Notes on Arms and Legs

Woof, it's been a while since I last posted. Wanted to thank Dave for having me drop in to his class for a guest instructor rendering discussion at DeAnza. 'Always fun to take over somebody else's class. Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving by the way.
Here's some arm and leg notes I cooked up for my students. I'll send you a handout if you want it. I'll upload it to my site when I get a chance, one day.

Figure Drawing Salon

Here's some stuff from Figure Drawing Salon, an open figure drawing session we hold most Wednesday nights at Cogswell. If you're interested, come on out and draw for 3 bucks from 7:00 to 10:00. Anyway not bad stuff for short poses. Fire me an email for more information. We try to keep it low key and have some fun. We play (sometimes distracting) music which gets the models into the swing......and sometimes when I'm having a bad night I just use the poses to draw trolls...Sometimes, when the night isn't going my way at all, I just make up stuff...I can't tell you where this one came from but I liked it, what do you think? Sorry BTW for not posting a challenge as of late. It's coming, I promise. Have a great Thanksgiving everyone!

Gorilla Gorilla

So I got a call from my old friend Cesar yesterday, and I felt bad because I had someplace to go and rushed him off the phone. I am VERY bad at keeping in touch with folks and really should do a better job of it, but am always very happy to hear from everybody. Thanks for calling Cesar!

If you don’t know Cesar, he’s a product of Cogswell College and just an awesome animator, he instantly earned my respect after just working with him for a few days. He is working mostly with Flash as of late and seems to be doing well with it. I remember him always going on and on about gorillas so I thought I’d post a gorilla progression I did in PS a while back. I blasted it out too quickly and was happy with the results at first but now that it’s had a chance to settle in, I feel like I need to go back and work on it more. Let me know what you think.

The Sketch

Background and Color Comp

Foreground in Progress

Final for now...

trick R treat Complete

Two days early, but I have to move on to other stuff. Here is "Brown Recluse". This is a step away from my usual stuff but she was fun to paint. Tried to go for humid, muggy feel in the BG don't know if I pulled it off, I'll have to hit it again, I suppose. Below, I also included progressions. Somebody already asked me for a print. If for some reason you want to buy a print of this shoot me an email. Webs are a lot of fun folks! If you drew stuff for this challenge, send it on over or post me a link. Have a Happy Halloween!

Skeleton & Muscles of the Anterior

To continue our anatomy lesson, here is a series of images with regards to the anterior view of an eight head high male. This stuff WILL be on the test...Here is the female anterior broken down in the steps of the GCAT method as well. Anatomy is essentially the same. Please let me know is this helping fill out our discussions.

Plan Nine From Outer Space!

We have finally arrived at the "Plan 9" portion of my storyboarding class. For my students, I am posting some screen shots of this very special and favorite film so that they can take a look and fix the shots. For the rest of you, click to enlarge the images and look back fondly at those happy midterm times. The images are sequential, but only cover a little less than half of the film's length.
The twelve shots shown have been chosen because each presents the question of good composition. Do these work? Are they visually pleasing and lead the viewer's eye while staying focused on the story? What can you do, using the methods and terminology we have discussed up to this point? Some are very obviously correctable and others may be less so. Give these a "shot" and we'll review your progress on next week. The aspect ratio is 1.33:1 if you couldn't tell work no smaller than a 5:3.75 inch panel and do these in your sketchbook. If you have questions email me. Good luck.

Muscles of the Posterior

Here are some lecture drawings created for our discussion of the muscles of the rear.

If you need me repeat the function, origin, and insertion of each of these muscles, just leave me a comment. Remember the muscle pulls in to its origin. The bone, or system attached at insertion gets pulled.

Skeleton visual starting point.

The top layer muscles are shown isolated and identified.

As they would appear without the skin, note the stretch and compression on either side.
Anterior is to come, hang on.
Let me know if you're looking for a detail.