A couple of figure drawings. Just enjoying the drawing process and not thinking so much of any assignment tasks. Trying to stay loose and alive.

My assignment. Not too many drawings this time, however I understand the value of a breaking down and studying the anatomy of a made up creature like this.

Colorful exaggerations, if I’m gonna be short and blunt. I can’t say I have a clear definition of what a cartoon actually is. From the top of my head I come to think of the worlds of let’s say, Looney Tunes, Ren & Stimpy, Johnny Bravo, Goof Troop. Mostly non-sequential shorts, often with a lot of slapstick comedy. Humor is key for me when I think of cartoons. Now I’m curious to find out why you’re asking? :)

I really liked this assignment! Drawing from live footage feels like it demands more “immersion” into what I’m drawing. Compared to when I draw from still images I can sometimes fall back into just copying what I’m seeing. More difficult to do so when things never stop moving. Thinking in motion also helped a lot when trying to invent poses from memory. It’s a challenge for sure trying to make something interesting out of nothing, but imagining the apes moving around and do stuff makes it easier. I took a somewhat similar approach to the memory sketching as the footage sketching, trying to stay somewhat loose but also allow myself to explore a bit of what I could recollect from the anatomy and muscle groups.

My assignment for the Muscle Breakdown. I had a bit of a struggle coming up with interesting poses to use with this lesson. So I went off and searched for some references; and while I could find a lot of pretty photos, not many of them were very energetic. Videos on the other hand seems more interesting for this case! Especially wild life documentaries.

Hello again @David Colman, here’s my assignment on skulls and skeletons. When I drew the skulls I tried to identify unique traits between the three, so it would be easier to distinguish them when I draw them from memory. In my eyes the Orangutan and Chimpanzee were the most similar, with the Orangutan being a bit more round overall but flat around the eyes. Even though I thought I had a good grasp on them, drawing them from memory later proved to be a challenge! It was difficult to really push the unique details when my only source was a foggy memory. I also had in mind your last feedback, that I should try and draw some ape skeletons in various poses, so they’re included here as well. I limited myself to not spend too long on these and also allow myself to be more loose. Maybe a bit small and too messy? I tried to focus more on the overall pose and character, while also showing the skeletal base of them. As always, any feedback is very much appreciated. I’m really enjoying this so far!

“I completely skipped a phase of teen artistic freedom, when most artists draw their favorite characters, silly OCs, funny comics” – In my opinion, I don’t think you’ve missed out on much. Putting it in context, when I was a teenager I was often in awe of my peers who drew seemingly anything. And I had my fair share of “original” creations I were particularly fond of too. Now, do I feel the same towards these things today, and do I want to go back to when I didn’t know what I did wrong? No, absolutely not. When I look at creative work of let’s say a teenager, adult beginner or even a child, I can find qualities in it that can be appreciated for what it is, works of a beginner. But I understand what you’re getting at, I too can find myself in a loop of ONLY studying, and then when I want to sketch out an idea from my head, it’s stiff, rigid and clunky; rather than loose and energetic. Which is why I would recommend anyone to complement their technical courses like anatomy, with courses more focused on design, like David Colmans Fundamentals of Character Design, or to engage in people sketching like Stephen Silver does here: https://youtu.be/FNXIIf9xTwI Having an idea and putting it to paper, simple or complex, and make it believable and appealing is a skill that needs practice, just like the technical fundamentals. The pro side of having done a lot of technical studies is that when you start to tap into these exercises, you’ll have a wider arrange of tools at your disposal once you’ll get to a more intuitive level. So I think your two ideas for exercises is good place to start with. In short, life informs art! As you get older and more experienced, you will possess more interesting stuff to share and channel into your art. And even if you did make a lot of silly cartoons and OC’s in your teenage years, I would bet you would’ve have felt “meh” about them as a more experienced artist later on.

Well, these were some weird shapes; a lot to unpack here! I felt that perhaps the most difficult part of this assignment is to decide where to position the scapula in the back. Maybe that’ll clear up a bit once I get to the muscles and have more to relate to. The 5th drawing is from imagination, and in the sixth I tried to not look att the 3d model in the beginning and plan it out from the reference photo, but later on take a look at the models. A question to anyone else doing these kind of studies. How long do you usually take for one drawing? I try to be aware of not spending too much time, but, some days I can spend way to many minutes just trying to get the shape of a torso somewhat ok. Of course it differs a lot depending on my daily mental fatigue as I’m most often left to do these in the late hours after work, daily chores and socializing.

Rib cage assignment. An egg shape? That can’t be too complicated! Or… Even though the big shape is simple, it proved to be a bit of a challenge to make it read clearly. In some angles it didn’t make for any sharp corners, especially in my second image where the top plane makes it all look flat to me. In contrast I thought my back view had a more interesting angle for drawing the rib cage. Any helpful feedback is always appreciated!

Ok! It didn’t amount to 20 nor 15 pages, but at least I got to 12 digital sheets! I really wanted to push it to 15 but, I also wanted to get going with the other assignments and there hasn’t really been many good opportunities for me to do coffee shop sketching. So a good amount of these has been done a little bit differently; like taking a mental snapshot of people when buying groceries and then draw them from memory. I saw that there’s more coffee shop sketching further along the course so, I’m gonna plan for a day when I can really take my time at one place. Anyway, enough with the excuses. As a first assignment this really made me appreciate simple yet compelling characters even more. It’s difficult to distill a person into a believable character by just looking at them for a short period of time. And to find a balance of stylizing, pushing forms but still contain some similarity, while also not making a caricature. Looking forward to what comes next. And it goes without saying, any honest feedback that can help me improve is very much appreciated!