Hm. That title sounds dirty.

Anyway, H.E. suggested I get back into sketching at least an hour everyday. I somehow fell out of doing it, and I need the practice. One of my weaknesses is the human anatomy—it’s the reason I got into Poser at all … because I’m a lazy artist and don’t like the bodies I draw. But if I’m to make a living at doing the art thing, I guess I better get over my fear of drawing the human body so I can take on more work on a higher level.

The first time I made a serious attempt at drawing a realistic human form on the computer (careful, there’s boobage, so it may be NSFW), I was wildly proud of it, and I posted it at an online art community to see what others would think. Among the comments? Not bad, but her face is too small. I was crushed and after that completely unsure of myself. Because they were right. The face was too small!

And after a few more attempts drawing the human body and a few more constructive criticisms, that’s when I switched to Poser. The criticism, the practice, the progression—none of it really bothered me, but I wanted to wow people for once instead of inviting their criticism, and all the Poser artists in the community at the time were getting all the WOW comments. I simply had to switch.

So I stopped drawing realistic bodies for a while. If I drew any bodies, they were cartoonish. There were nothing at all like the really cool hand drawing Minnie made.

Meaning I still suck at human anatomy. Drawing it, of course. And it’s time to change that.

First thing’s first. I must assess where I am in skill level as an artist, which is not bad for a cartoonist but pretty sucky for an artist who goes for realism. Evidence here:

Note the lack of muscle tone or shading, the caved in face, the awful-looking hand perched on that thigh, and well … my inability to draw the darn figure straight at all. I have it at this weird diagonal on the page. Bonus points, by the way, if you recognize the drawing discernable on the other side of the page, right where her face is.

Anyway, not bad for something drawn without a reference, but also still not where I’d like to be as an artist. I mean, I’d love to be even half as good as Linda Bergkvist, for crying out loud! So my mission for the rest of this month is to find a photo reference in this same pose and redo the drawing so that it’s more realistic and has more depth, something that looks like a living thing, like Minnie’s hand drawing.

Naturally, I’ll post my progress.

Share this post: