Today is a bit of a milestone, even if it doesn’t feel like one. I’ve gone from not really understanding anything about the human figure to at least having a strong enough grasp that I can pencil down some quick sketches and call it good, despite work driving me up and down a wall. And what I’ve done now does look much better than my attempt from last week where I relied too heavily on the contours of the photo references I was using.

Now, I will admit that the construction that I’ve been utilizing up until now does have a habit of omitting vital structures. For instance, had I not modified it a bit, the torso would have completely neglected the obliques and made the figure look far more egg like than I had intended. I think now that I have a vague idea of the interstitial areas, I can start divvying up poses into three main masses rather than a whole mess of ovals and pointed spheres, but here’s what I was able to massage these poses into.

From where I’m standing there are two main problems I’m still encountering when I work:

1. There’s too much guesswork when it comes to applying the muscle curves and contours.

2. The figures themselves lack a bit of fluidity in their poses, the rigidity brought about by over-construction rather than intuitive breakdowns.

I have a few lesson plans I’ll be going over in the coming days to see if I can more reliably break down figures without needing all this fluff that starts getting muddled after a while, but I think that’s enough for figures for the time being. I want to try and tackle every artist’s bane: hands and feet.

I’m mildly terrified, but I didn’t come this far to only come this far!