close, but the radius is bigger towards the wrist :) you can feel that one sticking out by your thumb (that parts called the "styloid process" which the french kids remember because it sticks out like like the tip of a pen, or "stylo" in french) we got to play with real ones in labs all the time. it was so interesting.

Ah - I'm pretty sure the proportions are off in other areas as well. :( I think the scapula is a bit small too, and maybe the humerus as well. I wasn't quite sure how the humerus connected to the scapula also, so I also kind of winged it, but mainly I wanted to record how things rotate here in the forearm since I just figured out the basic pivot axises for the two bones today after looking at a bunch of drawings and feeling my own arm as I rotated it. Hopefully that part is semi-accurate.

http://www.jointreplacement.com/bin/images/shoulder/other/shoulderanatomy2.jpg

the head of the humerus is kinda laid in the glenoid cavity (that little concave bit on the side) and laced on with lots of tendons and muscles :)

Thanks - I just copied the skull here though almost directly from my book at roughly the same angle. The main purpose of the exercise was to try to figure out how outer surface of the face forms around the skull (the red lines). I don't think I quite got that part right, as it looks kind of off to me.

As for my school, I'm out of school now. I was a computer science major, so I didn't get much in the way of art classes. The extent of my formal schooling comes mostly from my high school art class and a graphics design class I took in college that was geared towards business majors. Most of my learning comes from books. My favorite authors are Hogarth, Loomis, and Bridgman. Hogarth's books just make me feel like I know absolutely nothing about anatomy. Loomis is probably the most helpful, and I like how Bridgman simplifies the human form into very mechanical-looking parts. I also have this one from Barcsay which I've been looking at a lot lately which is probably the most helpful one when it comes to understanding the forms of individual bones and muscles.

I ultimately want to get comfortable drawing figures without references which is something I'm horrible at right now. I think it's because of the way I've used references traditionally in the past. I treated the process more as a hand-eye coordination exercise when copying what I saw rather than trying to learn the essential 3d forms through the experience. I'm trying to change that now.

Is your dog a Chihuahua as well? I love them - I have another one named Beauty (the black one).

Extremely well done.

Reminds me of that part in the ROTK movie. Y'know, the path of the dead?

Creepy. But good, very very good. I love how you can still see the sketch lines.

You are crazily talented. I love how it looks as though he came from another era/dimension/time, and his smug face.

That's tight. I really like the subtle highlights and lighting. Structure rocks..hehe.

Oh thanks. :) I don't know how much I learned doing this study, but I did find out something exciting about the forearm. I'll try to draw another picture to show what I mean. It's probably common sense for most people, but I never really thought about it.

The proportions are probably a bit off in this one, but I wasn't concerned about proportions - I just wanted to get the basic idea of the shapes of the bones at the angles provided. Also the bones look a bit thin to me for the amount of flesh I put around them. That's probably something I'm going to have to develop intuitively.

Its a very good study...when I had my life drawing class in the summer for college I remember my teacher having us draw each bone individually before she even let us draw full bodies...it helped alot, just knowing exactly how each bone connected to the next, and how weight effected them. The pelvis can be difficult, because of the curves, but honestly I like drawing it. (I'm talking about drawing in pencil/charcoal though, because haha I really lack skill with the mouse.)
I'm very impressed.

Modifying angles, lighting, or the original 3D form of the reference is the kind of stuff I'd like to ultimately do when using references. Just anything that demands the 3D form is understood so that it could be used to produce other 3D forms is what would benefit me most. I tend to be more 2D-oriented when copying photos regardless of whether I'm using measuring devices or just freehanding, and that's useful for copying 2D images, but not for inventing 3D ones. I tend to ask questions like, "what's the 2D shape of this highlight? How does it relate vertically and horizontally to this other mark?" Rather than, "what's the 3D form of this figure"? If I understood the 3D form, then I could invent my own highlights without using the precise shapes in the photograph.

I pretty much knew this picture wasn't what I should have been doing when I started on it based on my goals, regardless of the grid (though the grid made it that much worse). I set out only to draw the reference as accurately as possible and nothing more. In that sense, it's one of my biggest failures since that's the last thing I want to be doing in the future as I progress. I didn't even try to experiment with painterly techniques - I was trying to be as unpainterly as possible in this one so that it would look just like a photo. Generally I get the most comments about the painterly aspects of my works when working from photos, but this time I really wanted to try not being painterly (I tend to be painterly for economical purposes, not intentionally). I didn't even really achieve the photorealism I intended to achieve despite the use of the grid for the line drawing, so I didn't even succeed in that respect. While it's completely against my personal goals, I still admire the artists on here who can make their paintings look just like a photograph. I was hoping to achieve it here, but I think I deviated too much in the shading and still relied too much on lines which gave that sort of cartoony effect in places.

omg biggest posts ever. great pic and i've been a victim of the grid in the past. when the masters of the past were working on frescoes - they couldn't draw straight from life, so they did their preliminary drawing and they would grid that whole wall up before doing some of the greatest paintings ever made, theres no shame :):)

Mmm... (damn you essay writters.)

I like them both, too. This latest one sort of looks like a combination of Anthony Hopkins, and Charles Laughton.

Anthony Hopkins and Charles Laughton.... on a stick!!!
...I'm sorry.

I like this thing you do where you add colour/value with little short lines. Looks cool, very different from other stuff seen here.

Thanks everyone, but yes, I was really wondering what was up with the comments. Did everyone else realize this is a head impaled on a stick with blood coming out of the eyes and the eye on the right being pushed out of the eye socket? I think it's really ugly and nasty: a terrible thing to look at. I was in a terrible mood when I doodled this, and it was really frustrating to me that I couldn't delete that original version which wasn't even marked as finished. Now I wish once again that I could delete, as this is a thing of nightmares.

The short little strokes and scribbles are really just me being lazy. I want to not be so painterly and blend things in, but I had a hard time doing this in lascaux. In painter, I tend to paint this scribbly way at first, but then I use the blend tools to quickly smudge them into these nice smooth regions of color. I can't really do that so easily in lascaux. :(

Haha! Excellent!

I really like this! did you really spend that much time on this?? Now that's patience. He looks so much like someone I know....I can't put my finger on it...

Wow just..... wow. You belong, believe me.

Reminds me of General Zod from Superman. Without the crown.

Version 1 looks like a comicbook panel.
Version 2 looks like a bronze statue.
And the 3rd I mentioned.
WOWZERS.

just awesome! love the tendons in his neck..yowza.

It has a Giegeresque feel to it. This will be great.

pretty cool stuff, David...looks a little bit like one of the coneheads from Saturday Night Live... :) (I like the labyrinth design inside the outline of her face)

can you not say awww? I mean... awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

Awwww, he's soo cute! *snuggles picture* :D

This one's a she. Stinky is the boy. :)