HOME | DD
QBeagle — Homework #1: Proportions
by-nc-sa
Published: 2015-07-03 03:05:05 +0000 UTC; Views: 44; Favourites: 0; Downloads: 0
Redirect to original
Description
I signed up for Artistle 's Project Teamwork , and as a result I've got some homework from my instructor the wonderful Polardarkness .The first assignment was to practice proportions, which is what I was doing here. The idea was to draw figures in very basic poses and just practice getting the body proportions right.
Some things look off to me with this. Like on the guy the lengths look ok, but the widths of his legs and feet seem off. For the girl her torso looks a little long, I probably shouldn't have done a pose that involved foreshortening as it makes the measurements tougher to pin down.
Related content
Comments: 2
Nicely done! Overall, I think you did great! Here's a small draw-over you can look at while reading the critique sta.sh/08iapx5x7qn
The body width, for example, is EXACTLY as it should be (the heads' length twice).
However, there are other things, such as the length of the body (6,5 heads) that
could use some work (although you should keep in mind that 6,5 is an
average size for manga characters).
----------------------------- Note: Paragraphs related to next week's topics------------------
Regarding the anatomy, it's great that you did some muscles! It's important to experiment with body types, keeping always a proportion between the muscles, of course.
Some spots to work on would be the thighs (remember that the legs are wider near the hip and a bit more narrow near the knee), the neck (people, specially men and people who like to work out, get a really nice trapezius muscle;so their shoulders won't make a 90º angle with the neck)
About the pose, all I can say is that you might want to avoid drawing figures with completely paralell hip lines and shoulder lines (they can make the subject look a bit stiff sometimes). Also, pay attention to the hand placement and try to do the poses if you need to (just to make sure that making that pose isn't akward and, therefore, natural and correct).
Moving on to the girl, the proportions are right and the foreshortening it's quite nice, in fact. I believe the problem is the pose. I redrew it as well without changing much (because If it was really changed it wouldn't help you), but I'm not 100% happy with it. Oh well, we'll tackle this next week, don't worry
Apart from that, careful with the breasts, you don't want to do boob socks! (I'm mentioning this because I saw it in some of your drawings) resourceparadise.tumblr.com/po…
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oh, there's one more thing I want to say: it seems like you are applying some good amount of pressure on the pencil when you draw.
I believe that's the reason why you're doing what I call "bagging" (which is making somewhat closed strokes to represent muscles, making the parts of the limbs seem independent from each other; romanic art is the epitome of this www.castillodeloarre.org/MNAC/… )
Try to put you fingers further from the tip of the pencil/pen. Then, remember to engage the wrist, the elbow and the shoulder (it'll give you fluid lines) and try different grips (everyone has a different favourite one, so look for it. Also, don't be afraid to try things that don't seem like they would work, because they might. In fact, my grip's a bit weird xD, but it works for me).
For assignment number 2, you've got me scratching my head, congrats! It's really good. I'll try to leave some tips later.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Character height isn't something I regularly measure, and I ought to change that. Generally I block in the ribs and hips first, drop in a circle for the head, then add arms and legs. I'll measure upper and lower arms against length of rib cage, and that the legs are long enough that the crotch is roughly the mid point of the figure. I tend to just eyeball head size and total height, so I'm willing to bet most of my characters are on the short side. I'll have to be more careful about that.
----------------------------------------
You're right the pose for the guy was pretty dull. I wanted it to be easy to take measurements from it so a minimum of bends seemed prudent. Not that I got the measurements right, but that was my plan.
I think your redraw of the girl's pose helped. I had this thought of her running and waving to someone. I left out any sort of hip twisting that'd occur when running, which you added. As for the boob socks, I had no idea that's what I was doing now that you've mentioned it I see why it's a mistake. Like the pectorals on guys I'd add a line to indicate the anatomy, and just leave it there instead of converting it to shading. Something I'll need to be more aware of in future.
----------------------------------------
You're also correct about the pencil pressure in this drawing. Sometimes I do this on purpose, sometimes not, depends how I intend to finish up the drawing. I do my construction and guides in light blue (not sure if you can see it, I took a quick picture of it instead of a proper scan) then dark graphite pencil lines where I really want things. This way when I convert the picture to digital I can drop out the blue channel and leave just clean-ish pencil lines. If I intend to finish it traditionally then I'll keep things much lighter so I can erase the pencil after applying pen & ink (Here's an example of that ).
Short version: I kinda do that already, sometimes. Maybe.
Really glad to hear my perspective drawing looks good. The pose is perhaps a little stiff and forced, but again I wanted it simple so that I could get good measurements. I get really annoyed with how wobbly all those lines are, I probably should just use the straight line and ellipse tool instead of trying to freehand everything.
I'm not sure if it's of interest or not, but I did that with two point perspective. I tried doing 1 point initially, but the trampoline looked really distorted with the horizon cutting through the middle. I suppose if it looks good it's not super important how I got there, but then all my teachers in school were more interested in the work leading up to the answer moreso than the answer itself.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0