Drawing On The Left And Right Side Of The Brain

Michelangelo's anatomical sketches

    As an artist, I've always wanted to develop and improve my drawing skills further. One of the skills I wanted to develop is how to draw and paint from imagination, just like how some of artists like Michelangelo and some comic book artists and illustrators of old did.

     As a former traditional animator, I have been doing this kind of drawing already.  But because drawing for animation is a collective effort, where my drawings need to have the same look as that of the rest of the team's, to create a unified and harmonious whole, I now find my drawings and design skills have a very limited style.  This was my fault, because I didn't do anything to further my growth in terms of drawing.

    Some of the things I've always wanted to be good at is in drawing artistic human and animal anatomy.  Developing my skills in these areas would greatly help me later on to invent and design any imaginative creatures and characters if I so desire.  And so came this idea of enrolling to this online drawing course.

My copied drawing of Bambi and Thumper

    I'm now on my fifth week out of eight. The course is structured in a progressive manner, by first learning how to see and analyze the gestures of the pose. Then from that build the structure, form, & muscles, layer by layer, while maintaining good design principles.  Very basic but good stuff,  It's an analytical approach to drawing than natural. I think it's a good way of learning and remembering the surface anatomy of the figure. This course is more practical than medical. It's objective is more design-oriented, which is very much compatible to how I have been drawing in animation. In animation drawing, I was limited to just pencil line drawings, while in the second part of Analytical Figure Drawing Course, one could learn how to actually complete the drawing up to it's shaded form and learn basic composition as well.  That is how I actually wanted my drawings to be like - a complete artwork that can stand on it's own. This would also help me later on if I wanted to pursue painting as well.  However, doing the assignments at night have been very difficult and almost a physical impossibility for me, after a demanding day at work as a 3D animator. Having RSI doesn't help either. 

           Below are the assignments I've submitted for critiques.  These aren't the best drawings, but it's only a start. And I'm hopeful, that my drawings will eventually improve later on.   (click to enlarge)

Week 2 - Skeletal Landmarks

Week 3 - Head

Week 4 - Muscles of the Upper Torso