Structure of Man #3

So the next part in the Structure of Man series is rotating the skull into a three-quarter view. This is always the hardest part. It's very challenging to make your mind understand what happens in between the front view and the side view. I said this before when I was talking about rotating the entire figure (click here), but it really makes by brain work, almost like I'm doing calculus or something haha. Once you get the hang of it though, you can replicate it over and over with almost identical results.

Character Design #1

This is the inked sketch from my sketchbook. It was so easy to make this character design in profile after learning how to draw the skull from the Structure of Man videos. I hope to keep making up more of my own characters from now on.

I brought the original sketch into photoshop and practiced my digital inking using a combination of the pen tool and the brush tool. I'm going to try to add color to it soon, so be on the lookout for that post in the future.

Structure of Man #2

The next step in the Structure of Man videos is the skull. The above photo shows how to set up the human skull with realistic proportions.

This page shows how you can use the previous skull to develop a character design in profile. I didn't come up with this design, (it was the example from the video) but I did create my own that I will post later. The other two skulls are clearly the front view. It's all about getting the shapes right, especially of the eye sockets. I thought the front view of the skull looked a bit like batman, so I modified the skull on the top right a bit to enhance that haha :P

This photo just shows how to make the connection between the proportions of the side view and the front view. The eye sockets, mouth, nose, and brow should all line up.

Structure of Man #1

This is the very first thing that the Structure of Man videos teach. It's basically coming up with a formula for the proportions of the human body. Riven Pheonix (the guy from the videos), keeps it extremely basic at this stage. This image shows the front, back and side angles.

This step goes into rotating the figure at a 3/4 angle while still keeping all the proportions learned in the previous step. The key is to recognize where the negative space is. It doesn't look so hard, but it made my brain work like I was doing a complicated math problem!

Summer Update!

So I've finally graduated and have been out of school for a few weeks. However, I'm not creating a steady stream of finished work like I have been and I've posted pretty much everything I've completed to date (well everything that's worth posting haha). I don't plan on doing too many more traditional type pieces like still lifes or anything with charcoal for the rest of the summer, so I just wanted to let you know what will be coming. Right now I'm going through this video series called the "Structure of Man." It's supposed to teach you how to draw the human figure from your mind in any pose. I've gone through the first 15 or so videos so far but there's about 185 in total so I still have a long way to go. I'm going to be posting my progress as I go through these videos. I'm also hopefully going to be posting some digital stuff when I get to it. You can expect a post at least every Monday like usual, but I'm also going to try to update more often if I can, so don't be surprised if you see some extra content throughout the summer!

Finished Piece #6

So here's the finished watercolor painting that is based off of the sketch from last week. It's supposed to look like a scientific drawing, hence the scientific name for this particular jellyfish. This was the first true watercolor painting I have ever done, and I'm pretty happy with the results.

Sketch #6

This is a sketch that I did for an assignment in my painting class. We had to pick some kind of animal or plant to do a scientific drawing of in watercolor. My friend suggested a jellyfish, which I thought would be a cool thing to draw. This is the sketch that I did for the final painting, which I will post next week. The top drawing is a view from the top of the jellyfish and the bottom is a side view.