Figure Drawing From The Mind, Thread

[Chris J. Anderson!]

Post Your Imaginative Figure Drawings If You Got Em!

This thread is for everyone to post they're works in, about learning how to draw the human figure correctly from your mind. Life drawing is one thing, and after you master it, it becomes easy the more you do it. But drawing the human figure from your imagination, correctly, is an entirely different story. It's difficult to remember how every body part looks at every angle, and how to remember how to capture correct balance, motion and emotion in the body without the figure posing for you, giving you all the answers. So I've been studying more how the body functions, where the bone structure is, how things like knees bend and why, because over the years, even though I've had figure drawing classes before, I've forgotten a bit about the logic behind the function of human bone structure. I had tricks to how to draw the figure from my mind well, but not dramatic tricks to draw the figure well at every tiny level. Maybe some of you out there feel the same way.

I started this thread to bring back a classroom setting with other students who draw the figure. I figured this is a good way for everyone to learn MORE, FASTER, by posting figures drawn from the mind, revealing anatomy problems, and letting everyone give out solutions to how to solve the problems effeciently, so artists can finally correct them, learn more, and move on.

We can do things like circle in red where the problems are, redraw it correctly, explain why their was a anatomy issue and then have the artist do it better next time. This is for all of us who have anatomy problems here and there that we've always been so foggy on how to fix.


So, Post Your Imaginative Figure Drawings If You Got Em!

It is important that those who crit, 1) point out the anatomy problem, 2)explain the reason why there was a problem, and 3) solve the problem. Other wise, it will all be just loose comments and no explanations and learning.

[Chris J. Anderson!]

Here's one I did yesterday, it took about 45 minutes. One is how it was on 'Line' level, the other is a quick render. No reference.

[Chris J. Anderson!]

Here's an inbetween version before I put in the grey tone. I was trying out different techniques for the mediums look.

[Chris J. Anderson!]

Here's another I did today. Took around 45 minutes.

[Chris J. Anderson!]

Today, 45 minutes.

[Chris J. Anderson!]

Here's my last one today.

[bonedog]

Awesome thread idea!!

well, your artwork is better than mine, but here's a couple things i noticed in the first drawing. do you agree? is this too sloppy of a reply?? maybe when i have more time i'll try and do it better.

cheers,
-bonedog

[Avetice]

I've found the best way to exercise your imaginative figure drawing skills is to draw from that spider-man action figure that whitaker had suggested to people to buy on one of the threads. What I do is I put him in a pose and draw him in that pose from a couple slightly different angles. Then turn away from the action figure and think of another angle to draw him at and where you would be sitting at to see him at that angle. Then draw it from your mind. Then find the viewpoint that matches what you had in your mind and take either tracing paper or a red pen and draw over the drawing you just did to get the correct placement and angles of the body parts. Then you will start to see where you messed up and you start training your mind to see one pose from all angles. Its pretty much that whole draw through concept coming into play.

[mentler]

This will be helpful to lots of people ~ always have interesting debates with people who think they have to have long poses in the academic tradition to draw the figure. These people never believe you when you tell them most of the old masters did not need models and did much of the works without models at all.
Most of want I do anymore is without a model and if I use a model it is just a starting point to deviate from.
I will post here if you would like or do you what to keep this just your thread ~ just trying to help out it I can. Pax not Pox

[bonedog]

Sorry it's still so messy, but I saw a couple more things. The shoulders should pretty much always be convex because they're the line of the trapezius which is never saggy. (in fact, most concavities on the body are not concave but the just the area in between two convex bulges). Also, the arm doesn't have much definition... it looks very rubbery. The tricep should slip under the deltoid, and the extensor carpi radialis longus and brachioradialis attach surprisingly high up on the outside of the humerus. Those two facts might help. The balance looks off to me... I can't really tell how the weight is distributed. But overall. these are great drawings... a lot more good than bad.

-Bonedog

[Tetsuo]

wow amazing thread! I shall have to give a go at this later this evening and post an image

-TeT-

[mentler]

I am sure many of you have seen this thread
of some my figure studies ~ what you might have missed is that these are all done from my mind without reference.
The basic exercise which I do pretty much everyday is to draw 3 figures (front, side and back) without looking at anything, to test and expand my knowledge of the human form. What also starts to develop via working from your mind is a very distinctive personal style ~ which is an amalgamation of all the tidbits stuck in the fibers of your brain.
All of the figure/anatomy class demos on my site are also from memory.
I will contribute to this thread with draw overs and one on one critiques when I have the time. The heel on the bottom view of the foot could use a little tlc.

more of 3 figure exercise
http://www.tsofa.com/?faculty.gallery.tt

[krispee]

hi all
thought i`d throw my 2 pence in by altering the girl standing, i thought that she had some anatomy issues with her buttocks, they seemed flat...also her neck is perhaps a little too short.....and her breast a little high.....tried to alter as i could in red....
mentler: actually a lot of the old masters did their sketches in the street, drawing ordinary people, using them for their models.....



and i did this as a digi sketch, sorry it`s all a bit rough but i`m not used to using photoshop for this sort of thing......i`m sure there`s something wrong with the position of the right hand/arm and the buttock isn`t right either....



krispee

[mentler]

If they drew someone in the street or the market place they probably only had a few seconds or a couple of minutes to capture the important information. The rest had to be put in using what they new not what they saw. An interesting thing is happening here that I think needs to be addressed. I think it is interesting that a lot of the critique input has to do with personal taste and not drawing ~ I think this is perfectly normal, I am just wondering how you can really avoid it ~ perhaps you can't.
For instance ~ if you think the gluts are a little flat, what our you comparing that to?? We are have developed our secret figure in our own minds that we compare with others ~ does that mean that there is a problem with the ones that our different?
I think we can make general critiques that have to do with anatomy, concave and convex shapes, direct lighting, indirect lighting etc. etc.

[Chris J. Anderson!]

Hey Bonedog, great job! All your correction you made are great. You pointed out things in that drawing that I felt were off, but I wasn't sure how to fix. The shoulder area, the pelvis/leg bone, and the arm muscles I felt were missing something, thanks for pointing these problems out. I did some research today on the exact shape and function of the female pelvis, and neck muscles, and arm muscles and then tested out what I learned.

In the first line drawing here, I drew a figure based on the knowledge I know, and in the second drawing next to it, I drew in the skeleton and started seeing how the bones make the hip curves in the waist, how the muscle from the neck and deltoid shapes, etc. You were right about the neck line to shoulders, they are indeed suppose to be convex as you say.

[Chris J. Anderson!]

Bonedog, I see more clearly how the abdomen should be shaped and why. I forgot that the leg bone causes that lower curve, and the hip bone causes that top curve.

Here's a quick line to test how line in that area should be, and here's a render of how the planar structure should look. I had also forgotten about the dimples and how the bone structure and muscles causes those shapes.

[Chris J. Anderson!]

I will post more on correct pelvis, neck, and arm shape.

Krispee- You made some good points, I'll post more on that tomorrow and I;ll crit your sketch.

Mentler, cool sketches, I'll comment more later.

Aventice, Tetsuo, everyone, glad you like this thread. Lets keep it going.

[Oliver23]

cool thread, great ideal!

[McNallyism]

Whoah! Man you're really rolling with this thread Chris awesome stuff! I'll get my drawings in here sometime tonight so you can rip em apart. By the way, are thes purely digital? (you've probably already said...)

-Sean

[JoshuaTheJames]

Hahah. That's Chris's "Special Pencil Brush" Sean...

I think these are looking great for no reference.


-Joshua James

[Chris J. Anderson!]

"I think these are looking great for no reference."

Hey Josh, thanks. Remember in one of our many anatomy debates, when I mentioned how our college was great but they never showed artists how to draw figures from the mind without the model? That realization seriously irritated me, and a few months ago I got tired of having to glance at a figure art book every so often to get little anatomy problems fixed when I should know it all in my head. I hate not knowing completely how to do something, so these past few months I've been figuring out ways that works well for how to build a figure drawing properly with no ref. I think reference can kill the flow of the drawing sometimes. I've figured out quite a bit of good tricks on remembering how things like the knee and foot, toes, shoulder blades are suppose to look, and tricks on remembering how shadows land and form on the body in certian lighting. Most of it is just me recovering from laziness on my part cause remembering all the forms can seem very overwhelming to the point that you may not want to follow through with every shape properly. Before I found myself knowing how to draw the hands, but being to lazy to use those smaller lines to make those smaller forms become the hand and fingers in proper perespective. I'm glad I'm making progress. I'm finally thinking of the figure more simply than I used to. Before, certain things just seemed so complexed.


Hey Sean-Yeah these are all digital. And I'm almost afraid when I have to go back to pencil in a few weeks. But I think that after learning how to draw in PS, that I should be more loose and fluent with pencil because PS takes some of your control away. It's kind of like punching with heavy weights in your hand, so that after your done, your punches without the weights are faster. I hope the same effect happens when I go back to pencil. Yeah man, post your works. You too Josh. It'll be good learning for us all.

[kasap]

very cool thread. i draw with alot of lines trying to sculpt the figure out of my mind and put it on paper/screen.

[bonedog]

chris: what resolution / brush/pen settings do you use when you sketch in photoshop?

kasap: that's a nice gesture... how well can you tighten it up?

-bonedog

[krispee]

chris: thanks, i think it needs it lol.......

kasap: nice work, like the loose feel, was that particular drawing a digi one or a pencil?
might be an issue with the right foot, seems too far back to me but i may be wrong.....

chris: what resolution / brush/pen settings do you use when you sketch in photoshop?

good question bonedog, i`d like to know that myself....my lines seem too heavy and cumbersome in comparison, or maybe i`m just not used to using the tablet and pen....

mentler: i don`t personally think you can completely avoid the tendency to use your own judgements or preferences, after all you use that to both critique and applaud and this in turn comes from your own personal knowledge, whatever you`re comparing to has to do with whatever you`ve seen and studied(not to mention the subconcious understanding we have of our own bodies, but we won`t go there)....your preferences are formed from that.....

anyway, my 2 cents, i`ll try and draw some more later.....

krispee

[mentler]

Krispee ~ yes I am agreeing with you ~ just really posing the debate ~ we all have are own secret figure that we judge others from as I have said.
And I do not think you can totally separate that from any judgment you make. I know I do a lot of things however that deviate considerable from what would be considered an average figure and I do not expect other to look like mine ~ heaven help them if they do ~ for instance my legs are a little longer and they usually don't have much skin.
They is a very good thread and I will be doing a lot of workshop demos in the next few weeks which I will post here for some good crits ~ PAX and TNX:

[kasap]

tried to render it and pop up the forms a bit more, dont think its there yet.



Krispee- its done entirely in painter classic with a old skool small tablet, and yeah the foot was a problem so i let him pick up a spear like thing to make it look more naturel.

[krispee]

kasap: well, actually it makes sense him dragging something, you`ve made sense of his body shape......are you going to explore further with him?

mentler: hey, no probs, and it would be a boring world if we all did the same eh?....look forward to seeing your work....



i got so fed up with scratching away on my tablet and coming up with beau didley that i picked up my pencil and drew....man that felt good lol

krispee

[Chris J. Anderson!]

Krispee, here's a crit for you. I'll do crits of other peoples later. This was fun.


I thought that your figure was missing some anatomy in the foot, knee, stomach and waste, her left arm, and she should be more balanced on the ground because her right arm now looks like it isn't holding her up well. I did my own interpretation to test my knowledge and help you out if I can.




I still made a few mistakes I missed out of laziness.




Here's something that might help: 1) start with the spine line of weight, 2) add the arm where the weight rests and the legs that rest on the ground in this position, and draw in an idea of the floor so we see how the figures body rests 3) I drew a line where the foot and lowly leg may be, and a trick I use for the head is drawing a rectangle in perpective, when you have that, the rest of the head and face is easy, 4) complete more the foot, legs and hand and breasts in proper place, and I kind of drew her left arm in perspective with a recangle to get the foreshortening set up.




5) add more details to the breast, do more with the head based off the recangle, 6) add the hand palms and fingers, 7) shade in areas you like to define the surface structure with lighting, 8) I added levels to give me more of a black ink pen look.




Here's the final, I played around with PS brush techqniques to shade more.

[Tetsuo]

ok here is mine

apologise for the size but felt that it may be necessary for all the red ink you are gonna use on it



Oh and a quick crit about the final Chris. Wouldnt her supporting arm be bent more inward towards the elbow with her weight towards us more ? If she were sitting like that without anything supporting her on her left side she would fall over due to her center of gravity being thrown off by the weight of her upper body ? Or at least have both arms behind her to keep herself propped up with her hands facing backwards or bent to support the weight.

perhaps I am a bit wrong...but I went through my por....err reference photos to find a similar pose and all of them showed a similar weight distribution which relied on the hands supporting the upper body when its weight was going backwards.

[Joachim]

Great thread with a lot of nice discussion. I think you've captured a pretty nice anatomy with many of these Chris.
I will try to do a few and give a more in-depth opinion later this weekend.