Just having fun

I recently had a request to create a dragon tattoo for a co-worker of my husband’s and in order to get into the swing of things, I decided to warm up with some anatomy exercises. Well, I got a little side-tracked and started working on this…ah, I should get back to business.  I’ll revisit this later.

This little piggy went to market…

Feet are one of the top problem areas for me, so I decided to tackle them head-on by drawing a lot of well…feet.  I decided to start from the inside out but aside from the model skull I own, I don’t yet have an actual skeleton on hand to help me gain a better understanding of what I’m drawing.

In the meanwhile, I’ve used the following references to aid me: Artistic Anatomy by Dr. Paul Richer, Figure Drawing – Design and Invention by Michael Hampton and Anatomy for the Artist by Sarah Simblet – all excellent books. Some of the studies are copies from these sources while the rest use my feet or photographs of feet as reference. There’s something about copying something over and over again that commits it to memory – I now know the names of all the bones in the feet!

I have also included some more of my life drawings (5-10 minute poses).

Skull Drawing – Frontal View

For this drawing I used 60 lb medium-tooth paper and a range and Staedtler pencils ranging from F through 8B.  This is the first time I included a hard charcoal for the darkest areas, used various tortillons (blending stumps) and wore cotton gloves to prevent accidental smudging.  On another note, I am dreaming of skulls – I don’t know if I should be worried.