Six month progression/experimentation - would appreciate critiques on anatomy

Mykonos

Here is sketch work I've been saving since I started practicing heavily six months ago. I would greatly appreciate some critiques and advice.

January 07





Feb 07




March 07



April



May









June (month I began shifted my style)








July (my most recent sketch. I wanted to try something lighter and more anime'ish)

The LittleMan In The Boat

All the abs on the guys seem a little ... like distorted and miss shaped. I can't really just say that and have you understand what I mean. It's like they are just packed together and other times just like they are like lazy looking or something. They just look a little off and all the folds on your cloth seems just randomly place and not following the drape and snug rules for tight areas and hanging folds or something. I really don't know myself how it works but I can kind of see it just randomly curling and wrinkling.

Penny for your thoughts and my two cents. Whatever that means :P

NightDragon

By "practicing", do you mean drawing from your head, or doing studies from life? You can practice all you want from your head, and you're probably not going to get much better. If you study from actual human beings (even photographs if you can't get a model - or need a model aside from that of yourself or your friends....a photograph is better than nothing, but still, less good than a real 3D model in front of you), then that's a different matter, and you've got a much better chance at getting better.

Study clothing folds, take a large piece of fabric (like a sheet, tablecloth, etc) and hang it some where, or throw it into a corner, or on the ground...and draw that. Pay attention to how it folds, and why. Study everything you can - feathers, wings, etc. The more you draw these objects, the more you understand about them, and the more you learn about them. If the last guy is meant to be holding a feather....it really doesn't look like a feather. Study everything you're doing, get references. The more you understand and remember what you've learned, the better you'll be able to draw something from your head.

Also, work on learning the whole human body, both genders, not just the male torso. I see part of a thigh, and an arm or two, but in almost every single one of these drawings, you've got an exposed chest (or armor that looks like an exposed chest). Branch out a bit, eh?

Lastly, if you're really trying to work on your anatomy, and that is your current main focus, do not draw in an anime style. Anime humans are warped versions of "real" humans, and therefore do not possess the proper body stucture, proportion, etc that actual humans do. Drawing them isn't really going to help you understand real anatomy - drawing them, if anything, would help you get better at making anime proportions and body structures...which could be a hard habit to get out of later (I still have a problem of making eyes a bit too large when I'm trying to draw realistically from my head, and I partially attribute that to starting off drawing anime, heh).

Long story short, though -

drawing from life > drawing from your head.

Mykonos

yeah nightdragon i totally agree on your advice. It was around last january that i started looking at photos and trying to study anatomy so I can get a feel of how to draw the human body. My brother is a amateur profesional body builder so I also drew him into alot of my drawings based off the his pictures he showed me. His abs, as well as several body builders ive seen, had a strange development to them - they were all real squiggly looking. As for the folds, I'm just gonna admit, I suck at them. That's why I went out and bought a book so I can learn how to probably draw them. The thing is though is that I kinda wanna be independant of having to use images to draw, so alot of these pics are simply practice sketches from memory. Guess I should I hit the photo album again.

Godfather

Now i'm not the best at anatomy myself, but something that's been really helping me is a lot of blind contour line drawings regarding figures (well, anything in general). It takes a lot of tries to get used to it, but if done right it really solves a lot of questions that you might be having.

For example, take a look at the pectorials of your male characters. Every one of them seem to have massive, square shaped pecs. In realistic terms they're actually not that massive, and have more of an elongated "W" shape to them than a square cut. Something else that i've noticed is that you aren't enough space on the upper cut of the peck for the muscle and collarbone grooves on the top. I've noticed that a lot of up-and-coming artists tend to overcompensate on size as sort of a way to trick yourself into thinking that you've nailed that male or female form. It's a little hard to accept, but you've really got to try and nitpick all of those little anatomical details, because from where i'm sitting you seem to keep repeating the same errors over and over again.

Something I do like to see is that you're producing a lot of completed drawings. Now it's up to you to figure out just what you did wrong from the last one and try and fix it. You don't have to pinpoint every error; just enough so that there's been a considerable change from the last sketch.

Good luck man.

Mykonos

your definetly right, godfather, after looking back at them their pecks are way too squared and massive. thanks for giving me something to work with