Leeds Pride 2010

Was trying to capture the size of the crowd at Leeds Pride, but this is a very boring image. Should of used some colour, for what was a most colourful day .

And yeah! this blog is now finally back up to date

Leeds Pride 2010

Another sketch from the Leeds Pride. It started of being two specific women talking, but they kept moving and the women on the right, is in fact an amalgamation of several women

Leeds Pride Festival 2010

The last visit of the Leeds Savages, was to the Leeds Pride festival. As a challenge, a few of us bought along oil pastels. I have never used these things before, but it was a good bit of fun

Police Van - Clarence Docks

This was done at the waterfront festival, and following by two previous drawings, I thought I would continue with perspective. This drawing was going quite well, but they drove away before I could do the back doors

Horbury Barge

Sticking with perspective, had a go at drawing this barge which is in Granary Wharf. Wish I added in some more background as the image looks kind of odd without it.

City Inn

Still playing catch up with these posts. The following sketch lost the perspective when doing this, so its a bit neh!

Trees - I think

Last sketch from the visit to Merrion Street gardens. As our pessimistic summer has been creeping in. One of the topics of conversations at meets has been about depicting foliage. I thought I would have a go at concentrating just on the shapes of the trees. And I ended up with this.

I quite like this, and may give something similiar ago again in the near future. Next time seeing as well If i can get some shape in there too.

Fellow Savages Alex and Vics

If you were wondering what my fellow Leeds Savages look like, here are fellow savages Alex and Vic’s.

This was quite hard to do in places as they were both pretty much wearing black so the contrast in the shading is slightly over emphasised just to bring them out a bit.

Also, you might be interested in a guest blog by Vic’s which was on the guardian site, saying a bit more about what happens at a Leeds Savage meet. You can read it here

St. John's Church Leeds

Still playing catch up on these posts, but back in June the savages went to the Merrion gardens in Leeds. I started off with ink for a change and did this sketch of St. John’s church.

This is in fact the oldest church in Leeds, and if you ever get the opportunity to look inside it, do so as it’s very interesting

Bottom of Ruined Stairs at Rievaulx Abbey

And now onto the bottom. Just a note of interest here, which I have probably haven;t caught to well. If i was drawing this from imagination, I would of done the curves at the bottom of the stairwell going in one direction, but the reality is from my height from where I took this. The lines actually bend into the center.

Fallen Stairs at Rievaulx Abbey

Thought I would do my last two sketches in pen for a change. This was the top of fallen down spiral stair case

Rievaulx Abbey Column

Still battling against the weather at this point. Found a bit of shelter in the ruins and all I could really see was this column. Not quite finished as I did get quite bored drawing the straight lines.

Aside, Just noticed this is the 100th sketch on this blog!

Rievaulx Abbey - Abandoned Sketch

Unfortunately the weather wasn’t too great. I started this sketch and about fifteen minutes into it, the heavens opened.

Rieaulx abbey Warm Up Sketch

I have a fair backlog of pictures to update. June and the start of July have been extremely busy. to start with, here is just a quick warm up sketch at Riveaulx Abbey which is the furthest Leeds Savage Expedition to date.

Saltaire

Final sketch for the day, and decided to just pull out the 8B for this one. Not sure what I was exactly trying to do, but had fun doing it netherless.

All in a all, a good trip out to Saltaire and one of my favourite savages meet to date.

Titus Salt

As well as new pencils also had a new pad, a heavy weight 200gm  Daler Rowney with a fine grain. Going to take a bit of getting use to, but very much looking forward to getting back to doing some anatomy pictures with it.

I think I have been a bit flattering to old Titus here, but pleased with the result on what was a relatively quick sketch.

Bandstand

Have to say, the band was quite good. Quite a few savages chose to draw the bandstand, and it was interesting to see what details we all chose to concentrate on. There is a flickr group for the savages and I am hoping in the coming days, you will be able to see their drawings up there too.

Also, I bought some new pencils at the weekend, and have found the King of 2b pencils.  Its a Lyra Titan solid graphite pencil, which has a great weight behind it

Speed Sketch #8

Ventured across the border into Saltaire for the last Leeds Savage Meet. What a cracking day it turned out to be, with the weather especially. For a warm, up I choose to do some speed sketches of the cricketers who were playing on the green. Pesky blighters, they don’t move for ages and then suddenly spring into life for a second.

Armley Industrial Museum

I thought I would have a go at attempting some two point perspective, as you can see, I ll get my coat.

Don’t forget to download the Leeds Savage Ebook

Old Steam Engine

This was around the back of the museum, looking rather unloved but rather interesting at the same time. I had with me my Ryman Sketchpad which I’ve mentioned before is a bit crap as its hard to blend on. Spent some considerable time trying to get the perspective right on this, which was not helped with the overflowing spring fauna covering those all important lines. On  a plus note, I am beginning to get more comfortable in using the F pencil to complement my shading.

Singer Sewing Warm Up

There’s a sentence you don’t say everyday. I have been  a bit late posting these up as for the last two weeks, was working on putting together the stupendous Leeds Savage Ebook - DOWNLOAD its free.

Onto the drawing, a warm up sketch of some Singer sewing machines done at Armley Industrial museum at a Savage meet.  the museum seems to be a little unloved, but looks to have a great lot of interesting things there. I am looking forward to going back there and spending some more time. One piece of advice for the museum is lower the entrance fee.

Round Hay Park - Daisies on the Bench

Last sketch for the day and continuing to use the F pencil along with what I would usually use. Shot myself in the foot a bit, choosing to do this right in the middle of the paper really small, rather than taking advantage of the space. It was also a bit of a weird perspective as the bench was sloping ever so slightly upwards

Tree Line Round Hay Park

A fellow savage Vic’s mentions that she uses an F pencil for her stuff as you can still blend it, and get a hard line. So I thought I would give this a go. I had to admit the temptation to pull out the 2b became to much, hence why its a bit smudgy.  I can certainly see it being useful for some of the trickier bits on my anatomy drawings.

Speed Sketch #7

This time with the  Leeds Savage Club it was off to Round Hay Park and like doing the speed sketch at Kirkstall, lots of distance!. One observation though,  it seemed everyone was waking  left to right. There were very few people walking the other way.

Out of interest as well, I decided to see what all my speed sketches of people of Leeds would look like together, which you can see here

Kirkstall Abbey #2

Last sketch of the day and a bit of artistic license used. After the straight lines of temple works, it was also nice to see some “not so straight lines”.  You can see some fellow Savage drawings from the day on the Leeds Savage flickr pool . That person sitting at the base of  the ruining is myself.

Finally, a bit about the Leeds Savage Club on the YEP site and that’s me on the left in the photograph.

Kirkstall Abbey - Ink

I thought I would have another go at going straight in with ink.( My last effort).

I’ve squashed the frontage quite a bit, but think I have a bit better control over the pens than last time.  A picture here, from the viewpoint I was drawing from.

Speed Sketch #6

Another Leeds Savage Club Meet, this time at Kirkstall Abbey. Nice thing about doing this speed sketch, was plenty of distance! Where I have done similar sketches before, its been a bit of a fixed distance, but here they were all over the place.

Bonus points if you can spot which one of these people were a fellow Leeds Savage Club Member

Temple Works Window Frame

My final sketch of the day and I quite like this, if I get around to doing this painting here in acrylics , then I think I would  give this ago next.

You can see some of the other Leeds Savage Club members drawings, over here

Fixture and Fittings

Where I was drawing the previous two pictures from, was the old cafeteria.

From my vantage point, there were loads of the old fixture and fittings, such as this

A few more photo’s I have taken of Temple works, you can find here

Temple Works Rear Exterior Sketch

…Those straight lines are certainly pesky. Annoyingly, I thought I would have a go of adding a bit of colour to this, but was a bit too eager which, well resulted in the image on the right.

A photo of the view is here

Warm up exterior sketch of Temple Works

A very quick warm up sketch done of the exterior of Temple  Works in Leeds, done as part of a Leeds Savage meet to the building.

A phrase heard quite a few times over the visit, was “A lot of straight lines”

Left Hand Interior Corner - Victorian Detailing

Exciting stuff. Not at all happy with this, the wall paper and decor, is extrememly busy. Whilst I was not interested in getting the lavish detail of the Victorian wall paper and deco, I was hoping to do a bit of a better job of catching the shadows.

Speed Sketches Victoria Hotel

Phew, February was an extremely busy month, March is not looking of any sign of easying up, but it has all been for a good cause. The Leeds Savage Club is now up and running. Its a bit cables and wires at the moment, but keep checking back to that link.

This Sunday just gone, was the first meet of the sketchers, now under the Savage banner. Six of us turned up to the Victoria Hotel in George street to do some sketching. To the right is my warm up.

Venus' Backside #3

… And another attempt, this time another shift in view. I think here I have straighten the back too much, and god knows what is going on with the right arm.  I am wondering, if the sculpture was trying to make an older model look younger – I can’t really back that statement up with anything, but something is buggin me about the statue.

Still, not a bad way to spend an hour on sunday, drawing Venus’ bum.

Venus' Backside #2

… So I thought I would give it another go, this time from a different angle. I am more happier with the back on this attempt, but have probably given her a slightly more perky bum then what she actually has. Again that weight shift seems wrong to me. Here is a picture of the statue from the front, which also brings us to something else I struggled with, which was her shoulder blades. In the sculpture, there is not much detail, I have probably stressed it more in all three drawings, than what it actually is. But, where they are, seems wrong. – to me.

Venus' Backside #1

Following on from where I went back to Leeds Museum to redraw the Megaloceros giganteus,  going back to the Art Gallery, I decided  I was going to revisit Antonio Canova Venus . Initially, I was going to do just the head, but walking past and umming and erring I decided I was not in the mood to be frustrated by her chin, so instead I went for her backside.

Which proved to be equally frustrating. There is something wrong with this statue. I was really battling with not trying to draw what I know, but what I see. The shift of weight on the hips seems all wrong to me, and so do the shoulders.

Eric Kenningtons 'The War God'

A very quick sketch of the statue ‘The War God’ at Leeds Art Gallery.  You can see the original here . I was at the gallery for, the very last Leeds Sketchers Meet, which was appropriate, as it was where the first one was inFebruary last year. Though it is the last ‘Leeds Sketchers Meet’, it is not the last time we are meeting. We will be meeting in March under the name, The Leeds Savage Club.  Check out this link after the 3rd of March for details.

Incomplete 15th Century Half Armour

Following on from the warm up sketch, I attempted to start drawing the whole piece. I have added a couple of photographs I took of the armour, to my smokeback albums on fotki and flickr

I do have quite a good understanding of how armour is constructed, I used to be an armourer and I did find that helpful when sketching out  the initial shape. However, as you can see from the photo’s, the decoration on the amour is quite detailed and this is where I got stuck.

Someone said to us the other day, about being not being able to draw.  I think drawing is two things; The first is observation and the second is having a bag of tricks. The more drawing you do, the more tricks you add to that bag.

When it comes to putting an intricate 2D design onto a curved surface, I have to say, I am stumped.

Definitely something I am going to  have to come back to …

Armoured Glove - Warm Up Sketch

The Second meet of the Leeds Sketching group 2010, and this time it was off to the Royal Armouries.

The left, is a quick warm up sketch of a 15th century armoured glove. The glove is part of a half set of armour, which I continued to draw in my next drawing.

Anterior Dissection of orbital cavity

Moving onto the anatomy side, here is an Anterior dissection of the right eye. Unlike the ears where I started with the smallest bones and worked out. I wanted to start with the eye, from the outside and work inwards. After doing my sketch of my left eye, this seemed the next logical step.

Its a bit of a creepy image as well, which is always a good thing. A bit of a bombardment of new labels to learn, and I was going to write some of them down for you. But, when looking them up I have come across two excellent images relating to the muscles of the eye (obliques and rectus) which I am going to draw next. It also going to tie back to my drawing of the cranial nerves. so watch this space.

The drawing itself, is a bit elongated in my opinion. I think this might be slightly down to how I was copying it , with it being rested on my knee. I also tried a new sketch pad which I got from Rymans. Its called “The artist A4 sketchpad 180gsm” . It might be good for ink, as the paper is quite solid, but I had a real hard time blending on this. You can probably see, not even zooming in, that the blending is quite harsh.

Unlike the cheap boldmere sketching pad, in which I turned its downfalls to my advantage, I cant see this pad being used for much more than doodling. Save your money.

Close up of the Iris

I get a lot of traffic to this site, with the search phrase “what to draw in my sketchbook”. Doing a bit of reverse searching on this phrase, I am presuming that a fair deal of these enquiries are to do with people submitting sketchbooks for further education/college. Can’t help there, but I like to think that some people are searching under that term for the pure sake of looking to draw something for fun.

I would highly recommend drawing the suffice of the iris BIG!  My camera that I used to take the picture of my eye for reference in my previous drawing, is 15mb so I was able to zoom into an amazing amount of image detail on the iris.

I started outwards from the pupil with a 6b and then got lighter with the pencils the further I went out. The surface is unbelievable varied with shapes. I tried quite a few different methods to try and get this, which you can see the top is different technique to the bottom.

All in all, a rather fun drawing excerise

My Left Eye

Not quite my left eye… I took a photo for reference and ended up with a fair bit of barrel distortion on one side of the photo. I think when drawing this, I over compensated in trying to correct the barrel distortion. The photographer part of mind was in conflict with the drawing part.

I am not a keen fan of drawing eyes. When doing storyboards or concept art, as you can see in some old storyboard drawings here. I find the moment you start drawing eyes, you start defining the character and I’m not arty enough to go down that path.

One tip that has been engraved in my mind, from yonks ago. Is the whites of the eye are never ever pure white. and if you zoom in, you should just be able to see a fine shade over the eye white. This is the third drawing I have done of part of myself, and over at my other blog, I have stitched the three together as a self portrait WIP which you can see here

Latin Rock #2

Back to the Latin Rock for a warm up. This time, I used just an HB and and a 2H pencil in this sketch, concentrating more on the detail. In fact, went to town a bit and it would be fair to say I overdid it.

It’s interesting rereading the commentary from where I drew it first time round. Where last time I was concerned about proportions, this time  I was far more concerned about the light. The lighting in the room is extremely unnatural – not that you expect to see giant skeletal Megalocerous running around in daylight of course.

The museum lights do throw shadows, which in turn effect the shape of the skull which I found distracting when trying to define the shape. I do feel, I have done far more justice to his jaw this time around, though I do feel I have cheated him on his teeth.

Also of note, where I mentioned in my drawing of the cranial nerves about the cheap pad I used that was extremely smudgy. I actually deliberately used this pad for this drawing, to use that “smudginess” to my advantage.

I am also involved in the running of the Leeds writing group , I write fiction mainly set in the Belle Epoque, which you can find over here at The Dead Adventurers Club . I mention this, as I’m currently looking at bringing the two under the same umbrella. Watch this space

First up, is last year I did a skectch of the tendons on a finger.

Click here for the orignal (short!) post

A few things, firstly I have long given up on colour pencils – dont like them, also I can see in the lines in the original drawing , where I haven’t been confident  which results in that squiggly edge. Shading has been done for shading sake. There is not much thought gone into actual shape.

That’s not to say my latest drawing isn’t error free. I made a school boy error from the Vincula Brevia upwards. It took us a while to figure it, but what I did, was instead of drawing what was there, I drew what I knew.

The angle of the original, had been taken looking down.  You can probabnly see where I have drawn the nail with it curving at one perspective before changing it to try and correct the perspective.

Due to the size I was working on, I didn’t have enough room to really correct it properly, as you can see the middle phalanx bone is somewhat darker than the rest of them. Finally, all distal phalanx bones are not created equal, I wanted to draw it more to what I thought it should look like, than what it was.

One thing I am pleased with, is before starting I decided on what pencils I was going to use for certain areas straight from the start.

Tendons Dark  - 2B, HB

Tendons Light – H, 2H

Bone – 2B, 4B

Edging – B

which I’m pleased I did, as I didn’t end up with the situation I had when drawing the Ossicles.

To end, where  I mentioned in my last post about the black smudgy paper I used, this also left a big black smudgy mess on my scanner.

Posterior View Of Cranial Nerves

Moving away from the ear, my next few posts will be about eyes, but I wanted to first give an idea about the space in which all the aforementioned occupy. In my anatomy books,there are several cross section drawings, of things such as the right tympanic cavity, which is where the middle ears sits and I have got to take my hat off to those folks who do medical illustrations, as I do not feel confident in my ability at the moment to attempt to even do a straight copy of one of these illustrations.

What I did go for in the end was this drawing of the cranial nerves, and as you can see its extremley busy, but trust me, it is tame in comparison to the thympanic cavity. The moment you start adding nerves, muscles, bone it starts getting extremely crowded.

To give you more idea on where we are inside the head, I would suggest you take a look at my Pterygopalatine fossa sketch. We are behind this and I hope its clear in my picture here, that you can see where the skull is, and can picture how that continues to curve round to the pterygopalatine fossa, and of course there is the ear on the right.

Now, take a look at the size of the Incus, compared to a american cent  and take note on my drawing, where I have marked the Mastoid air cells. Everything I have drawn to date with the ear, takes place just above the this and goes from the outer ear, and just past the Sigmoid sinus. Many diagrams of the middle ear will show the Sigmoid sinus on.  Its also interesting to note, if you get an ear infection, those mastoid air cells can get infected, which you really don’t want.  I mention this, to indicate how everything around here is connected.  I hope this description has given you a better picture.

As for the drawing, usual culprit of pencils but new sketchbook, which has shown, shall we say- somewhat interesting characteristics. The sketchbook is by Boldmere, is a 130gsm and cost the grand sum of 99p. It does seem to have the magic ability to blunt any pencil on contact, which has made defining the lines in the drawing somewhat troublesome. The second interesting property it displays, is as regular readers will know, I take great care to avoid finger grease and keep hand contact to a minimum. Even by doing this, I managed to have a hand that was black along one side.

The paper really doesn’t take the graphite that well,its almost like charcoal in some senses, and most of the time during drawing this, I was afraid I was going to end up with a page of black smudge. Thankfully it was bluetac to the rescue.

I have been pondering whether to do a post on the joys I have been finding in using bluetac, but instead I will head you over to this excellent tutorial on the subject by Mike Sibley

Anterolateral View of the Inner Ear

To finish off the ear (for now!) Here is the Inner ear. You can break the ear down into two main functional parts. There is the Vesitbule which is dedicated to balance, and the Chochlea which is dedicated to hearing.

If we go back to the middle ear for a second, sound waves there have been converted into mechanical vibrations which have then come to the inner ear where the Cochlea then propagates these signals as waves in fluid and membranes and finally transduces them to nerve impulses which are transmitted to the brain. If you have an engineering type chum, ask them about the challenge of converting sound waves into fluid waves and you will get an idea of the complexity of what is going on and thats even before mentioning nerve pulses.

The Vestibule works in conjunction with your sight is responsible for the senses of balance and motion. It uses fluid and tiny hair cells, to get information about attitude, rotation and linear motion of the head, which it converts into pulses and sends to the brain.

Moving onto the drawing, you can see in the top left hand corner a quick rundown of the pencils I used. I’m not entirely happy with the sketch, mainly I think I need a bit of a better reference on the actual surface.

Of interest, I did take some photos of the drawing as I went along, you can see them in the fotki album here (they will be on the last page) and I have added some notes in the photo descriptions. These pictures are also on my flickr stream which you can find from  my previous post.

Latin Rock

I’ve retired my one arm manikin for now, and have a new model for my warm up excerises. Say Hello to the Latin Rock! This rock I picked up when I was in Canada and visting Mt.Revelstoke . Its a piece of Hematite and I don’t know why, I haven’t thought of using it to draw before as its absolute great.

Firstly, with the aide of a torch I can create hundreds of different shapes, I’ve posted a few pictures up here on flickr, such as this one to show you what I mean.

Secondly, there is the surface;One side of the rock, the iron ore is exposed and is rich in reds and brown and relatively smooth. The other side, is grey and looks like its gone through some heat and compression, which has left grooves and layers.

Thirdly, Its small and fits nicely on the shelve next to my desk and it was free. What more could you want ?

For my first drawing, I thought I would get out just the B pencils that I  use and not worry about detail or shape so much,but instead focus on where I would use those pencils on the drawing.

My Left Ear

After drawing all the ossicles I thought I would come outside the body for a change and voila! My left ear. Considering it was back in Frebruary I drew my left foot , you can expect an entire self portrait by 2056.

One word of advice to anyone taking a close up picture of their ear, DO NOT USE A REALLY STRONG FLASH!

The drawing itself was done with the usual culprit of pencils, but to note; the skin around the ear I did with a HB and used bluetack to lighten it – a tip I have seen on a couple of websites.

Again, a word of warning about keeping finger grease of the paper, it really can be a pain. If you zoom into the top of the helix you might be able to make out where I have tried to hide it.  I’m struggling to do this on an A5 pad and when you look at artists working a lot bigger than I, such as Clive Meredith the mind boggles.

Blind Sketch #8

As you can see he is still missing an arm.

I have added to the right hand side of my blog – right near the bottom, a blog roll for some other artists blogs that I follow.

The artists are all of different abilities and the main reason I have chosen to follow them is I find their commentary refreshing and honest.

Its not very prominent at the moment, If someone knows of a good wordpress plug in for blogrolls let us know, drop us a comment.

Anterior View of the Ossicles

After sketching all the individual bones, here are all three of them together in situ, but what do they do ? These three small bones (the hammer. The Anvil & Stirrup) carry sound waves from the ear drum to the Cochlea and its a nice bit of mechanics.

First of all, sound waves hit the tympanic membrane (AKA as the Ear Drum) , the vibrations are then carried through the Malleus, Incus and finally the stapes which then takes these vibrations  to the inner ear.   They effectively act as a lever and give a mechanical advantage, by not just the lever effect, but also my reducing the area of force. If the sound waves went direct from the ear drum to the inner ear, they would be a lot  weaker – Its a nice bit of design.

There are also  muscles attached to the ossicles which can control the extent of movement which is believed to protect the inner ear from loud noises. Interestingly  in Bats, these muscles are highly developed and seem to be crucial in their sonar and echolocation senses.

So there you have it  ladies and gentlemen, the Ossicles. As for the drawing itself, I’m not too happy with it. Not just because I used my old pad after the luxury of using the heavier a5 pad, but because  after mentioning last week about looking at other areas when it comes to shading, I started all guns in on the Malleus with a 6B which didn’t really give us much room for shading darker areas afterwards. Thankfully the HB came to the rescue on the Tymponic cavity, but my original intention was to have that darker and the ossicles lighter.

Blind Sketch #7

Yet to replace my Manikin so he is still missing one arm. When I  do finally get around to replacing it, may go for a hand manikin

Lateral View of the Incus

AKA the Anvil. Unlike the Yves Tanguy Stapes and the Jaws like Malleus who have been quite camera shy, finding images of the incus has not been a problem at all.

In fact I have decided, it is the Lindsay Lohan of the Middle ear.  My drawing is a composite from diagrams from my anatomy booka and the photographs I came across on the web.

One of the nice things about the photos, I was able to get a lot clearer idea of the surface. One of the sites I came across was the Otolaryngology Houston Texas website which has some great pictures (ironically there are pictures of the stapes and malleus there as well, but did not come across this site when I was searching for those terms)

Just a note on doing the composite drawings,  is I am aware of getting something horribly wrong which is where being able to refer to diagrams in my anatomy books help. But I have noticed that a lot of anatomy illustrations will tend to stress a certain part of the picture to fit the context of the article or topic they are discussing. It is subtle but I think it is something you need to be aware of.

I dis start this drawing with a 3B just to see what difference that would make, but quickly abandoned the pencil – it seems superfluos and doesn’t really add anything, so I was back to the usual set of 6B, 2B, B and 4H.  I was also using the 135gsm paper again which I am getting more used to blending on.   With the extending blending properties of the heavier paper, I have come across a negative;  it is more vital to keep finger grease off the drawing and along the short process if you zoom in , you may see how I found that out.

The Patella - Knee Cap

Fourth entry  in my observation posts about drawing skeletons and this time, taking  a look at the different types of bones in the human body. There are five classification of bones used and they are;

Long Bones

Exactly as you would imagine, these are the bones such as the Femur and and Tibia* but also include smaller bones such as the phalanges.  It looks like the official explanation is, a bone having a body longer that it is wide. So think more shape  than size.

Short Bones

Defined as being approximately wide as they are tall and have the primary function of providing support and strength. Examples of short bones are the Carpals and Tarsals which you would find in the hand and foot respectively.

Flat Bones

These are the bones which act as armored plates to protect vital organs, such as the cranium bones or provide a large surface for muscle attachment.

Irregular Bones

The “Get out Of Jail”card, for bones that can not be described in any of the other categories such as the Verterbrae and thorax

Sesamoid Bones

These are bones that are found where a tendon passes over a joint such as the Patella which is pictured  and is also known as the Knee Cap. They  provide protection for the tendon and also aide in the mechanics of movement.

The drawing was done with a 6B, 4B, 2B and a 4H , the 4B was used as an attempt to get a more lighter covering than the 6B across the surface.  on the subject of shading I would recommend reading the tutorials over at Dueys Drawing . He raises several good points and considerations ,and another interesting thing about his site is you can see his work in 2004 and compare it to his work now – well worth checking out.

* will update with better image soon

Blind sketch #6

Noooo! the right arm fell of my Manikin as I went to draw it this morning. It has served us well and may it rest in peace.

One thing I would like to use this space to say, is I have been reading quite a few drawing blogs recently. Both people who are learning to draw and people giving out instruction. There seems to be an awful lot made of this blind sketching and as it reads, a lot of it seems pseudo science.

Reason I do it , as with any other warm up excercise is to loosen up the hand a bit before diving into a drawing and the other thing is trying to improve hand eye co-ordination and that’s it.

Some of these posts that go on 400 words about right hand side of the brain malarkey etc , just seems to be nonsense and making something more complex than It actually is.  The sad thing is, I have read blog posts from people drawing that they are worried they are not engaging there right brains enough, I kid thee not.

Blind Sketching  = Loosen up hand , improve eye hand co-ordination – thats it.

My two pence.

The Malleus

Following on from the Stapes, here is the Malleus which is the latin for Hammer.

I wasn’t going to draw it from this angle, but was watching Jaws the other night and – well …

Again had the same problems as drawing the stapes, I can’t work out quite what is happening below the manubrium. My main source for this picture was one of the 19th century Grays Anatomy illustrations from wikipedia.

I am not to keen on using these as sources, as they are more technical illustration than drawing, which the artist would of probably spent six months drawing doric columns before being allowed to study anatomy and then only under strict conditions and with a defined set of rules and guidelines.

Fair credit to them, I would not have the patience to put in half the detail they put into those illustrations.

Bone Surface

This is my third observation post about drawing skeletons , this may well be a two part’er as I was reading a very interesting article about the surface of bones, but there is a formatting error in it, which could essentially split the topic. So watch this space!

Bone is continuously growing or being reshaped right up to the point of which we die. A lot of these changes happen on the surface and their is constant deposition and resorption occuring(building up and hollowing out respectively)

There are also blood vesels, nerves, ligaments etc running along side of the bone who leave their marks, in the forms of canals and grooves. Another point as well, is the forces the bone is experiencing will also leave it marks on the surface.

On top of that, evidence of past fractures and breaks will be present along with any signs of malnutrition,  scurvy and a host of other things.

The drawing itself was done with what I’m beginning to narrowly whittle down from trial and error; a 6B, 2B, B and a 4H set .

Following on from my comments on my scalp post about paper, I happened to have an A5 220gsm Catridge Pad lying around, and whilst not keen on the size, there is a huge noticeable difference in being able to blend the pencil. I may in my new found appreciation, been a bit over enthusiastic in the tones here, but  I think an A4 pad is on the shopping list along with a Mechanical 2B pencil, so I can work finer detail.

Speed Sketches #4

I came across Posemaniacs which is a site that has a flash application in which it will show you a random human pose on screen which changes to a time interval you specify.

I don’t think it beats actually going outside and drawing real people but it is good for getting angles you would not normally consider, and it can be done at the comfort of you own desk.

I found out about the site from a blog entitlted Art School at Home, which is an interesting read as the writer is trying to improve their drawing skills and is being quite self disciplined about it. Their commentary is particular enjoyable.

Blind Sketch #5

I am really enjoying thias as an excecise as the results seem to make no friggin sense!

I think when I get enough of these, may have to put them in some sort of morphing type animation.

In other news, where I mentioned about Yves Tanguy in my post about the ossicles – stapes , for those of you in Leeds, in the Henry Moore Institute, there is currently one of his paintings which will be there till January 2010 as part of their sculpture in painting exhibition which is well worth checking out.

Superolateral view of the Scalp

I never knew that the word scalp was actually an Acronym.

Skin

Connective tissue

Aponeurosis

Loose Aerolar Tissue

Pericanium

I was flicking through my anatomy book when I came across a diagram showing the layers and I thought, must draw that.  In the book its more a line diagram and was only the top half, but haven’t drawn a face in a long time so thought I would combine the two.

I can see what Is wrong with the face straight off; the right eye needs to come down and be resized (seem to do that a lot with faces) , the chin needs to come out more and the cheek realigned, and finally the nose shorten. I was very tempted to crop this picture just above the tip of the nose, but that’s what its like in my sketchbook and this wouldn’t be a true online version of, If I edited my work.

I know a workmen should never blame his tools, but could of done with a better pad as well. I normally use the WH Smiths 135gsm sketch pad, which most of the time is fine, but with where I was mainly using the rubber to work the skin I was running into problems in some areas – which you can see if you zoom in on the picture.

]]> http://www.smokeback.com/scalp/feed/ 0 http://www.smokeback.com/ossicles-stapes/ http://www.smokeback.com/ossicles-stapes/#comments Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:56:00 +0000 Chance http://www.smokeback.com/?p=203

The Stapes

Onto the smallest bones of the human body the Ossicles and for this post the Stapes (AKA Stirrup bone) which amongst other things is another  fine case of what I mentioned in my post about curves. It is also something I imagine wouldn’t be out of place in a Yves Tanguy painting.

To give you an idea of how small this bone is, there is an excellent image in the wikimedia commons

The size did present some problems when drawing it, noticeably most of the images I could find were … well , small and what large diagrams I could find, didn’t really give any indication of texture or detail.  It also seems that not all stapes are born equal , which you can see if you do a quick google search on the term.

Most confusingly, which I could not find an explanation for; some pictures seem to show a horn on the head as in mine and others don’t.  It was also hard to find close up  detail of the neck and head section.

My drawing is a hybrid of the photographs and diagrams I came across , I think this has had an effect on my shading in terms of representing light as I had no real reference.

Rest of the Ossicles coming soon….

Knee Joint

The second of my observation posts on drawing skeletons. Firstly I would like to apologies for the use of blue around this image, in hindsight it really was the wrong choice.

What we have here is the knee Joint where the femur meets the fibula and tibia. What I want to point out here is that the human body is a fine piece of machinery and the skeleton not only provides the framework , but also gives strength and protection for this marvel.

If you look at the curve in the femur at the end and picture what happens when the knee bends, Im sure you will agree it is a fine piece of design.  Now also consider the stresses and forces it has to put up with.

Bones aren’t there for the sake of it, and I think when drawing skeletons It is important to understand what motions are involved , what stresses and forces are involved, whats its relation to other nearby bones and understand especially the limitations.

The drawing itself I did with the king of pencils (or pauper of pencils-depending on your view)  the HB. I adapted this image from a picture showing the tendons on the knee, as such the shape has suffered slightly, but I hope it is clear enough the point between the femur and tibia.

Blind Sketch #4

Mmm, not as bad as last time, though cannot say overall whether this is an improvement or not… time will tale.

2009 Leeds EDL, UAF March

Deep breath for this post; firstly I should explain that I absolutely detest watercolors as a medium and the last time I actually painted was in 1999. That attempt was of a Tall ship,  which I abandoned after about two weeks after getting extremely frustrated with the drying times with oil paints. The abandoned effort is here .

The reason I don’t like watercolors is I am quite fond of strong contrasts and bold colours in general  and i normally associate watercolours with being wishy washy, plus I don’t like the workflow.

However, I was inspired to attempt the picture on the left after reading about the war artist Matthew Cook and seeing his work on the BBC site.

His work is absolutely stunning and is a combination of ink and watercolour. I have never tried inks , but had some watercolours lying around and I took this photo from the Leeds UAF and EDL marches this weekend just gone.

I thought I would give it a go, if anything to just appreciate the level of skill of Matthew Cooks work and to reaffirm to myself, why I don’t like watercolours. I have posted it up , because I do like the idea of this for a picture and the composition of  my first attempt I think could work really well, so I may in the near future have a go at doing this in Acryllics , which I hope will give a far better result than my GCSE effort to the left.

Fifth Metarcarpal Left hand

I noticed a lot of the traffic for my site comes from the search terms “how to draw skeletons” and variants around that.

To hopefully make this site a bit more useful, I thought I would start to put up some posts on a few observations I have made along the way about drawing anatomy.

To the left is the fifth metarcarpal left. Or to you and me, the lower part of your small finger on your left hand.  There is an earlier sketch I did on the bones of the hand here , which has the position of the metarcparl marked.

One of the things I have noticed about bones, is they always have gracious curves.  I decided to draw this bone, by simply flicking onto a random page in my anatomy book and I would put money on it that I could prove my point about curves with any of the bones in the human body.

Also, important to note is symmetry here as well never is the curve on one side, the same as the other, there are always subtle or not so subtle differences.

I think there is a temptation when drawing bones, to go the cartoon root and draw , two parallel lines with 3/4 of an 8 shape at either end.  So a point to bear in mind is to think of the sides in curves.

The sketch to the left was done with a 4b, 2B and a @H to give it the texture.

To also justify my “gracious curves” statement, take a look at the hyperbola and Neiles parabola here ,  both of which I would call damn ugly curves ;- )

Blind Sketch #3

Eek !

I don’t think my last two blind sketch attempts have been that bad, but this one is all over the place.

So the question is, whether the first two were just ‘blind luck’ or this one is freakishly out of place.

Time will tell.

Ulna - Radial Notch

Also known as the elbow, this is one of the reasons  I like drawing anatomy stuff, all the latin names make it sound like an exploration.

Following on from my post on the Bony Thorax where I only used an 8B pencil, this was only done with a 5B. One disadvantage is I couldn’t quite get the curve on the right hand side as smooth as I wanted it to be.

When you actually look at this bone, it is quite a graceful curve, which I don’t think I quite captured in this sketch.

I’ve mentioned before in my posts about using construction lines, I thought it might be handy to include a photo this time round so you can see how the sketch started off.

And to end a bit of a tip. I could not find my blender stick when I was shading this. Instead you know those cheap nasty pencils that have a rubber on the end , which never rubs anything out ? well they are quite handy for blending!

Blind Sketch Manikin

Another go at a blind sketch and the first post on wordpress. I am hoping that the move has made searching the site a bit more easier and a bit more user friendly. I am unsure if i will stick with this theme, but it will do for the time doing.

I am currently working my way slowly back through the posts to tidy them up a bit , if you spot any errors then let me know

This is also done with just one pencil, an 8B.

This is the first time I have used an 8B as I usually only go down to a 4 and occasionally use a six when i need something black/black.

The usual range of pencils I use are

4B 2B HB 2H 4H

Whilst on subject on what I draw with, should also note, I use a blending stub as well, which is essentially a bit of tightly rolled up paper.

Finally, just a note this blog is moving over to wordpress soon, I am looking to have it moved by November 1st. Please visit the site after that date, as you may need to update your RSS subscription.

Reminds me a bit of that old Michelangelo joke.

“How do you sculpt a statue of an elephant?” who said, ”It’s easy. Just find a block of marble and chip away everything that doesn’t look like an elephant.”?

Once again using my trusted manikin as a model and I will track these sketches over the next few months.

In other news, moving this blog over to wordpress hosting soon, if you are reading this, and its already on wordpress. Any problems jsut shout.

Here is the Pterygopalatine fossa, i will buy anyone a drink who can say that after five pints.

Went a bit wrong around the sphenoidal sinus. There was a slight illusion going on in the original source in the fact, that at first glance it looks symmetrical. There was a temptation when drawing the right hand side to copy the left. But whoever was on cutting up skulls duty that day was slightly out.

Sadly for fans of the Foramen rotundum, cartoid groove and Maxillary tuberosity amongst others. I didn’t want to clutter this image up with too many labels as it was taking away from the predator look.

Well, this blog in someways has served it purpose as no longer stagnant with them. However, Looking at my webstats I am actually quite surprised by the daily traffic coming to this site.

So thought i would chuck on a couple of more images and will try and get at least once a month an image on here.

Just to chuck in a gratuitis plug, Ive also started a short story blog over here

So to start off this session a quick gesture sketch. Again have that problem of worrying about running out of paper, hence the squashed legs

And if you are interested few more photos of italy I took over Here

The Leeds Sketching group has gone horribly quite,which is a bit worrying. Might need some pulling from the ashes.

Anyway, I will be back in June with some more updates to this blog

Last sketch of the day, this time found myself struggling with the horse’s head. Eventually giving up !

I think horses in general have to be one of the hardest things to draw, especially the mouth, It seems a random blob of shapes! In my storyboards (which im pleased to say now back on track on) Once spent a condsiderable amount of time getting a horse somewhat passable only to find out I had drawn it the wrong way around to the rest of the scene ! which remindeds me i need to go out and buy a point 9 pen this morning

I thought i would give doing some ink drawings ago, but think i have a long way to go !

Ps. Anyone interested in armour, here are some photos i took a few years back at the RA

http://public.fotki.com/chance1234/5ylac_general/5ylac_armoury-1/5ylac_armoury_–2/

Another Leeds Sketching group meet and this time in the pub! The sketch above is one of the gargoyles on the Town hall on the George Street side. Its one of three above a doorway. Taking a guess i would say it is meant to be Hercules due to the lion pelt.

On the other side there was a possible poseidon. In the middle however is some ram horns. Satantic link to the past ?

Not happy with the sketch, I lost it a bit around the lower right hand side, also not doing a warm up sketch before i think comes through in this sketch.

Just out of interest, I took the left and right hand side of the images and flipped them onto each other. the right on right image looks a lot more like the actual gargoyle than the original sketch.

As I mentioned in my previous post, hate feet and hate drawing them even more. It is always something I’ve tended to avoid preferring to strategically place things in front or not bothering at all together.

Aside, noticed when beginning to shade that the lines from my skeleton foot sketch were coming through ( must get a decent drawing pad) which could of been almost something interesting.

Quite happy with the sketch, but i dont think the shape / proportion is wrong but i do think the depth of field is out.

I absolutely detest feet; ugly looking things and you can see that ugliness starts under the surface. If you look at the skeleton hand which I drew here, there is an example of elegance , mechanics and the marvel of the human body. The foot is just one mashup of bones which seem to overlap and rub up against each other.

Metatarsus and distal phalanx might be impressive names, but they are un elegant buggers.

1) Statue had its head chopped off by a private collector and the body thrown on the heap
or
2) Usual Christian damage, statue from an uninteresting site and from a stock room filled with similar statues

Leeds Museum, certainly not the worst museum i have been to, and im sure its great if you are a kid. But i do feel that they have planned the space and exhibitions out very badly. Also there was a fair amount of unintentional dis information in the ancient exhibition. Which I reckon is down to trying to do an over enthusiastic approach to impress the rug rats rather that letting the exhibitions speak to themselves. Final rant, the display of Nesyamun is just lazy friday afternoon work. What should be one of the main attractions of the museum has been pushed into a pokey corner. Oh and the staff don’t seem very approachable for asking questions.

rant over

Anyway, spent a good 40 minutes on it and quite pleased with the result. Feels like my first proper sketch.

Neh, quick sketch of the infamous Leeds Tiger. For the record as some of the comments I overheard when sketching it. The Leeds Tiger did not use to roam the city streets. It was Shot in India in the 1800′s, turned into a rug and then sealed back up and put on display. Hence its wide head.

It was also most likely preserved in arsenic, so potentially still a mankiller !

Thing from drawing this, have come to the conclusion not very good at drawing hairy things. so that puts out going to Paris and drawing 15 year old prostitutes with webbed feet.

No Mummy sketch to warm up this time, went straight in with this sketch of the skull of the Megaloceros. The horns on this thing are huge! and i think i failed to follow the “draw what you see , not what you know”. The Horns on this thing really skewed the proportions. I also noticed this thing has huge neck bones as well, which in my sketch I under compensated on the length of the Jaw in comparison.

Wikipedia Article on Megaloceros

Final drawing of the day, couldn’t for love nor money get the face remotely right. Pesky Goddesses

Just a quick sketch to look at the composition of the painting, the original you can see
here

Just a view of one of the upstairs gallery, for a sketch im quite happy with it.

Neh, This is a sketch of a bust which is in the lower gallery. You can see the original . here.

I started off by marking the midpoint on the paper, which is where the bottom of the chin from my POV was intercepting. Then I marked out where the arms should be. Filling in the rest of it, I think i was concerned about missing the top of the head of the paper, so Ive over compensated by going out to wide.

More of the same.

Very quick sketches of people looking at the works in the gallery. the guy in the middle constantly kept moving, but thankfully kept the same sort of pose the whole time

Attended this Sunday just gone, the first meeting of the Leeds Sketching Group (link on the right) we went to Leeds Art Gallery and for a warm up, there is a bust at the top of the stairs which i did this sketch on. Used a 2B pencil instead of my usual preferred 4B. Thats my story and Im sticking to it

Neh started out ok, but lost it around the thumb , think i was alright in my construction but when i started shading, had trouble separating the back from the front , so over compensated a bit by bring the nail and end of the thumb physically forward.

Those are the things that really hurt it you ever cut your fingers deeply. Probably an understatement

Again drawing this being to hard with the opening construction lines, but think Ive got most of the right shape/proportions of the bones in there