Spartan Camp #258- 50 gestures + Optional "Landmark Study"

[Anthis]

Spartan Camp #258- 50 gestures + Optional "Landmark Study"

The aim is to produce 50 gestures by Sunday the 24th of March.

- The gestures can be of anything, human, animal, cavorting capybaras.... You can draw full figures, but you can also go for heads, arms, eyes, or anything specific. All media can be used, both digital or traditional. Coloured or black/white. Quick scribbles or long studies. Imagination or referenced. Clothed or nude. Specifics are up to you!

- In addition to this, participants can choose to do an Optional "Landmark Study", in any medium.
Additional notes on this weeks’ Optional Study:


Background
To get the right proportions in figure drawing, there is usually a degree of measuring involved. Something that can help in measuring and constructing a figure is the use of anatomical landmarks. These visual landmarks are points that can be easily seen and identified as anatomical features. Usually, they are located at bony places where the skeleton is right below the skin. As such, these points are fixed and a valuable source of information because of that. For example, the top of the bone you can feel at your hip (iliac crest) makes for a great landmark. So is the notch right above your sternum, where they are met by the clavicles. But the elbow, the knee, and facial features also provide great landmarks. A nipple or bellybutton is not as good a landmark because its location may vary with sex or weight. Knowing these landmarks gives you a good connection between the body and the skeleton, and makes measuring easier.

Exercise
In this exercise, we'll identify useful landmarks. Find some of these, and then pinpoint them in one or a few of our gestures/figures. If possible, add a name (like "wrist" or "bottom of the knee"). We can always identify the correct name along the way.


Reference
I have not been able to find many reference sources yet. Note that Loomis also covers some landmarks. Last I checked, his books were still public domain and available for download HERE.
Link - Landmarks by Vilppu
Link - Page 26,27,28 cover some torso landmarks (google books link).

As always- reference advised, not obligatory. Colour, medium, time frame, any specifics are up to you! Good luck and have fun! And feel free to ask questions!


50 poses is a challenge, but don't hurry or stress yourself reaching it! Focus on drawing, as practising is the main goal of this exercise.

Criticizing each other is highly encouraged!! Share constructive criticism, reference images and resources!! Let's help each other get better!

Come on soldiers! Flex those muscles!!

HALL OF FAME - SPARTAN CAMP #257

Viking Raider
Pete Hidalgo
ashess
- nat -
Flashback
Animare
IDrawOnions
BlackDelphin
andartarius

[Anthis]

The new thread got delayed by the server transfer. The Spartan Camp deadlines are traditionally on Sundays, so the next deadline will be the 24th!

I would like to find a couple more reference sources, then I'll update the optional study brief as well!

[BlackDelphin]

Animal studies.

[Animare]

Did some sketching at my local town center yesterday.
Also since I've been struggling with faces recently I've been practicing portraits.

[Viking Raider]

Woohooo back up and running again!

Never heard of landmark study before so after looking at the ref I decided to try it next time since I already had the morning's sketches done...and my free time was over. Okay, so 60 second poses, from quickposes.com (that timed thing is so much fun!)

trying to focus less on details and more on basic poses is not exactly easy but the time limit helps...real life intruded the last five day or so and I haven't done much drawing so I'm a bit rusty...

[vinterdragen]

Is nice to see the forums back and is nice to see your constant output

I've studied tons of stuff but my sketchbook doesn't fit on the scanner and I don't have a cam , so I think that have some practice on the pen tablet won't be bad :/(I don't like to work digital that much)
Here we go!

[- nat -]

Great job everyone! Comments to come later
for now here is an attempt to go back to daily drawing.



Necks decide if body language is dynamic most of the time, since it's a great weakness of mine I decided to dedicate some time to it.

[vinterdragen]

Studying Herbert Draper

[Viking Raider]

I feel like I'm on the cusp of understanding here...in each batch I do, the ones I think are the best are the ones where I don't THINK about the shapes, but just let it flow. Very wierd. I'm not normally this "be one with the pencil" thing...I think I was up too early when my daughter wet her bed...potty training sucks.

Wrapped up the gesture sketches then decided to try a landscape study. No idea what the heck I'm doing but at least it's different

[- nat -]

Still have to do the optional study

11 more! Drawn today - 60 sec


Drawn on the 13th.

[ashess]

-nat: the pencils r looking good! I love the way you place shape over shape. you could, use a few less lines; clean it all up a bit more though. like study does.as for the inks, they are a lot cleaner, and that's good. but I do feel you loose something in not being about to make your lines thicker.

study: that's the stuff! only thin I can think of, if this is the same girl, she kind of changes proportions everytime you draw her.

Vicking- getting cleaner! s great. use longer strokes though.

imma concentrating on the legs, esp knees first. because im not clever enough to remember all the landmarks at once. even though I've done this xrsize b4.
im not :p

[BlackDelphin]

Three more.

[Animare]

Landmark studies from Loomis.

Great effort this week everyone!

[- nat -]

Cristina, Great studies! You treated the face/eye area with a lot of attention and it gives the animals a sense of life/personality. The owl looks a touch on the skinny side though.

Animare, I love that you're working with head construction and portraits. I think it will maximize your understanding of the study. For the portrait, The right eye is slightly wider than that left or maybe the white is just more pronounced.

And great job on the landmark study, the lines are so technical and clean!
is it from 'figure drawing for all its worth'?

Viking Raider, you're getting the hang of it! I notice that some gestures have more definition with less lines (than others) Awesome

vinterdragen, the optional study looks so complicated! Good job on showing different landmarks of the body. I particularly like your second post, the one with the shading and full torso breakdown.

ashess, thank you for the critique! I definitely agree.
Great detailed study, your lines are very clean and flowing. You could include a bit more shading, I think it would help the forms more.



*******************************

Tried to use thicker lines this time, it's soooo difficult. The brush size was quite wide in the original size, the lines shrank a bit when I resized the pic.

60 sec

[IDrawOnions]

Hi all, great effort by everyone! I don't have a great deal to add upon what's already been said, but here's what comes to mind:

@BlackDelphin - Nice work on the animals! Maybe be a little bolder with the shading to describe the forms more, I love that first eagle (I think) sketch, definitely feel like you've captured something about the animal.

@Animare - Liking your head sketches there. I'll echo - nat - on the portrait though. Maybe the eyes are too wide? I know that's definitely a problem I have when I do portraits. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but is the rule supposed to be one eye width between the eyes? Really like the way you handled the light and shadow on the skin though, you definitely got the reflective qualities right there. Landmark stuff looks good, looks very Loomis!

@Viking Raider - Keep working on that epiphany! Like nat said, there are definitely some that feel more natural. On a mildly related sidenote, I was reading on the news today that letting go of inhibitions and just going for it tends to be a fairly common trait in "creative" people - something to do with their ability to just shut off the part of the brain that creates that fear of getting something wrong.

@Vinterdragen - Awesome work! Liking that landmark stuff, the perspective work especially.

@- nat - - Nice gestures! If anything, there are a few where maybe the head is a little out of proportion with the body, but most of them are looking good!

@ashess - Loomis stuff looks good! I feel like a couple of the ones from imagination are a little skinny in the calf department? Loving the way you've handled the knees though, looking good!

Whew... here are my 50 for the week, gestures/figure studies of varying lengths, a few from life drawing, and some hand studies from Loomis, still pretty sucky at hands, so expect more next week. Onwards to the landmarks study!

[Zombie_chinchilla]

Off to a slow start but I got a couple animal sketches:

[ashess]

-nat- definitely good, bolder lines. now the trick is to not use them to outline as much, but grab into the figure only at certain points ( you do this sometimes, but then you kind of just close the shape all the way round, whic is too much) Loomis calls it "Line Passes" in his 'figure drawing" book, p50. (which is free to download?) (lol. now it sound like I can actually DO that myself. :p)
ps, tried to add some shading myself as you suggested. it reads the drawing clearer for others, probably. and it does look good.


ZombieChinchilla: yay! animals! are they not wonderfull? dont forget, even giraffes have a lot of big masses in there , so keep adding those round shapes (the ass, for example, could use with some rounding, which will give the illusion of debth).

Idrawonions- haha. you might be right about those calfs. one leg definitely turned out a lit smaller then the other. and I was trying to match up. oh well. only focused on the knees I guess.
you have some solid sketching there btw! I keep noticing the same faults, which is a shame, becuase they are actually great drawings. So, I did a draw-over. hope you dont mind.

the 2 things are:
1you forget to look for box-shapes, which would expecially help getting depth into complex foreshortened parts, like the arms-poses you've tried. (also in my draw-over.)
this also help staying away from 'sausage' shapes; the undefined blobs we sometimes end up with.

2: the second is, you use your lines to outline your shapes completely, while it is important to only draw them over the other shape when the overlap another. this adds debt illusion.




here's the sad=panda amount I have to offer. err.. lets say its quality over quantity? also, my new rule not to draw longer then an hour at once makes me slackish :p


Loomis:


Pixellovely, focus = front of chest & arms up to hands.

[IDrawOnions]

@ashess - Thanks a lot for taking the time to do the draw-over, I don't mind at all! Lol at the sausage, but a good point, I'll try my best to avoid the sausages (unless I'm using one for still life - hmmm...). The overdraw is really helpful, just that one extra line and the overlap on the leg defines the muscle and gives it a lot more depth. Those first four sheets are all from the same life drawing session last week, and no matter how much I tried, I just didn't seem to be able to make the sketches look right, particularly the arm poses. Also, very good point with the boxes. This is something I've been noticing a little the past few days, particularly with those Loomis hand studies, when you think of things in "boxy" terms, it really helps figure out where the shadows should be going, and also helps massively with foreshortened stuff. Anyway, thanks a lot for the critique, really helpful points there.

Landmark study is a-coming, as soon as I have some more free time.

[gabyness]

hands and eyes! Will post more later! [:

[Animare]

Been slacking this round, here's some speedy 30 - 60secs gestures and a couple of slower drawings.

[BlackDelphin]

Little landmark study, didn't have the time for more.

[Mosen]

Wow this thread looks amazing! I just came across it and I am wondering how it works and how to join? Is there like a new topic each few weeks and you post stuff or do I need to do something special?

All you guys are great, working hard and it really inspires me to draw more! Especially gestures, I'm so bad at them... Really dislike them hehe. I'll keep my eyes peeled for the next one!

[Animare]

Hey Mosen,

Everyone is welcome to post. A new optional topic usually goes up every week but there's always the 50 gestures goal. I look forward to seeing your posts

[BlackDelphin]

Anthis, what's happening with the spartan's bar thumbnail? It would be nice if it will be up to date soon.