Past examples of Assignment 8

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Assignment #8

Real

Ideal ;)

TODAY'S TOPIC :
Clothing the figure

IN-CLASS EXERCISE: Drawing folds from magazine ads


Homework #8 -- Combat! Part 1

    •    Read all or most of the Text
    •    Complete 1 line drawing in good proportion.

Your drawing must show two people in hand-to-hand combat. Your characters may be engaged in a fist fight, a play fight, brawl or wrestling match. There should be no weapons involved. Poses should feel authentic and have movement. Identify the general thrust/direction line to your attacking and defensive poses.
Your characters should be drawn without clothes.
You may use reference as inspiration for the pose you choose but make your drawing in different perspective from your source.

This drawing should be roughly 10" x 10", neat with, strong simple contour lines.
Take the time you need to perfect the anatomy, proportion and foreshortening of various body parts. When finished, set your drawing aside and reassess it the next day.

More pix and detail in this earlier version of this post. But getting your own additional ref is highly recommended.
JH

Assignment #7

Keiko reminded me that I had promised to post examples of past work on this assignment --here are some good ones. They could perhaps have been improved by projecting the width of the head down to the floors of the boxes to check that the feet weren't too big. Also in the walking ones, the feet could have been placed under the center of gravity a tad better.

JH

Assignment #7 Figures in boxes

TODAY'S TOPIC :
The Figure in Perspective

     "The Three Masters":
          Flow, Volume, Silhouette

1. FLOW, aka
    Rhythm
    Gesture
    "Energetic ghost"

    Line of Action
2. VOLUME, aka
    Solidity
    Form
3. SILHOUETTE, aka
    Shape
    Outline

Reviewing contrapposto, line of action,
importance of “drawing through,” of using reference without copying.
Banishing “ideas from nowhere”: Purge the things you “know for sure that just ain’t so” (Mark Twain), e.g. symmetrically pinched-off “sausage” limbs, bow-tie feet, Chiclet toes, etc.


Homework #7

Complete 3 nude figure drawings in good proportion using...


2 point perspective - reclining figure,
2 point vertical - walking figure.
3 point perspective - (EDIT) SEATED figure,

They should be a variety of ages and body types. Give your figures natural – not wooden – poses. Make your drawings as clear and neat as possible, using one line for contours. This does not that you should omit all detail inside the outline: please draw people as if you enjoy people, are interested in them, and are generally in favor of their existence.

Same standards of perspective apply (especially regarding vanishing point placement). Use subdivision to divide the Box or “card.” Use projection toward the VP to check scale of head in relation to feet, for instance.

Keeping the VPs well outside the drawing, where possible (i.e., not in one-point) can make this assignment much easier.

I suggest:

1) Thumbnailing a few alternate poses, each with the Box and VPs, for each of the four drawings--less than a minute each.

2) Sitting down with plenty of figure reference and looking through it aimlessly for 10 minutes or so, observing things you already have observed about the figure, giving yourself credit for knowing them, while letting yourself be surprised by new facts too. Sketch some isolated body parts that happen to be about in the positions you want for your drawing.

3) Draw your made-up people as people, not mannequins. Include toes, nails, nipples, genitals, wrinkles and folds in the skin--even hair and body hair if you like.

MILLION-DOLLAR TIP: In all your figure drawing, always--in every drawing, from every angle, every body type--find the collar bones and the “t-shirt collar” and always find the cylinder of the neck (this attachment area is too important to abandon to chance.)

$500,000 TIP: Rough in full shape and position of limbs (even bent ones),  each as a unit, in earliest stages--don’t feel your way down them, losing your sense of direction as you go. Plan.


FUN FACT: Most muscle are fattest in the middle, rather than near one end. (exceptions are the biceps, vastus medialis, which are bulbous close to the joint). Almost all begin and end on different bones, usually across a joint.

REQUIREMENTS:
    •    Full figures, obviously
    •    Submit copies of your ref, stapled, for at least two of the drawings. 

    •    Put box on overlay, subdivided at least once.
    •    Image area of each drawing is at least 9 x12 in.
    •    Present drawings neatly, with box or card on an overlay. Use space of paper well (no tiny figures on big sheets). VPs need not be on final art or overlay. 

    •    Include horizon in overlay for 2pt reclining drawings. Boxes and cards must be subdivided at least once and all edges indicated (not just the ones on the near side). Halfway line must be indicated on all four planes.
    •    Horizon must not cross or pass near figure in 2ptV and 3pt. VPs should be well outside drawing in these two drawings
    •    No big, obstructive hair

    •    Vary the body types. Nice exmples by Gustav Klimt and in photos, below


FOR “EXTRA CREDIT”:
Include convincing form shadow and properly plotted cast shadows

REMEMBER: One of the drawings may be left at the layout stage to save time.

Best of Luck, you guys!

JH

EXAMPLES OF VARYING BODY TYPES:

 

(Note the weight distribution in different phases of the walk cycle in these walking poses.)

 

and below, a guide to childrens' proportions from the Famous Artists' course.

Setup for the 2PtV and 3pt Heads-in-Boxes

Here is animated GIF that shows how to setup for the Sophie drawing. Because a baby's head is closer to a cube proportionally than an adult's, this method yields a cube, which is a lot easier to get to than the 2x3x3 box. If you add a little extra height and depth to her cranium, above and at the back of the cube, while keeping her eyes at the level of the original halfway line, you will be correcting both the head shape and proportions to that of a baby. That's how I've got it figured out anyway.

Either the top red line or the bottom could be the horizon.

Your cube will be more useful if you make it smaller than mine and keep it fairly near the center of the red square. Thanks to Keiko for asking the question that spurred me to do this.

And here is an animation that goes through the steps we learned for 3pt. Use the same procedure for upshots and downshots. Just turn the paper upside down at the end of the procedure to do an upshot.

Click on  the images to see them animate bigger. Both loop indefinitely.

Thanks to Luis Deliz for his contribution to this method of constructing a 2x3x3 box.

Here is an example of a head shape carefully put inside the 3pt box.  Making the box occupy a larger portion of your equilateral triangle than I demonstrated risks greater distortion than this. You'll note that this head already appears a bit top-heavy. You can reduce the area of your head box within the equilateral a lot without losing that 3pt feel.

The above box exists fully in downshot, that is, below the horizon. It is essential that you not allow the head to cross or even very closely approach the horizon in either the 2ptV (Sophie) or 3pt (Francis) drawings! These drawings must be upshot or downshot.

JH

Assignment #6 Head in a Box

For Assignment 6:
The GIF here will replay automatically. It starts with just horizon, two VPs and the Station Point. The VPs are 90 degrees apart, as measured from the SP, just like they are supposed to be. The next step is putting a point and a line at an arbitrary point inside the triangle, farther from us than the SP, and adding the vertical (green) line through it.

The resulting face is, I'll admit, kind of odd, with its pulled-in, feminine mouth. But I'm claiming that it's the idea that counts! :)  Note the red centerline of the face and how it only touches the centerline of the box at the tip of the nose, and how there is maximum distance between round head and square box at the corners, which distance is exhibited to maximum effect on the left side. (Overplayed, possibly, but it depends on the type of face and how close the subject is to the observer. The face rounds away more severely in close-up, wide-angle views.)

Below, I did find one good example of this assignment (done before Ron, Sophie and Francis were introduced). It's a fine job on the perspective setup, and a nicely human-looking human. The interrelations of the facial features really work for this angle. The box is unsubdivided and too loose to really guide proportion, but it does seem a good match with the view of the head. It's that last thing that is really important.

I don't recall the grade, but I'm sure it earned a B+ at least.



JH

Assignment #6--Part 1

Heads! Hallelujah! At last we leave the dreary, dry, math-driven planes of perspective and enter the Valley of Fun! Well not so fast, pilgrims. We're gonna learn to draw heads right, in a variety of views, and that means using you-know-what. Yes, perspective rears its ugly head again.

Here are some examples of how not to do this assignment. All show some features of the head being unknowingly thought of as two-dimensional, and all show features shown as if from another angle, and many contain errors of proportion.  Some contain all three errors, like the first one, with its too-deep box and flattened, sloping brow area.

You can avoid many of these errors by sketching in the centerline carefully and placing the features--conceived of as simple forms, not lines-- carefully in relation to the centerlines before you draw them. More grotesqueness follows.

The last one orients the head completely differently than the box! Here is a reminder of which perspective is which, just in case.

JH

Facial Structure

Comparing the effects of standard off-the-rack drawing with drawing that pays attention to those little facial ins and outs. From my blog for the undergrad comics course ILL292.
http://ill193.blogspot.com/2010/02/those-wee-facial-offsets.html
JH

Assignment #5 Help

Please refer to this earlier blog entry.

J