Light post this week.
I'd planned to spam up here a ton of images of cavemen, because that's mostly what I've been drawing this week (as part of Extinction)-- and I really have taken up pencil this week more than I have in months. Since the 50 faces assignment, probably.


But my best ones, as you can see, are utterly cartoony. I did some more realistic ones, but they lack charm.

So what I'm going to do here is put up two images of a T-Rex skull that I drew, and do a little compare-and-contrast.
The first one was a composite of two references, a skull reference and someone's life-sized sculpture. Because its from reference, the proportions are generally right, and I was able to capture a lot of details. I think it looks reasonably neat, particularly on paper where the line-quality is less blown-to-hell. However, it's also completely twisted, and the perspective on it is totally, utterly wrong. I didn't understand the shape I was drawing, and it shows.


This one I'm actually much more proud of, despite its simplicity. Using only the first one as reference, I broke the shape down into a clearer series of simple plane-changes. It's completely structural, and I think it's actually a lot better in terms of technique than the early one, even if it's not quite as refined.

Mildly late on this post (still before Tuesday's class, I should be OK)-- so I'll see you in less than seven days, this time.

-ALD

This week's ACTUAL Entry

Corrections welcome-- I had to compile this from a couple of different sources, so I'm a little shaky that I've got everything right. I was surprised not to find anything with this kind of simplified diagram approach when I searched Google-- though many better-rendered, more medical-quality images are available (1918 Gray's Anatomy, I'm looking in your direction!)

As a side note, I really need to learn some better ways to prepare a scanned image, because the cleanliness of this picture is obviously unsatisfactory. My traditional method for creating a picture like this would have been to redo it entirely in Illustrator, but that would both have taken an extraordinary amount of time-- and have undercut my attempts to polish my drawing skill (and even my PS drawing skills).


Till next time.
-ALD

A Random Side View

Of the Face, just because it's this week's topic.



A note: I think I've finally figured out noses-- I'd post some, but next week is facial features week, perhaps then.

Circus 3ds Maximus

Put here because I have no other good place to put it.

First Post !!1!11!

About me and about this blog:
I don't draw often, because I'm ashamed of the results; I don't draw well because I don't draw often. Hopefully, this assigned blog will help a little in breaking that vicious cycle.

This week's focus was on the skull and neck-- this one was probable my favorite this week, I tried duplicating it later and modifying it as a cave-man skull for the Extinction project, but the results were suboptimal.


A good view of the muscles of the neck. Professor Jagers keeps referring to the trapezius as wrapping around the neck "like a towel"-- which is fairly accurate-- apparently it curves the shoulderblade and clavicle. Unfortunately, when I try to draw this it tends to get a bit exaggerated and folks start coming out a bit Cardassian.


Cutting away the trapezius, we have two cord-like muscles in the back and then a nice solid triangular shape.
As seen here.

The skull is apparently comprised of 22 distinct bones, but in adults they're joined together by inflexible sutures, functioning as a single bone. The reference skull was moved before I could finish this one.
Apparently this is the traditional Bridgeman method of drawing the simplified skull-- I like this a lot, and I think I may be able to apply it.