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Oskari Niemelä
•
3yr
added comment inMannequinization – Structure of the Human Body
I've tried to make the mannequins have a nice sense of gesture to them, while retaining the 3-d feel of the forms. I didn't really focus on making the muscles defined (though on some of these they did end up that way, more or less) just trying to identify the different forms making up the pose while also taking care to not let the proportions grow too out of whack. I'm mostly happy with how these turned out, but I definitely need to practice twisting motions more since those gave me a bit of grief.
I made these with a pencil, but then reinforced some of the lines digitally after I scanned them, the name & number combination next to the figures correspond to a model + pose number that I got from Proko.
If you have any critiques or tips it would be much appreciated! I personally feel like I could be a bit more bold with my form manipulations and with trying to exaggerate the poses.
Oskari Niemelä
•
3yr
Asked for help
I've been practicing drawing the structure for a year+, I think I'm pretty comfortable with it at this point, though I must admit that some more longhaired animals/weirder angles are still pretty challenging. Some of the time I only draw the structure of the head, since I actually find it more challenging to draw the structure of the head in more detail than I do drawing the whole body with a more simplified head structure. I'm trying to capture the gesture while also maintaining proper proportions. If you have any tips or critiques they would be much appreciated
Hi!
Your drawings are really quite good, a nice clean and precise stroke, but they don't really help you to understand the structure of the bodies and how to simplify them.
You use a lot of curves, but rather than helping you to sketch, they just give you an idea of the outline.
You have to look carefully at the references and try to identify the different parts of the body so that, with practice, you can identify them easily and quickly.
Let's start with a small premise: all vertebrates start from a common base, as the name implies they all have a spinal column, usually by identifying the gesture, the primary line of force, you have an approximation of it.
The head is grafted onto it.
Now, apart from snakes in which the limbs have disappeared during evolution, you will always have two large sectors in which the fore and lower limbs are inserted (no matter if we are talking about reptiles, amphibians, birds, mammals or humans).
Identify the shoulders and pelvis by representing them with boxes: this will help you to understand how the torso is oriented and possibly rotated.
Now place the front limbs in the shoulders and the lower limbs in the pelvis.
The ribcage is an ovoid shape that intersects with the shoulders.
Once you have this skeleton, you can begin to build shapes on it, bearing in mind that you will not always have cylinders: the forearms and calves, hands and feet of animals often have very little musculature, presenting almost exclusively skin-covered bones and tendons, and can therefore be represented more effectively with square shapes.
All vertebrates have broadly the same number of bones and muscles, just arranged differently (in many animal anatomy books you can see a diagram comparing the human structure with that of a dog or a horse, to highlight the similarities).
Also the skull, obviously with different proportions (herbivores have more pronounced chewing muscles, think of the large round muscle on the jaw of horses) but you can always spot the cheek bone, the nasal septum, the arch of the eyebrow, rhythms that will help you to draw even animals that you had never studied before.
Don't be distracted by the surface, try to identify the bone structure beneath it.
Your drawings are already graphically good, try to break down what you see in a more basic way and you will become very good at drawing animals.
Sorry i cant offer you tips just a big wow! Lines and shapes looks so clean, love it, very inspirational :)
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These are all pretty clean-looking drawings. The cat one is the strongest of the full body ones in my opinion, followed by the mouse as they show a lot of volume and the mouse one has nice plane shapes for its head. I also like the gesture of the cat, even though the back should be turned more torwards us based on the photo.
As for critique:
1. The gecko, meerkat and octopus could have some more cross contours on them to tell us more about the orientation of the different body parts and their volumes. The structure of the meerkat and octopus read better than gecko, but the torso and foremost leg of the meerkat look more like silhouette shapes than 3D volumes and the octopus could have some cross contours for the tentacles. The gecko, I believe, would need some cross contours for its spine to make the gesture read better, and I also think the S-curve of it could've been pushed a bit more.
2. Consider using more primitive geometric shapes. I personally find that simplifying shapes into more primitive and less organic ones makes you study the subject a lot in order to best decide whether the area should described with a box, a cylinder or a sphere. I also find that using boxy shapes makes you think a lot about the perspective of the part of the subject you're looking at.
I hope this helps!
I've been drawing for like a year and a half now and I decided to try and brush up on some of the basics so I've been doing gesture drawings. I've really been trying to focus on getting my quick-sketches to be more well proportioned while retaining a nice gesture to them as well as trying to do them quicker. Let me know what you think! The poses are all from the various "poses for artists" packs from Proko and I wrote down the name of the model and the number of the reference image in case you want to check them.
•
3yr
Hi @Oskari Niemelä, beautiful drawings! The line work is impressive, and the gesture is good! My favorite is veronica 138 (1st image, bottom). the s-curve going from neck to toe, is awesome! (thanks for writing the pose number btw)
I'll do my best to help you further:
ASYMMETRY & MORE
I think you would appreciate reading the critique I just gave cdilworth https://www.proko.com/profile/cdilworth/activity You seem to be a more experienced artist, but I think the stuff in there could help, especially the note about asymmetry and the 5 lines + head exercise.
PROPORTION
I think you are making the models thicker than they are in the reference.
SIMPLIFY
I like to connect & simplify things, whenever I have the chance. As a rule of thumb, ignore details that don't do much for the gesture.
STRETCH & PINCH
The torso often has a pinching side and a stretching side. Indicating that can help with showing the gesture (you'll learn more about torso gesture in the bean lesson) I attached a paintover of Mallory 022, as an example
I hope this was helpful :) Keep up the good work!
