Study group - Figure 5 ways 4

Concluding the Love Life Drawing study group’s “Figure 5 ways” month, we have a series of figure drawings that attempt to synthesize all the lessons. I built these figures in phases, using simple forms, gesture, values, and anatomy to piece together a final rendering. Marek drove a fair amount of this month, and he brought along some of his own teachings, which include things like composition and rendering technique.

I feel pretty good about these. Proportions look solid. I tried to do the terminator line with so-so results. The dark backgrounds on the first two I think looks good. I’m less convinced by the light and dark side version on number 3. (Also, that guy’s chest looks pretty funky!) The value ranges don’t look as coherent as I’d like. I’m am liking using a focus on the lit parts as a guide to building the figures. In fact, it saved me on number three.

That third picture has some tricky foreshortening involved. During my simple forms pass, my mind rebelled at the proportions needed in that forward arm. It just would not do it. I kept eyeballing against other landmarks, like his head, his chest, his back, nothing helped. Every time I tried to draw it, I pushed his shoulder too far back, his elbow too far down. It was a mess. But instead of bashing my head against that wall, I switched to doing the value pass — laying in big shapes of light and dark. And when I did that, the placement troubles I’d been having with the forearm jumped into clear perspective. I was easily able to fix things up and get a pretty credible likeness.

You want to hear a miracle? I don’t even hate the faces!