Focus on Anatomy

19/02/21 - Week 20

This week, we used a video as a method of life drawing. This definitely altered my approach to life drawing a bit and I am not too happy with the results I have produced from this exercise. I produced 3 studies, 2 40 minute and 1 that look me around 2-3 hours.

I used pencil for these studies but I do wish I instead used charcoal and chalk as I think I would have been able to produce much more movement and fluidity in my work.

One of the major things I furthered my understanding of during this exercise was definitely the muscular properties of the arms and chest area. I struggle in these areas in general so it was interesting to try to pay attention to this area of the body. The model had prominent muscles so this really allowed me to see muscles that you don't always see so well on others so this taught me some about how some of the muscle is effected when twisted and how this looks on the body.

Saying this, I still did struggle with accuracy and had some proportional issues with my finished results, I think this is noticeable in several areas of my drawings. These include the arms on the first two drawings, they are much too short now I look back on them and the chest is a bit too wide, though the model did have a wider chest than most people so it is a bit hard to figure out how much of an error I have made here. Another major issue is the sizing of the head and hands in the 3rd drawing. The sizing of the head definitely effected the hand as I would have been using the head as a referencing point for the hand in particular. Again, I think the width of the chest probably threw me off again and has perhaps provided a sort of emphasis on these issues and throws the drawing off completely in my opinion.

As for use of shading and line technique, I definitely think it is not as expressive as it could have been, as previously mentioned, perhaps experimenting with charcoal on this task would have allowed me to come up with a better expression of flow and movement into the pieces. Out of all three, the last one definitely utilises shading the best to show muscle structure and I am also happy with the shading on the material. I struggled again with accurately getting the details on most muscles and I am not too sure why this is, I think I am just not used to shading muscle in this way and I definitely need to revise this lots.

Overall, an interesting experience, I think if I were in the same room as the model it would have helped me more to understand the perspective and overcome the camera's warping.

There is lots for me to think about on the anatomical revision I need to do but I am also hoping that the next set of drawings I will do this term will help me.