspective with 90 degree cone of vision and Grid

[spyronite]

I haven't done any digital work for quite some time now because I've been spending time studying perspective theory. So I thought I'd try doing some master studies. This is my first time at it, so I'd thought I'd try studying someone who's work I really admired but also simple to approach. I grew up watching Batman: The Animated Series. It was so different from anything that was airing at the time and Bruce Timm was probably the first artist whose style was etched in my head. I started with the Joker. I also made a video for the entire process, it's a bit lengthy but I hope you guys take a look. I should definitely try and shorten the time but that shows how less confident I come across when working digitally compared to sketching with a pencil. Here ye go!

I wanted to do these studies (more coming) because for the longest time I've been studying from references and trying to draw them as realistically as possible with very little creative effort. And that can be daunting. I wanted to take a break from doing anatomy and perspective studies and just have fun with it doing a study. After all that's the point of it right?

[spyronite]

Continuing with studying Bruce Timm.
BATMAN

BATGIRL