Resources Tips for Drawing the Human Form....The Human Bean

I've been absent for a little bit, but had spare time today, on my Birthday (!) to sit down and share some recently learned tips and tricks for drawing the human form. Humans often seem to be a tricky subject for artists, myself included. I am consciously looking for sketching tips and resources to improve my work.

The "Human Bean" is a fantastic technique for capturing the action, movement and shape of the torso. Everything hangs off the torso, so getting the core right is critical in our work with the human form. I'm not going to explain the technique here, but will send you over to Proko.com .They do a much better job of explaining and giving examples than I possibly could. Once you are there you will notice an extensive library of other tutorials. Enjoy!

Once I did a little practice with this sketching technique I popped in one of my favorite action movie and paused the DVD occasionally to draw some "human beans" Within one sitting, I already felt my humans had improved by leaps and bounds.

At first I focused on just "the bean" but it was natural after the first couple pages to start adding on the limbs and head etc....

This works very well for the human form and I'm thinking that it might be applicable in some fashion to the animal form as well. The bean would be more stretched out of course, but the concept is valid. I'll give it a try and post my results in the near future.


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Sharks for Fun

Been working on some shark sketches in my free time. Really, really incredible animals, I'm pleased more and more public awareness is being paid to these creatures. I know we have so much going on in the world today, famine, violence, war: Important issues that need our attention. But hopefully we don't over look the other creatures that share the planet with us.

If you want to be involved here are some websites:
http://www.projectaware.org/

http://gifts.worldwildlife.org/gift-center/gifts/Species-Adoptions/Great-White-Shark.aspx?q=SharkAdoption&sc=AWY1200WCGO1&searchen=google&gclid=CLuqj56n6bYCFcJo4Aody1UAZQ&mpch=ads

These guys have been around since the dinosaurs. What a shame if the go extinct because we have no self control.

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Sketching 101

If you want to be a better sketcher, there is nothing to substitute for practice. Stop worrying about it being good. Stop judging and just start drawing and sketching.
Sketch anything and everything. Sketch what you enjoy sketching but also practice more difficult subjects too. Its not just practicing the actual skill of the pencil on the paper, but we also need to train our brain and eye to observe quickly and accurately and record this information. It will take many many sketch books before you end up with elegant, graceful, motion-full images.

Here are some links to some fun sketch exercises:

http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2012/10/20/4-silly-sketching-exercises-to-spark-your-creativity/

http://drawsketch.about.com/library/weekly/aa052003a.htm

I greatly admired a fellow artist who did a great deal of sketching with a ball point pen. It sounds counter-intuitive, but once I made the leap and started working with pen, it ended up improving my sketching abilities three fold.

It forces you to work lighter and ease into your lines. You can no longer back track, so you are forced to observe your subject more accurately. And when you do make a mistake there's no going back to fix it. You just have to move on.

To get started, it might be easier to start from photos before trying to tackle a moving subject matter.

These days I draw in colored pencil or pencil if I have a choice.







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