So for this week’s post we are to self-evaluate our own knowledge of anatomy artistically speaking, so I will show a few of my 2D drawings and share some of the feedback that I got from my fellow students. Some of these images are already shown in previous posts, so “sorry” or “your welcome” if someone has to repeat the experience.
The thing that I received the most critique for and that I myself also think is the area I could use the most improvement is when it comes to motion in my images. There are a lot of static lines and a lack of general movement in the poses of the characters. Another thing is that I seem very inclined to mess with the proportions of most characters, like having everything stretched out and elongated, which could be used as a style characteristic but if so I should do so with a clear pretense of doing just that.
One major gap in my work with characters right now is that I haven’t made a lot of female subjects, I think that I’m just more comfortable with drawing the male body and anatomy. Which is in fact kind of strange considering that almost all of the nude models I have drawn from in class since I began studying art has been women.
When I now realize some of the knowledge gaps that I have, I will try to fill them with focusing my drawing exercise towards those subjects. Firstly I will focus more on practicing action-pose drawing, and the way I thought I should do that is to do five minute sketches were I pick different verbs or expressions to illustrate. Just to squeeze in as many of those exercises as I possibly can whenever I have a spare moment, which is not very often these days but I’ll try.
I will also start to use more anatomically correct reference- images when I draw characters in general just to burn those proportions deep into my standard procedure of construction drawings. Also I really should get over the bump and start drawing more female characters and really get into it so that I become comfortable with that, because that is something I need in order to become a versatile artist. But I really think that it is just a matter of routine and practice, I just need more hours to grind and play with it to get where I need to be and I really try to draw a lot and do concept art in 2D just for practice and fun. I really try hard to not forget that drawing is really fun and something I just love doing just for the kick of expressing my imagination and create my own little worlds full of my images.
As bonus material I will now show a sneak peek of my latest concept work! It is just a practice image drawn from imagination in my spare time, but I did play around with the pose a lot to get the expression that I was looking for. It has some way to go before it is finished, but you can perhaps see the direction it is going in, and I welcome all tips and critique I can get towards completing it! I live to learn.
Nils Wennergren 