same subject as last time, different approach

Practicing skulls at various angles and trying to figure out how the muscles and skin wrap around them.

Recording my personal observations about the forearm. Note that these are just my personal notes based on things I've observed by looking at multiple pictures from my anatomy book, and I'm not sure they are 100% correct, though they appear to hold true for all the cases I've seen. I'm using my anatomy book as reference for the anatomy. I couldn't find these exact poses of the arm and hand, but found some pictures that were close enough.

The ulna and radius seem to remain fairly stationary as the forearm rotates around the area where they connect to the humerus. The axis of rotation appears to pass through the individual centers of these two bones around these areas, and thus the bones simply rotate in place around the elbow without shifting position. At the wrist, however, the two pivot axises of these bones appear to converge around the center of the wrist, and so the position of the bones change primarily around the wrist where the pivot is no longer centered inside the bones, but outside the bones at the center of the wrist.

Studying skeletal structure with 'Anatomy for the Artist' by Barcsay. The pose is not inside the book: I'm just using it to try to set up a proper skeletal structure by using multiple pictures from that book as reference. I had a particularly hard time with the forearm and pelvis because I couldn't find a drawing in the book that had the angles I needed to understand the particular forms in 3d space, so I also looked through some references on the internet a bit and felt my own forearm to try to get an idea of how those bones curve around each other. I'm still not quite sure about those areas. It'd be nice if I could figure out how to simplify them somehow.

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Look out mamma, theres a white boat commin up the river...

Inspired by The Flaming Lips song The W.A.N.D. and by a friend who needed some cheering up. Hope it helps. :)

After doing my last picture here which was a very mechanical attempt to achieve photorealism where my only aim way to copy the photo, I wanted to go in the opposite direction, getting back more to what I was trying to do in the intermediate boards, instead attempting the loosest attempt to draw from a reference yet, with an attempt to only use the reference without drawing the reference at all. Accuracy to the photo is not going to be a criteria in this case. It's going to be about speed, looseness, and improvisation. I just finished a lot of work, so hopefully I'll have the time to focus on something challenging.

I'm going to try to combine what I've learned from both my practice in drawing with references and inventing forms without references to make something that hopefully doesn't suck too much and doesn't require too much time spent on it (hopefully something I finish by the end of the day). By using a reference, I'm hoping the result will be more convincing and anatomically correct than some of my doodles on this board where I didn't use any references at all. By not drawing the reference directly, the end result will hopefully be something fairly different than the photo and interesting on its own. Most importantly, I'm hoping it will be a useful exercise that will help me get better.

Reference: http://hq55.com/scan/willemdafoe/01.jpg. After cropping out the text on the left, I decided to flip him horizontally. I just liked it better that way after removing all the space on the left. I don't know why I liked it better - I'm not a composition expert, but I liked the initial focus to be on the left flowing towards the right, and having the brighter portion of the face on the left seemed to do that more.

I don't really know what I'm going to end up with. I have a fantasy theme in mind: maybe a warrior or a priest or something.

just some guy looking up. really nothing special. i'll finish this later. there's homework to be done

Abstract horror kicks ass.