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Hi Christopher. It seems to me that you are studying very solidly and learning a great deal. Everything you are doing is great and is taking you forwards. I have found that following along with Iliya’s lessons, almost drawing stroke for stroke sometimes, has been very helpful to me. I watch a small portion, stop the video, draw, repeat. Then other times I draw without a video and some from imagination (but I don’t post those 😆!). There is so much to learn that I know I will be doing these studies over and over. His method is really helpful as it starts with just getting something approximate down on the page and then his process is a gradual refinement and building up of the drawing. Thus the drawing process becomes a journey. The more we do, the more we learn and therefore as we progress, we’ll keep improving. Don’t worry about things being perfect – that’s my trouble too. Just draw. Enjoy the journey.
Thanks Deborah,
Maybe I should try to follow the demonstration step by step too. Until now my approach to this videos was always about the principles taught in them. If I follow along it’s more about visual note taking for me.
So for example in Ilya’s skull demonstration I actually mostly just listened to what he was saying while simultaneously working on the same reference on my own.
If something is said that I’m specifically curious about or if the said was to complex I stop, minimize the reference and watch the whole part again while looking at what and how he is doing it.
Since I don’t expect to retain every important information and we are supposed to draw multiple skulls in that way anyway I’ll just restart the demonstration for every skull.
It’s interesting to see how different the approaches to those lessons can be 😁
Day 58
I wanted to do more but ended up again with just warm up stuff and the beginning of trying to use my sketchbooks more.
More sketchbooking …
So basically I’m trying to incorporate a few things I noticed. First even with all those line excercises to improve my arm and hand control I almost always find myself stiffening up while trying to draw more seriously. I end up using completely different lines and are holding the drawing tool not like if practising.
So even if I have to force myself I want to work more without any preliminary pencil sketches, which I have done with today’s skull. I don’t know if that’s the best way to learn about it’s structure but at least it ended up looking better as I thought it would be.
Secondly in my opinion my drawing sessions are way to split up because I always get mentally exhausted after just a few minutes which especially while doing more time consuming drawings leads to just a few little drawings per day. But what I need the most in my opinion is just mileage.
So I want to try to emphasize on my sketchbook more and mostly focus on these quicker studies and sketches while also trying to slowly increase the drawing time before I take a break. Hopefully that way I’ll be able to concentrate for longer then.
Day 60
Warm ups and filled the page from yesterday with more skulls. I also fell in love with this excercise I came up with a few weeks ago. I try to imagine a box and then draw just it’s outer shape. Today I brought that even further by then imagining the drawn box slightly rotated, elongated or with cut out pieces.
I doesn’t look like much but it’s pretty fun and challenging and if I look at them my mind fills in the missing inner parts/lines.
A few Vilppu heads without having watched his lessons for a few days. I probably will rewatch them soon and check how much I remembered.
Catching up on this thread and I thought I would drop this note.
“I wanted to follow up on your comments… my skulls are kind of weird because they were actually sourced from the NMA model in full wide-angle lens mode which created a mild point perspective rather than a true parallel projection… kind of a cinematic effect. They were really just the product of a torrid first date with my fancy new pen and not a good model for an effective analysis of the skull.“
The 3D models on the Russian course are using Sketchfab, not the NMA viewer (the custom application we created for the 3d content area of the website). Our viewer doesn’t have that issue but at the time the Russian course was released our viewer didn’t support texture maps so just those models are in Sketchfab.
Very soon (hopefully within a week or two) we are releasing the new version of our 3D viewer with a ton of improvements including a mobile app. We have taken all of the models from the Russian course and they will be available in the new viewer where you can control perspective and many other advantages. Also we are adding a 3d model of the Asaro head and a bunch of new models for the upcoming drapery and plaster cast lessons. The skull is one of those models that will benefit from the improved 3d viewer over the current one.
As for the content, Christopher, I think you’re on exactly the right track. This challenge is what everyone’s personal sketchbooks should look like. Drawing is thinking, learning, practicing and I see all of that here.
As for the conversation about the skull:
If your goal is to master the figure and head, then anatomy is a rabbit’s hole.
Knowing some simplifications or details of the skull helps artists. Studying the skull more seriously helps even more.
If you want to go even further, and in my case, having a good casting and eventually real skulls was important. One thing we can’t do for you over the internet (yet) is the power of touch and the information your brain gets from stereoscopic vision. I’ve spent a lot of time holding and touching these bones (que Dexter theme). If you have the ability to get a disarticulated casted skeleton from a company like Bone Clones (email boneclones and ask for a discount. They have done that for NMA subscribers) or Somso, it will help but only if you make time to really study it. Learn every bone. Draw it many many times.
George Bridgman used to carry a hand skeleton in his coat pocket to the Art Students League and if a student was struggling with hands he would toss the hand to them and say “learn this.”
I don’t think every artist needs to dive that deeply into anatomy but if mastery is what you’re after that will be an important step.
We did scan and create reduction products of all of the the Goldfinger cadaver casts to be small and affordable available at the http://store.nma.art/. Right now only the muscled head is available https://store.nma.art/product/anatomical-head-model/
Unfortunately because of COVID we have postponed the big launch. But you may be able to pick up the castings if you email daniel dot daigle at nma dot art
Beware of artist created models for study because they are generally inaccurate and will teach you bad habits. As a professional courtesy to other artists and art teachers I don’t like to pick apart their anatomy products so I’d appreciate if you don’t ask my thoughts on them but I will generally say: scans/casts of the real thing are best.
Having said all of this. Your overall drawing skills, your ability to understand form, draw from imagination, communicate gesture and movements, compose, are more important than the anatomical study and they need to take precedence. Your knowledge of your subject matter never stops but you need to get very comfortable with the fundamentals. If you’re trying to study a small bone and you can’t draw form, or light it, or simplify it, it will be somewhat wasted study. Work your way up to deeper and deeper study.
First of all thank you very much for this well thought out answer.
And yes I’m definitely interested in “mastery” even if I’ll never achieve it. In other words even if I should some day reach a point that allows me to work professionally in any way this won’t be the end goal or the top of my mountain. I don’t want to stop learning, the opposite is the case. As long as I’m able to I want to learn and improve.
So I’m very interested in studying and gaining a deep understanding of the human anatomy. But I have to admit that I think at my current stage it could be generally and also financially dangerous to dive to deep into it to early. I mean I’m not even comfortable with the general forms of the skull and as you said the fundamentals. So even if those individually castings would help I think they can get expensive fast and also somewhat addictive 😅
So I think I should try to not get carried away. So if I really would want to tackle the problem of not being able to answer all my questions with just 3D models, I would start with a single skull model/cast. I’ll definitely research for what is available in my area having shipping in mind and thank you for the links I already saved them.
Besides that I think considering your whole comment it’s good that I want to learn anatomy but currently I shouldn’t stress about getting to involved in it even if it can be frustrating. Especially the part about anatomy being a rabbit’s hole in combination with the end part of your comment mean to me that if I hit a wall I should step back instead of only searching the wall for answers. Or in other words if I don’t fully understand the forms of the brow ridge yet, I should recognize it and move on but not focus on just that for days without even knowing what the problem is. Since I in my case got much more things and especially general drawing problems to work on I should instead step back and work on further improving my abilities as a whole. Which in terms of anatomy would mean to first gain a general understanding, the deeper knowledge and little details can wait.
I’ll also definitely try to exclusively base my studies on the real subject instead of simplifications and while learning a simplified way from the NMA lessons I’ll make sure to refer and compare to the real thing. Even it can be frustrating having to figure out my own answers without even fully understanding what I’m looking at. But if that’s the way to avoid bad habits and learn more efficiently in the long run I’ll do it.
Exactly.
You will study anatomy for the rest of your life. Do that.
But also focus on the fundamentals which underpin everything and empower you to actually draw and paint and yes, study. The more you learn to see the more capable you are of study. I look forward to seeing your progress!
Again thank you Joshua, it’s much appreciated.
Day 64
As usual for the last days some basic excercises as warm ups. I don’t know if I’ll do more today since my hand hurts a little bit. I think it’s because I’m not used to the fountain pen yet but have worked with it so much the last days.
Additionally I also try to switch it up regularly in terms of one day working on my table easel? with the paper being almost perpendicular to my sight while not being able to rotate the paper for more comfortable angles and on other days I sit in front of my drawing table with a much flatter angle and my sketchbooks which I can rotate because they are smaller (even if I don’t do that often for practise purposes).
I think it’s good practise in terms of being/getting versatile and practising alot of different movements but it may also be stressful for my arm 😅
But I’ll mostly stick to my fountain pen for the foreseeable future since I really want to achieve some mileage and push through alot of “bad” drawings through ink work. I hope to pick up some good habits the medium has to offer while also improving my overall line confidents.
Day 65
I already mentioned it back in my introduction but my sensitive/fragile hand/arm can get pretty annoying. I have to be really careful the next days since I felt there was still something wrong in my hand (especially the thumb) today.
It’s frustrating since I already know out of experience if it gets worse I have to stop drawing for at least a month but even this little bit I feel right now will probably take weeks to fully recover.
Since I haven’t missed a day yet I’ll at least do my warm ups the next days to keep my hand/moving but while being really careful to not overdo it.
The most unfortunate thing is that I was just successfully getting used to slowly increasing my drawing time and now I don’t even know how to fill that time the next days. 😅
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