Well said words

~ gestureflow ~ Leave a comment

After Sunday night’s studies, I was pretty tuckered out and browsed /IC before bed. Not too interested in doing animation(but I do love 2D animation) and came across Richard Williams’ Animator’s Survival Kit. 

He provides many insights he’s gained from his experience in training and work in just the opening chapter. I thought I’d post this bit from an interaction he had with Milt Kahl which really gave me a boost in my pursuit of competency in drawing fundamentals and provided a bit more clarification on what I want out of this whole art thing. To be a good enough draftsman to a point where the drawing isn’t the difficult part, but expression and design is the goal. 

I’m not going pretending that this particular advice or conclusion is unique or hasn’t been repeated many times by many different artists or that I haven’t head some form of this wisdom before. It’s just put very succinctly by such an incredibly skilled artist that it really took to me. In fact it kept me up practically all night looking up some of the artists he encountered. John Watkiss’ anatomy skills and visdev work on Tarzan is fucking crazy good. Yeesh.

I might post more of these from time to time.

Torsos are hard, yo

~ gestureflow ~ Leave a comment

Shout out to AvoidingThePuddle’s for helping to fill the time while studying because I’m starting to hate every song in my library T_T

I’m better at torsos, abs and obliques still fuck me up, will probably study the shoulder girdle this week, but still need to work on torsos. Frustrating.

New Approach, Maybe?

~ gestureflow ~ Leave a comment

This past week, I’ve changed my study approach a little bit. Normally when I’m going through this Bammes book, I’ll study one body part or muscle group for a couple hours, then go on to the next one the next night. Not sure that’s been working out. What I’ve been doing this past week, as you can tell from the gallery below, is dedicate more time and more focus to single body parts before moving on. This week was arms.

So, the first step was drawing the arm bones, which happen to be deceptively difficult. So the approach, grind the bones until I could somewhat accurately draw the arm bones from memory, then study bones even more so I can understand the attachments and really understand the anatomy, rather than replicating an angle that was studied. Then apply that same mindset to studying the arm muscles.

The reasoning behind the approach, my brand of dummy science. The way I see it, when you’re first learning how to draw something, most if not all of your brain power is dedicated to getting your drawing to look like whatever your drawing is supposed to look like. It’s hard to think about understanding the mechanics or why shapes are shaped the way they are when you just want your arm bones not to look like dogshit. After getting comfortable with the subject, I.E drawing the arm bones over and over again, you don’t have to dedicate nearly as much brain power to replicating the reference, because you can do it from memory. Now when studying, you’re actually understanding the anatomy.

Maybe that makes sense, maybe it doesn’t. I don’t know, I feel like I’m better at drawing arms(still probably going to dedicate most of the week to the muscles of the arm). Either way, I definitely busted my ass this week. 40 hours at the day job, 33 hours studying.

Closing words? fuck forearm muscles. To death.

Beginning of March

~ gestureflow ~ Leave a comment

March Goal : Study more than I did in February. So far, I’m on track after the first week or so of the month.

Still going through Bammes and probably will be for a while. This past week I started a bit on hands and then struggled through the knee. Knees are hard yo.

The more I study muscles, the more important studying bones become. lol.

End of February

~ gestureflow ~ Leave a comment

I figure it’d best to space out the entries instead of spamming every night.

so yeah, february is coming to an end tonight. It looks as if I’ve developed a work ethic of some sort this year. It’s been over a month since I’ve skipped a day without studying. It’s definitely hard to suck ass every night and not really feel like you’re improving but I”m going to stick with it.

I’m delving into Gottfried Bamme’s The Complete Guide to Anatomy for Artists and Illustrators. I’m really liking it so far, the diagrams are well done and unlike every other anatomy book, Bammes is really doing a deep dive and providing ton of instructional drawings and angles for anatomical trouble areas, like the shoulder girdle. In Bridgeman and newer stuff like Anatomy 4 Sculptors, the shoulder girdle doesn’t get the attention it deserves, the material there always felt lacking. Where those books might spend a few pages at best, Bammes will provide a dozen. Maybe it’s just me and my smoothbrain but that shoulder girdle is so fucking tricky.

The main reason I’m picking it up is due to Saskia Gutekunst. If you’re not a aware, she’s a god tier artist and I’ve been a fan for years and years. After scrubbing through her tweets, I noticed she credits here anatomy and figure drawing skills to Bammes. What better endorsement is there?

I should really start writing more on here . Anyways, here are the studies: