Figure Drawings!

So the one thing that I have always been told when looking into animation, was to learn how to figure draw. Every single person has told me how important it is to be able to draw from life. Before I got into the program I thought that I was pretty decent at figure drawing, however since I took all of my art classes at a different school, I learned that my peers had an advantage when it came to life drawing. All last year I struggled with figure drawing, so I decided that this year I really wanted to get better at figure drawing. I also realized that when it came to my portfolio, I had very few traditional drawings, so I knew that I needed to beef up my portfolio.

I am currently reading two books that have helped me with my figure drawings. The first is "How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way" by Stan Lee. This book talks about starting off each drawing with a wireframe, then building up on that wireframe with cylinders, before finally going back and adding detail. I found this method works pretty well for me as I can quickly capture the pose and then build up the drawing. The other book I'm reading is called "Force: Dynamic Life Drawing for Animators" by Mike Mattesi. This book is fantastic and covers how to capture movement in your drawings. The drawing style taught in this book is the way I've always wanted to draw, so I'm really trying to work my way through this book to get better.

Our final drawing lab for the semester was Friday and these are some of the drawings that I did this semester that I feel were my best.

These were some quick, 15 second warmups.

This was a 2 minute drawing, where I tried to apply some of the concepts from the Force book

I'm pretty proud of these and I can't wait to improve. I plan on going to a zoo soon to do some life drawings of animals as well. I feel that if I can master figure drawing, it will greatly improve all of my art.

As always thanks for reading and enjoy!

~Josh