Week 2 Artists Techniques

This weeks tasks was to research several artists and search for some inspiration to help with my sketches, looking at their techniques. I focused on three artists, Scott Eaton, Michelangelo and Burne Hogarth.

Firstly I will begin with Scott Eaton, the first thing I noticed was his method of adding shading, he uses strong lines, making it not as realistic as other sketches I have seen, it even looks a little messy however for some reason I find it fascinating, I have seen artists use this method before and I might try using this technique, as it is something I need to improve on, I find it difficult to get shading right in my sketches. I think using this technique I will be more aware of shaded areas in my drawings.

The next artist I looked at was Michelangelo, a well known artist worldwide, looking through his sketches I really liked the way he draws the human form, its very detailed and the shading is well done, in the image on the side the shading looks a little 'blobby' and I find it hard to create the same effect in my drawings. Comparing this to above I think the sketches look more realistic, it a lot more smoother and easier on the eye, however Scott's sketches have something about it that makes it appealing to me, I think he pull's off the 'messy' look very well and I find his work more interesting than Michelangelo's.

The final artist I focused on is Burne Hogarth, I noticed he does hands and feet really well in his pieces, and this is something I don't get chance to do in my life drawing classes because of the time I am limited to, so I would like to focus on these parts in this weeks tasks drawing 3 human studies using Burne's techniques.

Comparing Burne to the two artists above his drawings look more exaggerated for example the leg and arm muscles in the drawing to the side, however these are very detailed and the shading is something I look as inspiration. The muscles are clear and using his techniques will help my drawings look well formed and not as flat.

Week 1 Proportion

This week I focused on the proportion of the human body and the different sizes and shapes, I learnt there are three main types the Thin (ectomorph) body type, Round (Endomorph) and Hard muscular (Mesomorph body type. For this weeks task I created 3 studies of the human form, using pixelovely.com as reference, I firstly went with a female due to the fact I don't draw them often, in lifedrawing classes I usually draw male models. I started off by drawing the outline and getting the scale and shape right and continued to add layers and layers of extra detail spending around 2 hours altogether, for the first drawing I think I did really well, and feel I can draw females better than the male models. I struggled with the feet a bit, it took awhile to get them to not look like mini sausages but I got there in the end, I found it hard to get the rib cage in without it looking bad, on the picture it is really noticeable but I feel on the drawing it isn't.

Next I decided to draw a male model, I wanted to focus on the torso but decided to draw the full body, same as the above drawing I started off quickly getting the silhouette of the body and added layers of detail, I did struggle getting the legs right here because of the clothing on them, I do prefer to draw without all that on. I feel I could have done better with the torso muscles, the abs are not as detailed as I would want and the arms look a bit off, this drawing could do with lots of improvements, and I need to focus on improving on the male models much more.

The final drawing I wanted to challenge myself, again with a male model but this time with a difficult pose where a lot is going on, the torso muscles were very difficult to get right, the shading on the body could be much better and this is one of the main things I need to improve on to make the drawings look realistic and less 2D. I struggled getting the head right too which was a bit strange, it doesn't look like it fits in with the body, at this point I had been drawing for a while and quality had gone down compared to the female drawing earlier. Next time I will do one a day so this doesn't happen and keep working on something if I can't get it right.