Piecing It Together

The final part of this blog series: drawing an entire human body. I expect that it'll be much harder to draw the details, such as the face and hands, because the farther out something is, the less detail you can add to it, making it harder to create a realistic look.

Something I struggle with when drawing full bodies is definitely proportions. Even if I follow proportional rules (the entire body being 8 heads long), it always looks just a little too unrealistic. I admittedly cheated on this one and drew the a picture of the knees-up instead of a full-body shot, but I figured that it was close enough, and cutting off the calves and feet wouldn't make an enormous difference.

The thing I struggled most with was definitely the face. With the face being much smaller, I struggled to fill in the details, and I'm honestly not satisfied with the overall face.

Of course, I started out with the basic head shape. As you can see, I started out with quite a rough sketch, just eyeballing everything quickly onto the paper and getting the major parts down.

I chose not to use construction lines here, because I was at more of a loss as to where to put them. Though they can be helpful at times, it's rather difficult to place them where they'd be most advantageous. Bridgman suggests following the major lines of the drawing best, or the lines that specifically direct the eye (Bridgman 72).

Another issue I had was smoothly connecting the limbs together. Bridgman explains that "Masses of about the same size or proportion are conceived not as masses, but as one mass; those of different proportions, in respect to their movement, are conceived as wedging into each other, or as morticed or interlocking" (Bridgman 12). He basically explains that the body parts should not be seen as multiple parts, but as parts of a whole. With this in mind, it was a bit easier to smoothly connect the arms and legs to the torso, as well as connecting the head to the body.

As you can see, I had quite a rough start. I was rather intimidated by the whole process, and it was quite difficult to start off. However, a tip I'd say is to not dwell over mistakes. It's okay to misplace the eye, so long as you use the misplacement to properly reposition the eye.

I'm really quite neutral about the end product. Not my best or worst work, but it had a lot of time and effort poured into it, and the finished product doesn't look horrible, though it's not the best.

How do you feel when something doesn't turn out how you want it to? Do you get discouraged when you don't always achieve the best results, and does it deter you from doing the same activity?

Bridgman, George. Constructive Anatomy. New York: Sterling Publishing Co., 2016. Print.