Anatomy Refresh

 I feel like I'm constantly going back and refreshing these things. If you don't use it you lose it and it's so true. Whenever I do go back and do these I feel like I'm a little better every time. I hope so! Here's another round of anatomy refreshments. More to come hopefully!

Heads mostly.

Arms doing arm things.

Legs and butts mostly.

Legs and feet

I've gone through the Michael Hampton book many times. The feet construction is great, but I've always found the legs a bit lacking. I get that it's a cylinder with different muscles going all over and around it, but it's never clicked well. So, I'm looking for other sources of information and I've found Proko to be pretty helpful. The knees in particular can be especially troubling. Knowing the muscles and bones in the joint, and helpful ways to indicate them makes them look way better.

The Big Expressions Post

The next stop on my face and head drawing practice is expressions - the 6 major expressions. There are many expressions the face can make which can arise from internal emotional states as well as come from external sources. I've focused on the major 6 expressions because most expressions can be derived through some combination of the 6. A lot of what I learned here came from the book "Making Comics" by Scott McCloud.

The muscles of the face along with their umm... simpler names

I've tried to boil each expression down into a simpler form. The face has a lot of skin and muscle that bulges around, and it can get a little overwhelming to think about that as you try to draw an expression. As long as you retain the principles of each expression I think the viewer will have an easier time reading the desired expression. I've also added some examples from various animated sources to go along with each expression.

 Expressions and their underlying emotions can have varying intensities. The lower the intensity the subtler the expression. I find subtle expressions are harder to distinguish, but are very important in alerting a reader as to what a character might be thinking or feeling. Context helps, but I think it might be required to exaggerate an expression a little bit to get the desired effect.

Well, that's pretty much it. I've learned it all. Just kidding, but I feel like I've got a good base now. I'd like to explore some of the different styles I see other artists draw their faces in so that's what I'll be trying out in the next couple of weeks! I look forward to posting it here :)

Planes of the Head and Value Study

Here are some planes of the head as per the Asaro head. I don't have one myself, but I managed to find some photos of one from a few different angles online. I drew it using the photo reference, then, giving myself 3 light shades and 3 dark shades, I added the values. On the first head for each angle I used the photo reference to place my values, but on the next two I placed my own light source and did the exercise from imagination. It's definitely a brain workout, and I don't think they're perfect, but it was great practice.

These are the photo references I found for the above exercises.

Figuring out the Head

Not a huge focus on anatomy - more of a focus on form and being able to draw a head from imagination from lots of different angles. I like to use a combination of the Loomis method and Hampton's examples. Start with a basic sphere, cut off the sides, find the brow ridge, measure out the chin, create a jaw line, then measure and place the remaining features. Proko has some really good video tutorials and examples as well.

Practicing some basic head construction.

Some more basic head construction.

Trying a couple different ways to construct the head then light it from a random angle.

Eyeballs! Practicing the form, placement, and different shapes of eyes.

The nose! Understanding nose construction is great, but I need to practice rendering it nicely still.

The mouth and lips. I'm sure I'll be revisiting this when I start practicing expressions.

Finally we have some ears.