Drawing Natural Forms: SHAPE

1. Shape: Trailer and Course Projects: Hi guys, and welcome to the World of Shape. This is an engaging course that aims to transform the way that you perceive And capture the diverse range of shapes in the world around us, from the very hard to the soft and smooth. Join me on this creative journey where you're sharpen your observational drawing skills. Let's dive into those class projects. The class projects are designed to elevate your skills in perceiving and capturing shapes, whether it's the spines of a cactus or the vapors of a cloud. This course is supported with a wealth of handouts providing comprehensive guidance on each of the projects. I've put together a 31 page booklet loaded with vital resources and a detailed guide on reindeer anatomy. After creating your sketches, please scan them or photograph them and post them in the gallery, where you'll receive valuable feedback that can help keep you on track. On each of the handouts, you'll discover an activity box that you can mark to confirm that you've completed all the tasks, allowing you to track your progress and ensure you know exactly what to do. Each project has been designed to be easily approachable. They encourage independent and imaginative thinking. Try to personalize the project and reflect on your own unique perspective. There's no need to replicate exactly what I'm doing. Simply follow the step by step approach outlined in the handouts. And you can adapt the medium or subject matter to suit your creative preferences or whatever you have available. Let's jump into assignment one. Assignment one is a comparative measured drawing of a dinosaur or an ex skeleton. Extent means living where you will learn to create a measuring rack to ensure that you can get the entirety of the skeleton, including the tip of the tail and the toes. You're going to learn to squint to create clarity of the blocks of tone in front of your eyes. You're going to align vertically and horizontally, anatomical relationships. And create a drawing that showcases your understanding of proportions by using a comparative unit of measurement, such as the length of a head. Assignment two is all about capturing the character of form. We're going to create a negative and positive shape drawing of a plant spring. We're going to create a sight size drawing in this context which is bursting with character. We've learned to describe the shape your plant by using descriptive words. And then focus on the positive and negative shapes and create either an two or three drawing. Simply follow the step by step process from planning and plotting, where you'll move from an area that you understood to uncharted territory and new shapes. You'll discover the character of your subject, which will be revealed by focusing on the negative shapes. The final major project is a reindeer study sheet. Join me at Riverway's farm in the reindeer paddock, where you'll learn the three main walking stances of animals. You'll also learn the pivot points, how to articulate the legs to bring a sense of movement and dynamism to your drawings. We can learn about how artists in the Renaissance such as Leonardo Da Viucci and Gar mastered an understanding of the muscles to capture a dynamic surface of the skin with grooves and shading of these elastic mounds beneath the layers of fat and fur. We're going to explore all the tips and tricks I use in the field to sketch animals from life, from breaking the body down into left and right hand side, by sketching in the bilateral line of symmetry, we're going to learn different ways of starting. Understanding how to draw the reindeer in fall short imposes by imagining they're created from. There'll be a host of fun activities including coloring in anatomy charts so that you can learn the placement of the bones and the muscles. At the beginning of each section, the learning objectives will be listed so you can clearly see what you need to learn by the end of the course. Without further ado, let's make a staff. 2. Shape: Introduction: Hi guys, welcome to Shape. In this section of the course, we're going to be learning about all things to do with shapes. Shape is a fundamental principle of drawing. It portrays a wide range of different subjects in any shape and size. Shapes are the foundations of form. They are the building blocks of any drawing. They're generally created in the formative part of the drawing at the beginning. It can also be the main focus abstract piece of work be helped here my plant, Twiggy. Twiggy was in the bathroom and wasn't doing very well at all. We brought Twiggy into college and the students fed Twiggy the old paint, hot water. And she's absolutely thrived and loved it here. Thank you to Twiggy. All shapes are two dimensional and have a length, and the width bordered by an outline. In its most basic form, shape is commonly thought to have a closed contour, like a trapped negative shape or gaps through here. However, I also feel that shapes can be open, such as the sky line against the horizon. Shapes can be created in a drawing by delineating the boundary of the form. Or it can also be a change in local color. If you think about a leopard spot, you might draw a line around the edge of the spots. Or even that of a Friesian cow might also be shapes. All shapes are essentially abstract, which when combined, create the illusion of something at its heart. Drawing is really very much an abstract process. And putting abstract things together, again, working from first hand, you're going to get a better understanding of the shape necessarily working from a photograph. But again, in these exercises, I will put the photograph files in to support your studying. If we're drawing something you can't get to firsthand, shapes will contribute to the overall personality of your subject. If we think about the spinly legs of a heron compared to the mighty pillars of an elephant's leg. It can take time to tune into your subjects shapes. After several warm up sketches, you'll begin to feel that you know your subject much closer and the shapes that they've got. It can be like a bird's beak or the shape of its head, or the length of its neck and things like that. White space is also known as negative space, The empty space that will give your eye some areas to relax whilst taking away from the detail. It's a place to breathe, a place to rest. We always need to not over fill our drawings, allow your composition to breathe. Negative shapes are always there to help us identify the character of the positive shapes. All shapes are loosely classified into those that are geometric and those which are organic. The geometric shapes have been with us since childhood. They include shapes such as the circle, the triangle, squares, and polygons. And polygons are hexagons and those ones that the bees love so much. Often, manmade forms are geometric, such as the components of a car. Although a lot of organic forms are also highly geometric. From the petals of a daisy, we can think of a snowflake or an or apple or orange, revealing the mathematics that are behind all of nature's designs. Geometric shapes are typically characterized by straight lines, angles, and come in many different permutations, Set of course, the circle and a lit shapes which have no straight lines or points at all. On the other hand, irregular shapes or the ones that we consider to be organic, are characterized by free flowing, sometimes apparently orderless forms. We can think of shapes of ripples in the water, twisted gnarled roots, organic shapes of big cumulus nimbus clouds in the sky that can grow and flow and move. Organic shapes are frequently rounded and even uneven. They can appear erratic. You can enjoy looking at organic forms and pulling out those imperfections as important as their perfections. Of course, with organic forms, they don't always repeat exactly. If I had a host of different pebbles out here, which we might do later, we can look at all the different variety of shapes within them. Nature shapes are more abundant than the imagination. Sometimes stunningly intricate and geometrical. From starfish, six sided honeycomb cells, snowflakes, segmented fruits, shell spirals to spiders webs and tree rings. Other times, the shapes are much more random. From meandering rivers to the tributches in the sand, the rosettes and jaguar, the multi, various forms of coral or in shapes. I just thought I'd talk about this drawing here. I did this one in Richmond Park, it's an oak tree in dip pen and ink. I began this drawing by identifying a focal point of interest, a window through the leaves to the blue sky. I started with a single sky window and looked carefully at its negative shape, somewhere around here. I think drawing this style, the composition arrangement can conceived as a collection of shapes, or I began to create the first shape in the right space, which would dictate the whole composition to plan that carefully. Then once you've created initial negative shape, you can move from the negative and positive shapes. A bit like putting a jigsaw puzzle together. As it grows, you finish the drawing completely in that area and it's just going to grow out. I didn't attempt to draw every individual leaf, which didn't seem impossible. Instead, I looked for the cluster of leaves and looked for the shapes of the irregular clumps. Some clumps were in front of the others. A single line overlapping the clump behind created the illusion of one clump being in front of the other. Like a stained glass window I made the lines describe the divisions. The trunk is th with a bolder line for the busy leaves, which are a lot lighter. I tried to create a lighter line, so that was sympathetic with the leaf mark compared with the trunk mark, if that makes sense. Okay. I mean, that sketch there, if you wanted to enliven it a bit more, we could just simply add a splash of water color on top. Okay, so without further ado, let's get going with shapes. 3. Comparative Measuring of a Dinosaur: Comparative measuring means that you can draw at a more comfortable scale whilst maintaining accurate proportions. Sight sized drawing sometimes results in creating tiny sketches. Say, for example, a life drawing class, and you're some way away from the model and you're trying to measure the distance between the eyes and the chin. And it's literally the length of your pencil tip also might find is that when you're sketching in museums, something like a dinosaur that a sight size drawing, if you take the measurements, if you're sitting quite close, means you can't fit the end of the tail, in which I find quite annoying. The answer in these situations is to use a comparative method of measuring. This method involves taking one measurement, typically the length of the head or the height of the head, and then using this as a unit to measure the size of the body and calculate its relation to the other body parts. Materials are used in this tutorial are a coloring pencil, a fine liner, some light gray markers. And I created this drawing in a double page spread. Sometimes I don't find it necessary to complete an entire under drawing before adding the tone drawings can be approached in different ways with a proportional measuring rack. Structuring my sketch, I can navigate my way along the dinosaurs body sectioning off my focus on the challenge that each body zone represents intuitively, I'm going to swap between the fine liner, which is going to work on the linear qualities, and then the light gray brush markers, which I'm going to use for tone. Just because they're so quick, I'm going to work my way from left to right, from nose to tail. Simplifying each item into areas of abstract, light and shade before going onto an area I haven't understood. So I go from an area I've understood to new territory. An important note to make if you're going to be using markers in this sketch is that they will stain the other side of the paper. Initially, I held up my arm straight to ensure a consistent unit of measurement. I slid my thumb along the pencil till it was at the tip of the iguanas, horny beak, which would have been an ideal tool for tearing vegetation from trees and bushes. The tip of the pencil was at the back of the skull. Then I've got a unit of measurement. I then counted the number of times I could fit this horizontal measurement across the length of the body. Then I guessed at an appropriate transferable head size, that would mean I could fit in the entirety of the dinosaur across the double page spread of the sketchbook, including the final tip of the tail and the toes. Then I counted the distance between the head and the shoulders to be two heads and so forth. Next, I created 11 short lines horizontally across the double page spread, which created a rack of proportions that I could align my body parts to. Starting out with the coloring pencil allowed me to sketch out a very light armature before committing to the indelible fine liner mark. I've broken the iguana down into primary body zones and then work nose to tail shape to shape. I'm looking at each abstract shape and how they fit together. I'm looking out for landmarks such as shoulders, elbows, and knees. By working my way down, I broke the subject down into mini challenges. The mini challenge of the head, the mini challenge of the neck, the thorax, and so forth. I wasn't taking on too much at one go. While I'm drawing, I'm always looking for comparative relationships, both horizontally and vertically, to see where things are beneath each other or where they are side to side. I noticed that the tips of the fingers lie below the first two cervical vertebrae. These are the Atlas C one and the axis two. The Atlas allows for the rocking motion of the head and the axis, the rotation. They can look a little different from other vertebrae. This is why I think it's worth mentioning them because they often have a wider shape. You can think of the Atlas as the Atlas holding up world. In some species this can be as wide as the skull. I also notice that the knees are a similar height to the elbows. When I think of knees, I always look out for the patella, because where there's a patella, there's always a knee. On many animals, I roughly judge the midpoint similar to where our hips are. It makes sense that the hips are in the middle. To balance the dinosaur by measuring the distance from the head to the hips and the hips to the end of the tail. I can get a rough idea of the seesaw effect of the balance of the dinosaur. The Iguanodon was a herbal of ore able to walk on all fours and also on two legs. It had a large thumb spike at the end of its hand, possibly to ward off predators. And the structures of the muscles inside the head indicates it had a very long tongue. Inguanodons lived in the Early Cretaceous, 140 to 110 million years ago, and incredibly weighed up to about five tons. 4. Wild Thistle: Negative and Positive Shapes: Guys, in this tutorial we're going to draw a wild thistle. By all means, please swap this plant out with a different subject matter. It's nice if we all do slightly different things. There will also be a photo of some holly in the resources if you want to use that instead, or maybe find your own plant to work from. In this exercise, we're going to focus on two aspects of drawing, which I find both equally important, that of negative and positive space, and also sight sized drawing. Being aware of the negative shapes is good for getting away from your preconceived ideas of what you think your subject should look like rather than what it actually looks like. Initially, concentrate on the negative shapes and the shapes of your subject will gradually emerge from the paper. Positive shapes refers to the composition's main physical stuff. These are the focus of the artwork. There might be objects or figures that the artist wants to draw attention to and capture negative shapes. On the other hand, are the areas around the positive shapes. They may not be the main focus, but they will provide balance and contrast to the positive shapes and help to make a more effective composition. Also creating what they call white space, which is an area for the eye to rest. A classic example of thinking about negative and positive shapes is Rubin's Vase Illusion. Where you can see either the vase or two profiles facing each other. Depending on what you focus on, the positive shape of the vase or the negative shape of the profile. Trapped and open negative shapes. Trap negative shapes refers to the openings that are surrounded on all sides by positive forms. Both trapped and open negative space are abstract shapes. Small trap spaces are easier to understand than the larger, more complex ones. Particularly the open spaces, the open spaces surrounded on all sides by physical matter. It might be. Say for example, imagine the sky line and then that moving up to the sky itself. And the sky is then an abstract open shape. Every plant has its own personality. The thistle has sharp spines compared with the softer, arabesque shapes of an oak leaf. The way you move your drawing implement should be in sympathy with your subjects character. Think of smooth flowing lines going around the dog eared shapes of the oak leaf compared with the harsh quick flick marks that you can make to capture those fearsome spines of the thistle. In this tutorial I'm going to be using two graphite pencil on some two cartridge paper, but that could also be a double page spread of your sketchbook, a sharpener and a putty rubber. And I'm going to use a long, thin paint brush handle for measuring. The sight sized method of drawing is a practical way to achieve accuracy, is the practice of creating a drawing the same size as you see the subject. For me, this method works best when you can sit close to the subject with far away objects. You'll find yourself measuring tiny proportions. Keeping the proportions correct of any subject is a lifelong challenge. The thumb and pencil method. There are a few tricks that are powerful tools to enable you to estimate the length and breadth of forms by comparing the components against each other. When drawing, you can estimate the proportions and check them with a fair degree of accuracy by employing the thumb and pencil method. This is done by holding a pencil. Wooden dow, it could even be the handle of a long thin paint brush, which works really well. I also think chopsticks are good to use. Hold this in your hand, then bring it at arm's length between your eye and the object you plan to draw or the scenery. Bring the stick to your eye level and shut one eye. Use your thumb as a gauge to measure the segments of your subject. And then from the object you're looking at, then place that over your paper and make little dash marks to section off those proportions. Besides measuring proportions, you can also measure angles. To measure angles, fully extend your arm while holding your pencil, either vertical or horizontal With one eye close. You can judge the angles of your subject by almost imagining a protractor attached to the pencil. You can check this angle on the page by placing a horizontal, vertical pencil against the line you're drawing. You can even copy the angle by moving your paintbrush or whatever you might be using from your vision point to the point of the paper. I'm continually looking for vertical and horizontal, and even diagonal alignments to help with the proportions and the drawing process by holding up the paint brush handle. This method is like projecting graph lines onto your subject. The angle of the leaves and the spines can be determined by sketching a central vein. I then sketch one leaf at a time, looking closely at the negative shapes between them. Particularly at the beginning, I am refining and modifying my proportions and shapes. The initial lines that I've created might be wrong. So this is the point to change them before they get set in stone. 5. Reindeer: Introduction: Hi everybody and welcome to drawing radio. On this course, I want to be your virtual companion and your road to learning to draw a firm friend who's going to remind you of a few ground rules. Each mark you create should be the result of a clearly observed I look first and then draw. Switching regularly between the two, we can't really draw and look at what we're doing at the same time. All our eyes have to flick up. All drawing to a certain extent is about memory. Don't just work on one drawing in a drawing session. The first sketches we often make are a bit clumsy, and the more time you spend drawing of subject, more fluent you get as you warm up, as you get to know the shapes of your subject better. The goal of this course is not to create one polished photographic drawing, but see drawing as a series of attempts. All drawings to some extent are hard, one in sometimes you might feel like, which is a feeling I think we can all share. But try to stay persistent, add additional parts on the drawing, have another go, and often it comes together at the end. Also share your work with friends and other artists. They might point out other qualities and things that you haven't seen. We can always learn a lot by sharing our work with minded people. For me, drawing is all about experiential learning. Experiential learning involves engaging in a hands on practical activity that you then reflect on to develop your knowledge and skills. This approach is similar to riding a bicycle. When you learn to ride a bicycle, you have a concrete experience of first trying falling, and then adjusting your actions to avoid falling off Again, through experiential learning, abstract concepts are formed and actively experimented with to deepen one's understanding of what one can achieve, go freehand. All these exercises are aimed at developing physical confidence. So know rulers, ellipses, arcs, and go freehand. Unlike learning a language or music drawing has a very few fundamental conventions and that are relatively easy to grasp. However, just like learning to walk or play an instrument, the initial stages of learning to draw can be the most challenging. An afternoon at River Ways Farm, I was thrilled to discover that a local farm had a herd of 19 reindeer. And headed off with my telescopic easel to join them in their paddock. I sketched them on a polar blue tense paper, which I felt gave a feeling of them being in the snow. And I took plenty of photographs to water color up the sketches. Later on, in the comfort of the studio, I drew them as the season was turning towards autumn. When their antlers were covered in fur. The pelt is created from hollow air filled hairs for insulation. In the summer, it is thin and brown, and at the time I was drawing them, it was turning thick and grayish. Getting ready for the winter. Reindeer are called caribou. In North America, there are species of, there are two varieties of reindeer, tundra and forest. Both male and female Reindeer grow antlers, which makes them unique in the deer world. The female use their antlers to defend food in small patches of cleared snow. Unlike horns, antlers are shed each year in males, this tends to happen in late autumn after the rout. Females, however, retain their antlers until spring because access to food is critical during their winter pregnancy. I began filling my paper with lots of sketches in different positions. I find it's really good to get to know your subject by drawing a front view, side view back and you get a good three D Understanding of the form. When I first went into the paddock, the reindeer are a little bit unsure of me, but they soon settled into seated positions, which allowed me to create more sustained studies. I always find it's good to start with a seated position or a sleeping animal. When I first getting to know them, think of anatomy. We tend to think of muscles and bones, but also we can think of the number of toes they've got. For example, reindeers have four splayed toes on each foot that act as snowshoes floating on the snow in the harsh Arctic environment. And also makes them really strong swimmers to get across gushing rivers. The sharp toes can break through snow to uncover nutritious grasp beneath. What we want to do is to have a quick look at an investigation of these feet Go. Claws commonly grow higher up on the leg than the rest of the foot, such as in digi grade or unguligrade species, a bit like a thumb. That doesn't make contact with the ground when the animal is standing. You can try this with your hand at home. However, they do contact the ground when the animal is running and provide extra traction on slippery surfaces such as ice. What I noticed about the reindeer's foot as they actually splay out and do touch the ground in a standing position. And then they retract and rotate round to behind the leg, as in the movement. That was a really interesting thing to observe while sketching the reindeer, I continually heard a clicking sound coming from them. This is created by tendons that snap over a sesamoid bone in their legs. So think of a sesamoid bone as a small round nodule of a bone within an attendant whose purpose is to reinforce or decrease stress. Think of a patella for example. Experts believe the clicking sound helps herd members stay in contact, especially in snowstorms. Hi guys and welcome to the game is afoot. First of all, let's talk about the pentadactyle limb. Limb with five fingers such as the human hand or foot is the template found in all amphibians, reptiles, birds, and tetrapods, allowing us to deduce that all these animals are derived from one common ancestor. Sometimes these digits are reduced down from the original five to a lower number, but they're never more than five Fingers hippos have four toes on each hoof, making them an even toad ungulate, whilst tapias still have four toes on their front feet and their hind feet have evolved down to three, making them an odd toad ungulate. There are three main arrangements of the limbs of tetrapods walking over solid ground. I think it's empowering to know what's going on beneath the skin so that your drawing has structure and doesn't feel too much like a soft toy plantigrade. This is a footstance that you should be familiar with as it is your footstance. Remember this stance? Think about the foot being planted on the floor. Some animals that have a plantigrade stance, one of them is wolverines, which are powerful predators and scavengers with the plant grade feet of five toes on each foot that's padded to help it walk in the snow. Now let's talk about digitigrade animals. In terrestrial vertebrates, digitigrade locomotion is walking or running on your toes. A digitigrade animal is one that stands or walks, with its toes touching the ground. And the rest of the foot or hand raised. Digitograde animals generally move more quickly and quietly than other animals. Makes it a great stance for predators. Think of it as someone tiptoeing, trying to sneak into a house at the end of an evening. But also birds are mostly classed as digitigrade animals, meaning that they walk on their toes rather than the entire foot. A rabbit's survival depends on how fast it moves and has digital grade feet. Their hind legs are longer than their front ones. This allows the rabbit to accelerate from a still position. Wild rabbits are generally faster than domestic ones and can reach an incredible speed of up to 45 miles per hour. Domestic rabbits tend to be slower at 30. I still find that amazing. Okay, the last foot stance we can learn about is a bit of a mouthful. It's called unguligrade. Unglets means nail to nail, or nails on your hand. Uglets are a group of large mammals that are distinguished from all other animals by the presence of hooves. You all know hooved animals. These include odd toed unglets, such as horses, rhinoceroses and tapias. They're even cousins such as cattle, pigs, giraffes, camels, sheep, deer and hippotamuses, cetaceans and whales and dolphins and porpoises are also classified as, even to unglets, which might seem a bit odd even though they do not have hooves. They have evolved from an ungulate ancestor. Equids are the only species of ungulets to have a single hoof horse, the zebra. And the donkey. Hey guys, I thought we just do a quick note to the tail, run through on anatomical features that I notice while I'm sketching that can enable to get a bit more sophisticated with your drawing. The first thing we start up with the head. Here the eyes are on the side. Animals with eyes on the side are tend to be herbivores, particularly in land. Tetrapods doesn't really work so well in the oceans. This enables them to get a good peripheral vision of anyone sneaking up on them. And of course, the binocular vision of the animal on the front of a tiger and things like that enables them to judge the distance between them and their dinner. The forehead is hard and under here from sure if you stroked a dog, under the chin tends to be soft, so that might kind of affect the way you make marks behind the eye. We have what's called a zygomatic arch. You can tend to see a ridge, a prominent ridge of this in coming out on top behind here we have the seven cervical vertebrae. We have these long thoracic vertebrae which support ligaments that enable the head to be locked down when the animals running and stop it from wobbling around. In particular, there's like a cable that lions bite through when they're attacking their prey at times to disable them, it's called a nuclear ligament, and it runs from these long thoracic vertebraes to the base of the back of the head. Think of it like the cable on a suspension bridge perhaps. Then that's the neck zone. We come up here, the giant barrel of rib cage. You tend to see these ribs coming through more than any muscle features on this area of the body. We have the scapula, which is involved with rotating the front limb. We then go to the humerus there, the Elkrnon, you can often see a protrusion here sticking out, and also a protrusion here of the front head of the humerus. There we come down to the radius and ulna, which has become fused. The carpals, this is the point of the wrist, then this is the metacarpals here, and then digits 123, and we've got the deuclause to come down the back. The Iliac crest of the hips here often protrudes and sticks out on a cow particularly. And that the pubic area here at the base of the hips that often protrudes as well as we come down the leg is the equivalent of our Fema. Go to the patella, where there's a patella, there's always a knee. And then we come down the tibia and fibula that again are fused, allowing for explosive, running away but losing that rotational ability. We go down here to the calcaneus is an important protrusion. We'll look at that when we talk a bit more about the muscles down here to the ankle, Tarsls and then the longer metatarsls here. Okay, those are the ones I notice, the muscles, the skin and fur of some mammals are thin enough to allow us to catch a glimpse of the muscles that lie beneath. Particularly if they're very athletic animal. And you tend to see the muscles clearer on wild animals than those in a zoo. It's not just the thick fur that obscures their shapes. A layer of fat often softens their appearance, which on some Arctic adapted animals, takes the form of a thick, insulating layer of blubber that will completely obscure any visual way of actually seeing the muscles at all. Also, if you're drawing something like a bear, you're really not going to be able to see the muscles. However, a basic understanding of the knowledge of the varying shapes of the muscles is useful for bulking out. Many animals and creatures can really help with the expression on the surface of the skin indicating these malleable forms can bring a sense of tension and elasticity to your drawings enables you to know where to put your grooves and your shading. Many Renaissance artists like Leonardo da Vinci, also skilled anatomists. These artists examined how the bones and muscles work together to create more lifelike depictions of human and animal bodies. Understanding the major surface muscle groups is tremendously helpful with doing your modeling. It's also quite satisfying to be able to put a name to the lumps and bumps you see in humans. Muscles are more or less apparent on the skin to a range of factors. It can be athleticism, it can be youthful skin compared with the sagging wrinkles of age. Can be someone who's a builder. It's really clear where the muscles are antagonistic muscles. Muscles primary function is to create movement through muscle contraction. Muscles attached to the Skletal scaffolding of the bones via elastic tendons. They are typically arranged in two groups. To create complex movement and counter movement. When a muscle contracts, it gets bigger and bunches up. When a muscle relaxes, its size returns to normal. Muscles can only pull and do not have the ability to push. Muscles work against each other in antagonistic pairs of muscles that create movement. When one contracts and the other relaxes the bicep curl. The biceps and triceps provide one of the clearest examples of how antagonistic muscles work together. Try this experiment yourself. Stand up and start by doing an exercise curl. Start with your arm loose at one side. Clench your fist, lift your arm while observing the biceps muscle enlarge. Then in a controlled way, not just allowing the arm to flop back down, push your arm back down, and feel the triceps working on the other side. The triceps is an extensor muscle. It enables you to extend and straighten the limbs of your body. The biceps, we all know the biceps. The biceps is a flexer muscle. Flexer muscles reduce the angle between the bone on the opposite sides of the joint and pull the arm together like that. We'll do a nose detail run through on a deer. The nose has that interesting slit at the side that is for exhaled air to come out of. Meaning that the fresh air that the animals breathing in can have fresh sense on it. And it won't be obscured by what it's previously smelled, enabling the deer to sense predators approaching and things like that. We come along the head, we see a round bulge of the eye ring. Then just behind the eye ring, we can see a little bit of indentation on the surface. That will be the zygomatic arch, like making a little bit of an appearance on the surface of the skin you have beneath it. Here, the patch of a Massa, we can think of the Masseta being apparent on a horse. If you look at a horse's head, that's apparent there. You can do a soft round oval shape for the lip and you'll see that the lip is controlled by some surface tendons that you'll see on the surface just poking through there. Again, particularly on animals like a horse. The big pink one coming down here at the side is the brachiocellphalicus. That creates a jugular groove coming in here, which is quite apparent to see attached up here to the high thoracic vertebrae. We have the nuclear ligament which helps to keep the head stable. I think of it like a suspension bridge cable that sometimes is quite clear to see over the top of these high thoracic, the trapezius muscle like we have on us, curving over them. We have the deltoid here. We have the two muscle group, things coming down here, which is the deltoid, a big pack of the triceps there, the pectorals, you can see underneath. Then I group together the extensors and then the flex there, which can also create some muscle surface impressions over the body. Here the muscles are very thin, letitmus, dorcyte, and external leak. They're not going to be really that visually apparent. You're more likely to see the rib cage, to be honest with you. We come back to the rear of the leg. We've got the gluteus medius and then the glutes on cats and dogs and animals like that. The glutes will become separate muscles. Then the biceps is called the bicep fomorus glutobiceps. You will see on animals like hippos and things like that. So have a look at the back leg. One thing that's going to be really clear is the gastronemus muscle here and the Achilles tendon. And there's that gap beneath the Achilles tendon, which is very clear to see and creates a feeling of tension in the back leg. 7. Reindeer: Articulating the Legs: William D. Berry was renowned internationally as a wildlife artist. Through his disciplined artistic prowess, Berry's clear vision translated a scientifically accurate and artistically compelling portrait of the creatures and the habitats of Alaska. Extensive periods of observation in the wild endowed him with a unique ability to capture animals on the paper in a wide range of artistic mediums. Whether it was depicting fox cubs or Caribou Berry managed to capture what you might encounter on a walk out in the wild in Alaska. Each animal meticulously rendered with its distinctive character, which shows a reverence for the individuality of the animal and also capturing the specific species characteristics. Throughout this course, we're going to be learning to analyze the drawing process. Our goal in this lesson is to learn how to accurately depict motion. Let's start by drawing the scapular, which has a spine down the middle, which is for muscle attachments. Connected to the scapula is the humerus bone, which angles upwards. Sometimes you can see the head of the humerus at the front of the body. Then you have the two pectorals between them. Let's extend those lines downwards To complete the legs form by including the fused radius and ulna. Remember to include the elchronon. This acts as a lever. Then we move down further, from there to the wrist joint, which is the carpals. Which they create a bulge on the leg and then move down to the longer metacarpal and the three little phalanges bone follow along with my movements as we practice together. Paying attention to position these segments in either an uplifting motion where the leg is bent or supported by the other straight leg, which is then supporting the weight of the animal. Try to feel the pose in your own legs and see if you can exaggerate to express the posture. This understanding through repetition helps build confidence. If needed, feel free to pause the video. Practice again and again, and then resume at your own pace. By repeatedly drawing the front limb in these different positions, we become familiar with the variations in bone structure. This familiarity boosts our confidence, facilitating more expressive and creative drawings. As we advance, we can shift our focus to shading and coloring and surface textures. Knowing that our foundational understanding of structure is secure, it's crucial to recognize that this seemingly basic practice enhances our skills, freeing us up creatively. This foundational knowledge allows us to concentrate on later more intricrate aspects of drawing. Observe how the leg position changes from seated to galloping. Pay attention to the position of the hooves and how the little phalange bones allow for extra rotation. Repetition of these drawings is key to ingraining the knowledge of anatomy. The more we practice, the better we internalize the nuances of a reindeer's motion. Allowing us to draw with greater freedom and accuracy. Making the animal come alive on the paper. Focus on capturing the reindeer's movement rhythm first, and then build in the different body parts accordingly. Pay attention to the thin, weight bearing legs supported by the body and adapt their position accordingly. Remember, when one leg is bent, the other should be straight. Maintaining balance. Understanding how reindeers distribute their weight in movement is crucial. These observations contribute to a realistic portrayal. Mastering these fundamentals allow us to confidently explore more advanced expressions, practice diligently and observe keenly. And soon you find yourself catching the essence of a reindeer's movement. Feel free to ask any questions, and don't forget to download the resource pack for additional guidance. Happy drawing. 8. Reindeer: Negative and Positive Space: I often like to draw with a color pencil that is the same color as the pelt of the animal. Here I'm sketching with a raw umber coloring pencil. Also what I do quite a lot is actually sketch in the field on location, and then just use the water color and put the water color in the comfort of the studio because it's much easier to do it this way. Next up I've done an underpainting with a raw umber mixed with a French ultramarine. This just puts in the shadows. I always think when you're working with water color, you need to work out what step by step will work. Obviously, if you're going to do something like a zebra and you put the stripes in first and then put the shadow on later, the shadow will all wash over the stripes and muddy it. Up here I've blocked in the undertone painting, which is a mixture of raw umber with French ultramarine predominantly. The mixture is rich in French ultramarine, which gives those lovely shadows that the impressionists were so fond of. Next up, I've painted the pelt, and I've modulated the colors between a range of hues. Sometimes moving more towards the raw umber, sometimes more towards the yellow ochre, sometimes more to the burnt umber. And included varieties of other colors in the mix to get this variegated color across the pelt that I could see on this reindeer called Chili. Last of all, I've added in the darker nodes, you work with water color from light to dark. And just included a few details because I was on the MetNse blue paper, this allowed me to put in a splash of white color to pop out the dew lap and the tail at the end as well. Artists can benefit from an understanding of the pivot points as it enhances realistic depiction of movement, form, and balance. Mastery of these points adds to the authenticity and dynamism to create artistic expression. This is a sketch by William Berry from his Alaskan sketchbook in 1954 to 1956. It shows a caribou or reindeer just in a walking pose. The first pivot point I want to talk about is the atlas. The atlas forms the joint that allows the head to nod up and down. It is the first cervical vertebrae that we have in our mammals. It can be wider than the other vertebrae in the skeleton. If you're drawing a skeleton, you might want to look at that. The atlas has a hinge joint, which means it can move in two directions, up or down. Think of Atlas holding up the world to remember. The next pivot point to discuss is the axis which allows the head to rotate from left to right. Next of all, we move down the neck vertebrae or the cervical vertebrae, which also allow for a great deal of flex and movement till we get to the shoulder joint. The shoulder joint has a wide range of movement. This is created by the ball and socket joint. You can explore this in your own arm. Then we get to the elbow, which is a hinge joint which allows the arm to flex and extend. The carpal bones are the equivalent of the human wrist. Try to remember, there's also flex in the digits at the end, or what they call the phalanges. These can also bend in and out again. You can do that with your own finger Working our way to the back of the animal, we start with the hip joint, which is also a ball and socket allowing for a wide range of movement. Moving down further to the hinge joint of the knee and then further down to the ankle. Then also we have the movements in the toe as well. Hi everybody, and let's start doing some observational drawing from HD films. I tend to start drawing the part of the body that's closest to me. That might be the head, or it might also be the rear as well. If you have the animal turned around, we're going to have different focuses in these drawing exercises. The focus of this one is going to be negative space. This drawing exercise is really beneficial to help you let go of preconceived notions about how you think the subject should look, what actually a reindeer is. Forget about that and just start thinking of the reindeer as abstract shapes. The form of the subject will gradually appear on the page. If you actually focus on the empty space around the deer, because of the unique shape of the antlers, it's a good exercise to look at the negative shapes between them. Try to develop a feeling for your subject. Each animal has a unique personality in contrast to the softer contours of the body and the structurally sprung legs that are full of tension in the hind legs ready to spring into action. Negative space can be both trapped and open. The openings that are encircled by positive forms on all side are referred to as trapped negative space. Abstract shapes are produced in both enclosed and open spaces. What does the shape remind you of specifically? Is it like a tiny triangle? Perhaps it's a square or more simple hexagon. It's an angular or supple shape, sinewy and long. These negative forms aid in capturing the positive forms. Particularly if we take a reindeer and we want to work out the length of the body, we can look between the legs and actually really judge and look at that abstract shape that's really helpful. There's a slight tendency to get the length of the body a bit too long to move from an area of understood to uncharted territory. By looking both at the enclosed open space and also the positive space, I tend to draw adjacent body shapes from the one I've actually understood. Be patient and let the drawing develop until the deer's character becomes apparent on the page. Try and capture these abstract shapes that would combine to create the character of the animal. Be surprised by the shapes you see, and don't try imposing what you think the deer looks like on any of your observational studies. Representational drawing at its heart is actually a combination of abstract shapes that when placed together, actually create the illusion of something. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. 9. Reindeer: Foreshortening: In this film, I thought we would just focus on foreshortening. Foreshortening is a technique that creates the illusion of an object receding sharply into the distance or into the background. The illusion is created by the object appearing shorter than it actually is, making the view that you've got more compressed as it faces the viewer. You can easily explore foreshortening by standing in front of a mirror. Now hold out your arm straight with your shoulder to one side of your body with your fist clenched. And now rotate your arm so that your fist is facing you. As your arm rotates, it becomes shorter and more compressed. With your fist facing you, you can barely see the arm at all. Only the clenched knuckles foreshortening is one of the most challenging aspects of drawing to tackle. Look around the room you're sitting in and see how many, few objects are genuinely parallel to the eye. When sketching wild animals, we can't ask them to pose for us, we are at the mercy of their movements. Typically, this happens when drawing reindeer that they'll turn and face away from you and you'll be drawing them from behind. Perspective frames is a light sketch of a rectangle that organizes the organic form in space. One of the easiest ways to conceive of foreshortening is an animal lying down, either facing you or away from you. The thorax and the belly of the reindeer can be thought of as a massive barrel. Foreshortening tips, purposely seek out foreshortened poses to work on rather than avoiding them. Draw your subject from angles that you're just not used to. Start with light lines and then create comparative measurements. Be surprised what you see due to perspective. A foot might appear longer than an arm in certain poses. Forms closer to you can be drawn with a darker, thicker line to create emphasis and pull them in front of the other forms. Also, lines that overlap inform the eye that one segment of the body is in front of the other Body parts in the distance can also be sketched more lightly. Live animals that are momentarily at rest can be dissected by the eye. Imagine the body parts are made up of glass. Being transparent, you can see the ellipses of the neck through the head and so forth. Drawing through or seeing your subject as if it was transparent is an excellent approach for sketching animals from firsthand observation. To begin, use this drawing approach to reduce down the subtleties of the organic forms to the most basic geometric. The neck, for example, can become a tube. The body is a barrel, and the legs a series of segmented tubes. You'll notice that even on your arms, the tube are wider at the top and narrower at the bottom. This is pretty much the same, all animals I can think of. I've always got that bilateral line of symmetry running through the middle. I think I heard Professor Brian Cox saying that I think all animals with the brain are symmetrical. I can think of flatfish and some crabs that aren't. Once the primary forms have been established, the facets or planes can be hatched on the surfaces. Details of tendons and muscles and fat can be applied with shading, and tufts of the pelt can be created with hair flip marks. Many times I might start with the top of the head. I do a light box with the bilateral line of symmetry. If we do a cross across on a box, we find the exact center. And this works perfectly when we compress that box into perspective. This really helps align the left and right hand side of the body parts to keep things symmetrical. Next, I might draw the projecting box for the muzzle and then work backwards through to the neck as I envisaged as a foreshortened tube. Work from the big, prominent forms to the smaller, and add pendenges to these, such as ears. When sketching from live animals, the amount of information you can get down on the page is dependent on the length of time your animal holds to the pose. However, this can result in a lively drawings that are full of personality and life. The back leg in repose can be thought as a cocked spring. Capture the dynamic angle of the heel and the noble calcaneus, which is the heel bone. And look at the pronounced Achilles tendon, which attaches the heel to the gastronemus. A gap between this cord and the bone creates a prominent indentation. So you can actually get some shading in there and really try and model that can feel this is in your own body. And it's clearly seen, I tend to think of this muscle and tendon a bit like a chicken drumstick. Do, do, do, do, do.