Drawing Characters in Perspective and with Foreshortening

1. Intro Video: welcome back and won this Robert Marcelo and this my class on drawing characters in perspective and with four shortening. So in this class you're gonna learn how to construct characters and how to align them using basic one point perspective. And then we're gonna jump into doing a two point perspective example, and you're gonna learn what it takes to really make characters occupy role space. So these examples and exercise their very important so that you can draw sequential storytelling. Next, we're gonna do a three point perspective in the upshot, which is actually a lot more difficult to dio. And you got to do a lot more kind of envisioning and reworks, but it's definitely a great exercise. I'm also going to show you techniques on how to map out distance and how to look at anatomy differently so that you can constructed around the basic forms in perspective. Then you're going to do an example on this could be a project file for you, where you draw hand coming out towards the viewer and we're going to construct the anatomy around the basic forms and then render that out. So I hope you enjoy this class I'd love to know what you think and more lessons around the way. So thanks very much for tuning in and talk to you soon. 2. Drawing Characters in Perspective: Welcome back, everyone. So now we're gonna talk about drawing the body in perspective. So what I've done here is established a nine heads tall model and drawn this back perspectively to a vanishing point. So this is a rise in line right here like that. This is our vanishing point, and basically, the rise in line is your line of sight. So if it's up here, it's like you're taller. You're sitting up on something. If it's down here, it's like you're either squatting down in the scene or your lower maybe in a sub level of something, looking over the edge. So this is just your line of sight where your vision fades off into the distance. So we'll talk about this more as we progress. But right now I want to show you how to start drawing characters in perspective. So if you were to have this kind of model and I'll make sure that you got a copy of this artwork toe work along and practice with, just try drawing a character using this and maybe have them standing off to the side of this. So this is just a flat wall, and they're just kind of hanging out by it. So try something like that. We're gonna draw these three main masses. Remember, you can get to this by just doing a noble for the chest kind of a V separation for the rib cage like that. And remember, we can use lines like one head tall to find where the head is. Two heads down to find where the nipples are. So we could actually bring that over and maybe raise up the chest a little bit. But it doesn't have to fall exactly to this diagram either. You know, this is the part where you really want to start embellishing and, you know, stretching your imagination. But this is a guide to help you. So foreheads down is about where the lower pelvises get that third main mass of the body. And like that And then from here, you know, the upper legs. So remember that using this guy this way and then once the person standing out sideways, you're just gonna come over with the horizontal form of ah, alignment. So something like that and bring that foot, I'll start with this side, get the foot down here and then work over again, straight across that foot out to They're just getting the basic lengthening. See, it's pretty messy, but that's all right. Let's have this character just kind of place in their hands on their hips like this. So the elbow generally lines up to the naval. It's about there, you know, with a little bit of a narc. Because the arms air obviously position back hands could just kind of come up and over like that. So very simplistic. Very Ah, you know, almost like a stick man. Right? So it so it all starts here. So let's take this now and move that over just a little bit. So it doesn't want to use right against that wall there. And this gives us our basis in our starting point. And what I want to do here is show you that when you work with characters and perspective, all the same rules apply. So it's going to take this. We'll find it just a little bit because going soft, erase this Ah, stick person back and add INTs and basic forms. So again, we've kind of got are place holders now so we can start to imagine a little bit better what the forms might look like in proportion to one another, just kind of drawn. Whatever you see here, you can be creative with this, and if you want, you can go to cylinders first. Kind of drawn in some of the shape of anatomy that I have somewhat memorized. But we can get in those basic shapes of cylinders just to kind of check the work. Make any last minute adjustments before we render any sort of anatomy. Remember that the lakes of the male are going to kind of not come up nearly as high when they connect to the hips. So for males, it's like this females. It's gonna be higher and more tilted of oval right there. Cylinders for the upper legs. Make sure as well should have actually done the little lightning bolts there. But make sure to get the forward bend and then backwards been even if it's Ah, slight should be somewhat evident in there. So Ford in the backward backwards for you may and the feet just kind of get that separation . Or that tilt from the toes probably need to adjust that make the upper legs take more of the dominance in that amount of space. There, circle on the front for the knees. Make sure those point outward a little bit in the polls like this. Legs air almost never completely straight those hills and place and, you know, again you can use that alignment for the heels are gonna land on the ground plane. So this is really ah, great exercise because it's it's one step closer to making the characters in the forms rack to, ah, background, and that's really what this is all about. So whenever you talk perspective, you know, we think of drawing buildings and cars and things like that, and it's all part of it as well. But I think the trickiest part and the part that we need to practice the most and sequential storytelling comic creation is making characters react with a background so that we can convince Lee tell a story because obviously, if they're all just floating on a blank white canvas that it just doesn't read well, that could be great for pinups and action shots. But to tell a complete story, they really have to work within a scene. Eso that's what really what? These lessons they're gonna hopefully help you with is that we're going to address all of that where they start to function and connect with their surroundings. It was our character, and you can see there's some, ah, things that need to be corrected. This hat is actually way too tight to the collarbones there, So raise that up a little bit. So again, I'm gonna keep reiterating and stress the fact that this isn't meant to be an exact placement of everything by utilizing what's here. In fact, it's just kind of a guide to get us there, and then I'll keep embellishing as I go. So now I'm gonna do one more level of refinement to clean this character up, and then we're going to draw another character in the mid ground and one down here. We're really gonna compare the difference in scale, but we'll see quickly how it reads as a scene and we can use that to do are more complex, you know, busy street scenes and cityscapes and things like that. So with that, let's keep moving forward. Okay, so now I'm gonna refine this character, and I'm gonna create what I consider more of a mannequin and that's where the cylinders air there. They're kind of the shape of the forms of, you know, the leg and the lower leg and things like that. But there definitely very cylindrical and very basic primitive shapes. And the reason why I like drawing mannequins is unlike gestures. You can place more forms and get a better idea of some salad. I kind of feel to the work, and it's another chance to check perspective and check angles. So a lot of times I think artists will jump into rendering anatomy too soon without fully understanding the direction in the overlapped. It occurs within these forms of the body, and it's gonna be a lot more accurate when you apply your anatomy if you understand how to construct the body with basic primitive shapes. So in this next pose, I want to draw her leaning against the wall, so I want to make sure to bring her down. So even if she was the same height as this character, she's going appear shorter on that diagram based on the fact that she's leaning. So that's another thing we have to account for when drawing all these different poses, things like posture and angles of the body. Eso It's really nice to simplify the work as much as possible and get a lot of this gestural and then basic forms in place. And then we can detail as we progress further. Okay, so now another thing to keep in mind. Obviously, if we start drawing a character way back here, they're pretty much just gonna be silhouetted or just very light line. That's going to be pretty hard to consider any kind of detail back here, So it's gonna get very loose to interpretation and whatever So But the other thing that I want to make sure that we make a note of that I think is more important to address here is it keep in mind based upon wherever the character is in the scene. So without this diagram, so you just have your horizon line. If you were to draw a character, maybe that was ah, you know, child or someone smaller and hype. And maybe they were sitting down like this, or I guess it could be sitting be another way to look at it. But I say we're just drawn a kid, and they're sitting here or standing here, I should say, And they're about like this. Anybody of equal height is going to balance out with this proportion and the horizon line. So as you go further back, if there I levels right on the rise in line like this, then the next one is gonna be on the rise in line. And if they're the same height than that's your guide, if they're taller than I was said, they're above it a little bit, and you can use the same vanishing point or a different vanishing point. Anything converging onto this line, really, And you can establish the heights where they be the same or different. So if there's somebody taller, you're just gonna draw them proportionately taller this way. But their feet could still land on the same finishing point or line. To the perspective perspective line against is what we should call that. So there's a lot of different things to taken account when drawing this way. But the main thing is that it's actually pretty easy to figure out the various heights of the characters and then draw them into ah, seen this way, even without constructing the entire scene. Now We're going to get into examples where we construct more of a scene and then make those characters fit within that scene. Because that's, I think, the trickiest part like which do you put first the scene of the character creation? And a lot of times I think it's just better to draw the scene first because then you've got all these different guides to rein in your imagination, which can sometimes just go on its own little ride. You know, you're constructing characters and you know you're trying to have fun with it, and you can really take these into ah Rome of deniability. We're just not making sense. So if you have some kind of seen as a basis of your creation process than all of this starts to be a little bit easier to pull together and make something cohesive out of it. So let's go in and enter into the next lesson when we talk more about drawing characters in perspective, and then we'll move on to some foreshortening examples and really get a nice variety into what we can create here. So with that, let's move on 3. Drawing a Character in a 2 Point Perspective: Okay, so here we have a two point perspective and the vanishing points are off the canvas. But the main thing to take note of is that as they converged together to give us this cube like shape and this is, ah, great exercise to really get in the habit off drawing characters in perspective, occupying world space. So what want to do is kind of ah illustrate a character inside of this you can do all sorts of, ah variations here, could have characters leaning up against it, sitting with their back against that whatever. The main thing is again that you get used to making characters react within these perspectives, and you'll see how it helps you to really visualize where things might place and a scene like this. So first off, we're gonna draw the three main masses, and I'm gonna kind of perceived that the characters leaning over and placing their hands against this Ah, what I would consider a glass box. Eso again. This is just really a helpful exercise to start to visualize characters in a three dimensional space so we'll define the upper torso. I'm actually gonna lean this mass over, so I'll just draw like a bit of a rib cage or sternum like them. I'll have the spine kind of bend and then have the pelvis director just a little bit differently. Something like that. And then I'll attach the legs first. So I want to show a good amount of bend. So what? This character almost look a bit distressed, you know, like they're trying to figure out a way toe, get out of this thing or maybe wondering how they got here. So it just kind of established those lengths. I was that each time I changed the trajectory of the bones of whatever I just put a little died. It could be the knee here, the ankle here, the front ball of the foot there. So something like that just to get a quick idea and representation of where this might lie again, remember that this is always very malleable, that we're moving things around, and we're kind of, you know, seeing if this works. Not that it has to be right where we're placing these things. Eso you want to think very, very much in a fluid like structure at this point almost sounds a bit contradictory. fluid structure. But at the same time, you want to just really let yourself maneuver and at the stage, So you see, like, this upper torso is pretty large gonna convince that right down a soft to raise some of these lines back. So I think that what's helpful at this stage is to try to make us many edits as you can in this very rough stage. So try to look through it, even though is not a lot here, toe work from and try to see into it a bit further and, you know, making adjustments you can. Maybe this light needs to come down further before receiving back into space, and it becomes kind of tricky to perceive depth and space with just these lines. But the more you draw this, the more it'll start to make sense. And you'll kind of I immediately recognized when something's wrong length. Basically, as we talked more about four shortly, we're gonna get into that. So if this arm was coming out towards camera more and then the forum was in the way, you're going to get a very short arm here, but you gotta You're already thinking ahead and the fact that the upper arm is going to be in a deep perspective or pretty abrupt perspective coming out towards camera, I guess. So there's our base. Polls just are stick man, if you will. A stick person s Oh, now let's add some form over top of this and see if we can make this work. Okay, so now what I want to do is start to add in some basic form and primitive shapes. So it's just feeling this out a bit further, and I want to still think about the direction that a lot of this is taking. So what? The abdomen, the stomach muscles? I might draw these cylindrical shapes kind of ovals floating in the air with this line defining the front center of the character. So the reason why I like to do this because it helps me to visualize the shift in the plane change of the chest, to the sternum, to the stomach muscles. So it's almost again, like drawing the spine but a front line down the middle. And then I can start to work in the pectoral muscles and move across this way. I want to keep everything very angular. So that's why you see me drawing with, you know, kind of ah, blocky shapes, Ursuline cylindrical shapes. Just to start just to kind of feel this stuff out. And then for a shoulder, it may be a circle or just a series of angles. Uh, the reason why I always use angles. It helps me spot perspective a little bit easier. Same thing with the cylinders. It's just a slow build up to get more comfortable with the poles and figure out what things might overlap. You know what direction it might take on three D space. So again, still trying to visualize. Ah, a bit of dimension here and those cylinders helped me to do so. You know, don't be afraid to draw over certain aspects. So maybe to have a late come in front of the pelvis draw the cylinder shaped just a little bit in front of it. Try to direct it with a bit of curvature. You don't have to jump right into a full organic shape, but if you feel confident doing that, that's fine. But really tried to visualize the shift in the the angles that you're gonna get so from this angle. You're probably gonna get of the pelvis in front of the leg a little bit. So you want to get that kind of blocky overlap just to kind of start to visualize, you know, this one being the closest to camera. So if I had the label, these would be this upfront this next and this in the background. So a lot of times that I'm drawn, even characters, I'm thinking foreground, mid ground background or just a layering process. So maybe a certain circle for the kneecap, something like that other cylindrical shape with lower calf area. And I try to fight the urge to over detailed the state so you'll see me put little shifts and the shape to kind of represent anatomy. But I'm really trying to fight the urge to just draw in the anatomy. You can also put in these little ovals here to kind of help visualize a bit better as well line coming down with the circle for the, uh, elbows there where they'll be placed Roundabout Ah, cylinder for the neck. Just connecting lines for the trapezius. And you just do this little V on the neck for where the external Claddagh master. It'll be going later, just something like that, to kind of place it and then remember that the head shape and its basic forms is really just a sphere with a box or plainer objects on the front. So plain change there, and you just kind of blend them together. You know, slice off the side, a line from the ear coming down to the jawline. There's a bit of a plane change there, and the hands and their basic shapes can just be bit of Ah, future angle shapes the middle fingers taller, obviously same thing with the palm of the hand. It comes up to a point and dips back down towards the pinky, and the hands will talk more about those. But the easiest way to really think about hands, I think, is that the thumb having this larger pad takes Ah dominance, especially an angle like this. And then this side comes up smaller and tilts up and then you know the relationship of the fingers, so we'll get into that more and more. But just use those basic shapes. You know, these triangles and the bigger pad of the thumb to kind of start work off from there. I think the most noticeable aspect is when the fingers air improper by comparison of length . So just get the broad strokes in there. I see this cylinder shaped comes way outside here, so I'm gonna cut that back, race that back, I should say. But I always think of Ah, this kind of like sculpting has them drawing the stuff. So I'll say things like cut it back or moving back or whatever. So when this foot, I'm picturing the characters kind of up on the ball of their foot there. So bring that out, Bring the hell up like this. Try to get this in a lot of primitive shape. Same thing here, but not as evident. So in this foot out like that. So now we've got our basic primitive shapes, our cylinders, and we've got a lot of the forms in place. We're going to clean this up a bit more now. You know, fixem inconsistencies. Obviously, this is still very crude, but it gets us a step closer. So with that, let's continue to refine this. Okay, so I'm gonna go and soft to raise this down and just fill this back in with same primitive shapes, but a little bit more. We're fine and cleaned up a bit. What kind of titan in here Zoom appear? So Yes. So, basically, this is really just an exercise, and I really recommend doing this in a lot of different ways. So really challenge yourself to draw these characters in confined spaces, sitting on these objects, pushing off the objects, reacting with them in a variety of ways because that that's essentially life. You know, if you're really gonna draw storytelling, you've got to make characters that occupy space and react with objects. And this is, ah, a great exercise to do this. Another one is to draw characters that are reacting with things like ropes and, um, almost like they're gliding across. Hang on to something, you know, it could be, ah, study gymnast and trapeze artist. Things like that really pay attention to the way the body moves in reaction to variety of objects and pulling against its own weight. So that's that's really what's going to give you the energy and the flow of movement that you're gonna need for action comics and characters in motion. So but what I like about this exercise is that it really gives you more of, ah, feeling off, Uh, the characters occupy in real space. And, you know, there's a lot of dynamics in a lot of storytelling that goes into the, you know, something like this. So this character could be doing any number of things that could be trapped in this, um, enchanted box or they could be stuck in a elevator of this space was larger by comparison. So there's a lot of storytelling that could be done with just simple dynamics like this and techniques. Um, but I think if we don't challenge ourselves to practice thes, it's really easy to get out of the habit of doing them and just drawing characters, you know, flying through the air and, ah, you know, holding their arms up with some sort of power, which is also very important, obviously, for your your comments as well. But there's all there's all these types of scenes where they have to be able to manipulate objects and react to those objects. So things like this could be very fun and, uh, really help you to feel more confident with that. You see, I'm skipping over and drop announcement Adami. I want to fight that urge. Actually, just want these to be more mannequin. I like to draw as many mannequins as possible because if you manage to the mannequin and really fight the urge to detail the anatomy and get your basic shapes in place like this, you can turn these mannequins and that any character you need on their great to just great reference. But I think it becomes a little bit more difficult if you render them out fully. So I really fight dear. To do that at times, develop your ability to draw the mannequins and get these basic shapes and focus on things like the direction that these shapes air, heading their orientation and response to one another. And, ah, again, lots and lots of mannequins. And the reason why it's nice as well as like, just kind of like we've talked about with gesture and things like that. The more you separate the work down to its bare essentials, the more you can process and get Thanh of variation within that. So, for instance, with gestures, you can just draw hundreds and hundreds of gestures. You can get really fast adjuster drawing, and it teaches you a lot about the simplicity of movement. Or I shouldn't say simplicity because it's actually quite advanced, but the the movement of the body and the energy of the body. But if you detail everything, a lot of times, you'll lose that energy and flow about the body. So gesture is very important for getting that, harnessing that particular aspect of the work and likewise with mannequins here, they're very important for being able to turn the's forms in your mind and on the page effectively. On the more you doing thes here that'll get the more you'll start to do complex poses just almost instinctively. But you've got to log in lots and lots of these variations of studies. So there's a character occupying a two dimensional space or, ah, two point perspective. We're gonna be addressing three point perspective next, and then we're gonna get into some other techniques for four shortening and things like that. So with that, let's move on 4. Drawing A Character in a 3 Point Perspective: Okay. I've already established a basic three point perspective guideline. Again, this isn't gonna be on the software, so just drop whatever you see. Ah, on paper, whatever you're working with. But just use some line work and get some basic three point perspective. The vanishing points, if you notice here are right here, where they converge right there. The 3rd 1 is right off the screen. So if I was to draw that like that, So now what I want to do is just give you a basic starting point. So we're gonna do something real simple. We're gonna do an opening to ah, doorway. So I'm gonna bring this over down, back down. So this is gonna be our very dramatic three point perspective. We can do a quick frame for the doorway. A little bit of an insect that you're going to see right here, some of the depth from the doorway like that. And I'm not gonna overly detail this. I just want you to have ah, basic understanding of the perspective. It's here so that as you go to illustrate this in detail it I mean, we do like a Let me see if I can put something here that makes a little bit more sense with this doorway. So I just really want you to see the extreme angle that you're getting here. So we'll just say this is like a filing cabinet or something. You see, it's even distorted. It's probably the vanishing points, probably are entirely in the right spot, but good enough for now. I just want to give you this basic illustration. Remember, you can draw through stuff and find out where everything lands we're trying to do, like the little handles there or whatever. Ridgelines are always good for making something more detailed than it looks without him. So get those in there. So we're just going to say, That's a filing cabinet, Nothing to detailed. I don't want to go too crazy with that. I guess I could do those little openings for the tabs that would kind of help sell it. It's pretty quick to dio something like that, and you get his details. You need to, but But basically what I want you to be aware of is how extreme this angle is and then what we want to do. This fit a character into this setting back here. So it's like they're walking through the doorway. I kind of want a detail that's just a little bit more. Just so it reads as a room through a little picture frame or something right there. OK, so now we've got our basic setting. Our basic scene and now we're going to do is draw character in this area. I'm gonna give you a couple quick tips for that kind of stuff, I've already explained, but I just want you to be aware of ways that you can make this a little bit easier to understand. So let's do that. Okay? So if I want to draw a character walking through this doorway, it's It's pretty easy in the sense that I've already gotten established scene. So it's a lot easier and say, drawing on a blank white canvas. I guarantee you, if you didn't take the time to illustrate the scene and you just drew the character in this sort of dramatic upward perspective, there'd be a lot of inconsistencies when you put 22 together or it just just wouldn't read while you know altogether. But one of the things that you could do here is you can use that subdivide meant that we talked about so you could take the front opening of the door and you could crisscross like this open. Actually, that's not the very corner, is it? Go right to here when he is the very corners. And that's going to give you your center mark halfway up. Just like that. Only do this real quick. I'll just do a subdivide of four so I'll do it again. He and very corner to the very corner. There's our subdivide. So that gives us ah to equal space is up there and you see how dramatic this is like how How much information says I get this last line, you really see it and look at the difference from this amount of distance from the first section to the second to third to the fourth. It changes dramatically. Now I'm gonna make this Ah, a little bit less in your face kind of thing. But you still see, with lines are going to get rid of that ruler for now. And now what I want to do is I want to draw a character going through there. I don't want to use these specific points on the body, but I just want them to help me visualize how much distance is gonna You don't need to be a calm accommodated for for this character. So, for instance, if we were to say, the halfway point of the character is the lower part of the pelvis now, obviously their heads not gonna hit the door but would be way up here and look how much room would be left with legs. That's really the idea and perception of perspective that you want to get ah little bit more attuned to so that when you start to draw him, it makes more sense. So I'm gonna bring the head of the character way down here. I'm gonna draw the upper torso, but I'm immediately gonna bring that upper torso in front of the head because we're looking up basically from a warms eye view of this character, and I want to basically, if anything, have a majority of the upper torso would be the underneath of the sternum. So you're going to see more of that midsection part, and it's gonna everything is in a quickly curve upward from an angle like this and then the pelvis is going to get quite a bit larger. It's gonna look closer to the Thea upper torso than most poses. And you're going to see more of that connection points of the legs from an angle like this , and we'll say the characters walking in. So we're gonna draw a late coming out, and we're gonna leave a lot of room for that lower leg. So, you know, sale dramatic. That extension is that Lower lake from this angle, and we're gonna bring that back. We can kind of use perspective to maybe guests or guide us where the ah, yes, more guidance than guess where that back knee might hit. And then that leg's gonna go back here, maybe catch some of the foot. Maybe this foot gets cut off, and that helps to really push that effect that this care that we're really looking up this character, that we don't even get the ground plane from an angle like this. Eso no contra pasta post a Harvard said We bring that other arm up forward here to balance from this Ah characters. Right leg. We're bringing the left arm. We also break that barrier of the doorway, which helps us to have a little bit more depth there as well. We keep in mind that the lower portion of the pelvis gives us the rough positioning of the rest. And then we just add the hand so that another kind of alignment the elbow aligns with the naval. So we keep that in mind then, from this side, this arm is gonna be back then maybe coming out towards camera little bit as we had the cylinders weaken. Paint this some perspective a little bit better than we had the hand there. So there's are rough. Umm stick man, you know, three main masses with the extensions of the arms and legs in place in this particular perspective. Okay, now let's had some cylinders or forms to this. Let's get rid of the subdivide lines. They're more of a distraction at this point. And let's take this character and add some form to him. So take the soft, erase it back, jump in here with, uh, some larger shapes. Remember to keep them primitive. If you're still trying to figure out where you're going with it, you know, if you're confused, draw lightly and suggestively and let the shape start to make sense to you before you refine it or commit to it with a dark line. That's just something works for me so that probably dependent upon the way that you like to draw. But make sure to draw through its the other way. You make sure there's kind of a continuity from the shapes that they don't just float apart from one another. So draw right through another benefit to drawing light. Make sure to show a difference from this back leg, as faras the with So this front leg should be very prominent and get very large. You know, just keep this doorway in mind is your immediate perspective. So pay attention to that and just think about how these shapes would get really dramatic as they came down to the lower viewpoint here. Attached that foot was just a basic primitive kind of a square and then a triangular shaped attached. Just always think of basic primitive shapes just to make it easier to get these ah, larger forms in place circles for the shoulders. You're not going to see any collarbones from an angle like this. You're just gonna see bow to the chest, you know, dependent of its male or female. That will be a different shape, obviously, or a series of shapes. But in this case will just draw amount. It's gonna be kind of an outward bend and then more of a silhouette of a shape. And what happens here, too, when you're at such an extreme shot? Ah, lot of these more define herbal shapes that used to drawing like this point in the sternum become a lot more subdued in elongated, especially as it pertains to like the edges of the character. So one of the ways to kind of get used to this is just study from photos and look at it. But then, obviously you have toe put those away and style eyes what it is you're after. But at the same time, you can at least pay attention to certain cues in certain patterns that you see within pictures of extreme foreshortening and just the body in general. So again, with cylinders, I want to fight the urge to make this arm just look straight out. I'm gonna bring this cylinder down a bit more and then bring this one out. If you notice arms are very rarely, if ever, completely straight. A lot of parts of the body just are never straight. So line down the middle has always helps me to visualize more of the plane changes of each portion of the body, my stomach muscles and I'm actually going over illustrate some of these shapes. But then tone it back as we finish off the character. Because again, from, um, or extreme shot you're not going to get is much definition generally and a character like this you're gonna get mawr, Uh, subtle kind of bends connecting it all together. Okay, so now for the head, the head is more than likely from an angle like this, unless they're really looking down, I guess you're going to see the bottom of the jaw, which you don't normally see from almost any other angle, Just extreme shots. But here you're definitely going to see it. So you're going to see the bottom of the jaw and remember that the eyes are gonna be really close to the top of the head from an angle like this again. You're pushing that extreme foreshortened concept. You're gonna get the bottom of the nose and full view things like that. So I'm just gonna lightly illustrate those ears Gonna look like it's on the back of the head to the very side, back of the head. Eso all these kind of shapes move around and I, you know, in essence, with the extreme foreshortening. So So let's put a hand here. Let's just do a relaxed hand. Polls. So we're bringing those kind of hands together, but not quite a fist ham balls or something. Definitely want to just pay attention to the gestures of the hands and try to get a nice variety. So you're not always drawing the same characters Run around with fists all day long, and characters that are just have kind of appointed open hand either You wanna pay attention to some of the variety that you get from hands. Well, just couple relaxed samples is nothing to extreme there. And then after we get enough of this kind of base forms worked up when we start toe see a little bit mawr into what we have here, we can start thinking about other things, like dressing the character and all that. But mainly, you know, hopefully you're seeing that with these primitive shapes, we can really start to look into this a bit further and picture how are looking up at this character and how we're gonna lose certain details and move things around to make that feeling that we're looking up at the character now, as we start to detail this character with clothing, you know you're going to do things like, you know, these be patterns because his exact patterns for wrinkles on the sides, the legs sum's exact patterns here, but they're going to be a lot larger by comparison. So a lot of times these patterns are repetitive. But if you were to draw the same size patterns here to the side of the lake here, it's not gonna read well, so you have to again perceive that perspective shift and that the way it's converging to that vanishing point up top. And as these wrinkles go up, they're gonna get smaller and tighter together, or they're going appear to look tighter together on a lot of ways. The same kind of wrinkles, um, and we see his back leg almost looks a bit strange now, so we could bring that up. Is well, but for now, I just want to focus on giving you some hints to the next step of detail in this. And that would be getting these wrinkles in plays. Pay attention to the way that materials falled on the body. And you know what direction the wrinkles go That shoes were the best way to get better at wrinkles is paying attention to the way that they, you know, they jet out. Which way is they? They direct, basically, as they go around the body, like with the arm. Here, you'll generally see wrinkles. They go up in around because of the kind of the way the anatomy is going with the form in the direction of the arms. So you'll see it kind of carry through in that regard. So you could do something like that, closed the character, you know, you're gonna get maybe a little bit of the hair up here. Not much. Just kind of kind of poke around the sides a bit more. I get some of the hair on the side there, but again, just remember that this information gets pretty tight and condensed down with this character. So I go out and do this. This is Ah, just me kind of. Ah, nipping and talking. So this this gets us the character in an upshot. Now, I'm gonna go ahead and time, lapse this and tightened it up just a little bit. So let's go and do that. 5. Drawing A Character in a 3 Point Perspective Adding the Details: all right, so not to refine this a bit more. And just keep in mind that this is a really awkward pose for me. I don't draw enough, and that's one of things that kind of tells you within your own are where you need to focus few Trafford. So if you go to draw something like this and you feel that you're just not seeing the shapes properly and it seems awkward, it's nothing to shy away from. In fact, I always feel like you grow the most in your are. If you really attack those head on, it's not the easiest thing to do because we want to work within our comfort zone. So we might take a angle like this and you know whether or not we've got some freedom in the script or we can talk to an editor and say, you know, we're not feeling comfortable to shot. I've never really approach it that way. I just know that there's different levels off what is accepted within different groups of working professionals. But what I would say is to mainly go at it and try to do the best you can. So in this, like I said, I'm kind of put myself under the bus a bit and saying, You know, this didn't feel like I did as well as I would like to for an end piece, but I don't want to sugarcoat it. I don't want to make it seem better than it is, but I also don't want to not utilize the artwork. So I work through things in a way where I do the best that I can today, and I make mental notes of what I need to improve upon. So when it comes to a more difficult angled shot like this, I might take more reference. I might try to generate my own photos. I might look for better reference, but really just making a mental note to study more of these types of shots so that it starts to make more sense. But again, don't ever let yourself stagnate and not produce the work that's needed, because then you're not gonna be able to complete a book. And I can't tell you how many times I've talked to young artists and they they make these compromises with within their ability to produced up because they're like, I'm not ready for that. I'm not doing so good at that. Drawing and creating this type of art is not about perfection. It's about a process of getting better through generating more art. Always say that because again I can look at my own artsy that Where could this be better? You know now, some of the tips for drawing up shot like this is again remembering that things were gonna b'more dramatized at an upward angle, so curves it would normally be safe. Horizontal or eye level are now going appear to ball upwards. So that's a really tricky thing in and of itself, because if you're not used to looking at something an upward till then, you're doing some guesswork. Now. There is one thing Teoh kind of take comfort in, and in that is that our eyes are really good at spotting flaws, even if we don't know what the flaw is. So sometimes if you let yourself just be easy going about the process and relax, you can keep making minute changes in getting to something that looks decent. Front end result again as long as you don't attach an anxiety or negativity to it. I think because it's really easy to go. I'm just not getting it and, you know, just gonna keep starting over, and I'm never gonna finish it while then, of course, deadlines are gonna be met and you're not gonna be able to handle a full script because a script is going to say, you know, draw something from an upshot, draw something from a bird's eye view, draw something like you're peering through a window at an angle. You know, there's lots of details of these different camera angles that you have to work on. So that's why I want to include this in these lessons. Not because again, it's not my strong suit, but it's The fact is that you have to tell a story with lots of different camera angles, lots of different scenarios on. There's no better way to get better at that, other than just practicing and persevering through it on. Then again, analyzing it after you're done and go, OK, what could have been better? You know the shape is the shape of the cheekbones, off from an angle like this of the eyes close enough to the top of the head because the other thing about four shortening and we're gonna talk about this more is that you have to take certain things that really condense them down into certain space. That's why it's called foreshortening. So it's really condensing that information down and a lot of times was something like a face. You can usually fix something just by maneuvering where those proportions are and how close they might be to the next corresponding edge. So I almost feel like the face needs to be closer to the top part of the forehead to make it accurate. So that will complete the rendering part of this. Let's talk about spotting flaws now. Okay, so now we've got our character drawn out and weaken really fix a lot of things with more rendering, like bigger shapes of shadows, things like that. But let's just try to look at this and see if we can make it just a little bit better. And a lot of times, like, always kind of reiterate. Fix it as you go. Don't hold yourself to accountable. Don't slow your production, but one of things I can spot almost immediately that just looks awkward is the bow of the chest. So This is one of the things that you fight. I think mentally in your perception of four shorting is your picture. You picture a chest from a side view and it might in a superhero way. He has super reform goes something like this, right to get this big boat out chest and goes way back before connects the neck and, you know, stomach muscle slant down like this. So this is my perceived, you know, I idolized chest of a superhero. So what's happening here is I think I'm seeing that too much in my mind as I'm drawing this upshot. But what's happening if we were to simplify this, is that if we're to go across the chest that somewhere along this line, even more so so like this and you know, we've got the doorway to kind of help us guide there. Now, the body obviously isn't confined to just that perspective of the room, but it is still a guide for us. So let's go across this way and you see how this shape is looking really awkward now. So what I want to do is take this, get rid of the kind of the biggest problem first. So eliminate this awkward shape right through here and then think about it. Was character may be more of an average joe type, you know? Or maybe they're a superhero in regular clothes, whatever. But from a shot like this, you're not going to get as much of that defined hero, esque type chest, you know, I wouldn't say so. So So basically, I'm just gonna shape that down a bit, make it less, you know, defined less, uh, overly exemplified and looking like this and try to make small changes like that just to see if it fixes the problem. Uh, so that's really one of the hardest parts I think about perceiving dramatic camera angles is that these shapes changed so much. And then it's so tough to find good reference for this. So again, you're gonna try to generate reference when you can, and every now and then you're gonna get lucky. And you're gonna spot this. What happens with me anyways? I'll be working on a piece working on a panel. And although I'm looking for something else, I'll see a shot that I know that I've been struggling with, and I'll capture that you know, sometimes I even just do a screen grab and save it right to my best top so that I don't lump it into all my other reference and forget about it. The reason why that's helpful is because I know that there's been times that I've struggled with, say, a shot like this, and I need to make that mental effort to combat that to go head on with it and figure it out. If you just kind of keep putting it off or draw were comfortable with, you'll never really get there. So you gotta really be aware of that. Eso the I'll say this is a little bit better. We're gonna make a couple of quick adjustments that we're gonna check that against the original work. I also feel like the face. I think I've already mentioned it. I feel like the face needs to go up a bit higher, and if you're working traditionally, you're just gonna use a light table or soft to raise some redraws. So it's a little more difficult for traditional, but the same, you know, just think of it is the same thing. I know it's tough for traditional artists here is often hear comments of like, I can't just move things around like that. Well, that's when you go to a light table with, you know, vellum, our regular paper. Whatever. Now, the other thing that I feel would help this a little bit more is to bring the feet off the panel more. So I'm gonna bring this back. I guess I don't really need to. Let's just bring that to here. I'm gonna size this up just a little bit, and I'm gonna bring the feet off the panel more so that it doesn't look like a tangent of this character Walking against are on top of that edge. So you gotta be careful of things like that since we're here with minority, do a small tilt, you know, whatever. Just to kind of play around with it. So now what happens after we've got enough? That's in place. And there's other things you can do. Remember to use great line weight or nice, heavy line. Wait to really bring this character closer to the viewer. So we're gonna do nice heavy lines at the base. I still feel like that. That other foot needs to be off camera more something like that. So now what happens is, uh we can take this and kind of look at the other one and see if these changes helped at all. I still feel like this arm to could use just a little, a little bit more bend. It just looks to straight. So I'm gonna angle that as well. So again, I'm always kind of Justin things, always trying to get the most out of it, but also being aware of the time constraints and no looking at the clock and make changes like this just can't simply keep trying to make it perfect. Without any concept of what time it takes, I wouldn't be able to deliver on a type of projects, whether it be commissions or page work. Okay, so now it's not a few more wrinkles right there. And then we'll leave this alone something like that. And then now let's compare it to the previous example and sit we got So this is the changes . This is before, and let's do this to make it a bit easier. Let's just couldn't take the before. Move it right over here. So I love the work by comparison, seems to be the best for me to kind of spot flaws and see if I'm heading in the right direction. And I would say for the most part, those changes did improve it. I definitely see the chest being more natural looking here. This looks wonky and kind of weird with the bombs there and again, it's just me trying to perceive what I think a chest looks like on a overdramatized fashion . But when we changed that perspective in such a extreme camera angle, you're going to see a lot of more extreme curves get balanced out with smooth lines and things like that. So study your photos, generate own photos if you have to make these changes. But again, don't shy away from these tough ones. Go head on with, um, and just remember that you're going to get better each time you revisit opposed like this on and kind of take solace in that. So that will complete this lesson. Let's move on to the next 6. Foreshortening Techniques: Okay, so now we're gonna talk about four shortening and more detail, and I want to give you a couple of tips just to kind of, you know, exercise, I guess, to get you rolling one that I like to do is drawing cylinders, kind of Ah, in an upright way for So we'll kind of perceive this is being an arm, and we'll just draw this out like this. So this will be the form. It's gonna be a little bit longer, quite a bit longer. And then for the shoulder. We're just going to do a circle. For now, these are the basic primitive shapes that I see when drawing. You know, um, attach your hand. Keep in mind that the middle knuckle is taller. So that's why you see me draw this little point right there like that. Um, so that's the basic primitive shapes that I see right there. Withdrawn arm. Now, keep in mind these probably aren't accurate as faras length. I just kind of drew them in visually, you know, But if we want to check it, you know those things that you can do, like one of the techniques for the wrist. If you hold your wrist up to your shoulder. That kind of do this, the arch hark. I should say the risk will land about here, and then you would attach the hand. That's a little bit above that. But again, hold your own hand up to your shoulder. You'll see what I mean. So it's a good way for alignment there. And then just remember the elbow lines up to the naval or mid section of the character. So generally, with those two, you can kind of place. He's relatively well, and then, obviously you're going to style, eyes and overdramatize the way that you like to make your characters. So with that in place, that gives us our basic primitive shape. And the reason why I like to do this off to the side is because the arm can be pretty complex. That's kind of what I want to start here. I think you can break it down and simplify it. But at the same time, when a lot of our is generated of comic characters and superheroes, you'll see them flying out towards camera and you'll see a lot of kind of mistakes happen there. Present company included you know, it's just one of those things where it's not the easiest thing to visualized. But there's a few things that you can do to make this a bit easier, one of which is to pay attention. Teoh kind of what we established before. And that's, you know, the measurement process. So if you were to draw a box a rectangular shape around this, something like that and then you were to criss cross your corners Skill this brush way down , figure out where center is there like them Do it again. Find center again Do it again down here. Find center again. So there you end up with quadrants. Yeah, You know this section four sections like that on The neat thing about this is it starts to show you Let me move this behind the artworks if that'll make it more evident a little bit and told the capacity back So it shows you where the halfway part part of the arm is. It shows you the divides, you know where they fall. The reason why this is so beneficial is that if you take this now and your toe, do it in perspective and again I can just distort this working digitally. But I've already showing you how to do your sub divides, so just keep that in mind. But I'm just gonna take this for ah, just to make it quick and easy and I'm just gonna distort this into place. So now what it does, it shows you in perspective how much that information is condensed down. I could have brought the arm over with it and showed you that as well. And that's another way to do it. You can map it out that way and then just draw mawr dimensionally in this way, but it's kind of good to do. This is an exercise and utilize. This is your base measurement looking over to the side here, and it does a couple things you can pay attention to the placement even left to right here like this so you can start that shoulder over here. So you're gonna get the bend of the arm and as well cause Remember the arms never straight and automatically I wanna draw it like this. This is just meat guessing. You know where it might be. But if I look over here at my reference, I could see that the halfway mark is where the segment segmentation occurs. So you see, I overshot that quite a bit. And that's that's really what happens in our perception of foreshortening because we're just not that aware of what really occurs now, how much it gets. Ah, um, again, you know, stretched out in perspective. Eso now paying attention that and also noticed we can look that this is about halfway the distance of our shape here. So here it's not. It's a little bit under that, so I need to widen this out. So this little diagram over here can actually show you a lot more if you pay attention to it. And then as we add the next segment, we want that to curve right up. And over this previous segments, we want to think as dimensionally as possible as we do this. And then again, it's definitely at least halfway the distance. There's we want that in there, and then, as we bring it forward, look where it ends up alignment wise here. So would that be 7/8 or something, or maybe 68 but at any rate, just kind of visualize that bring it over and you see, it hits this line right here. So we could probably guess. And I kind of figured that out. We could subdivide this again if we want to be very specific. So you can again connect the dots over here. So why'd it gets sexual really wide, is it? Brings brings out this way and again we gotta think dimensionally so we gotta show that opening for the rest. Just look how massive that wrist is. And we know what the fist is much larger than the wrist. So then we have to finish that information out that way. And now the fist is gonna be pointed at us. We have to compensate for the fingers coming down. So the knuckles, even though they go right to this edge because we can bring it to that edge still, let's see the first fingers here knuckle here, local here, here, and this is gonna be a little bit rough, but we want to compensate for the dimension like we could see the front of these cylinders . Right? So we can see now the front of the fingers. Those are just gonna be box shaped for now on the thumb would come out back. Something like that. So you see, it's very it looks clunky at this stage, and it looks like, what would that really look that way? But as we start to work in this and get rid of some of our construction lines and try to make it, you know, make a little bit more sense, we're gonna take this off, trace it back. We're gonna draw on what we know about anatomy over top. We gotta remember, this is a very extreme perspective. So curves they're going to be very upward angled. I don't think like mountains or Hells or whatever, but going in an upward angle. So other muscle groups are going to really kind of protrude in front of other muscle groups , and that's again, you're just gonna have to pay attention to that. But like, for instance, the forum muscle here is gonna be very prominent. That's going to kind of take over the shape. So it's gonna come out like this and circle around like this and get these ones that go to the back of the hand. But, you know, it's it's really kind of overlaying those on top of what's here? So this construction is just our base guide and then, you know the way it connects here, connection points are always tricky. And you're gonna probably a little bicep there. Part of the forum here. The rest here and again. This is me doing a little bit of guesswork in what I think looks cool for the dynamic anatomy that I like to do. But, you know, we're just study anatomy as much as possible and try to get a pretty good feeling for what you want to see on the page. And then this is a tricky one here for me, because what happens is from a side view. The shoulder comes down and connects kind of like this. It was a very crude representation of it, but it connects down the middle of the triceps. Up here, the biceps. Here, you get the way the chest connects. Remember, the chest and the shoulders are all kind of really together. They react together really well s So what happens is over here I have to fight that urge because I want to bring this muscle group down like that. But I also have to remember this is such an extreme angle that chances are the tricep in the way the bicep connects are gonna actually kind of proceed that or take, it's gonna look like those shapes come in front. So it's It's a tricky thing to visualize. But again, as you start to draw more than she'll start to see little things like that and you realize that you're gonna get more detail on the top of each of these shapes than you are on the bottom because they're going to the bottom connection points are going basically it covered up by the height that occurs. We got to remember that muscles like a tricep it doesn't just come down like this. It comes out and over, you know, it's got height to it peaks up in certain areas. So as this is brought up dimensionally in this muscle starts to come out towards camera. Something like this. It's gonna block that next muscle group in this case, the shoulder. And then you're also gonna see more, evidently, how the tricep is higher in a dips down and kind of has this. Ah, this curve line or whatever That's not always very evident depends on how segmented. You know you've drawn the character and how detailed the anatomy is. But it's kind of this relationship that you'll see, and it kind of goes across like this. Get the bicep curve and things like that. So it's just again one of those things you have to pay attention to as you rotate thes muscle groups. And this is, Ah, pretty prime example of it here, although it looks a little too skinny all the way across, you know, as far as going all the way up. But I would just keep editing that and trying to make that stand out and move these shapes around until it makes more sense. So then, as I work down into the hand, you're gonna get a lot more detail or more evident detail down here. And that's the other way. You kind of show for shortening. So when things were closer, it's not just that they're larger. There also a bit more in focus, so you're gonna get more detail, more shadows, more evident breaks in the design of it. So it's another way you can kind of convey that depth knuckles in there. Some veins to the hands, things like that. So try this out again. This is a good exercise to start getting a feel for. I don't know if you see the thumb right there, but getting a feel for how these shapes work and how they're going to change in a more dramatic, foreshortened perspective like this. And you see, this is very dramatic. So you can kind of start here, play around with this even the hand. You're gonna probably a few like upward angles, like bizarre upward curves. I should say that the thumb would be back here more, so keep making these tiny little adjustments. Do this exercise so you can come up with. And then what should happen after you've got a better understanding of how this works, it'll become easier for you to just kind of draw in these basic shapes like this and then perceive what you want toe happen in the shot. Because there is a lot of areas where you're just gonna cheat it because you think it looks better more in tune with what you're trying to accomplish in a certain panel. Eso you're definitely gonna break rules. You know, you always look at it like this you're not gonna want to draw everything based upon this this guide or this rule here because there's times that you just really want to let your art in your style takeover. But knowing these rules and these guides helps you to have more confidence with your stylized drawings. So that's the That's what's helped me. And that's what I want to share with you here seeing drawn arm rather quickly change some of shapes and get something. It does look somewhat foreshortened, but without using a lot of this because I've done enough of this to understand what I need to do over here. Okay, so that will complete this lesson. Now we're gonna move on to some actual applications of this with some different arm poses, so let's move forward. 7. Foreshortening a Muscular Arm Pose: So I want to show you an example of how you can utilize for shortening and come up with an arm pose. So I think arms are generally just a good one to practice because there almost always coming out towards camera super opposes eso. There a good place to start anyways? So let's try to define just a basic perspective with cylinder shape. So we'll just draw one coming out towards camera like this route towards viewer, another one and then remember, we're gonna always kind of angle the different parts away from one another. So, really, the shoulder connects over and down like this, But I just start with a basic cylinder or sphere. I should say I'm in a cylinder attached for the upper arm and then for the forum, another cylinder coming out towards camera. But perspectively so some pretty extreme foreshortening. Now you can even think about it like this. You could draw back each portion to a vanishing point, you know, see if your horizon was up here, you could think about these converging in such a way where they meet the vanishing point. So there's lots of ways that I think about it in this case, I'm just going to focus on each section individually. So just kind of imagining the perspective. So it's kill this down. So I got a bit more room here, but the main thing is is that, you know, you're gonna get a pretty good overlap, teach portion each segmentation, and the fist is gonna come out and be quite large. So something like this the thumb come down if you come out like this. Well, something like this. But again, just really trying toe. Make that fist overly large and getting the wrist relatively thin back here. But then it's a wide now for the shape of the muscles that we're gonna attach something like this council moving these shapes around, trying to figure out if it'll work. I think the shoulder needs to be quite a bit larger. Well, something like that. So that gives us some perspective. Anyways, you know, a little bit to work from. We can attach Thea Trapezius and the collarbone in the pectoral muscle. Something like this, this again trying to get the zone with very basic shapes. So let's bring this over to the side. Another thing I like to do here is I like to draw in these other kind of cylinder this shapes like this and really perceive the depth here. So what I think about when I do this is kind of like if you were designing this in a three D software in doing a wire frame, and I really like this effect because again helps to solidify this feeling of these shapes occupying a three D space. So I find this to be helpful just to get that feeling, you know, we can also think about the direction of the muscles, like the chest separate into five muscles, and it kind of spirals, and then it they connect here under the shoulder. That's why you get this little Bowls in the chest of the muscles when somebody's really defined. So that's thinking more about the anatomy. But we can also kind of do that as we're doing these, these ah three D lines, or whatever grid patterns. So again, the middle knuckle is, you know, just slightly higher. It doesn't need to be very extreme like this. I tend to over embellish that over accentuate that area, but that's just preference. Then obviously get the lines. The main thing, even with a flat fist like this, is that there is a difference from, you know, the middle finger being the largest, the way the brain fair comes down than the pink even smaller. You know, these little subtleties and then the divide that you get right here. So it kind of goes like this and the knuckles kind of point down like diamonds will fill that in later. But again, just these basic kind of patterns that you start to notice make this a lot quicker to draw from memory. So again, that gives us our starting point. Now, let's bring this over and start to ah at in our anatomy. All right, so now we're gonna overlay some anatomy. What I want to try to do here is picture the shape that you see within the arms and make it really look like it's working in perspective. So that's why these guides air helpful because they paint just a very basic perspective off the forms. I don't want to see the underlying forms because really, the underlying forms our bones not sell under shapes or whatever, but this gives you kind of some build up to that process. And then you have to look through this and you have to go, OK? What these muscles tend to do. This one tends to wrap around and kind of swirl around the arm like this, you know, in a very defined, superhero esque type character. So you might do something like this and then you get these muscles that swing around here and forgive me, I don't know the terminology as well as I probably should, but just gonna draw these in and show you what I see here and what I have to think about is how big this forum might get before it connects to this. Ah, this breast here and then to the hand. Now, the main thing with four shorting is to remember that as these things go back in the space , the overlaps air more evident now in this direction. So, like that, uh, that's kind of a quick and easy way to just make sure it reads this foreshortening. But then it goes a lot further with anatomy to get some kind of feeling of realistic anatomy. There's lots of tricky areas generally the tricky areas of the connection points So, for instance, it's it becomes kind of Ah, a bit hard to realize, you know, Where does the elbow fall right here? Does it come in front, Lee. You know, we would picture normally because there's usually still pronounced, but in some angles the elbow will actually get covered up and you'll just see, like, you know, maybe the side of the elbow. And then from this side, you might get some of this muscle that starts to block it. So again, it's when that arm starts to raise up. These shapes change, and they, you know, they move. Ah, and look a little bit different. One of things that happens here is as the arm comes up, this part of the shoulder, the shoulder muscle comes up real high and it dips down, and then the next ones lower. So, you know, pay attention when you look in the mirror and you move your arms around and try to see what muscles you can or, you know, study or photos or whatever. But this is one of the ones that I think throws a lot of shoulder designs off, because if you don't get this muscle right here, protruding upward, a za shoulder raises, and again this side dipping down and coming out more. It just doesn't read is a shoulder. You get a lot of shoulder designs where it's just this kind of this overlapping. You know, they'll know that maybe there's three main muscles or it looks like the remain muscles, but I think it's a lot more than that. But they'll do something like that and it looks like a pumpkin, kind of. So you just got to be aware that this one pops up and, you know, from the chest that's kind of spends out like this. You know, you're not gonna draw every segmentation, but it's good to be aware of them and then just pick and choose what definition you want. I know another tricky thing about this is the bicep from this angle, you know, again and overly defined superhero bicep. I's gonna like, pop in front of the shoulder. If the arm is up high enough now, if it's not, then your shoulders gonna come in front of that like this. But but in this particular poll is you're gonna get the bicep. It takes precedence from this kind of angle and as well as the tricep. Now, the other tricky thing is the tricep is actually ah, larger muscle group. But, you know, based on the way that people draw, they might like to draw the biceps larger. But in all actuality, the triceps a lot larger and it can have come down, comes down. It connects to the back of this muscle. Here, get something like this. And the neat thing about muscles is that the string together nearly connect from one point to another. So if you start to pay attention to the connection points, you can really start in one spot and figure it out throughout the design of the body. But it takes a lot of practice to do that. So at first you just want to study. I think the connection points those. They're gonna be the hardest to get right. And why not really go for the thing that slows people down the most? So get those connection points right here is like the shoulder the connection point of the form to the upper arm pay attention, lows. Now, the other thing that happens here is that the arm like dips down, goes around like this now, from a side view, our downward view of the arm, the shoulder would look like it comes way down into the middle of the arm. Remember that one side's different than the other two, never symmetrical or even side to side the triceps empire, the bicep lower. And then you get what looks like a divide, even though this is really a muscle right here. But it looks like they're divided, and you get kind of this pointing that goes on like this, right? This one's lower here. So what I'm saying is here it's definitely a downward, almost like a V shape right? But as you work the arm going upwards, arms ships to raise that V shaped becomes less and less evident in these other muscles start to come out become more evident. They kind of take over the ah, that shape. So that's another thing to be aware of when designing these these arms like this. It's like you got to be aware of when these other shapes become more dominant and changed the shape based on the fact that it's foreshortened. So now let me attach the hand and the hand basically these over to find knuckles. Fingers attended. Uh, not. I fight the urge to draw them like rectangular shapes. And I purposely tried to throw in like, little pockets of skin because I always noticed when one of fists clenched, it's never like a bunch of even shapes. It's a bunch of wrinkles and folds and things like that. And so when I see somebody draw ah, hand and it's very angular and rectangular for fingers, it just doesn't read well to me. And that's some of the things that I look for within my own work. You also get a little bit of the side of the knuckles from an angle like this. The knuckles come down like this little bit of a V shape, but again, we got to remember not to draw every line. So a big part of making this stuff look and feel, uh, not realistic, but well, down, I guess, would be to not trace what you think is there to actually let some of it go to let the viewer connect. The dots basically leave a little bit too imagination, because that's the whole purpose of this is imaginative, you know, design and drawing. So yes. And as we get to the Was this a trip? Easiest journal, Claddagh Master, It comes down to a point you get another little separation for the Adam's apple. And so now we've got much of this in place for a lot of this in place, I should say. And, you know, we've just got to keep going and see if it works. Now, one of the things I start to render this I'm not gonna render everything exactly the way it looks here. I'm not gonna again. I'm not gonna trace what's here and just render everything in big, solid lines. Now, I will do that in some areas because that's what gives it a more solid fields with work. But I want to make sure to pick and choose. And I actually want to keep my shadows toe one side predominantly and make breaks in a lot of this land work again to fight that urge to trace the information. It's almost like you're you're making it to evidence of what's there, and it takes away from the quality of the work. So let's ah, let's try to refine this a bit more and see if I can explain to you what I mean. There 8. Foreshortening a Muscular Arm Pose: camera, turn this one back and merges together. Now, actually, I'm gonna take the previous sketch lines and tunnels back of it, but actually like to keep as much of the sketch together sort of like traditional drawing where you're really just slowly working up what you see on the canvas or page. So I'm gonna take this now and soft to race this bag, and I want to try to just pick and choose what lines are there. I also want a maneuver, a couple things I'm always trying to, you know, adjust things as I go. And one of things I see that just isn't reading as well as I think it could. Is this muscle group right here? I'm gonna try to just bring that back a little bit. So I'm gonna softer race that down a little bit more like this. I want to leave just enough of it there where I see where my previous step was. But I want to just play around with that. I want to move these shapes around just a little bit and hopefully get a little bit more out of him. So what I think needs to happen is I think this needs to come back even further, and I really want to bring this up and over really want to give that visual that it's coming up in around and then connecting, you know, lower and thinner this way. So it's just one of those things where, as you start to play around with, you know, anatomy for shorting stuff like this, you start to realize that the small changes can have a pretty good impact, you know, especially if you're trying to apply style. So you might just change the lines just a little bit to give it a more stylized feel. You know, the information is there, but you just want to see what you can do to make it your own, I guess, or just bringing out a little bit more. And that's really what small changes like that can do. Also feel like the tricep can look a bit more impressive. So I'm just gonna bring it out further, bring this line back down, and you know they're not always winning choices. But I think that if you settle on something too early on without exploring some ideas, you're kind of cheating yourself like you could get a little bit mawr out of what you're doing. So moving around these little lines here and there can sometimes open up some doors for what you're looking for. For your style. Let's try something like that. I think for the most part, a lot of this should work. I brought him after. I like toe. Add in a lot of these little tiny lines to kind of divide stuff and make the character look mawr, you know, segmented or ripped. But I'm careful not to just connect again. Draw lines all throughout that are connected. I'm really trying toe. Add in those a little bit of bits of separation, you know, even something like this, instead of just coming what's already there can a curve, curve and curve. I could maybe try a little bit of a back bend and then a curve over. So just little things like that can add to the the style of it in the separation. Here, jump right over to this one and again, seeing home, bringing that curve inward instead of just right over. Just little choices like that can sometimes, you know, make a pretty good difference. I'm gonna bring this curve up a little bit of a line break and then picked back up over here. So it's almost like you're drawing an imaginary line, you know, just skipping some parts of it, and it just somehow it gives a little bit more style, and I think confidence to the work, just little breaks like that again, I want that wrinkle to the back of the hand. I think that adds a bit more depth, so I'm gonna make sure that's in there. You know, another part of this is realizing that you can't get in every a little bit of detail, even though you know there's more back here, like bones to the hand veins and stuff like that. It's such a forced and condensed area that sometimes omitting certain parts is a is a better choice. I think that comes with confidence and lots and lots of trial and error, lots of mistakes, basically to realize, you know, maybe I just gotta not put anything there, and that's a that's a hard pill to swallow with art, because you you associate being better with putting in more and more detail. Sometimes it's leaving out certain parts of the detail networks a lot for shortening because there's a certain parts from certain angles that are going to get covered in, ah, omitted. And it's hard because you I think as an artist you want to show your skill set and you want to draw everything that you know, is maybe there. But again, you gotta sometimes realize that to make it look accurate and make it look, you know better. You just have to leave parts out show just a little bit of the bottom of these knuckles. Um, you know, keep in mind, too, that you can like, uh, show a little bit more of one and make one awkward and angled out just a little bit differently, that that sometimes looks good or a lot of times looks good with fingers because there's just never completely even right there. Thumb here. This will get covered up from this angle and the funny thing about hands as you can show a lot of direction just with way you place the thumbnails, so just be aware that a couple little wrinkles there and again. I drew these separations of the chest, but I don't want those to be in the end result. In fact, I wanna wanna let go of a lot of that. I just kind of, like, drawn him in to check the work a little bit. But then as I get to this part, I'm just going to again, No middle out of that. I want to maybe get in, you know, pretty heavy shadow here to show the the bulk of a chest the size of the chance. Right there. Same thing here. I don't want to draw in all of this. Just pick out some little shadows here and there. Some little separations. Maybe a bit of a vein like that. Larger shadow here for the trapezius. Something like that. Maybe a little bit of this separation, but not much. We'll raise a lot of us back and you see, it still reads it. Still shows like it's there. You don't really need all these connected lines, too. Paint the picture for you. We'll get rid all this rough construction stuff like that and then with the stomach of one to get some of stomach muscles in. You can really just illustrate parts of that. You know you don't need an overly to find stomach. To make that at work, you just get a little bit of shadow on the bottom. A lot of times you could just shade one side and it'll still read pretty well something like that for a shirt design. And that's it. So now we can start playing some shadows to this and see if it reads his walls. I hope so. Let's go and do that. Okay, So now, for shapes of shadows, one thing I try to do is just get in a little bit of curvature to even the shadow. So I try not to just trace the existing shape entirely. I also want to make sure to just shade one side of the muscles at first kind of perceived, ah unified light source or a singular light source or shadow at first, and then maybe apply some of the other side if it needs that. You know, obviously you got to think about what the scene entails, but you can just, you know, drawing your shapes of shadows. Poor little X is there. If you need to remember where these Ah, what these lines mean? And again, I'm just kind of perceiving some of the shape on this one side of the arm. And so I'm trying to like Well, that's kind of looks like a mimic of that shape. But what? I'm trying to fight the urge to just trace the shape like basically what I mean is I would rather go with the shape like that instead of something like this. So to me, that looks too bubbly and not as interesting. But then, if I change this a little bit, and I move these shapes around, mix in some angles with some curves, Aiken generally get something looks a bit more interesting on. Then, when I had my rendering lines, that should help that something like this Aiken think about maybe the shadow getting larger and then a bit thinner like this. And instead of bringing it to a point just kind of round over the ads, something like that. So I'm constantly trying to experiment with shapes of the shadows, because again, it's just really easy to get in the habit of just drawing really simple curved line around it. And then it takes away from what otherwise might have been a pretty pretty cool rendering. So I'll see myself do a lot of like, stretched out comma shapes is Well, it's kind of like a go to shape for me. I guess I was playing around those picking at it. I kind of perceived a little bit of a shadow right in here, but not much. Try to just doing a little piece there. But it doesn't mean that all of these will work either. Like, I'm just I wouldn't say guessing, but I'm picking at it. And then as I render it, it'll it'll show me if this is ah is accurate, as I expected on then, you know, open a change, obviously. So just trying to get a lot of it in there like that. And, you know, you can do a lot of little techniques to you can purposely put in a shadow like here. And like I said, I planned on shooting this down here anyways to bring out the you know, the bulk of the chest. But what will also do is it'll push out the bicep in the form. It'll it'll add to all that jumping out. In fact, I'll continue that shadow right here because, you know, it stands the reason a lot of this is gonna be in shadow anyways, You know the stomach and just kind of put some shadows on the bottom of this. Those are kind of round out. I don't win those being around shadows on the bottom of the fingers like this to one side of the knuckle. And these are primitive shadows. I'm not, you know, going for anything too fancy, Like, you know, more advanced artists will put a lot in the shadow. Like, you know, there will be a lot more comfortable with throwing in a large shadow here and really varying up the feeling that you get from part to part of the arm or whatever. But I want to keep this relatively simple so that, you know, a lot of people can follow along. I think that it helps to slowly picket these areas and just adding little bits and pieces As you go on, you can always ADM. Or and you know, obviously you can always take away with the racing as well. But you can add little bits here and there and kind of find what's working for you. You could even have a shadow here and you could leave a small light gap often referred to his room lighting, and that might work and depending on the style you're looking for. But again, it will kind of push this away from this other filling right there and then passed that once we start to render this, we're just gonna pick some different lines and and texture. You know it's not texture because skin, so this is a really texture, and it's just shading it. But one of things that I find to be helpful is a nice variety of thick to thin, just a little bit of cross hatching, but really trying to mix up the patterns that you see in the designs that you see what then that. So I fight the urge to just do everything the same, especially material to material. So if I'm shading on arm versus clothing, I do a very different at least somewhat noticeably different pattern. Eso that reads is different materials. That's something I just find helpful, and I think even do this a little bit, just different parts of the design, because I don't want the effect that this entire pattern is repetitive. Throughout my design, I just wanted to appear a little bit mawr thought out than that. And the other thing I try to dio don't over. Toby is evident here. But as the detail goes back within the design so you know, calling this, you know, our foreground And this our background, something like that. I'm gonna make sure the foreground has mawr more detail and the background has a little bit less at least try to any ways. I guess it really depends on the subject at hand. Well, shadows here between the fingers. But I love to render I think the rendering adds a lot of designed to it and, you know, makes it makes it feel more impressive and just fun to dio something about rendering is just ah, who is fun now here I have to think of a little bit different design, so I don't know, you know, break the rule that I just talked about. Basically, what I'm gonna do is just leave these as lines and I'll do the cross hatching on the skin. So not much of a difference, but just enough where hopefully it'll read well as being different from one another. I can also do something like this where you create ah, pocket or an area like this and actually need to get rid of the excess first. And I could shade this just a little bit differently so that that hopefully reads, Ah, again, A bit different than the skin. So what I'll do now Because this is gonna be repetitive. I've explained what I'm gonna do here. I'll go in time lapses and finish the rendering. So with rendering, you're really just trying to block in your shadows and try some variation with their line work. Turn lots of practice studies of rendering itself variations off victor thin lines variations in the way that you crosshatch make sure to use heavier line way as things appear closer to the camera, the viewer and really just have fun with it. And I would say Just render different materials like I already said in different ways so that you get that distinction. But other than that, it's really just practicing it and make sure not to do it too busy so that you distract away from the art piece itself. All right, so there we have the finished version, so try to use some simplified shapes, construct from different arm poses and render over top and see. We can come up with its a phone exercise, and it can really help to build confidence. So with that, let's move on to the next lesson.