Anatomy Exercise 2

Continuing the anatomy sketching from a few days back I'm focusing on the head and neck today. Using the mechanical pencil that I carry with me I wanted to do a few quick sketches of the head from different angles.

Having sketched the skull repeatedly I've noticed I'm not only quicker at drawing the basic head shape but also far more comfortable with the positioning of the facial features from a variety of angles.

With the practice I can quickly render the head but I realise I'm still lacking in my knowledge of the muscles of the head and neck.

This understanding of the muscles is imperative when forming facial expressions and so my ability is still greatly limited by the gaps in my knowledge.

The reference materials I have made studying the spine a challenge, they are not entirely clear and nothing beats being able to draw from direct observation. But I can still glean a lot of information just by trying to re-create what I see, my mind has to analyse how the bones may fit together.

 

 

I'm keeping in mind a concept for a future sculpt so really getting to grips with the form and structure of the spine is going to be important. 

Having a variety of sources of reference can help piece together what you may not automatically be able to see. One source I try to use are picture reference books that contain photos rather than other people's drawings, so as to limit working from someone else's interpretation.

So now I have another go at putting the skull on top of the spine. I'm not sure how anatomically correct my sketch is at this time but my drawing's become more confident!

Next time I shall go back and look at the muscles in this part of the body and try and establish a better understanding of the bones that make up the top part of the spine. But in the meantime I'm noticing I have a far more comfortable approach to sketching than I had when I first started the blog. By trying to instill some discipline in sketching on a regular basis, and committing to putting the results up on the blog, I'm definitely seeing the benefits within the first two weeks.

Doh!

Well I said I would post both the good and the bad attempts at sketching that I'm trying to produce on a daily basis. So today's efforts fall into the 'bad' category. And it was going so well!

 

So I picked back up on yesterday's sketch of the 'Skeleton Heads' with the intention of creating more solid forms using shading techniques. Things started off okay, although I'm not sure the reflections on the glasses are right.

Using a black Biro pen and putting down light, cross-hatching lines to build up a smooth, blended surface I went about trying to give the sketch 3D form so that the skull looks solid. Not as brilliant as I would like but not going too badly at this point.

So this is where things start to go wrong. Now I have to admit I was partly focused on the drawing and partly focused on researching something on the laptop whilst I was drawing, and I could make the excuse that that would account for my poor effort. But even though I'm obviously not great at combining two different tasks at once, the mistake in the drawing is really just down to my own stupidity; I should've known better given that I've studied this a million times before! Can you spot the mistake yet?

 

Yup, I've gone and drawn two different light sources in one sketch. Doh!

It took me a while to realise, the light is definitely ambiguous but when you look at the hands the light falling on them just doesn't make sense. And the side of the upper head would be light, not dark. Unless there's a light floating around between the two heads! So because I wasn't concentrating I dropped the ball. As I said before, Doh!

Skeleton Heads

After beginning to work on what will be a series of anatomy studies to improve my figure drawing and hopefully, in turn, my sculpting, I continued today with sketching skulls from different viewpoints.

 

By trying to draw the skull from a different angle I’m trying to build discipline into my sketching, pushing myself to be able to design characters from all angles rather than just sketching them from face on and resting on my imagination to fill in the gaps.

By working up the tonal values on each sketch I reflect more on the form of the skull, the planes that make up the 3D object and how they translate onto the 2D sheet of paper, more so than if I just leave it at a line drawing. 

By sketching and re-sketching the skull over and over again it does become easier to place the skull in space at whatever angle I want, I’m not as adept as I’d like to be, but the practice is paying off.

 

The drawing looks more relaxed and I’m finding that I have fewer tendencies to distort the facial features when I change the angle from face on. It’s not perfect but there’s definitely improvement, which one would hope given I am sketching almost daily now!

Feeling a boost of confidence I decide to go for it! I’m placing two ‘Skeleton Heads’ interacting, a sketch to be worked up into more of a drawing. I’m creating the line drawing using the mechanical pencil that I’ve been getting more comfortable with, but I’m not sure yet what other drawing materials I’ll use to work the drawing up with. The sketchpad I’m using is a Strathmore 300 Series Drawing pad with a medium surface (11” x 14’ and 104 g/m ²).

The second skull is a little trickier than the first and I think it’s because the viewpoint is from slightly below, another Achilles’ Heel I seem to have when it comes to drawing! But by keeping the pencil marks light and sketching, erasing and re-sketching the lines, eventually it looks better.

I’m using the whole sheet of sketchbook paper, a much larger drawing than I’ve done so far so that I’m not trying to draw the detail in cramped spaces. I worked out the composition beforehand, keeping the sketch simple in design.

Hands are not my strongest point but I want more interaction between the two skeleton heads than just their eyeline so I decide to put skeletal hands into the drawing. I’m not sure about their proportions compared with the heads now that I look back at the sketch, but if you knew how long it takes me to draw hands you’ll let that one go! Hands are on my anatomy ‘to do’ list. 

It may be clichéd but anytime I think of scientific study of skulls I see spectacles. I wore spectacles my entire childhood before I discovered contact lenses and everyone always commented on how ‘studious’ I looked, so maybe that’s where the mental connection comes from.

The spectacles were definitely in the wrong place, and as I’ve already asked for some consideration on the over-sized hands I figured I should correct the spectacles!

So that’s the basic composition sketched out, I don’t think it needs anymore detail added so it just remains to work the drawing up in tonal values which will have to wait until tomorrow.