Snapshots and Life Drawing, Part 1

Hey, Panos here!

The initial thought was to publish one more figure working post and then move into a different subject. Turns out I had a lot of material to clog into one post, so I broke it down into two parts. Today is part 1; next week will be part 2. 

Last week I talked a bit about the female form, you can check it out here: http://panoskamoulakos.blogspot.gr/2013/01/the-female-form.html

I have been searching various sources to practice drawing anatomy, movement, facial expressions and emotions. I wanted to take my figure working further and work from more elaborate poses. 

 

Life drawing is especially effective for honing your anatomy skills and your perception. It pushes you to think in patterns and fill in blanks to a subconscious level. I have had life drawing lessons during my time as a student at Loughborough University. The experience working directly from a live model is unparalleled. 

There is one thing missing though.

Did you guess it? I thought you would!

Model is restricted to pose the entire time, it is impossible for him or her to act in movement. The human body is capable of stretch and move and act into a thousand different ways to a thousand different angles. The model in a life drawing class is restricted to a number of positions (crouching, standing, leaning, laying, etc.). Unfortunately no one is fast enough to draw a model jumping or running in a life drawing session (if you can I envy you).

Photographs achieve snapshots of motion (jumping, running, tumbling, fighting, etc.) that somebody can work from in order to practice further. The gallery bellow is from a number of sources. Some of those are Olympic Games 2004, UFC, Undisputed 3 movie and various fitness magazines.

Thanks for being here once again! I appreciate it!

You be good now! Until next week!

Panos.

 

The Female Form

Hello how you’ve been?

I will pick up where I left last week and continue talking about figure drawing. Only this time I would like to go a little further.

If you haven’t read the previous post you can catch up here:  http://panoskamoulakos.blogspot.gr/2013/01/introduction-and-figure-practice.html

There is no doubt that the female form is one of the hardest to portray effectively. I have been practicing drawing women from various sources like movies, music videos, fashion shows etc. In the drawings I am about to show you I did not intend to produce absolute accuracy or hyper detailed portraiture. The point was to capture motion, movement and expression. Here I present a collection of these drawings:

Next Sunday will feature both male and female figure working!

You can follow up by e-mail, check the sidebar!

Thanks for being here!

Take Care!

Panos

Introduction and Figure Practice.

Welcome!

This is my first post here, so before I get started let me fill you in a little about who I am and what this blog is going to be about.

My name is Panos and I am a comic book and storyboard illustrator. At the moment I am working as an art teacher in IEK Intergraphics (HND equivalent education college) in Athens, Hellas. I am teaching illustration and digital imaging.

I am also working on my graphic novel called “Medusa” which speaks about the famous mythos of the gorgon Medusa and the demigod hero Perseus. Visit my portfolio section to see the first five pages of the graphic novel. There are going to be posts and updates about this particular project soon.

In this blog I will be talking about my illustration work, comic book and storyboard art. There are also going to be updates about upcoming personal projects or commissions. I will also be posting drawing tutorials and digital manipulation tutorials.

Blog will update every Sunday.

Now into today’s topic: 

Figure Practice

I have been doing a lot of practicing lately working on my figure drawing. After doing a bit of searching I came across this website: http://www.posemaniacs.com/. I was happy to see that there is a training exercise that you could do in a daily bases. Two sets of ten poses day and night 30 seconds each.

I have been doing this exercise for about a month now and I feel that it really has helped me improve my skills. I put together a number of those 30 second poses for you to see, take a look:

Thank you for being here on my first post, leave any comments, feedback or any questions you may have down below the comments section!

Be sure to be back next Sunday for more art!

Take care!

Panos