How to Draw Stylized Poses and Anatomy - Breaking Down the Basic Shapes

1. Introduction Video: Hello everyone. My name is Robert Marzullo and I'll be your instructor for this course, how to Draw Stylized poses and Anatomy. This course starts from the very beginning and we're going to start with basic Shapes. My goal here is to teach you how to simplify the complexity of the body was simplified. Shapes, forms, looking for rhythms, gesture, all sorts of things that will allow you to build this backup and then draw more dynamic interesting characters. This course also includes a lot of localized studies before we get to the bigger Full Figure drawings. So that way we can study things like the Torso, the shoulders, the individual parts that a lot of us have had trouble along the way learning, but makes it a lot easier to draw those Full dynamic figures. In this course, you're going to learn Stylized Anatomy for Comics. Dynamic poses, light and Shadow of the Figure, line, Weight, cross Hatching and Rendering, gesture and body language, as well as how to construct Male and Female Poses. Some other downloadable resources that you'll get with this course are step-by-step tutorials and high-quality poses for you to study and draw along with. Keep in mind that this entire course is in real time. That way, don't glance over anything and I show you exactly what it takes to create this type of work. And remember, you get lifetime access to this content and all future updates are free. So if you're ready to take yard to the next level, let's get started. Thank you very much for considering my course and I can't wait to see your work 2. Practicing with Basic Shapes: Welcome back. So what we're gonna do here is I wanted to get you warmed up with kind of learning to process Shapes. Lots and lots of different shapes. Everything is just a shape, a line form of volume. It's all explained it as I go, but, but really it's just getting in the habit of developing the shapes in a way that you can maneuver them. I want you to always think your drawing is like a ball of clay. Just so you could see what I'm working with. I'm going to use Procreate on the iPad Pro, but you're welcome to use whatever you want. This is not software specific. You can use paper. I just find it easier to be able to show people my process this way. So just so you understand the settings there they are. But again, doesn't really matter. You can use what you want. But what I want to show you, the main thing that we want to really address in this particular lesson is to get used to developing shapes. And so for instance, if I was to draw just a rectangle here, right? Pretty basic, right? I think most of us could pull that off, right? If you can't, you need to sit here and practice rectangles and every way, shape and form that you can think of them. At first you're going to start with the rectangles just facing you. And then you're going to eventually get to a point where you start thinking of perspective. And all you're doing is making the sides of that converge a little bit to an imaginary vanishing point. You could place that vanishing point and you could draw these out if you want. But really I find it to be helpful to warm up your imagination by doing just this simple exercise. Really stretch it. So really take it and see how far you can take some of these basic shapes in every conceivable way. So maybe even start with an angled version like this. Draw some lines that basically are converging relatively the same direction, right? So if they went far enough back to a point, a bit of vanishing point. And again, you can draw that if you want, but that's not really what I like about doing this. I think that by free handing it, you're forcing yourself to make some estimations. And there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, there's a time and place for ruling every line and drawing every vanishing point, all that good stuff. But in this case we're really just want to express a lot of different Basic Shapes and we're not being too awfully critical about anything. So again, try some different ones, maybe a square, maybe see the underneath, a bit more. Maybe draw through so that you get this kind of see through prism. Alright, so I'm as simple as that. You see, I'm not trying to refine it is I could see some real flaws in that little shape right there. If I wanted this to be a true cube, each one of these flat planes would need to be roughly the same. You see, they're not, they're skewed. But I'm not going to crack that. That's again, not the point. I'd rather login lots of mileage here, if you will, and keep drawing, keep expressing lots of things. Another good exercise when you do your circles and you connect them to make a cylinder, you can put like another one in the middle. Another thing you could do is draw, I kind of a floating rectangle and the middle of that. Let me do another one. Well, it was kinda messy to show you. You could go the other way as well and do that again. So let's take that and go like this. We're going to have it converge a little bit towards a receding point. That's what gives it the illusion of depth. And then we'll put this rectangle, let's say right here this time. So that goes over here. So we'll draw through. I didn't get the other side of our circle there will draw through. And so this needs to converge as well. He's a hit that little circle angle here should match the angle over here. You see even something as simple as that. There's a lot going on there. But that's why these types of exercises are so good for you. Because although they're super-simple, they teach us a lot. And all of this comes together into characters, buildings, cars, you name it. I mean, everything is comprised of Shapes. Now you say, you could look at this goal. How does that translate to a person will get into that more and more as we go. But essentially what happens is when you can take a box and you can maneuver it like this. You say, well, that's that's an up-shot to a head right there. We won't need to refine it to illustrate that. But then when you go to add the Torso, you're like, Wow, I want the Torso to be tilted away from the head. And I want there to even be an angle that's different from the head. Okay, so now we have a Torso that's slightly tilted. And then likewise the pelvis, maybe a different orientation and also a different tilt away from the upper torso. We end up with something like that. We attach the spine. The spine runs through like this. You see real quickly How now these boxes that we've been messing around with do translate to a body. And this is more effective than a lot of people give it credit for. Because essentially, I always find this like I just draw, right? And I just go to organic forms. There's times I can pull it off and there's other times I can't seem to get the perspective right or the relationship of the proportions, right? I'm just a little bit flimsy. In my approach. This structure allows you to induce or you can utilize perspective in the body. You can see it. There's, there's perspective to the pelvis. It's on its own orientation. The Torso in the head. Each one has a perspective to it. If you go like this all sudden, you know the direction the head is facing, right? So it allows you to utilize perspective in the body. It's very mappable, it's very understandable, digestible. I just think it's a really good technique. Now, you do couple this width, slowly working into organic forms. Ribcage might become something like this. Simplified rib-cage, obviously finding the center line to it. You might convert a ribcage is something like that. For your next step. The pelvis might become something like this. Like he's floating underwear, right? But that's again, I want you to I want you to slowly build up to that. Like if that's too much for you, then go even more simplistic. Tried taking just the me go back and show you another possibility here. The main thing is that you stay simplified as long as you need to start expressing shifts in the perspective of the body. Because if not, what do we do? We tend to draw characters. This is a common problem with most beginners and even events artists. You get kinda caught up and doing this way too much. Alright? You want to really fight that. This is a great way to fight that. So again, maybe you just simplified this box like prism, this rectangular prism with just a center line. And just that upward, upside down V, you get right there. And that's it. You'd go right into the same shape. Maybe that's your simplified rib-cage. Whatever you need. Again, it's a matter of keeping things as simple as they need to be until you're ready to move up to the next step. But the thing I'm more interested in is that you start to realize that the pelvis doesn't align with the Torso. Torso doesn't lie on the head. They all have their little subtle differences. And it's easy to see that in something as simple as that right there. Now next, if you were to take somebody who shapes and say, okay, well that explains how you might use boxes for those areas. But arms and legs, you're not going to use boxes, right? Let's go back to these cylinders right there. And you're also going to practice like if I draw a cylinder like this, it implies it looks like column, but it implies foreshortening applies, implies that this is receding away from our view. Or it just means that that's a tapered object. It could be almost parallel to our view, but it could be tapered on one side. That's really what I would recommend for arms and legs. So when I draw an arm and I go back to the cylinder method to do something a little more like this. Okay. And then a hand becomes a bit of a wedge. And then fingers I could sit there and try to fill in little cylinders. I mean, that's what they look like. Our fingers do look like cylinders, but I never really do that. I go more gesturally at that and we'll, we'll get into the gesture of as it applies to the Stylized characters as well. But see I do something a bit more like that or another technique you can do again, keeping things as simple as possible as you can draw a hand with a mitten. And that's a pretty simple shape. Or you could, you could make the argument. It's probably about three or four shapes if you were really to break it down, Something like that. But it's super simple that right there, we'll do a lot of work for you if you struggle with hands. Because we can all kind of envision different hand gestures as a mitten. And then you just break off a finger to break it up, but break it off from the bulk of the form as the mitten and the handles that a lot you will see hand poses where the hand, the fingers are bent, Pinky's out, alright. Whatever they're holding the glass and the babies out. So same concept applies. This minton, you can draw the mitten. And by itself it looks kinda boring, but as soon as you pop that little pink you, it's a little bit better to look at. It's one step closer. The right direction for you, instead of trying to jump in and draw a hand that's all contorted and crazy. That gets a bit confusing. So look for the Gestures and the hand again, we'll get into Gestures more as we progress. But for arms and legs, oh, pose to Draw a Leg, kind of in a standing position and do that basic floating underwear. It's pretty simple shape right? Then. The upper leg would be a tapered cylinder. Like that. You would probably start. And the most simplest form is a circle, even though it's not very circular the most part. And then another tapered cylinder and then a wedge for the foot. This is bad, is that is, and so you can see that all these shapes, I mean, this is really all you need is some circles and ovals. Some cylinders. Will circles becoming the cylinders, the box like prisms with a little bit of imagined perspective. And just having a login pages of these. And I know it's boring and I know it's like really, I want to get to the good stuff. I wanna do, the font stuff. Don't discount this right here. This step, this step is super important and a lot of people don't spend enough time. So say you've got a lot of this and I hope Kim, I'm going to bring out a foreshortened version of the Leg because I'm feeling pretty good about all my practice and now I'm ready to make it look more dimensional. The next step is you take the same cylinder and you say, okay, if I was to bring that out towards the viewer, how would that taper? It's obviously going to look different than this because we have to imagine that foreshortening, changing the shape of it. But that's not too, It's not that hard to play around with this cylinder over and over again until you figure out the knee would be in a particular pose you might want. The knee would be really high up like this. So that means that if it's going to relate back to this same flat plane of the opening for the Legs. While it's not gonna get much wider than that, right? If at all. I mean, this is straight down, so I might widen out, but it's still has to meet here. Your connection points usually expose how big those areas and GDP. So that's your one point of reference. As you work out. You just kinda keep moving this oval. This one here, into different scenarios with the same general width of the opening of the Leg there. What if what if I moved it right in front? You know, how dramatic would that be? This one is going to probably didn't more difficult to envision. Let's say it was something like this. Now that needs like right in front of the upper leg. You have to almost imagine like this bit of depth around. I don't want to make it too confusing, but you'll have to imagine this being the knee until we placed it. But it's really that process of maneuvering that around. Maybe you want the Leg higher up and you want the knee way up here and the shorter part of the Leg, the lower leg is coming down here right? When that case and that oval opening for the knee is gonna be up here. Same reference point to about there. Something like that. Then when you add the next part of the Leg, it would come down from there. Right. Now you get a leg that's starting to go upward. But then as we refine it, we attached the knee kinda floating into here and we'll get into that. But I don't wanna go too far too fast. The main thing is that you utilize these basic shapes and take your time and express lots of variety to learn to simplify your work. So let's go and stop here. We'll head over to the next lesson and continue on. So let's move forward. 3. Overlapping Shapes: Okay, so now hopefully you've had plenty of time to draw lots of basic primitives and really try a variation, triangles, pyramids and all sorts of stuff. Just, just play around with all the basic primitives you can. But now, let's also think about how we can wrap those around forms because this is what happens generally when we move to the next step of thinking about some sort of Anatomy. So we get pretty good at maybe drawing a body and I'm going to skip over, but I'll come back to it. I'm going to say we've got some gesture of the body. Okay, So buys like this. So I'm skipping over how to get to a Torso like that. But again, I'll come back to more gesture. And you've got to Leg back here, Leg up here. And I'm just going to draw this in rather quickly to get to the point I want to make about how to look at other shapes over top. So when I'm doing this, I'm actually thinking a lot about silhouettes. And that takes some practice to do. But it's, it can be a fast way to draw characters. And I'm also again thinking about the gesture. So I'm trying to get that curvature of the spine, this slope right here. So this me is more of the gesture and even the Arm. I tried to get a rhythm of the Arm like that, so it's not so straight and stacked. Nothing worse than Santa shoulder, upper arm, forearm. Now, as we mentioned, that was in the previous step of how you would do it. You wouldn't stay there. That's an initial start to start getting a sense of perspective going so that you can maneuver these shapes and forms in a kind of 3D space in your mind. But you have to remember that the shoulder connects around the upper arm. The forearm protrudes out from the upper arm. And we'll get more into this as well. But they're just they're not stacked there, if anything, there's a back-and-forth, almost like a zigzag. It goes there but just not stack. With this. We get this basic Pose going. Like this will say, you look at this, there's a lot of Shapes going on here that wouldn't just be basic cylinders even at this stage. And I haven't even really started refining and placing a lot of anatomy. A little bit kinda hinted in there with the silhouette drawing, but it's not. There's gonna be more and more of that as I refine it. Well, let's get enough of this in here where you can make it out. Let's say we get to about right here and I'm like, Okay, I wanted to start refining this. But up until this point, the shapes have been doing or just cylinders and cubes. How do I even process and do something like this and get it to look more natural? What I would say is that when you go to do this, let's zero in on this Leg. So at first you're thinking like this, okay. You got a cylinder, you got a circle. Got a tapered cylinder. You're getting a little more advanced, so you're not drawing your Saunders like this anymore. Can you see the difference? One just has a little bit of curve to the outsides and the other ones more solid and flat. This is okay to start there, but eventually you're gonna get to here where you start to bend them a little bit more. Remember everything's a ball of clay and all of this is malleable. All this is something that you can twist and contort and move on the screen. Anyway you want. The more you start to think that way, the more the your imagination kinda opens up. Okay, so let's go back to to here. Now you're at this point and they're starting to get a little bit more curves are starting to think a little bit more about silhouette drawing as you do this. But you're not quite sure how you would build other forms onto these forms. Well, the way that you do that is you have to think about these as two ways. Really. One is individual forms. So a muscle that goes to Leg. It looks something like this. You might have another segmentation or noticeable mark to the Leg Right about there. You might have another one that comes down and back, something like that. Alright, so the trick is, what am I envisioning right here? And say, well, I know that's the vastus medialis, right? And to me that's the right shape. It might not be, it might be a little bit more like this. Remember, we're stylizing this are being imaginative or having FUN with it. It's not always gonna be exactly the way it is. The main thing is that I come up with a simplified shape and form that I can envision. And I can throw in there anytime I want. What I like to do. So it's the calf muscle To me, the calf muscle, it looks like this. It's a bit of a diamond. Like it's a there, it looks like a spearhead, but it's a bit of a diamond light shape. And so that's how I draw it. This is what I envisioned when I when I get to the calf muscle. Now obviously I'm not drawing it as segmented as you would see it right here. But to me it's a simple shape. In the more I can do that, the more I can get through an entire Figure doing that, the easier things are for me. There's another muscle I don't know if it's a solely as I pick, it is not going to get into name and every muscle here because I'll slaughter some of them. But I got to usually be looking at my reference sheets to get it. All right. But let's say it's this muscle right here. To me, it's that shape and on and on that goals. Now, again, this isn't going to be the end result or I'm gonna get somebody that looks very mechanical, very virtual reality, bad virtual reality graphics from the '80s. I know it's just going to look really weird, right? But it's a great way to think about it. And so the knee. So here's another quick example. Let me zoom in here and show you something. I think it's worth mentioning. So if we bring the knee out like this may say, Well to me, this is my simple knee. It's a triangle right there. Then that's fine. And that's better than nothing. But then at some point you'll probably get to where you keep paying attention to need illustrations or the body and gentlemen, You know what, there's a little angle right there. You go from basically this at first, which is better than a lot of people really. They won't even just, I don't know. It's like the knees like something where people try to do this and they do some weird thing and it turns into a lumpy look and elbow or something. But I would say in this case it's better to simplify. And then eventually as you develop your knowledge, I cannot. Your next simplification would be this. Then your next one? I'm just speaking from my own experience. We're all going to have a different road map to how we start to perceive the human body, I think anyways. But then your next one would be like this and go, you know what, there's always this little bump right there under the knee. But you see how even even this is really just a process of what I thought about the knee initially as all there's an angle, they're all know it's an angle and the kneecap actually points up more. And you start to learn this as you do Anatomy breakdowns and you'd look at where the tendons go and all of us in that. And then you realize, oh no, there's some bony protrusions right there. And at first you draw on the Leg, maybe completely straight back like that, the shin area and then also no, you don't want it seems like for most views that I see it bends out a little bit right there. And on and on that process goes. It's really just developing a memory of what you see and then also what you adopt as being right for your style. So let's go back to this. And I'll just do another quick version right through here. Because again, I think this something you have to practice, but now we're talking about the vastus lateralis To me, it's this kind of shape. And you get the hamstrings on the back, we see a little bit of a pull this way or it could be the other way. I might be. They could be this way down. And then you've got some muscles here at the glue here is kind of bring up like this. This might, you got to iliotibial tract in here, but I usually do is, I think it's a shorter version of that. Let me bring that up a little higher. Something like this. Rectus femoris here. So again, this is my simplified version of the side of the Leg. And it's gonna be a little different for all of us. Like you might look at that. I just look right, Rob. And that's fine. That's where Stylized drawings are. Okay? Because we have to make our own distinctions. So again, calf muscle like this on the outside. I think it goes more like this little bony protrusion right there. Down to the foot here. I'll just do a boot version here. Ankle here Something like that. Sometimes less is better, so I'd probably stop it there. Then you have to remember too, when you start to Shadow and shade and develop things, you're not going to use every segmentation and every, every bit of that. But if you, if you need more, that's when you take your basic version of what you considered, your style and your memory of it. And then you go to some source material. Pinterest is gray and I've got about four anatomy books that I rely on at any given time, medical Anatomy and then some that are illustrated by Anatomy. Burn hogarth is one of my favorites. So again, this is my stylized version. Now, here's the other thing. I love looking at other artists and seeing how they interpret it. And I suggest you do that with my work, but then also you have to all always table that with your own research and development, okay? Yeah. So you're gonna hear people say don't copy other artists because you'll copy their mistakes. I don't wholeheartedly believe in that if they're better and they've done their due diligence. And you can see that in their work, by all means, learn from them, grow from them. Never trust one source. I don't care if it's a book. I don't care if it's an artist, a mentor. You want to be a advocate for your own knowledge. You want to go out there and really just research in add bits and pieces into your own development. So again, we could continue on with this, but hopefully you get the idea. What I want you to practice here is not just the Anatomy shapes I've shown you here, but I also want you to think about these other shapes now because we're going to need these as we progress. And so you're going to take the Shapes I showed you in the previous lesson. And you're just going to draw some things that look a little more like this. That was pretty bad. Let me try that again. Have a hard time going left to right on the screen is really rotate it. But see how this gives you a nice dimensional feeling. And it's also got some curvature in there. So now what you're doing is you're incorporating again the previous step. With this step we're getting more of a sense of dimension. And this works great for Anatomy because you have to imagine that all of these muscles are dimensional. Strips of clay will save yeah, bands or clay or strips that I don't know how to really make that sound for you, but, but again, they're malleable. They have contours. Some are thick or thin. Lots of muscle groups in the body and you need that variation. You need some that appear strong and bulge out and then you need some that are like little bands and little tiny strips. So you're going to have to practice thinking of shapes like this. Maybe it goes back like that. Maybe it tapers together, gets thinner. So see how it starts thicker. The air gets thinner there. Then maybe have another one right by a lot of times muscles will converge in a similar area, right? So we do something like that. Again, these little lines, these little lines are basically like wrapping lines. So when we get into drawing the Anatomy, specifically, more and more I'll, I'll explain it further. But what you're trying to do is think about developing these shapes and a way where you can. It's almost like you're just, you're trying to see things. Everything is a basic shape, basic series of shapes and forms that you can maneuver. Again, I'll just keep relating it back to trying to get your artwork to become this malleable ball of clay on a, on this white canvas. It can sometimes be daunting. But if you go back to thinking of it as all these potentials for Basic Shapes. All sudden it becomes a lot easier to process. Because now you can just move these shapes around. They're not so intimidating. Yeah. It's not like that's right. But I can since I can understand each one of these shapes, I can maneuver, am I can nudge, want around, I can grab this piece of the puzzle and slide it over there. So that'll be it for this particular lesson. Hopefully that's informative where let's head on to the next lesson and see what we come up with. 4. Adding Volume to the Form: Alright, welcome back. So another thing I wanted to point out before we move on to this. So again, you've got this trips, you've got the bent shapes that you should be working on. These, again, will help out with a lot more than just drawing the Stylized characters. So really suggest you do it. It's also thinking about the belly of a muscle. So you kinda have it here, but let me just draw it off to the side. So any muscle or almost any muscle I should say, is going to have a noticeable kinda belly to it. So it's good to practice these types of shapes. You can call them teardrops. I've, I've heard people refer to them as chicken legs, all sorts of things. But it's just kinda this belly like form, something like this. And even practice just kinda wrapping these in front of and around each other. This is a lot of what makes the Form really complicated to draw. Because it has a lot of this that has some smaller ones that kinda protrude out. And you can think of them like many little cables as well. Pull up their since see it better. These tiny little cables. But again, it's kind of a noticeable thick, thick, thickened area and it's called a belly to the muscle. And you're going to see that in a lot of areas. So it's good to practice these as well. And then sometimes you're even going to see these areas wrap around. Another group. Do something like this. We kinda warm around. So that's something else. It's worth practicing. There's times I like doing this affect with cables. So it's kinda somewhere to this. It's been to practice and all that really is. And it can come in handy for muscles as well. As you draw. Let's just say one big cables so the will ignore the belly portion for now. Just to show you this little exercise, will do these little wrapping lines. So the wrapping lines are just there to get a sense of depth and dimension souls you do is you put a little curve on them. And that immediately gives you a little bit of a 3D kind of vibe to that, right? With hardly any effort. Then you take another one, much thinner. So I'm going to bring that over here. I have a wave around a little bit. So it's not just a straight cylinder, but other than that it is, it's a cylinder with a little bit of bend to it. And in some tiny little wrapping lines, right? And just like that, without hardly any work, you put a little shadow right here, maybe a little bit over here, but definitely more noticeable on this side. Groups that we've already got something that feels like a couple of cables on one beneath the other. I mean, immediate depth perception for very little effort. And you can continue on that path. And it's really kind of a font exploration. So I, I liked just going and going with this. It's almost something to just kind of zone out and do a bunch of, then you can play around with different variations to the wrapping lines if you want. But essentially, what I like about this the most is it's just an immediate bit of depth. With very little effort. You can keep building upon it randomly. So you can say, I'm going to curve it over to here and have this pass under these. I'm going to start with some really thin ones now and I get these nice and thin. I'm going to have them go against the current direction because again, these are random right? Now with muscles until you get to the veins. They don't really seem as random. Is this. Oh, you know what, I'm kinda disjointed. They're always draw it through as well. It's not disjointed, but it's maybe not as random as this for muscles, but this is still a very good exercise to get you thinking in that dimensional way. That interlocking kind of way of like veins even. But again, play around with this and then you can get to a point where you scale the brush down. And you can even do some that are just silhouettes in the background. You can use some negative lines to show the separation if you want. But you can really keep going and going smaller and smaller and show a little bit of variation in the wires. Stuff like this color is up really nicely too. But sales simple, that idea is really, and then you can add a little bit of rendering to, you know, if this is a cable. But again, I really just want you to think about the idea of depth perception and overlapping forms. And then here, thinking about the belly of the muscles and really trying to envision if one is in front of the other What does that do as a belly in front of the other? Is other one get dwarfed by the size comparison. Does it pass beneath the next few that come up? You'll see as we illustrate these ideas, there's gonna be a lot of that. There's gonna be a lot of things that move up and then overlap and other objects and other Form. And you have to think about how the Shadows react there, how the line Weight reacts, things like that. So practice that as well. And so back over to here, I wanted to mention one more thing before we wrap up this one that is basically to really envisioned and play around with the, remember, as I talked about, the strips of muscle down here, right here, and those are basically just thin strips of muscle. And there's a lot of areas of the body. We're going to have to think about that. But there's a lot of thin little strips of muscle that if you draw them too bulky, they're just going to look inflamed and ridiculous. And there's a time in a place, certain muscles you're going to want to show big bulging biceps, right? That's a pretty common term. But then you wouldn't want to do that everywhere. Because then what happens to the biceps? They look dwarfed by comparison. Or if you do it everywhere, it just looks like somebody that's got a really bad Inflammation brought me there all inflamed every words the swelling everywhere just wouldn't make sense. So what you have to do is once you get to the point where we're gonna keep going over these basic shapes to look for. So one of the Basic Shapes here, there's a diamond on the back of the the separation of the muscles trapezius. The trapezius comes up like this, like this into there. You get that diamond of separation there. They're pulling against the spine. Alright, so it goes like this. Then it goes up and around the spine. The spine of scapula, the shoulder blade is somewhere like this. It just kinda goes around that you get this bit of a shape. Now, if I was going to simplify that further for him and try that again. I would definitely start with the diamond because to me that's the most noticeable kind of landmark, we'll call it. And I would, if I was going very simplified, just do this. It's almost like, well, let's just say what the back there's a lot of v's and w's will get into that More like when you draw the lat, basically looks like a W shape right there. But again, we'll get into all that. But the thing I want you to focus on here is sit at your to the point where you're like, okay, this is the simplified form of the trapezius that I've gotten my mind. Right. But how thick is that? If it was consistently the same width or thickness strip of muscle that I talked about, maybe it will look like this. Look how flat that looks. All of a sudden. It doesn't look like overly bulky trapezius. I would say that's an error of the body where you would want more definition and more curvature. So again, it's not just memorizing the shape at first, that's what you want. You want some simplified shapes. You want to convert that to memory. You want to make your own distinctions for sure, don't trust everybody. Source, make up your own. Be inventive, be creative. You might just come up with the best, next best way to explain a certain muscle group and that's gonna be your style or part of it. Well, in this case, again, that's just too flat so the shapes not wrong. It's the perception of depth in, in relation to it. So now let's take the same shape. You do get a bit of a divide here. Sometimes you'll see there's more of a separation there, but I feel like just kind of implying that is enough. But what I'll do is I'll put curves here for the wrapping lines. And I'll just kind of envision a little bit more depth. See all immediately. We can get that to look like it's protruding away from the base form of the back. It's now it's got it's got some rural perception of depth there. And then obviously we added to that. Let's take a Shadow. Me, lighten that up even more. I'll just put like a nice big shadow here. Obviously, it's pretty easy once you start adding in these grayscale Shadows to show a lot more curvature in depth. But I just want you to get the point. Like you need to practice these in ways where you are perceiving depth and you are using your wrapping lines to curve over. This shape of the deltoid looks really flat, right? Right here, just to me, the deltoid is really like a heart shape and you can see that's pretty much what I drew there. Sideways heart. You do have a medial head. You have a posterior head or posterior? Had you ever anterior head what you would barely see it angle, something like that. I mean, I don't know if that's exactly right. But then again, is there an exactly right we're talking Stylized Anatomy, but, but the difference is here. I need to figure that out where that segmentation is, where those three main muscles are. I can break off into smaller striations. But then I need to, again, I need to really perceive the curvature of the muscle groups. It's gotta be depth and dimension there. Let's see all that immediate looks a lot more dimensional without the Shadows and it's just those wrapping lines versus something like that. Where are we really don't know, you know, is that flat? Is that what does that, you know, it's implied a little bit but not enough. So again, the separation figure out where the heads of the deltoid would be. Something like this. And then get in the curved wrapping lines. It's almost like you're drawn Spiderman suit or somebody, right? There you go. Now you've got some implied depth. You can also add a little bit, a little bit of Grace Hill to it, which are really push it out at the viewer a lot more. So you get like you're shapes of shadows going. Again, we'll get into all this. I'm just trying to slowly warm me up to these concepts. And just like that we have something that looks and feels a little more dimensional. Let's really, and again, it's going to be practicing all these things. So focus on this, for this particular lesson, focused on the belly of the muscles in print and really play around with this as well. So I probably should've showed you a little more variation to that. One more. It's not just gonna be, you're going to have the belly of the muscle and it's good to find that and pinpoint that all throughout the body. But you're going to want to show like really some variation in the way that occurs. So some are gonna be big center belly and they're going to thin out quite a bit. Sometimes you're gonna get a belly to the muscle and the tendon is going to be a lot longer. And then again it's gonna be the variation and the overlaps to those. Sometimes they're going to pass in front of around through underneath. So again, play around with the variation to that. Then also couple that with the idea of conveying thickness and weight. You can use definitely use your wrapping lines. You can also use a little bit of gray, gray-scale and shadowing value. But keep it simple and practice all sorts of variations with this. And then also practice studying from life or Comic Art that you like. But break it down in this way and see what you come up with. Let's go and stop here and we'll head over to our next lesson. 5. Drawing the Front of the Leg: Welcome back. So now what I'd like to do is talk to you about simplified shapes. So I'd like to break down some different areas for you with you so that you can practice these. And again, really try to think about the shapes and forms of different parts of the body. Simplified ways. Now, be inventive, tried to come up with your own versions of what I'm getting ready to show you. But if you don't have any better versions and you're feel free to use mine and then you'll slowly develop your own process and skill set over time, I think, but let me show you the ones that resonate with me the most and hopefully that'll get you going on this thought process. So as we draw something like a Leg, Right? So say we start with a cylinder method to get a base structure going. Ok, and I'm going to taper the inside a little bit. I'm going to put a curved outside. Put a circle for a knee, lower leg, bit of an angle on the inside, curve on the outside. Now remember what I said is about starting with basic cylinders. So very straight cylinders at first. Okay. Then you go to tapering those inward. And then eventually you start to imply Anatomy. So I'm skipping those steps a little bit, but hopefully you understand that, that I'm just going for a little bit of a sense of applied Anatomy. But feel free to do whatever steps you need to, to get to here. But I think this is a better way to kinda do it. And you don't have to even draw him a, a version of the calf muscle like that. But you could definitely do a little bit of curve like this. One of the rhythms that we see in the Leg. Our curve, relatively straight curve and the insides a lot straighter by comparison. Okay. So it's definitely not that the Leg, the inside of the leg is straight. It's just by comparison, it's kinda noticeable that's a little bit more straight than the outside. So just pay attention to that. And that's kinda what I'm implying right there. Even with this basic cylinder approach, it even goes right down into the foot with a foot. Jets out, usually a little bit more like this. All right, so even a very blocky representation, you might draw the foot something like this. Again, it's an oversimplification. But there's a lot of times where that's very beneficial. And then as far as proportions, so you're also gauging proportions. And we'll get into that in more detail as well. So it's hard to really teach one before the other. A lot of these things are interlocking techniques. So by looking at this, I would say that upper leg needs to be longer, taller by comparison. So I would adjust that, something like this. So again, we are thinking about proportions as we do something like this. So now to the Basic Shapes. So again, this is kinda been something we've already covered as far as this portion. But when you go to Draw Anatomy, it, it becomes a little bit trickier to figure out how to overlay this in a way that doesn't get confusing awfully quick. So I'm gonna do is I like to actually add a layer at times like this. And so that's the screen mode. I just want something to be able to draw over top of in a way that you could soft erase it, whatever you wanna do there. But to draw over top of it in a way that's very discernible, very easy to see. So the shapes that I'd like to think about the Leg from an angle like this. One of the things is the quadriceps. I like to look at those like an upside down heart Leg shape. Okay, so at first I'm going to start even more simplified than it really is. An upside down heart-shaped with this middle of the heart roughly where the knee is. Right there. We were probably doing better than a lot of people in the beginning stages of work because they just draw legs too awfully straight. Now, one thing I want to point out is the medial side, lateral side or not even. I've purposely made them even here because again, I want to slowly work you up to these ideas. I just want to throw you into the deep end of the pool and say, well, good luck started swimming. It's like you need to slowly, hopefully understanding. Now if you're more advanced, you can progress passes. You'll have to make that decision for yourself. But what I like to do here, if show this shape, practice the shape. You should be able to Draw heart. And if you can, just keep practicing, it doesn't even have to be. Is Stylized the minute you could homeless really just get away with a really stretched heart-shaped for the spot. It does explain the shape that you're going to see their for the quadriceps. Now, the quadriceps are the medialis lateralis rectus femoris. Again, we don't need to get it in the terminology too much. I want to say there's one below it as well. I don't think the sartorius is part of it, but you do get this sartorius muscle that comes up right through here and goes down like that, like a elongated as we'll talk about that as well. But The next step to here is just to really take the middle muscle that you get in the Leg and just kinda segment it like this. You see how simple this is really a good thing to think about here are teardrops. Okay, so we've started with the heart Leg shape. We break off into this other segmentation, right up the middle. And we think about a teardrop shape. Look if you take another color here, you go right through here. Let's just looks like a teardrop. And really the Leg itself can be simplified with a bunch of teardrops. A lot of muscles have these teardrop look and shapes. Remember what I said about paying attention to where the belly of the muscle is. But you can really keep going and going and draw a lot of teardrop look and Shapes. And you generally will get heavier organic look and feel to the anatomy that way. So it's worth paying attention to. But I just want to show you that. So we're taking this quadricep area, we're segmenting it with an upside down teardrop because it would be falling the other way. These could be considered to other teardrops falling kind of a standard way of looking at them. And then over here, we're just going to take the what does this I believe it's the adductor group, but we'll say the inside of the thigh. We'll just have this kind of come out. So think about this, instead of even picturing the entire volume there, just think about this one line out and then a wave inward. You can play around with variations to that slope into this muscle more. Also, also I'm really trying to convey their is it you just don't want to do that. There's nothing completely straight, even though we did start that way. I'd rather you just think about, well, this has a volume to it and one part of it's thicker. In one part of it's sloping into the neighboring muscle group. So something like that. And as I mentioned with that sartorius, it goes from up here and all of these, by the way, come up here and connect to what's called the ASIS, anterior superior iliac spine. Really, it's just good to know that they come up here and they attach to the Front of the hip area. But this muscle goes down here through the side of the knee. It does this big kind of sweeping. Or this is another rhythm that you'll see in the Leg. It does this big sweeping. Look at it like a giant elongated S right through there S, right? And so when you start to see these different rhythms and you connect it with these basic shapes. It starts to get a lot easier, but it takes some practice, so don't expect too much too soon. Let's move down here to the the calf muscle. And let's just explain this with a diamond light shape. Will see that just a basic diamond there. Again, these are oversimplifications, but I think that's important to start out with. So as you come down here into the knee, knees are tricky. But one of the things that I do as I just simplify it with this shape here. If you find that to be even to complex, you can go a step further. You could say, well, what if I just drew the bottom of the knee? Just this shape right there. It's like it's really like a little triangle with, instead of having that tip there, you just kinda cut it off. So just think of it like that, just a little triangular like shape. And you're just going to cut that base off like that and flatten it out. Pretty simple, right? It's just drop that in there. And so what you have to envision here and maybe not even draw, sometimes I even leave it out. Is it, It's coming up like this. It's connecting to a tendon that's going to the rectus femoris. In fact, I don't even know if it connects there, but it does a sort of shape there. So it's worth paying attention to. So really you can just divide these up and kinda get this feeling that it comes down into the knee. It's pretty simple to do. But again, let's keep this very simple. Something like this will probably bring the inside of his knee and further it looks too wide there. I'm always gonna be nudging this stuff around. And then for the other side of the knee, we're just going to keep the knee is a bit of an oval for now. So this whole area of the knee just going to keep it very oval like side here. I'm just going to bring this down. And we've got a lot going on over here. We'll talk about this more. But for now, what I really wanna do is I want to bring this out and slope it right into the vastus lateralis. Usually what you see on the side of the Leg here, looks to be Like one shape, but this muscle cuts in. So we're just going to do something like that. Again, trying to keep it simple. Same thing with the Leg here. Remember we talked about those Initial curves earlier. So we're going to bring that out, curve it down. And I feel like this curve needs to be pushed out. Again, always nudging the stuff around, just kinda sculpting it. And our ankle is higher. Just get an idea like that in place. Okay, so now what I want to show you here is that after we get enough of this and let's get this part right here. So we've got these muscles that come in front of the Leg. I'm not going to get into too much. Again, I want to keep this simple, but I do want to say that the Front of the Leg needs to feel a little bit like it's in front of the calf muscles. The calf muscles are on the back of the light. So it's very easy to draw these like I have and they feel like they're on the side of the Leg and other they're poking around the side. But this part right here needs to have the feeling That's definitely in front of you. Got a muscle that wraps around. You've got these little divisions. You get one that pops out here to the toes, the digits, but I don't wanna get too much into it because it could be very confusing. And rather you focus on this and you go okay, If I had a wrapping line going right through here, this would clearly be in the Front. And these aren't too far off to the back, but they're going to wrap back in a way a little bit. Hopefully that is visually making sense for you. It's a subtle area, but it needs to be that way because if not, you get this very flat widened out view of the Leg there. Likewise up here. I wanted I want to show you two things here. I'm going to bring this out a little bit more. Again. Always pay attention to the difference from the n-side to the outside of the Leg. The more you can zero in on that, the better your Leg illustrations will get. But right here, this is an example of it. So the media Alice is a lot lower than lateralis. So just like we have this angle right here for the ankle, we have to also get this angle like here. You see, I didn't I didn't start with that. I wanted to show you the simplification of that heart Leg shape, but it can't stay there. Well, I guess based on your style, it could I've seen styles where they they definitely leave it like that and I have a lot more evened out. So that's up to you to decide if that's your style and it's okay if it looks good, it looks good. But for me personally, I guess it's one of those things once you start to see can't unsee it. And I feel like this needs to come in like this. Have that distinction from the one-sided being up higher, the side B and lower. They're also not exactly the same size. Again, I'd probably change that as well, but first I'm going to just adjust that one to be higher. Also going to leave that divide I talked about from this down to the knee. And I could get in here and keep detailing, but I'm actually going to slow down because again, if I detail everything and I go too far, I mean, this might already be too far for so many. Now, keep in mind if it is to slow down, go back, redo the lesson. Don't pressure yourself to draw as fast as me. This stuff takes practice. And then remember, get in here, do some of your wrapping lines and really flesh out the dimension that you're looking for for these forums and volumes. And just try not to make them look too flat, right? So you're going to put curves here. You can go back like the previous lesson, add some volume to it, which will continue on with this one. I don't want to move passes too awfully fast. But go ahead and work up until this point, work on this and see what you come up with. But let's go ahead and stop here, head over to our next lesson and add a little bit more volume to this. So with that, let's move on. 6. Volume to the Front of the Leg: Welcome back. So now let's continue on with this. And so what the adductor group kinda divide this, but you always see a whole lot of that. I'll just draw a couple of those divisions in there. In the Leg is going to attach on a bit of an angle. Keeping in mind that when we do male to female, you'll see that the angle there is a bit different. It's more steep angle lot board for females. Also. If you struggled to get your, your shapes right, always remember that center line can be very helpful as well. And then there's a slight plane changes. We'll get into plane changes and in more detail as well. It's all this stuff. It's just, again, it's hard to really talk about the one without getting into the other a little bit. But then they each really require their own explanation and practice activities, I believe, because they're just also powerful. All these techniques really help drawing things to look and feel a little bit more mechanical is great for the start. I just don't feel like it should stay there. And then you also get these in this little shape right here under the knee. So just to show you a simplification of the knee area, let me go over to the side here and say, okay, if I was just this is zero in on the knee, this would be my simple set of Shapes for it. Remember what I said about the angle being cut-off. Now, I would start to round these areas over a little bit more organically as I preceded. So again, just like I mentioned about the foot, you can start mechanically InDesign, but you don't end up there unless you're drawing a robot and then you'd stay there entirely. But then the next shape that I see, something like this. Again, overly simplified. I would try to get in there more organically. And then when I bring the knee up, comes up like this. Now, the medialis sits really right on top of the knee. But what I tend to do is I tend to put a little bit of the pocket of the skin right over top of that. Now, hopefully this isn't too confusing for it, but I'm just trying to give you let's even take that part of way. Let's just focus on this right here. That is the shape. The basic shape memorization I have. For the knee. Obviously you have the inside of it and the outside of it. I feel like the inside has a little bit more of a bowl like this. It's lower. Side has a curve like this little higher. But again, that's my overly simplified version of just the knee. And I do that for really each part of the body. And then I just practice interlocking those shapes together and then building up the organic drawing over top of it. Get rid of that for now. You know what? I'll leave it right about there. Just save that in illustration for you. So going back over to here, I want to add a little bit more of a sense of volume. So as I mentioned, these quadriceps, which are basically a heart and teardrop like Shapes go up to that point called the ASIS. Look at your anatomy books fine, that it's really great to find these pinpoint, these areas where you can pinpoint the Anatomy like that. It's also good to pay attention to where are these bits of Anatomy start, where they end up. Always study your Anatomy. But for now, I want to just show you the shapes and how I build up on these and connect them altogether. So let me add a little bit of volume here. So I like that. Grab a solid brush. Can actually what I'm gonna do here is make it at full opacity. And I'll just control the layer to drop down the opacity. You can get away if you're working traditionally, this just means a nice, hopefully have some gray markers. I have some by Prismacolor wall. I definitely have some promo who who which just got a set from them. Alcohol-based markers, which are great for filling in these grayscales. But for me, it's really easy to do this. You could use a gray colored pencil, whatever you have, just use your graphite pencil. But what I'd like to do here is really pay attention to the way that I can build up the feeling of volume to these muscle groups. And I might add some angles in here to the Shadows. And I feel like I'll be giving you a lot more on shadows as well just because again, it's all super important. And I do want to say that really practice patients, really practice, enjoying the moment of doing this and not pressuring yourself to be great overnight and a month. You have to slow way down, enjoy the journey It's going to take awhile to get all this stuff mastered. But if you're enjoying every day, then that long while will be perceived as a quicker amount of time. It is like if you go to some FUN, exciting place on vacation, it flies, right bye. Alright. So the trick is not to be so impatient and put all this unnecessary pressure on yourself, just, you know, I'm sure it goes without saying, but right here, what I want to point out in this area, I'm trying to add that shadow all along the side vertically on that group, that muscle group because I needed to feel like it's in front of the calf muscles. If not, It's gonna be aligned with it. It's gonna be two parallel, two side-by-side. And it's just going to flatten out the Leg. Also, you could probably Shadow, I tend to Shadow down into here and then pick it back up with the light source as it pushes out away from the foot. And I absolutely love creating these types illustrations. Because I feel like there's a lot to be learned here. It feels like a very designed way of illustrating. And I can always apply Anatomy over this later. But hopefully you can see now, you know, the distinctions from the inside of the Leg to the outside. How we started very even, but as we cut into it, we just kept pushing the sense of, of differences from the segmentations. Now this is overly segmented. Hopefully you realize that as you would apply Anatomy over top of this, if you wanted a more realistic character, you would, you wouldn't connect all your lines. You would still try to imply and establish all your forms and volumes, but you would do a lot more implying than tracing. So just remember generally tracing gives you more mechanical looking characters and then implying areas and leaving line breaks definitely on the light source side is going to give you a lot more of a natural look to scan or even clothing or just in general, just in general, you don't want to trace around every object. But for studies, I do feel like it's very helpful to do prior to shade in the whole medial side of the ankle here. And then again, as we get into plain changes, I'll explain that further, but I really kinda over accentuate plane changes for Comic Art as well. So even the knee area, simples, that is, I would Shadow this bottom plane of the nice section. You see I did it right there. And then I would leave a light source to the top. Likewise, I would shadow under this era the knee, maybe the side of it a little more. And on and on that goals can I'll get into that more as well. But that's basically it. So use your wrapping lines also. You can actually use your wrapping lines the other way you see I've only established them the one direction where you can go up the volumes vertically as well, right? And I don't know To me, this is super powerful and often overlooked. If you're finding it tough to get a dimensional feeling to your characters and tear Anatomy. Try these wrapping lines really, really stay here. Dedicate some time to it. Think three-dimensionally. Look at some 3D, never see those 3D diagrams where they show the grid through it and look at those, even pull those and then draw them in your own style. And see we come up with use your center lines to your advantage as well. A lot of times they have to turn the page to get a horizontal feeling of it. Horizontal lines are always tricky for me. Really get in there and detail that I don't know. I just find them to be super-helpful. Really more-is-better, but maybe not, maybe, maybe just as many as you need is better. More is not always better. There we go. So now we've got a leg from the Front view. Obviously, you know, I'll have all these illustrations saved for you so you can check them out in more detail. Maybe some all refining greater detail, stuff like that. So let's go ahead and stop here and head over to the next lesson and keep talking about simplified shapes 7. Rear of the Leg: Alright, welcome back. So now we're going to draw the back of the Leg. And what don't wanna do here is first draw this floating underwear shape. And then we're going to draw the bone coming out. This particular little illustration right? There is a really good one to remember, mainly because it helps you to think about the Leg coming out towards the hip, back down, inward towards the body, and then coming back out. So it's just a very simplified skeleton. But it's better than thinking about everything stacked upright. So we'll just do the one side here. Get something like that drawn in. And then on top of this, we can lay on our cylinders. And you can see that even from the slant, it starts to give us that feeling. Remember what I mentioned about the curvature on the outside of the Leg and then a relatively straightened us on the inside of the Leg. You can see that kinda comes from the starting point right there. And taper this N word will say the ankles about here will attach to heal. So as far as simple cylinders, maybe something like that. Okay. And so from here we can say, okay, well let's start a plant, some Anatomy. But what are we going to look for? So you're going to bring it out here. What I'm gonna do, let me show you this. I want to show you a silhouette version. So we're gonna go right from the cylinders here to a silhouette drawing. So we'll put the glute here inside leg, which is straight or straighter but still isn't straight. Obviously. You get a noticeable bend the knee, you get the calf muscle. This calf muscle which is a little bit more elongated where this one has a little bit more of a protrusion outward towards the metal. You also get, even though I'm talking more about the silhouette, I just wanted to show you. You get this bit of a diamond right there. So I'll explain that here more in a minute. And then for female characters, you're going to do more of a widening at the hip area and also a taller pelvis. Something like this. Alright, so there's our basic silhouette. Needs a little bit of work, I guess. But just to start out, those are basic silhouette. So I'm gonna do is bring this over now and show you how we'd refine this. Okay, So the reason why I wanted to go with the silhouette version here, really, I just want to give you different ways to think about all these different areas of the body and your illustrative work. Again, I've mentioned it, I'll reiterate it. A lot of these techniques inner weaved together. And I think what you have to do as an artist, as learn when they suit you the most. I think there's very different techniques that I use for not only arms and legs, the Torso, whatever. Also, there's different techniques that I use based upon certain poses, even that I'm just more comfortable with than other ones, I have to revert back to a bit of basics, things like that. So why don't wanna do here now is break down some of these, these interior shapes for us so that you know what to look for. But again, it's really helpful. Let me actually let me get rid of stuff on the inside right here. But it's really helpful to pay attention here, silhouettes, there are certain silhouette, certain angles and poses that are just gonna make perfect sense to you. We're actually really good at spotting bad silhouettes. It's something something that's, we have a bit of an, of an innate ability for honing that can really be helpful. You'll see painters take advantage at quite a bit. Digital and traditional painters, they do a lot of Shapes and then cut into the Shapes. So with this one I want to show you, is that one of the most discernible things? And you're not always going to see this in a character, but as the divide right up the back leg. So you get the hamstrings. This is where you start to see that diamond. And then the calf muscles actually go up and spend into those something like that or they intersect or either way they create this sort of diamond. And really the diamond is more important than I think the segmentation of the muscles now the calf, you could say, is pretty important because what happens here is it's very discernible That the calf is has a has a divide back here. Okay. So that's that's worth paying attention to. Because again, if you've got somebody that's pretty defined, you are going to see this. This divided the muscles right there. I think to me the capture one of the most noticeable parts of definition and most people were not. Everybody has big biceps and triceps and all this other stuff. I mean, but a lot of people, even if I've even seen overweight people that have pretty definable calves. It's just something that is a lot more common. Now. Then you have this tendon that comes down the back. And now everybody knows this one, your Achilles tendon. Then right through here you have your ankle. Again, as I mentioned, you have the definition or the angle of the N side, ankle being higher. But opposing to that, you have the inside calf muscle gastrocnemius being lower. Okay. So that's something to pay attention to. Again, you have this definition or this protrusion here that you want to be getting in place. And you have a bit of curvature right here. So it's not just completely straight. You get a bit of a been there. I know I am drawing more organically here. This is a bit different than the previous exercise, but now the other thing to pay attention to, I think that's a good one is that you've got these your hamstrings to the back here. But then through the side here, you have your IT tract known as your iliotibial tract. And he wanted to say that would be your vastus lateralis. So we've got the medialis lateralis. And I want to see you're seeing some of that as well. But a lot of times in your medical illustrations you're just going to see this labeled as IT band. But again, it's good to pay attention that does come out like this. If you were to fully illustrate the glute, you would get the glute that looks more like this. And then you actually have the medial head of the glue divides down basically where the IT track is beside. But again, if, if you're going for basic forms, you're going to ignore that because I don't think in most people you ever see that definition. Again for the back of the Leg? I find this to be more than adequate for what we're gonna be doing. Now, again, I just want to let you know that these are meant to be simplified versions of what's lot more of a complex subject. Obviously have a course on the detailed anatomy in a more realistic depiction. But this has meant to teach you the basics so that you can get to the Stylized drawings that we're gonna be doing later on in the course. So keep that in mind. I just don't want to overwhelm you with Here's a little muscle and there's another one here and here. And it's just that it can be a lot. And again, I don't think that's really necessary to teach you to Draw Stylized characters. Now, also, this is meant to be a preliminary basis for your understanding. And I would still recommend that you do continue to study anatomy and go as in-depth as you possibly can. It's just, we have to always be mindful of how much of it we're really going to be able to retain. And you generally are just going to retain things you're using more on a daily basis. But then it becomes easier to resource the other data when you need it. So for instance, I'm not really going to study organs and things like that. But as far as the superficial muscles, that makes a lot of sense, but also making the simplification so that we can resource that material easier. So there's the back of the Leg, again in a simplified form. Now let's go ahead and move on to arms. Will do the Torso, and then we'll get into some other aspects of character creation, creating these poses. Dynamic and interesting way. So with that, let's move forward. 8. Basic Shapes of the Arm: Okay, so now for arms, again, I'm going to just jump in and get us moving on this. I'm gonna do a very basic Arm. And another one I want to show it, or another technique I want to show you here is after you establish the length, something like this, a couple of things you can do jump right into cylinders, but one of the techniques I would like even more than that is this one. So I show this one off a lot. I honestly think it's so simple and effective. Absolutely love it. It's a little bit of a lightning bolt. And so what this helps us to remember to do, and you still combine your cylinders if you want. But what I like about this is helps us to think about how the Arm is not so upright. So when you get somebody that's new to drawing, generally even with the cylinders they Draw, will do something like this. That's their arm. And there's times that I've started it that way, but I just I know enough about the body now and I end up there. So say I did start there. So I go like this. I would at least move the cylinder over a little bit in this cylinder over and tapered. So hopefully you see it That's a little different than that even with that messy line. So I'm gonna, you can do it that way if you want. But again, remember not to stack it so awfully upright and aligned. And what's better is to get in this basic shape of something like, will say something like this. Like this here. Kind of a football shape for the bicep, diamond or something like that. For the tricep, the Arm will come out, the form will come out away from this a bit. In, then back in, towards the wrist. The wrist is actually a bit of a thin rectangular shape. And then another diamond off to the side. So it's a bit messy the way I've done it here, but let me clean this up for and show you what I'm thinking. Let's get rid of some of this construction stuff through the middle. So there's our silhouette to pay attention to. Right? If you're just looking at the silhouette, attach a hand here, bit of a wedge to a block light shape, making sure the middle knuckle is a little bit taller. Even if this is the knuckle here. And these are the fingers. You always make sure that middle mcals just a little bit taller. The thumb is a diamond or I'm sorry, a triangle, I guess. And then another little piece like that. So that's my simplified first from an angle like this. Now keep in mind when the palm is down and away from us like that. This is called pronated. So just remember, pronated Supinated palm up as Supinated hand down, palm down as pronated. So this is a pronated Pose. Say at the Form of it too long as well. But I guess I should be able to adjust that as we go. I also feel like the deltoid, It's too small. Now another thing about the shoulder, the deltoid. Deltoid comes from, pretty sure it's Latin or Greek, but it's part of the same I guess, but it's a, it means it's like a triangle. The symbol is an upside down triangle, delta, right? So that's something to think about when drawing the shoulder. You see I've started with a rounded version of it. But if I was to simplify that, be a triangle like this, what I like to do is a little bit of a mix. I actually like to do what I consider more of a heart shape. If you go like this. And I kinda see something like that. And the reason being is it doesn't all line up right in the shoulder. The one heads a little higher. You get a segmentation from the anterior head to the medial head. The medial head protrudes down lower into the Arm. So to me it looks more like a heart or fruit or vegetable oil, you know, something like that, but not, not so much, just a triangle. But again, it's good to know these things about, you know, what the shorthand ideas are. Just makes you realize there were simplifying the shapes a long, long time ago, right? Even name them after simple shapes. So if we keep adjusting the silhouette, I would increase the size of the Form, which might help make it not look so elongated. In which case I would have to increase the size of the fist as well. So just remember that as you're playing around with your silhouettes here, you can't just, I would say just one thing. It's going to affect the neighboring part. So you gotta look at that. And I still feel like this shoulder needs to be bigger. So I think personally, you really have to get these proportions right with the Arm, especially the shoulder, because the shoulder houses it holds all that weight and that all that strength and I got everything connects through the shoulder to the Torso. So it's kinda has to be right there. But just keep playing around with it till you get what you like. So now we'll cut into this. So want to bring this over? I just need this part. So get rid of this right here. Just to show you, we got that silhouette. Now cut entity shapes and I'll show you the basic shapes that I tend to see. And actually, let's, let's try it this way. I'll start with a color. For the deltoid, as I've already mentioned. I see it as well first, I think it's helpful to get the separations of the heads. So let's just put this in with some basic kind of ovals for now. Remember, we're going to refine all this as we draw our character concepts anyways, and we'll get more into striations and all that. But I want to keep this simple for it. But what I think is important to do is to at least first start making the separations. So you have anterior, medial, posterior. It's easier to see on something like a top view where you're gonna get the three heads more visibly. Say you're kinda looking down at a little bit, I guess it's kinda Down in out and you get like the clavicle spine of scapula. They're not exactly even but just simplifying that. And the trapezius goes to the middle, some neck muscles. So again, medial head to the deltoid. The back of the head is the posterior and the Front had on the chest, the anterior things you probably don't need to know to draw this wall, but there it is. Now at the bicep. Obviously it's in the name bicep. You've got two heads there. I very rarely if ever draw the two heads. But the divide is kind of up the middle a bit. Unlike anything else. They're not even, even though in my illustration and kinda look a little too even it's always a long head, short head, anterior, medial to lateral. But I want to say it's long and short head. It's it's just basically just know that they're not the same in but what the bicep, I really don't show the definition hardly ever with my illustrations. So that's up to you if you want to seek out where the divides are more and you want to show that more. I'll just very rarely show it now if there are very flex position, the arms up and shoulders are rolled back, then it kinda makes a bit more sense. You're going to see it more noticeable be there, I guess. Now with the separation here, you've got bleed. It's the brachialis. Forgive me if I'm wrong on that, but there's a muscle that is very distinct right there. The main thing that I want to point out here by time you get to the center muscle and then you get to the tricep. It's really the staging of it from this angle That's super important. So if you look right here, it all just looks flat across. But what I would really recommend that you think about is that it's actually if you were to look at it a little bit more from the side, like a bicep. Let me zoom right in here real tight, but I'm gonna do a small illustration. So it's a bicep, say we're viewing it and I was kinda level to the middle of it right through there. Right. So you're looking at it. This next muscle is a bit higher and the tricep is even higher than that. So if you are looking at it straight on, you're actually going to see these. And you don't see that from an angle like this unless you illustrate it as such in the way that you apply or Shadows and everything. So what I mean to say is that you have to think about it stacked. And when you start to do that, it looks a lot more impressive. So the shoulder comes through like this. Segments down here are there. But this is all kinda stacked and that's why you will see it from looking straight on. If not, you would see the bicep and these would disappear entirely. In sometimes they do like if the arms rolled back far enough, you're just going to see the bicep. But sometimes you'll see these and they actually raise up and away. I don't know what they're much higher, but there are a little bit higher enough to make a difference where you can see it from certain angles. So just pay attention to that. Hopefully that little illustration makes sense. Yeah. That they're not just, it's not like this is a straight flat line going across the Arm Right there. Now maybe for somebody with really little definition, okay, so there's always different instances, I guess, but now another tricky part, especially when doing the silhouette first is right here. So you've got these muscles that come out, but then they come back this way and point towards the thumb. In fact, they actually coincide where the tricep is. Now since the tricep is disappearing back there, I probably brought it out a little too far, but I like to over accentuate some other stuff. But the main thing is that this line right here from the tricep and these muscles coincide. So they come from here. They wrap around the forearm and point towards the base of the thumb Hey, something like that. These mostly come through. So this is where it's tricky because all this kinda spins around. There's a lot of spinning aspects to the Form. Because of our ability to rotate, radius and ulna, all those muscles twist with it. But these ones right here go right to the base of the thumb. Your extensors. I like to group these together, especially for simplifications, become like this. I hit the hand. You go out to the digits. So it's probably extensor digitorum. So, but the extensors, and there's a few segmentations in here, but I'm going to want to group those together to keep it simple. Then here you've got your flexors kinda protruding around. So you get a little bit of a diamond like shape there. My see a little bit of elbow back here but not much. Then the other side of the cell, your flexors, you're just seeing it from the other side. And then you also get one or two that comes out to the side here. I want to say this is your maybe extensor that goes to the pinky. Don't quote me on that one, but actually let's leave that out. What, again, what I want you to see is these overall shapes. And I don't want to put too many of men there were just it just becomes too confusing for you to get. I mean, there's a couple of little ones that wrap around here. There's lots of details, right? What I want you to focus on as these big, broader Shapes, I'm going to clean up some of these illustrations for it and I'm actually going to label them. Because again, I want you to really zero in on the silhouette, the bigger, broader shapes that you can commit to memory easier. And then you can always go back and do more detailed studies of each one of these areas. And you'll be able to see like, hey, what was he talking about here? All of these are actually, this is actually two muscles that spin around there. There's actually two more divisions here. And you can break off into smaller, again, incremental studies to get better at that. But I want you to really get this basic shape memorization going first. So just to recap, three heads, the deltoid, two to the bicep. Even though for these illustrations we're going to keep it as a big football shape. I perceive the tricep here is a bit of a diamond. A lot of these are glorified teardrops. So you could really go through all this and do teardrops if that's easier for you. Remember that the tricep and the muscles here coincide along that line. And then they wrap to the inside of the thumb. This is probably a bit big by the way, so proportions will vary. These are just proportions I chose to use. Your extensors go into the back of the fingers, group those together and like one big tear drop shape. And then your flexors protruding out around the side. I kinda see that as a bit of a diamond, but maybe just a triangle. You'll see a lot of ovals and triangles throughout the body as we go. Triangle here for the thumb, wedge like shape for the fifth. That's it. So remember the smaller diagrams here explaining how you might perceive the heads of the deltoid and the stacking of these muscles through the upper arm. Okay, So we'll go ahead and conclude right here. We'll head over to the next lesson. Do another view of the Arm. And with that, let's move forward. 9. Shapes of the Arm Supinated: Hi, welcome back. So with this one we're gonna do palm facing up until this is going to be Supinated. And let's say for this one won't will start with the lengths again. So shoulder, upper arm or humorous and simplified skeleton. Now, one of the things you'll notice when you see illustrations with the arms out, in, not even out, but the palm facing up. You'll notice that the forum kicks out a little bit. It doesn't come like so say here is the show you real quick. Let's say that we have the body next to it, the Torso, simplified Torso like this. You're never going to see the Arm Supinated coming straight down. It's almost hard to even do. It's you almost have to force your triceps behind your back. It just feels really awkward. You'll notice that when you drop them down, Supinated and your arms out, they fall outwards just a little bit and then light in the opposite with pronated, it's more likely to do this. Think about how much more comfortable with as have your hands in your pocket or even when you're swinging your arms back-and-forth, just kinda looked down and notice your elbows kinda poke out just a little bit. So I know it's such a little thing. But it can, these little things really add up, they can make a world of difference. So as we draw Supinated version, might as well have the Arm commodity little bit and that's maybe a little bit much. Let me move that just a little bit over. Because it needs to be there. It doesn't need to be extreme, but it needs to be there. Okay, so we've got our lengths established. Again, I'm gonna go right for silhouette drawing on this one. Or you know what better yet we'll just take what we learned on the last one and we'll go right for shapes. So I'll follow along using the shapes I'm using or just use ovals. You don't have to go with angles data if you don't want it, you can start with ovals. And then you can apply angles. So you could say, well, there's three heads to the the deltoid. I just saw him explain that. So you start with a couple of ovals had here, had there, and then you just cut into it and I'm going to add some angles, don't want it to look more rigid. You see how that's pretty easy to do. You remember the heart-shaped I told you about or the fact that it's named after an upside down triangle, things like that. So again, I'm just going to go for a shape about like this. This is the medial head dipping down. And then for the bicep is going to draw this elongated football or oval shape. Definitely just put an oval there or an oval it to angles at the base. Remember what I said about seeing that muscle before you see the tricep? Now, the tricky thing is this. You may not actually get all of that. You might from an angle like this. So this is what happens as we rotate our hands upward and outward. In any way. The bicep follows. They all have connection points and they twist with it. Alright, so let's go ahead and drop in the Form first because we might want to just get a little bit of the tricep and we might see, we might start to see more of it here. The other thing that pay attention to as a tricep is such a wide muscle by comparison that there's times you'll see a little bit of it on the outside, a little bit of on the inside, sometimes a good amount on one side and very little on the other. And then obviously when it's rotated so far, you're not going to see them the other side. They also have a little strip here, the coracobrachialis, I believe. And so you bring these ones over. Remember that I said that these ones came out and pointed towards the thumb will now the thumb is over here. So these come out. They're no longer wrapping over the forms that we're drawing. And then you've got the flexors can actually come out from this. Let's say this, the condyle, the bone anyways. But you'll see that pretty distinctly. And then you'll see them spin out from there. But we're good. We're going to group those together just like we did the the digitorum, so are the extensors. So again, remember that the wrist is really more rectangular than, than oval in cylindrical. So it's kinda tricky to teach that part, explain that part when it's kinda contradictory to the beginning stages I was showing you where are you drop in cylinders. Again, you have to remember that Lot of that stuff is a way to start. But you don't have to end up there. Okay, so just like how we're doing these segmentations and very almost robot-like illustrations at this point because it explains the different muscle groups more effectively, I believe then. But by the time I show you how to render this, we're going to be changing things here and there to make it look more organic. Again, these are the shapes. I'm looking at. My group these together. And then we'll draw the, will attach the first tier of the poem divides right up the middle. Thumb comes over to the side. You've got 12.3. Then for the closed fist, get the shape and first little fingers a little bigger, and it's right next to that divide and the palm in really am, again, I'm oversimplifying this, but really you should even get a little bit of curvature in the fingers, even as a squeeze and press together. Just notice that when you pull your hand together, they're pretty straight, but there's actually pointing towards the middle just a little bit. The more you squeeze, the more that happens and they roll inward this way. So just those two little things. So you'll see a lot of, and I make the same mistake. I draw these phis that look like this. But that's like wait a second, pivot, slight little curvature into the palm. And the more squeezed, the more that occurs and then also the more squeeze the more of these role. And that's the superhero fish. You always see somebody Draw, right? The good artists, these draw it with the knuckles up like this. It kinda over accentuate that because there's expressiveness. There were this way, there's not a whole lot of expressiveness, right? So we have to pay attention to that. Will make sure to get that in later illustrations. There we go. So now we've got one that's Supinated, That's it. Rest a little long. These aren't, these shouldn't be so even as well. So that's another thing, is that the inside is always different from the outside or however you want to look at it. One side is always different than the other. Even the tricep here is not even from side-to-side. You've got the, the inside had his long in. The short head is more abrupt and they're just not aligned. So this is a bit to a line for my taste, so clean that up. And then what I would say is, I'm just going to extend this one quite a bit further down like this. This one's more abrupt. That's right word, but it's just, it's got more of an angle, I'll say, compared to this one being more elongated down the arm. Same thing with the long head there versus this shoulder again, what I mentioned from the previous one, I really want to make sure the shoulder is big by comparison, so it can look like they can support all that weight. While the strength comes from the shoulders. So it needs to be evident in our drawing. And I feel like the other thing is just proportionately, I could really thin some of the stuff out. So as I mentioned, kind of what the chest to chest to waist ratio. A good thing to also pay attention to as redrawn this stuff is the width of the areas where it should be more tone or it should be closer to the bone and less overall muscle tissue and things like that. It's really good to pay attention. Those are the risks. Here is a prime example. Even this area is any connection point from the next neighboring area of the body will get more into that as well. But that's really it. So this is again, another simplified version, which we could clean up even further. But I think this about covers. What I would like to do is get you more examples. So even though some of these might not be as clean as I mentioned, I will find some of them for your notes and things. But I want to get you some more dynamic examples because you really need to see this stuff working a bit more functionally. It needs to be presented in a way where it can be an actual poses and dynamics, not just these flat starter poses, but what they do is they give you that base knowledge of the group shapes. That's really what I'm trying to show you here. Okay, so now I'm gonna go ahead and copy this. Move that over. And I just want to show you the simple shapes so that I get a little bit messy heroism. Drawing this. Again. Let's pick route here to make sure you can see this. I just want to give you this simple breakdown of the Shapes. These ones actually just say no, these actually go right into the tendons of the risk, but I always show the divide like this, and then the separation of the tendons like this. That's up to you. But there's just so you know, if you look at the Anatomical illustrations Extra go like this. That's another thing is kinda confusing, is when you look at either defined bodybuilders and then you look at medical anatomy. It's almost hard to read. It's it looks different because of volumes of the muscle and different definitions, different way people flex versus just a standing illustration. I think that's why it's such a complex topic. Then you see Stylized drawings and that puts a whole, another variable into the mix. So again, I just want to give you these simple shapes, make it a little bit more discernible for you. Hopefully, these next lessons can work more effectively. So let's go ahead and stop here and continue on. 10. Male Torso Front: Hi, welcome back. So now we're going to talk about the Torso. And so for this, Let's just draw a center line. Line across a W like shape cylinder. I'm gonna put an angle here, angle here. So he uses this to measure Cross. Actually have a bit of a circle right here. Angle here, angle here, angle here to here, here to here. And keep in mind that if any of these are harder for you to draw like this, draw through. Always remember to draw three. You should draw through anyways to check where you're at. So always you can draw through in a couple of ways. Let me show you that. You can draw through like this. If you're good at that, if that's hard for your hand mechanics and that's not your, your way. Another way is like this. You find center and use straight lines but you draw through. I would say it, this is probably a better way, especially if you're used to using a ruler, you're going to really be able to map things out. If you use a roller ruler, you can go from a certain point, roll up. I mean, they're just amazing and love those things. But just keep that in mind that drawing through in either angles and, or curves will help you to map your symmetry. So it's super important. Now we've already drawn the shoulders, but I really, I like drawing the shoulders here again because they relate directly to the chest, the pectoralis. So I'm going to Draw those again like this, like this. That's kinda the shape I used for the simplified shoulders. Trapezius. Neck is a cylinder like this. Wider for a masculine male character. So there we go. And then for the ways or the abdominals and just kinda draw a shape like this. It's actually two up here that complete the set. But for the hero, Esq., Form. I leave those out. They're still there and you could still you'll see people shade them. They almost look like ribs because they're not as, they're not generally as noticeable. Especially if somebody's bowing their chests out will explain more of that. And we get into the, you know, when you cover the section on Gestures, remember that each one of these sections bounce back-and-forth as needed. Again, these are interlocking techniques, not always one before the other. So something like this is our basic shapes for the Male Torso. Okay, so there's lots of the things to consider the serratus, I'm gonna do an overly simplified version. The serratus are pretty complex looking, interlock with the obliques and not going to confuse you with all that right now, a lot of times for simplified Anatomy, you'll see even marks. Just as little as that to imply. The main thing that I want you to focus on here is that the kind of the hierarchy of these forms, the chest is out the furthest, right, the Front of the ribcage right here. That's what we'll call it. Is. Out. Next. The serratus go from there and connect back into the lats and the simplified version. But in any obliques, you can leave it relatively strip. They usually taper down into this area just a little bit. Not usually completely straight. Sorry, the abdominals rectus abdominis is actually on top of or in front of the obliques. So again, as far as a hierarchy of levels, because when you go to start illustrating this stuff and shading it, That's really what makes a big difference that you start to think of it. And that way, if not, you'll just shade it, cross it, it will start to flatten out. So you can have as good looking illustrations that look really flat. But that is the simple shapes that I use. Now if I was to help you envision this as these primitive basic shapes and forms. And you kinda get a little bit of a divider here to the obliques. They actually go up in front of the lats are behind all this by the way, you want to be careful not to illustrate it with, Let's look like they're parallel to the size or something there. They're very much on side and the backside of the bag, you'll see as we illustrate the bag. So again, let me go over this one more time and kinda hit home the simplified shapes to look for another color here. Okay, So if anything, I think the chest is good to group together. But remember what I said about the chest and the shoulders. The shoulder is really cut into the chest pretty significantly. In fact, even have the shoulders come in and you have a divot here. It's actually called a fossa in one here So those are good to pay attention to as well. So you have the jugular fossa in-between your clavicles and you have the clavicular fossa in front of or below the clavicle and in-between the pectoralis and the deltoid. So it's a really good one to pay attention to. That's actually a lack of muscle. There's there's nothing in the spots are hollow I guess, or something but but you can pinpoint things off of that. So it's good to know those spots. Obviously, the sternum runs right down the middle. For the chest, the shape that I would say there is, I would really look at this whole shape. You get it obviously dips down with the collarbones and collarbones are obviously not that straight. I'm really simplifying them. Collarbones are more like like that obviously from a view like that. In just so you know, the pectoralis doesn't go right up to them, which you'll see that in a lot of comic illustrations. It sits below it in it. Believe it connects to, it connects to that and the sternum. And they divide and spend towards the armpit right here. So that's why I drew this one right here for you. But again, as far as the simplified shape, look at this whole shape right there and you could even go straight across it first. Kinda looks like a little bit of a superman logo, but it's kinda like, uh, a bit of a diamond. But then you'd cut the diamond. The diamond would go like this, right? So it's like a diamond, but you cut the base of it off for like a superman logo, we've cut the base, base of it off. That's the shape that I would say for the chest. Then you dip it in for the collarbones. If you want to be more realistic, you put the curvature of the collarbone. Again with the shoulder. This is where you really see where it got its name from. The side. I said to me, this view is where you really see the diamond or upside down triangle should say. But again, it's just a bit of a, a wedge like shape or this is the basic shape that I would see there. Remember it's the medial part of it that goes down to the middle of the Arm. Something like that. Then for here it's really easy. It's a big like why didn't W curved edges of a W? I don't know To me that I just go with a very simple form there. It's probably a bit too much, but it's so easy to remember, it's really simple. And then for the abdominal, the rectus abdominis, you could just make this point straight line and a curve. I've seen styles like that. They render it beautifully. It looks nice. I just add a little bit more to that idea. It's the same thing. Point up here, slight angle here, straight than the curve. You can obviously take that a lot further. And keep in mind that really the abdominal muscles have a lot of asymmetrical values there. I keep them pretty symmetrical and Male illustrations, but that's up to you. For the lat. You'll see the lat on the back is another W. But here I would just say it's basically just a big, you like shape if you were to draw through it. But in front of that makes sure that you get your obliques coming up. And I would say, personally, try not to make them completely straight. If your style looks good like that, go for it. You gotta be careful with these little bumps at the base of the obliques because if you, if you protrude them out too far, people are going to see your character as love handles, right? So you kinda wanna figure that out. It's usually for very heroic form. You're going to take it easy on the love handles, but I don't know. Who's to say your character couldn't have love handles and still being superhero. The trapezius from here, I just generally go with an angle, make sure that you perceive that this goes up behind the neck, up the back of the neck. You'll see that when we do our back version, the neck as simple as a cylinder. Maybe not as simple as that because you have the V from the sternocleidomastoid and they also sloped down like this. They do these two little bends like this. So it's maybe not as simple as just a cylinder, but you start there. I like to draw the neck and think about it. All of it flowing down and curving into this area. And the trapezius going up and behind the neck. So that's how I generally illustrate it. But just like that, we've got the Front male Torso with the simplified shapes. And hopefully that makes some sense for you. And let's go ahead and do the back and they'll do the Female Torso. And then we'll get to actually putting this all together and creating some cool character poses. So with that, let's move on. 11. Female Torso Front: Hi, welcome back. So now we'll do the Female Torso. And same thing. We will start with a bit of a center line. A lot of the same shapes here. So we can do the V for the collarbones like that. And I'm gonna do the floating rib cage first. And I'm just gonna go ahead and attach well, actually it's not a patch, I would say detached. But the floating underwear like this. The reason just say no, the reason I'm attaching the pelvis here and I didn't the previous one is because here it's more necessary for the previous one. We'll get into that as we draw the character concepts. But just keep in mind, it's the same thing. From here down to the pelvis. The pelvis difference is the angle, a big part of its angle of the connection point with Legs? It's more sloped for a female like this. And then also the Male hips are less angled inward like the hourglass form like that. Other than that, it's the same and don't worry, we're gonna get into lots of examples where we draw that the Male hubs as well. So I just don't want to be too redundant as I show you all that stuff. So as we get into here and we get our center line, we've got our upside down a or upside down V, no, right there. But again, it's like this W shape for the ribcage. So now the position of this and comparison to the aces, the Front of the hip area is pretty important depending on depending on what you're after your style. So I noticed that a lot of times I have to maneuver this. Okay, so I'm going to drop that down right now because I just kinda know how I am. I'll end up needing more space up here. So this is another thing we tend to do as artists. We want you to Draw an office stuff. You start to remember what I always seem to make this area too narrow. Let me go ahead and fix that now. And that's a great thing, right? It's like showing that you're starting to learn more about yourself and your process. Remember the abdominal muscles, how I dipped him in. What I tend to do here with the Female character is really put more curvature through these kind of instinctively right there. So they go pretty low. I know it seems a bit low right there, but you generally don't define them as low. Like when you refine that she joined, don't maybe draw every abdominal muscle, but they do go pretty low into the pelvis. And so for here, again, we've got the collarbones. Remember what I said? I like to attach the shoulders and get that angle in their shoulders are generally a lot less massive for females. Something like that. And then for the brush, you can start circular obviously. But I like to try to envision teardrops so that I don't keep them to spherical. So I bring that shape up like a teardrop into the chest. Likewise, if I want something that looks more natural, I would put those remember what I mentioned about the collarbones going like this, I would get something more organic. I'll tell you a cool trick for the collarbones is just remember, draw them like a bicycle handle. Handlebars is what I always say. Like if you were to think about bicycle handlebars coming down into the sternum, That's a good shorthand method for the, the collarbones or a good mnemonic device or something. So trapezius, they're usually sloped inward just a little bit. Will bring up the neck. Remember the next starts as a cylinder in this area, but then it slopes into this cavity of the upper torso area. Also you get this a little bit of skin that comes in to the side. So the pectoralis, you'll see a bit of an angle right there is it blends into the breast area. And another trick that I like to use for placing the nipples is just a triangle like that. Just kinda helps you to align that from, from each other. And just remember that angles in general help you to map these things out. Then from here I would just keep checking proportions and nudging things around. I think I tend to do that more with the female characters. Like I really need to find the right balance from proportions and width to width to width ratios. So yeah, I do a lot of that kind of clean up Abdominals, I would show the division here and maybe a little bit into the next division. And then that's about it. And the belly button would be right about where the tapering of the waste is. It does vary. Keep that in mind. Not everybody is belly button is exactly in the same spot. Imagine that there's our crude version of it. We can push back, get rid of some of the center lines here. I would definitely soften up the forms. There's times I bring the breast closer together, some further apart. That's up to you. It's just there's different ways to go about that. But again, I think that would helps as well. One of the things that helps to, and you'll see the angled shots that we're gonna do. The more dynamic poses is also perceiving the breast as not sitting like so spherical onto another plane like that. So even that has a little bit of a flat spot. You want to think about gravity and then also that there's soft, right? And then you have the ribcage sternum is pressing it so they're going to flatten out at spots. And again, I think teardrops or better representations of them just from any angle. So just keep that in mind that really want to think about the flat spot. And you could put that probably on a pose like this. You'd probably put a little bit of it right there. Generally is just going to make it look more natural. Likewise, wider at the bottom and then tapering. And again, this is kinda teardrop thing, wider at the bottom and then tapering thinner towards the top. Again, I'll show you that as we, as we do more refinements. So let's go ahead and take this. Now. I'm gonna do two things here. I'm going to redo the shapes again. But actually I want to show you how I clean this up. Because again, I think that for female characters I typically do this more. So I'm going to clean this one up where it just a little bit because I feel like what I have here is is just a little bit uninteresting for the female form. So what I would do is try to thin this part out. Which internal widen out the hips without having to. If I thin this out and widen up the lines on the hips right now, it might be too much. So always try to ease end of this stuff so you don't go too far past your mark. But I'm going to soften some of this up. I'm going to still keep the shapes that I wanted to see. Obviously. What I said too about the angle being more extreme. The slope of the opening of the Legs here. Try that again. And then it's also bring the breast is filled to straight and flat. So I'm going to try to show you what I was talking about. Their soften them up a little bit and bring them in. I'm trying to push the curvature towards the center of the chest more hoping see that. Which means that I really don't need a lot of the other stuff. So to me, that's starts to make it look more natural to because I'm not tracing all the way around it much like a lot of the other forms. Now bony landmarks are different story, I generally will over accentuate those. Actually, I'm gonna go ahead and show you the more organic version for this part. I think it just looks better. So the other thing is this. Whenever you do these characters, if you're leaning more towards angles for everything, they're just going to look more rigid. And so now for somebody want to appear strong and powerful and all that good stuff, that's fine. But sometimes you want these characters to be soft and friendly and nice and approachable or whatever. You don't want them all to be tough guys, right? Well, that's when using more your curves in every part of the illustration. Even bony landmarks, just something as simple as a round over versus I could draw this same collarbone with almost identical and I could put this very sharp point right there. And not only is it going to make it look more Stylized, is just going to make it look a little less often friendly, I guess. I don't know. It's just going to give it a different vibe to the shape language. And the more I do that all throughout the illustration is just going to keep hardening up the, the illustration where the softer a little bands will do the opposite. That one I just wanted to show you how you could add more curvature through there, even the stomach muscles. I would hint to the definition. I would fade that out as it went down or wouldn't go all the way down with that. But I would get little bits of definition in there. So I'm just kinda slowly adding it in just to see how much I really want details around the ribcage they're in on and on, but that's That's kinda how I would approach it with the Female character. I would, I would really ease into the details. Unlike where a male character, I would just all sorts of details and striations and cuts. And so it's just a little bit different approach. So there's the Female Torso. I guess it could feel like I want to add these definition, definition of the hips there, but then I put it in and I feel like it's too much. We'll keep working on. And really we could say, well what about the obliques? I'm going down to here, has too much too. Alright, so we'll go ahead and stop it here. So let's move on to draw on the backs of the characters now and then we'll get into some practical applications. 12. Back of the Male Torso: Okay, So again, just a straight shot of the back. I'll start with a center line. The back is actually, it's pretty hard to draw. But then once you realize it's all triangles and a lot of triangles really, it becomes a lot easier. So let me show you what I mean. So the trapezius comes in like this, dips out. I'm gonna go very angular. You gotta diamond right here. Roundabout. You've got the shoulders, as we already talked about, those are triangles. Something like this. I like to put that little angle right there. As you can see. Then the neck would pop up here but just a little bit. And then the W for the lats. So we're very powerful looking character the lats are really discernible. So something like that. Then as you work down into the trunk or the base will just do a cylinder for now. But our add the glutes or somebody else. I'm going to get mad at me for not drawing a button. Content. Got to have a bot. It's part of life. So these angular, I would say maybe you could get away with something like that. But obviously they're gonna be, even on a male character. You're typically going to draw them more organic than Angular. But I do mean, but to start, you want to always my own opinion, you want to always start angular because it's just easier to map all this stuff. Easier to, it's like when you're trying to draw buildings, so much easier to get all those details and stuff in there with the angles of perspective that applies to even drawing the body, especially the symmetry, because you're trying to think across the line here and get things placed accurately. So I feel like have too much space for the lower lumbar, but let me just put them in and see what we get. A lower lumbar, you typically see the two muscles right here. It's escaping me what those are. Always, always just say lower lumbar region. Then again the lat, now the light actually if you could see it in more definition and you'll see it go across like this. You don't generally don't see that in moles, so I could probably leave that out. Also. I think it's a good thing to point out right here at the arms. Really, you can see that noticeable protrusion outward. So I'll just go to about here. But again, that's where It's kinda helpful to draw these, these shots of the body from different angles because then you really pinpoint different things because of it. So if you avoid drawn backs, it can really be a hindrance to your work and a couple of ways. So let's go over like this now. Right about here is the the spine of scapula. Just like the collarbones are really important in the Front spine of scapula is very important landmark in the back as it relates to the trapezius, the shoulders, everything. And then the scapula comes down like this. Now, in a male character, you don't really see them as much. Unless they're doing a pose that is like pushing really, really hardcore gets his shoulders and pushing the scapula is out. But what I will say is it just for a shorthand method, you kinda get like this, a little bit of a Y, like this. And this covers these few muscles. But what I'm going to say here is it honestly, you have to Draw this area over and over with different points of, of, of flexion or whatever. But you have to see it in action. You really do. You have to draw a box or punching you have to Draw arrests are getting their arm pull back a bit or whatever. It changes so much. This is a basic idea of the muscles and it's like first vanitas, teres minor, teres major. But that's not really what's important for these lessons. It's More importantly, you just realize that for one they're not flat. This may be a short-hand diagram to get you going, but they push out differently, very differently based upon the definition of the character and the Pose that they're in and what they're under stress for, what stress or putting on the muscles in that area. So you just have to Draw those. Unfortunately, I can't think of a better answer for you for that. Yeah. You really do. You just have to draw them over and over. A lot of the other parts of body a little more discernible because or a bit more stationary. They all, they're all tricky and their own right because our body moves and flexes and all less than that. But but yeah, what this area I think you really do you have to draw like a shoulder pushing back against something and you're like, well, you start with the trapezius because you know, that's kinda understand that form from a different shape. You understand the shoulder, understand the lat. But then when you get here, that's where you have to think about the way it might push and create a few Shapes. Oftentimes you'll see in Comic Art. They'll just explain it with a few interconnecting kind of bumps. But that's really what it almost looks like because it's not just a simple I don't know. It's like every time I see that arrow, it looks different to me. I don't always explain it. But I would start by making sure that they're not flat and they're not even. And I would go for the big muscle groups first, you understand like hopefully by the end of these lessons you have a lot better confidence of the trapezius has shoulder the lat. And then you'll be able to bridge the gap and drop in some of those. And sometimes you will see the shoulder blade pretty distinctly. You see it a lot more distinct, distinctly and vividly and female characters, their shoulder blades are a lot more evident. So we'll get into that. But again, do some specific studies of that area. From, again, life studies of action, sports is a good thing to reference. So with this diamond here, lots of triangular like Shapes, lots of angles and general W for the lat. Why for the divides here above the scapula? We've covered the shoulder quite a bit. So you should have a good idea that by now would hold a quick cylinder for the upper arm. Obviously it's one more complex than that, but just starting, the other thing is this. I have drawn the trapezius where the right against the spine. Keep in mind that all of this pulls away from the spine. Alright, so really there's a divide to all this. And then you actually can draw a couple of the vertebraes here and there. That's always a kind of a cool look and you can just Shadow to one side and drop those in there. But again, that's a simple shape. You have a medial side of the glutes. So a lot of times you'll see the definition of the glutes kinda dip in and come out like that. Again, starting very angular with that. But there's our, here's our quick representation of the back. I want to distort that. There's that. And just to make a few notes over top. What I will say too is it's gonna be very important when you start to illustrate these. And again, we'll cover this in greater detail, but you're going to want to show the definition of the muscle groups raised up. So actually let me do a quick refinement of this one. We're going to turn this back. But what I want to do is show you hopefully that the you want to really get the volumes going. Was an area like this. For one, as is, muscles are going down the back but dipping N, right? So that's going to be a noticeable difference from what we see here. This is going to look pretty flat even as I introduce some wine way. But we have to really envision that this area of the back is receding away from our view. It's not all flat. The trapezius would be the furthest out. They need to appear the highest on all these forms. Remember, if you want things to look a little more natural, tried to break up the lines a little bit. Something like that. And kinda speeding through this. I don't wanna take too much time, just some PR example. And this isn't gonna be our finished finished renditions. This is all just techniques and ideas that I just want you to think about in the real, the real exercises for you to do it. But I do want to show you a little bit of, a little bit of volume on this one. So now what I'll do is add in something for a Shadow layer Like so. And so again, I want you to think about how as you move down the back here, this is all, a lot of this is gonna be placed into shadow. We get a little bit of light hitting the base, but definitely from the bottom. If you were to think about just the lats on somebody, It's really defined this superhero Anatomy. There's just no way you could Shadow that flat. There's no It's not it's, it's like a big barrel or a lot of curvature there. And that's going to cast a pretty big shadow on this information down here. That's really what I wanted to point out. Now, I'll Shadow the rest like so you're gonna get indentations are here. You can probably make the argument. All of this would be in shadow because it's, you get this big trapezius that's casting some Shadow. And keep in mind too, when you Shadow something that you can bring that Shadow into the Form in different ways. It doesn't have to just trace around it. It can be heavier here than it can thin out down to where it collects this other Shadow. But yeah, sometimes you have to. Well, you remember the lesson where I talked about the belly of the muscle. Same kind of concept. That Shadows should reinforce that concept of the belly of the muscle. So just think about like that. Alright, and then go over to here or here. Bottom plane, right there would obviously be a flat plane that would receive no light. So hopefully even this little exercise and Shadow helps you, but I'll do more of them as we render full characters. I know light and shadow can be a nightmare. I know I've struggled with it. Still get my comfort zone there with that, but that is why we practice right over and over and over. Something like that. You could get some of the sides a little bit. Some interior here. Same thing with the glutes there. They're very rounded, right? So I probably could bring the shadow up higher. So it can be think about the way I did the lats now. But just remember if you're really trying to round something out, you're going to bring that Shadow up higher. Doesn't necessarily have to be a round shadow all the way through. So I cut back a different angle. But I do mean I keeps it and I do mean by but it's like you have to bring that Shadow up higher if you want that form to appear larger. So really it made me think more about this. Like maybe I can even bring that up a bit higher because this is, to me in my mind of visioning this illustration, the bank is very large right here. If I put the same way to shed on everything, it flattens right out. So I have to think of ways to be creative and say, well, maybe it could put a little bit heavier shadow here. Shoulders are pretty spherical. I could really bring that Shadow up higher there. I want to show the difference from the shoulder to the triceps. Maybe put a shadow here first. In online, you go with that. So hopefully that starting to make sense plus probably wouldn't be bad to check it from a distance. You also do have a bit of divide and definition here. I feel like that's a little too much, but it is there. So pay attention to that and your anatomy books as well. But again, I want to show you more from a stylistic standpoint, so I'm not gonna go too crazy with this. Yeah, Let's say right about there. So that gives us back illustration for the male character. The females just the same as the difference of proportions. But let's go ahead and do one of the Female character to have that on file as well. So what that Let's move forward. 13. Back of the Female Torso: Alright, welcome back. So now I don't wanna do is talk about the, the back of the Female Torso will start the line down the middle. And again, we're just going to keep this really straight for now. But we'll get into some more dynamic versions. So don't worry. This is established two circles for the shoulders. You could draw the simplified rib-cage if you want. Mainly just a sort of V or start the hourglass shape, right? So you'd go down into here and attach the hips to this one. Just kidding you. An hourglass kind of form. You could draw the floating underwear. Just make sure the rural difference. As you start this especially will mainly if you're drawing this from the front, I guess, but you still want to think about it, this steeper angle that you get in the female body like that, but this is gonna be from the back, so we'll put in the glutes over this. But if you were to get to about here, we could do a little attachment. The arms. Always find it helpful to draw like the neighboring muscle group or appendage or any of those things. My goal is to stop here. I almost feel like I need the neck here to define this because all these muscles run into each other, right? So muscles, bones, everything. It's all, it's all different landmarks that you need in relation to the neighboring bit of anatomy. So what I want to show here is that the typically in a female that's relatively lean, maybe not even that. I mean, it's usually pretty noticeable that the scapula Female character is just a lot more discernible for the most part than men. Not, not always, there's never an always scenario here, but I tend to notice that you see the scapula pretty well-defined. So it's almost like maybe because of a lower overall muscle mass, you're seeing more of the bony structures for more predominantly. It really depends. You can have a sheet hall type of character, right? And you're going to pack on the trapezius and it's gonna go right over top is, or maybe you show both. But it's almost like they fight for a little bit of dominance. Now, in an illustration that's tilted, then it's easier to pick your, pick the area that you want to discern. So for instance, we come over here and we say, okay, we're going to angle back, alright, well, then you're probably going to pick one. Pick like the shoulder blade this time. It's not that I'm not going to draw the trapezius. Of course they're gonna be there. It shows I might get the maybe going after the effect where the scapula is more raised. Now, there's certain poses where that happens. Flexing the shoulders back, I guess would pinch the trapezius together. Really, it's almost like when you flare your scapula all. So if you roll your shoulders forward, it does it. But again, I feel like on the female characters, it's just more noticeable. Now keep in mind to the spine of scapula as part that would come up like this. Lead off to the deltoid, the trapezius. It's right along that. So that's a really great landmark for the bag, which I believe I've already alluded to that. But then obviously you have these other muscles that are on top. But again, if you're if you're going for a skinnier female or one that doesn't have as much muscle mass and definition, then I would probably I probably wouldn't do a whole lot of definition right here. So we get kinda like that Y shape. And it's as simple as that. Obviously, there's some bulk their to each of those areas. But I would probably shy away from that and I'd go more like this. And then you'll get the curvature of the spine. So you have these also, you have these muscles right through here and they almost look like they would be the latissimus dorsi are the lattes but it's not, it's actually the erector spinae. I couldn't remember last time I was talking about the back, but I always call it the lower lumbar region. But the erector spinae. They have these two muscles that go right along your, your vertebrae all the way up the back. But they're more Predominant in a, generally on lean females, I mean, lean individuals nonetheless, but, but you see it really evidently in lean females. It's almost like That's just one of their more dominant muscles that shows true supports the spinal that but it looks like it's a lot because really the lack comes down like something like this. But I didn't show you that in the previous illustration. As far as with lead as I showed you, the W effect, the simplified shapes. Because I want you to look at the volumes, not really knowing exactly where they insert and which ones layered here and there will talk about some of that. But it's really not pertinent information to Drawing while at least I don't I don't believe so. I've never, you know, a lot of this stuff I've learned more recently and I think I was already drawn it pretty decently enough. Now, the knowledge is always great. I'm never going to say it's a bad thing to learn this stuff. But I want to teach you the things that are going to get you up and running the fastest gets you Drawing well. And you can always go back and keep studying, which I do recommend. So we'll get like the glued in here because it looks kinda funny. We got like a twisted character here. For the glutes just when I start rounded right in this area, as I mentioned on the male character, you really have this kind of, we have this medial head to the glutes. It's off to the side like that. So you'll get a bit of definition here. But I don't know that you need a lot of it. And then the, the main thing that is super important besides obviously the hourglass figure, but it's where you get that. So you get that from the bone coming out like we talked about, like this. And so make sure that you widen it out and then taper back in. You can generally get pretty soft. Good luck to the character, the female form like that. Just by thinking about that. So again, we know the trapezius comes in through here. Dip sound, and you get that separation. You get that little diamond up here. That's all. It's all the same Anatomy. It's just different proportions and definition. And ultimately, it looks so different because of the fact that again, it'd be too redundant here. But essentially when we have low muscle mass and body fat and general, we're going to start to see more of the bony landmarks, but it therefore, it's almost confusing. It makes you think that something's different about the anatomy because it looks vastly different from that. But I would really zero in on paying attention to the shoulder blades for shot like this. And then also, when you go to do your form studies, you're going to practice raising those with your shadows and everything else. I feel like I got the upper area a little too wide. Next see to, i've, I've illustrated this with one curvature. That's not as realistic obviously, but again, we're talking a little bit more about Stylized drawings, right? So let's recap here with the, the actual shapes that I would look for. I think it's super important to pay attention to the spine of scapula. It's a great landmark for looking at those bees and the body. The back, there's a lot of bees, lot of angles to pay attention to. It gives you that at point at which you can pay attention to the angled downward to the back, but also relates really well to the deltoid. Do variations where you try the muscle more defined over top of the scapula and then do some versions where the shoulder blades are higher and more pronounced. The lat probably look issues More to find a little bit more like that. Remember the lat does go all the way down to here, but again, it's, it's kinda like a W shape for the lat as far as the simplified form. And then a bit of a V, I would say the scapula really probably rounds out more like this. If you're being more realistic. Again, that's not the way I draw them, so I'll just show you the Stylized way to it. It's more like a V and a hook over. These coincide dependent on the way the arms flexing one's gonna be more dominant looking. So play around with that. And again, these are just kinda like tubes running down the back. They usually fade off as they go up. Some people have really defined muscles there and it goes up pretty high. So there's variation to that. You get a little bit of a V right here. We have the divided a little high there. And for the glutes I typically again, a teardrop idea that I mentioned before what the breast like, it's, it's better than just going to awfully round. And also square. And then really paying attention to the hourglass Form. I guess we could say that it's roughly the same, at least the way I've done it. I guess I made the hips a little bit wider. And obviously there's gonna be lots of variation there. So your play around with that as well. Yeah, that's it. And then as far as the arms coming out, remember that they kind of tilt outward a little bit. So as we get into illustrations where we draw more advanced poses, it's good to pay attention to things like that, that they're not they don't connect and go straight down. And even if they did, even if the arms are straight down to the side, you would still see a little bit of this angling out. So I'll point that out as we do other illustrations. So let's go ahead and stop here, head over to the next lesson and continue on. 14. Back of the Torso Refinement: Okay, welcome back. So now we'll go ahead and clean this up. And so what I'm looking for here is just to obviously refining the lines, get a bit of smoother curvatures. And here, one thing I will say too, I practice a lot trying to get a hand control. And I see him doing a little bit more of a Sketching right here. So Sketching and connecting the lines end over end. I've worked a long time to be able to do that. Now, it's probably more efficient to practice like AB type strokes. And I'll talk more about that as we clean up Line Work and refine it. But it's just like getting used to putting one point down, either visually on the page or just in your mind, and then throwing the line from a to B. So again, I'll show it more in detail. Maybe come up with some practice activities for it because it really is worth doing. But there's other methods as well. So like softwares like this have stabilization features, things like that. Some have curved tools with Bezier handles. Now maybe you're working traditionally and that doesn't apply to you. But then probably the best tool for you as a French curve. And I never got used to it myself probably because I switched to digital and was able to do a lot this way. And also because I practice, like I mentioned, really getting my hand control down where I can usually get the lines that I want within reason. Not all perfect. Obviously, it does take me more revisions where somebody that's really good with a French curve can really jump in and nail these spots a lot quicker. I've seen people that just, they almost worked miracles with them is just amazing how fast they can discern the part of the curve they need. And then they map it to their work and draw through it. It's really impressive to see. Again, it's not a skill set I could share with you. But I at least wanted to mention that because I do get a lot of students that say they have a hard time getting the line clarity that they want. Also, I've even seen people use French curves on top of digital displays like this, which is kinda while. Now I'll move over to this other one. And again, I just want to clean these up for it. And I want you to hopefully see into the illustration a bit better. And notice just decisions I've made and what Shapes I'm deciding to accentuate with a heavier line. One of our refining this stuff, I tried to think about obviously the volume of the muscles and the overlaps and things like that. As I mentioned, I think it's really good for you to practice doing different studies of the scapula area and the trapezius. Somewhere they're pushing away, somewhere they're pulling towards. And you're seeing the different ways that the muscle groups move. But I will be sharing as many of these different variations as I can with you. So this particular one, I want to show you an arm raised. So I'm going to start with the deltoid. And here I'm going to work back to the trapezius. But keep in mind, I'm also thinking about the collarbone on the other side. So I feel like you're not going to see much of the collarbone maybe like a little bit right here. But it's it's in my mind as far as placement. So again, these bony landmarks are really helpful. So the spine of scapula, which is right about there and it's going to sit just below the trapezius. And then that clavicle on the other side. Those are really good place holders to fit the other muscle groups in and around. So I really recommend that you, if nothing else, learn the bony landmarks. Like there's just a lot of ways that they help you to pull this all together. So the other thing is when the arms raised, the scapula pops out, jets out a little bit. So that's why I wanted to draw this version where you see that it's not completely stationary like other parts of the body might be in respect to different parts of the body. Like a lot of it has rotary movements in different things like that. But the scapula has a lot of range of movement and it affects all of these muscles quite significantly, quite noticeably. So what I'm doing here is just drawing the trapezius around the scapula and trying to show some of the way it might flex from a movement like this. And again, just try to give you an idea of what things you might look for and what you might study when you go to your own versions. So always look for these poses that when you go to do your figure drawing or your Comic Art from Figures and your stylization, whatever it is. Look for those poses that you see an intermediate like, Wow, that looks interesting to me, that looks different. Or maybe it intrigues you. Maybe it's something about it. You're looking at kind of scratching your head about Walden, that is a perfect opportunity to study that particular thing. Quite, quite a lot like to really slow down and pay attention to it. Zero in on whatever it is you don't understand. Lately for me, it's really been a lot of the back muscles because it's so easy in Comics and illustrations to always draw these cool characters forward-facing or shooting off to the side. You don't have as much of a need for drawing the bag. But especially if you're drawing a lot of Cape Crusaders, right? They're all wearing keeps over the back anyways. But that's why we have to be diligent and take note of that and condition ourselves to Draw the things that we could easily get away from. And then I know in my mind, the next thing for me is like I really have to sit down and draw more vehicles. I avoid them. There's techniques to just get through the day and not have to draw them, draw them other ways and use software has all kinds of things. But it's not going to make me any better. So it's one of my, my things that I might conditioning that I want to achieve. I want to be able to draw them in a very competent manner. So that means taking time, not avoiding them. And again, poses like these. Not always exciting to do these types of studies. I think. I mean, I actually enjoy them, but I can see where a lot of people wouldn't like. That's not what I want to Draw right now. I want to draw some cool super villain, some awesome bond superhero. But zeroing in on certain things like just paying attention to the scapula. Just just like taking note of that one area and then drawing it over and over and then picturing what it would look like if you move them together, if you drew the arms at a different position and then researching and finding the source material. You need to go with that if you can't draw it, alright, so you can know a lot of these parts of the puzzle and then still not be able to envision it because the body is just that complex. It's a lot of things going on here. But if you do keep studying these parts of the puzzle and you do keep our structuring these things and redrawn them and all sorts of different angles, it will start to make sense. I mean, there's a lot more that I can draw from memory than I could a few years ago. And that just came from a lot of studying in a lot of patients. And also just being excited to keep drawing the same thing over and over. I mean, it's, it's kinda tough because you're like God, drawing the human body over and over and over. But it's, no, it's something about it is so interesting that I guess you don't get bored of it anyways, because there's that much to learn about it. Whenever. There's that much to learn about something that's pretty hard to get bored. So here I'm just trying to point out that section of the muscles that you might see from the back here. So, but again, i'm, I'm gonna pull away from this because I'm trying to show you really the stylistic way that I would draw this. And this is about as far as I would go. Now, I could get in there and add more of those muscles and I could definitely do that. But it's not to me, it's not always necessary. Like I really want to, I really want to put down just enough to convey a good illustration, but not so much where it just becomes a distraction. So when we talk about like focal points and we'll definitely get into that more as we do more character concepts. You really don't want detail everywhere just for the sake of detailing. I think that it can be oppressive or you can think in your mind That's impressive to the viewer. But it's really a distraction in it. They don't know what to really zero in on what studies like this. Really, I don't need there to be detail everywhere. I just need enough detail to convey the sense of Anatomy, the, the feeling of musculature where it needs to be detailed that and that's why you're going to see me when I do this stuff, I like to use line breaks, like to use line weight. A lot of that is directional. A lot of it is like, Hey, look over here. This is what I want you to see are this is what I'm really focused on in this part of the drawing. If not, I would probably trace everything with one big flat line. Well, I don't know. I wouldn't do that anyways because it really is just a boring Look where line Weight in and of itself just looks better when it's has a sense of variety to it, I think. But again, the allotted this to you when you're drawing this stuff is kind of a sense of focal points and intensity. Because again, if I put like heavy Shadows everywhere, it wouldn't have the same effect or appeal than if I used a few heavy shadows and some choice areas and some nice strong light source on the other side. Then it all sorts to make sense and read better. So yeah, it's, it's just a matter of finding that balance and your work. So hopefully these illustrations are giving you some ideas on how you can draw the Female Torso. And Let's go ahead and wrap up here, head over to our next lesson and continue on. 15. Gesture Drawing: Welcome back. So now we're going to talk about Gestures. And so gesture is something that we should practice all the time obviously. And you should practice it in life. From Comics, everything, you can see everything and get your eyes on Leg going to Pinterest and capture and some good Gestures. But also you want to really experiment that coupled with Thumbnail Sketching. And you want to express lots of ideas really quickly. So there's all sorts of things to pay attention to a gesture. A lot of times people will say go for the spine, girlfriend action line, like the most dramatic curve through the body and work out from there and try to throw your lines, throw your curves. Now, when I really tried to do this quite fast, I end up with something a little too whimsical. I don't know. Almost like I'm drawing a flowing thing and obviously doing this without reference. I'm just grabbing some idea out of my head. But coupling that with gesture is so it can sometimes be a little bit on effective. It's important to do this. One of the things I really like about this is trying to simplify something like a Leg with as few lines as possible. And you say I'm going a bit angular here and I should probably be using more organic. Let's try that again with something organic. So you can see that just by doing that. So that's the Leg for me, right? And it's a very simplified approach. It's neat to test yourself and see what you can come up with with as few strokes as possible. So that's one part of it. You're almost always gonna get something that feels a bit more gestural when you do that. And you're gonna be a lot faster as long as you don't go back and try to fix it, you start getting in here and trying to refine little bits and pieces. So there's this idea of forward momentum with it as well that I think is important to latch onto the way that I do it as I draw smaller because then I can get more on the page. And I also like to express a lot of different ideas and I might default to something very typical at first, I think that I do More often than not. So if I'm trying to get a quick sketch, something that feels hopefully energetic and somewhat gestural, but more comic book like I do it with a lot of basic shapes. Sometimes I'll lean more towards some stick figures. It just depends on the current pose. But I'll admit that I typically default back to something very repetitive, very safe. I guess in my mind, like I just kinda go for some pose that I've seen over and over again. So that's what you see me doing here. I tried to interconnect with Basic Shapes. I tried to explore a little bit of perspective in the Poses wall. I might do a little bit of a tiny bit of a background if it makes sense with this weird stance or something. So that's my quick thumbnail sketch that I do for Comics. And it's, it's really suits me. So again, it was kinda like that gestural thing I just showed you at the Leg. But I might do an Arm Pose to blow that up for you. As simple as something like this. That's my shorthand method for an arm. You see allow us shapes we've been talking about kinda present themselves in here. But it's a very crude version of an arm. The reason being is I could take that and I can maneuver that really quickly to all sorts of different poses. And now I'm drawing bigger intentionally to, to help illustrate this point for you. But remember that smaller is better for speed and you are a lot less likely to get in here and try to fix things where if it's bigger, it's like maybe it should refine this fine that and all sudden you're not in the gesture all conceptual mode anymore in my own opinion. So let me get rid of these. What is my Undo button? Doesn't my tabs don't work the way they should. Love it. Okay, so right here, and so let's just knock out a few of these. And so what I really expect you to do to, hopefully you will do, is try to draw a bunch of these and just really have FUN with it. And after you warm up, you'll feel it that you start to get a little bit more of a sense of fluidity to it and range of movement. So you might try a different camera angles. I'm going to draw a little bit bigger than I normally would, just so that you can see it more clearly. But because I never know what somebody might be on a smaller device, but, but again, smaller is better. Okay, so here's another thing, just like you would practice different gesture drawings at different speeds. So what the speed does is it forces you to make some quicker decisions, right? Because you're kinda timing yourself and like, well, I don't have time for any refinement here. So I'm just going to grab the big strokes and move on. So just like that's super effective for figure drawing, it's also really effective for this sort of Comic gestural drawing. But also to Draw smaller. If you're drawn smaller, it's a lot easier to cover larger spaces, right? I love drawing little tiny thumbnails of the entire scene, background, everything. And it gets pretty murky in hard to read at times. But it's super beneficial. Also try to really stretch the spine. So maybe draw the spine first. You get that curvature of the spine. If that ribcage in there really stretch the Pose to the point of where it almost looks broken. So I say, Well, I don't want a bunch of broken looking characters, but at the same time, you draw a Comics. So you really want to see where that limit is before the character breaks and then pull back from there. But you do want to go to extremes because it's dynamic comic book Art. So you need to really push things. So sometimes I'll put a Leg really high up where most poses, you're not going to see something like that. But in Comics, and it probably are. It's like a realm of pass, belief, suspension of disbelief, I think it said, but you want to really stretch these ideas. Hyperextend. Bring that head way back on a pose like this so that you get this kind of ultra heroic feel to the character. Bring a leg way back and if it's broken and you just don't use that pose. But again, this is, and I really shouldn't be going back to your us. Nothing about this as you want to try to move forward no matter what. Now there's a couple of ways to do that. One, which is you could start with a very thin line and get that Pose down. And then you could come back over top of the heavier line. But really it's maybe just err on the side of a thinner line. You see I'm using kind of an ink line here. And then just avoid the idea of fixing and racing. You're gonna get some bad ones. The more, it's more important that you get a nice variation. So let's try like even different proportions. Let's try like, it's good to go onto this with a very distinct idea. So I'm gonna have like a whole Clip character thrashing his hands down, maybe that one that you see where they're blasting the ground and ground cracks open, right? I'm going to jump in there. And illustrate that. My very crude boxy forms. That chest way down, head could probably go lower. So to move their head, I'm just going to redraw right through it. Little bit darker. Knees would probably be out to the side. I don't know if they'd be up that high. It's going to bring them way up here. But I feel like that's a bit much. So I'm going to undo it. Shouldn't be doing that, right. But I'm just going to bring those down to here. Now another neat thing about doing this, and again, the speed of it is that you can always go back and do iterations as well. In fact, I find myself doing that a lot. I would say it's one of the more I want and if I bring the feet there, then the hands aren't low enough, right? So what kind of messed up there? So Alright, let's just use an iteration here instead of redrawn this. So we'll say he was just praying in his hands together and clapping them. But I'm going to work off of this and say, okay, but that wasn't right. Okay, so let's try it again. Iteration. Maybe you could even change the camera angle at a point like this. Let's bring his backup higher than the head. I think that's part of the shoulders. You need to be really low. So the collarbone is gonna be way down here. These are hinting towards the trapezius. I'm going to bring these fists right out here. Draw those first. Sometimes I'll draw like this and work back. Again. This is meant to be more of a development of an idea, not a Refinement. So I got to really avoid that. Let me fix the arms. Arms don't want great. I don't know if this like the spacing here, right. That's not how it's going to end up. Okay, It's not how I do foreshortening, but for here, it makes sense to just let it go. You know what? I didn't I didn't start with the feet. The feet needed to be at the hand plane, maybe even a little bit higher dependent on the perspective Because he's hitting the ground, right? In fact, I'll do this little crack or something. Figure would be a little more of a zigzag and cracked and grown impact shot. Simple as that. Now the feet are gonna be way back here, maybe even cover those with the impact shot. So if I'm gonna do that, I need to think about how to work back from there. And again, sometimes I'll even draw those feet first as a placeholder, just like I did the hands. And then I'll work into these shapes and see if I can connect the dots. Right here. This would actually be all covered up by private placement and Shadow. But hopefully you see that by doing it like that, we're able to work from this, create an iteration and get to this. Not the prettiest drawing I know, but at the same time, it helped me develop an idea that gives me a blueprint for that Pose. And had I been drawn this larger, I might have maybe stayed here and move the legs around it. And that did a real iteration. So keep that in mind that this also is great for just iterations of these ideas. I probably different way to say it, but that's how I'm going to say. So now let's try another one. Let's try something I don't draw enough of the back of the characters. So let's draw the back. It's bringing Arm all. You can combine this with that stick figure kind of approach. Normally this curvature of the spine and try to keep it fast. Also, a good thing about this as well is experimenting with Ben's of the arms and limbs that you normally wouldn't. So I default a lot to this kind of arms out thing. It does match a lot of superhero type drawing, but at the same time it can be a bad habit. So like right here pulling this leg back, it's easy to add these shifts when you're drawing very representative like this, very loose. So take advantage of that where again, if you're drawing bigger, you might not break out of your comfort zone quite as much. And you might find yourself just drawing a little same poses that you know you can draw. Feel safe and get you to the part where you can start adding all the Fun details and get, get the Art finished. But yeah, there's, there's a lot to be said for just doing this and letting it laying there be a wonky looking foot, doesn't matter. This is like the no judgment zone of drawing. That's what I like to think of it as usually less likely to share these because of that. Now also another good thing to practice here is your perspective. So as I mentioned, moving the camera regularly see these are all relatively straight on. Don't underestimate the ability to just draw on some kind of basic idea perspective like this. If you want. Some people need this, some don't. Draw this box like prism. And then just draw your character through it or rounded or whatever sitting on it, standing next to it, whatever it is. But just give yourself the opportunity to play around with this. And also try to shift the Torso from the direction of the head. Things like that and make a relatively boring Pose more interesting. Stacking the head, torso, and pelvis. Again using that little bit of a stick figure approach. Because of this plane, this box like prism, I have an idea of where to attach the feet. Here's just kinda signal with his hands on his hips, right? Just to start with the stick figure, some basic Shapes. Keep it simple. Practice drawing through all the complexities that you might think over the poles like this. But again, that little prism gives us that reference point that find it to be a lot easier. If I, if I draw this Pose with that little box, let's say, and I couldn't get it relatively close because I've drawn poses like this a lot. But at the same time it becomes a lot easier with these little references to perspective. And again, this simplification just makes it that much better. So there you go. Give this a try, try. Lots of variation, will do more of these and we'll also explore how to develop them passes point-like grabbing one and building up with all the other techniques we've talked about. Let's go ahead and stop here and head over to our next lesson. 16. Gesture to Pose Refinement: Welcome back. So now I don't wanna do is show you how to take one of those smaller sketches and refine it and blow it up. So let's start with something that's pretty maybe iconic or typical. Had kind of angled down. Body, gestured over just a little bit with the shoulder. The fittest kind of flexing and tilted sideways. This tough guy pose that you see a lot in Comics. Throwing some basic shapes just to get a sense of the Anatomy like that. So again, the head's tilted away from the Torso, which gives it a little bit more of a dynamic feel like that, maybe a little bit of the back. And bring that midsection or lower, upper, mid, mid section of the body up here, but more. So you can really try to get the curvature here. Maybe push that a bit further. So there we go. So you see how quick that was? It's very tiny. So let's say that you do a bunch of these sketches and you could really stay here and try to do some variations. But I think this one will work just fine for what I'm looking for. So what I would do is just take that, blow it up. Alright. Not really worried about the distortion right there because it's it's pretty crude, especially when you blow it up. I mean, look how bad that is. But it has the overall gesture that I'm looking for. So I'll just turn that back. Then. Now clean that up. And uncle for the big shapes first. You see I'm still kinda scratching through it, Sketching through it. Mainly because I feel like if I sit here and sketch through my drawings a couple of times, I'm exploring the possibilities. But if I got in here with a very distinct set of lines like this, I'm not seeing it wouldn't come out okay. Because again, I've done this stuff for awhile, so I should be able to come close to something good. And I'm going to save a bunch of time. But I'm not there yet. I feel like I still want to explore connection points. A little bit of a Shapes, the proportions. So I'm still doing one more rough iteration through this. But again, this gives me enough to kind of work from and get to that next level of the drawing. Remember the football like shape for the bicep, tricep up higher on the back of the Arm. I'm going for a little bit of a stylized representation of all this obviously comes up like this. The middle there. Remember what these rap towards the thumb? So if the thumb is up in the air like this, then these are going to point over to this point right here. So just remember that kind of relationship. And then these muscles spin to the back of the hand. Suppose we bring this hand up like this, kinda start with a blocky series of Shapes for the hand there. Get the elbow one place on the elbow goes to the the back, the other side of the wrist. We can do something like that and kind of pinpoint that you get a little bit of the ribcage in there. For that kinda tough guy local angle the head down. Now these parts like this, the oval on the side of the head, the lines for the cheekbones are roughly, it's not really cheekbones, but it's a guide for that. I'm really thinking about plane changes. Plane change of the Front of the head and all of that comes out. Or it helps you for the refinement stage of illustrating a full-on character. So we're going to first do a variety of these almost mannequin like illustrations. Just to get you to a hopefully a comfort level. Tori understand this process and then we'll do some Refinement. Stomach muscles right about here. And so hello, this is body's pretty much what I was after. The only thing I'm not really liking, but so long. A couple of things rather the proportions for one. Something like the the chest feel like it could be much lower, much bigger. Maybe it's that Try to fix that. Maybe even raise the shoulder up a little higher. I feel like I could push the the gesture a little bit more. I don't know if maybe bringing the waste back a little bit might do that. Let's try that. I think that's helping a little bit where we're getting more of a sense of I was draw through this just to show you. We're getting a little bit more this kind of shape going on. So that kind of lean essentially. So yeah, let's go ahead and take this now and clean it up one more time. And I think this will give us what we need. I'm going to bring that over. And I'm gonna make a copy of that. And I will turn that on back. Draw through it one more time. Okay, so now the swollen nudging lines around. Again, keeping the shapes pretty simple. You can also practice throwing the lines for cleaner effects. So if you're starting to see the illustration at whatever stage of your work, you're feeling confident about some of these directions, then you can start practicing nice clean strokes from like point a to point B. So I would picture from here to here, throw that line here to here. And usually I can get this angle. One stroke, something like that. This isn't for every style. It just depends on what you're after for your style, but this generally will give you a cleaner look for your end result. But it's a little bit more shape-based. I feel like when you do this, more defined shapes basically. But again, I don't draw this way when I'm still trying to figure this stuff out. So I sketch more when I'm trying to design and work through a part of the illustration. And then as I start to feel a little bit more confident about it, I may jump to throwing lines from, again, like an a to B, kinda perception of my mind. 0.8 point B, point a to point B. They're not always big jumps. And you see when I sketch, I get just that right. A lot of weird overlaps and stuff like that just has a different look. I think what's interesting too as well, when doing this is trying to get some mirror line Weight in at the same time. It takes a little practice, but you can throw these these lines and try to, not only to worry about the angle you get with just a little bit of the line Weight at the same time. There we go, get this shoulder blade side of the bag popping through. Another thing is like little areas like this. I just feel like this will look better. Have that on a separate layer. I feel like this would look better if it had just a little bit of a downshift. So sometimes these small changes like this can make the Anatomy look a little bit more impressive. I'm having a hard time getting there. So just that little bump right there. I feel like it looks a little bit better than just gone down smooth end to that area. So again, play around with little shifts and the Angles, they're all sorts of PFK-1 ways to be inventive here. Now you see the areas that I didn't throw the wine as confidently have to go back and clean up. I guess I don't have to. I could just leave it. You see, I don't have any definition from the anterior head to the medial head. So probably throw a segmentation right in about here. And I gotta be honest, I don't have a set rule for where I put those. I mean, obviously the medial heads right up the middle like that. But I play around with all sorts of variations. Sometimes you're getting here and go really crazy with it and add lots and lots of little definition shifts. So it's it's up to you to play around with that. But yeah, I don't really have a set rule there. I would say for a different characters too, I add more or less. So if it's a clean cut character, Hero ask, maybe I don't go so far with it, but for the villains and the kinda grittier character designs, I'll go a lot farther with it. So there is that there and I'm trying to draw more of a profile, the hand, but I feel like I could almost get away with either maybe the middle knuckles lot higher. You can almost put that on the other side here. Or it could raise up one of the fingers like this. I don't know. I feel like I'm just going to go with the basic profile shot like this. I guess I could get a little bit of the other poem and like that, or I could even maybe play around with the other knuckles showing on the side like that. Just say anything to make it not look so flat. But I think I'm just gonna go with that part. Let me abdominal muscles down to here. The obliques little bit of a implied love handle without putting that bump there, as I mentioned earlier. And then let's see the center line to the head. Side plane change of the side of the head. Then the downward slope, alignment for the eyes and the brow. Because that just makes you kinda tough guy look and Pose. And then the plane change of the cheekbones. So I feel like all that stuff is important to show you because I, mainly because I do it every time. So when I go to draw my characters, I put all these little bits of information that I'm showing you right now, go into that. Cleaning this up religious redraw. It was pretty messy in here. So you see, I started to get a little bit more confident with the winemaking. As I went through this, at first, I felt like I was still Sketching and kinda finding these ideas. So yeah, there's always a few iterations to clean things up. And that's essentially how would take it from. Let's see which one we have here. From that there to that. And let me actually drop in, will go ahead and clean this up one more time or at least dropping a implied Shadows for you. So with that, let's move on to our next lesson. 17. Line Weight and Shadows: Hi, welcome back. So actually before we get to the Shadows, I want to show you how to clean up the line Weight so it's pretty, pretty close right here. But I like to have a few more details. And I just kinda go back and check things. So I might add a little bit more line weight on the base of some of the muscles. So generally line Weight is on the bottom line, Weight is on the curvature. Line Weight is heavier on the perimeter of the character versus the anterior. And that's probably the big one that I'm seeing here, is that if I don't make sure to bump that up, a lot of the lines on the inside are kinda too heavy by comparison. Let me explain it like right here with the Form. If I put a nice heavier line here, are weighted line there. And also right on the base of the Arm here. It starts to make the interior. The interior lines look a bit thinner, which I feel like is necessary. So with line Weight, I've heard to explain a lot of different ways. Even one time I heard an artist mentioned, they just go back and forth, thick to thin to thick to thin all the way around. And it was the only thing they had kinda mentioned and I thought that was crazy. But then another one that I heard, and I don't think it was the same artists, but it coincides with the way of thinking of the one I'm telling you about where they were going to pick them tick the the other one said something. The effect of it's just, it's just better to have it did not have it like you should. If you don't know where to put it, just put it somewhere in. Always have the Line going back-and-forth, thick to thin. But they didn't really mentioned like where. And then other artists I've learned from have mentioned. You put it on the shadow side. He put it on the heavier side of the muscle. One of my favorite artists time and for him even said at one point, you put it on the curve that's bending outward the most. So all these things are a little bit different perception of it. One thing I would say most, if not everybody I've heard speak about line Weight, agree upon is that the outside line should be heavier than the interior lines. So the perimeter line should be heavier than all this interior stuff? I would say I agree with that. I really agree with all of them, honestly, because it just adds some more interesting effect. Now the other thing is that if an object is closer to the viewer, you want to put a nice heavy line Weight on that. So simple that, something as simple as the Arm Right there. Notice how by making it heavier right there, it feels like that forearm or the biceps is coming out towards us a bit. You can really do that all the way through a working forward to back. So you'd say, well, this one needs to be even heavier. And another thing that I want to say is that a lot of people underestimate how heavy line Weight can really be. There's some styles that really take it quite far and I absolutely love it. I feel like it's just a neat way to propel the work off the page. So yeah, definitely experiment with it. I mean, throwing some nice heavy lines here and there. Even experiment with the interior lines and say, well, this part of the chest is closer to us then this part. So I'm going to make it just a little bit thicker right there. This is a perimeter edge, so I'm going to make it heavier on the shadow side of the pectoralis. On and on it goes, this is, this, this is closer than all this other stuffs. Want to put a nice heavy line right around it. And I'm also going to make it have a little bit of variation by itself as well. So I'm going to put like maybe a bigger angle here, little bit thinner and then have it get wider again as it goes towards the thumb. Have you get wider as it comes to this part of the thumb and kind of does a little point. So you can shaped and sculpt these line weights, all sorts of PFK-1 ways. And again, it just makes it look more interesting. And I think I feel like I want to even one of those points right back here on the tricep, even though it wouldn't really have a point like that, alright, but it's kinda funny to explain it that way. You can also make these areas heavier just based upon muscle definition along with this nice, strong looking shoulder, I would definitely make it heavier around the neighboring muscle versus a a a wrinkle or striation. So there's that as well. So you can even get inside the interior forums and play around with the variation as well. All sorts of PFK-1 ways to utilize this stuff. I would say there'll be careful on the interior forms not to go too awfully crazy because then it takes away the the luster or the effect of the line Weight on the outside, which I feel like it's a little more important. So there's that clean up the head shape here a little bit more. I get a bit too messy in there for my taste. Okay, so now back to what I said. Let's apply that Shadow. But now I get something that I feel pretty good about as far as working through the Pose. Remember, we started with a very small sketch. We will find it tried to push some of the gesture around a little bit. It's a simple poles, but it's iconic. It's something that you're gonna see a lot and probably use once or twice and your own work. So it's, it's good to know these. And again, I think if we do more of this type of stuff where you get to see some basic Gestures at work. Then hopefully it'll lead, lead you up to the more advanced stuff and just give you a base of understanding that will allow you to draw the more complex poses. But notice a lot to be sad for these iconic ones, the ones that you see and Comics over and over again. There's a reason they are in those reason they work, they carry a certain mood or they work in a shot well for a certain set of reasons and he has. And with that, I really want to say, Take your time to study these iconic shots from great artists of Meier and do these running out of better there and do these breakdowns that we're doing here. And basically in the same format, break it down in your own style and use it and don't feel bad about that. That is something that's very important for all of us to do as artists. You're gonna see a lot of growth by studying from others that have mastered certain things that you're not well versed at yet. So never feel bad about that. I see a lot of conflicting information about that. And I think it's just silly. I think it's wrong when people say things like don't copy from other artists, you copy their mistakes. I mean, obviously you want to want to be aware of when they're making mistakes and their work and try to learn from that as well. But at the same time, it seems like you would grow the fastest by studying the, what you consider the masters. And that's been done since the dawn of time with artists and with every skilled trades you can think of. So do not feel guilty about it. You're gonna probably learn the most by it. I know I have. So if there's a Pose I can't get right what I do, I look at other people that do it well, and I draw it in my own style. I don't copy it. I guess it is a copy, but it's a translated copy because I made sure to draw it on my own with these techniques and do breakdowns. And then I tried to change it as well as I go. So it's not a exact duplication. Change in Arm, change of facial expression and change the light and Shadow every, all the above. There we go. Got some shadow there. And I generally will add the shadow like this first and then I'll come back with another layer and ink over top. We'll do that as we get closer and closer to more finished versions. But again, I want to slowly work you up to these concepts so that you feel comfortable. And I just wanted to throw you into the deep end and expect you to swim here. So I'm trying to break this down for you systematically and make sure you let me know what's working for area and what can be better and all that good stuff. I'm always listening for good feedback. I think that's about right. Let's pull back and look at it. Yeah, So that's that's about it. That's about the level I would add. I don't know if I should push out on the Zidel ahead. I like doing this because it helps me to see the plane change with the head. We have to get into that as well as lots of little plane changes that you should really practice taking notice of. So we'll stop it here. Hopefully that gives you a good idea and something to work on with all the techniques that we've studied. But again, play around with these breakdowns, working from your basic sketch all the way up to your, your cleaner liner and your shapes, the Shadows and see what you come up with. So what that will stop here and head over to our next lesson. 18. Angle of the Torso: Welcome back. So another thing we should probably practice and talk about is the twist of the Torso. So the abdominal area, the relationship of the upper the rib cage, the pelvis. There's a lot of range of movement there. So if we don't practice, that will get very stiff. Life was characters won't have a range of movement for the action that we want to portray with our characters, things like that. So what I suggest you do here is practice the floating rib cage. Floating lower pelvis area. Pelvis, I should say. Lower Torso error is what I was thinking. And so you end up with something like this, alright? As a starting point really. But this at least gets you thinking, Well, you know what? There's a nice Arc to the back here. Here's the collarbones. There's the orientation of the pelvis, the orientation of the ribcage, that's shoulders, collarbones, all that good stuff, the sternum here. So there's that difference in orientation. You could say this one's pointing up like this. And this one's pointing something like that. That should at least get you started. Now, we have the abdominal area where there's a lot of twist and contortion that happens right through here, right? Obliques, rectus abdominis, all this good stuff right here. Not only can we twist like this, obviously, we can curl over like that. And so there's just a lot of range of movement there. So again, this is something that you should practice a lot. So let's go ahead and draw a, just an example. So again, I'm going to start with that curvature. You could draw just a bit of an action line through there if you want. And let's do the in that floating replicates. I'm really just going to repeat what I just did, but we'll do it a bit more fine. I just wanted to explain the idea first. And we'll go right through the middle here. And really kinda push this now, again, as I mentioned, it's not just the ability to be oriented differently, it's also the ability to twist and pinch and contour as well. So let's say that we just draw the Leg coming out to here. Like you went out to here and kind of tucked under something like that. Then we'll just put the shoulder is about here. And we'll bring the head back. This maybe just bring the arms back into the ground because that little lightning bolt kind of method, if you want, will attach the press. This. So now we've got a clear distinction. This is just gestural obviously, and we still have to how it's been a mix, I guess there's a mix of gesture and forming here. Mold too much Form to be entirely gestural I guess. But just like this, we can say, okay, we've got enough of this in place. We can clearly see that the front plane of the chest, if where to put a rectangle on it would be pointing up and out this way, right? Where it same thing with the pelvis. It'd be down in this way. So again, it's really helpful to be aware of that and also to do other ones where we do more pinching and extension. So generally even hearing kinda see it. This side is going to have more of a pinch, this side is going to have more of an extension. So another thing that's prevalent in all these different poses when you look at the Torso. But then also, we need to again twist and contort that a bit. But we'll start here because again, I don't want to, I want to overwhelm you too much. Something like this. So now let's take this and bring it over. There's our first iteration. Again, I was trying to think a bit more gesture lay about it, but that's we came up with. And so now we'll go through this and refine this with some more solid forms. It could be cylinders It could be just shapes like so for hands, I like to use this glove technique. Yeah. Just, you know, big broad shapes for these areas. So for the Leg here, I'm going to bring it out and then say okay, or would receive a lower portion of the Leg? Say she's kinda sitting on her foot and foot's tucked back. Again, kinda like the idea of a glove. I'll just do a simple shapes for now. But again, if you need to work out perspective, you can draw through this and you can get in cylinders. Cylinders, you're usually gonna be a lot easier for you to convey a sense of perspective, right? You can even go, some artists go as far as drawing a cube first and then cutting into it with a cylinder, I find that to be a little too much work, but whatever works for us, works for us. Collarbones, remember there they're not really straight. I'm gonna go overly simplified there, but I want to show those. It's a really strong landmark, bony landmark on the Female forums. So I want to get that in there. So now I've got some more implied volumes here. And for the midsection of the stomach will come down into here. Over define that shape. Naval belly bottom be somewhere in there. Okay. So now I've established those. Yeah, I don't know if we'd see the other arm, maybe a little bit of the Arm right there. Maybe we'll say drop it on for now. Remember, you can put these little wrapping lines throughout. Can generally help you figure out the forms. Remember the triangle, finding, the placement of the nipples works out pretty well. And teardrops for the breast. So now we've taken that gestural one and we've added a lot more of a structural design feel to the Pose. So let's take that now. And so at this stage are generally will go in a lot more organically or think more organically about it. So let's go and try that. I do like to use a thinner line at this point as well as I'm trying to figure out the Pose. Now, I did say organically, but keep in mind, I am still going to use angles that I just I'm not confusing there. So what I typically think about is I'm trying to breathe life into this pose. Or as I render it into a style that I like, make it more cohesive with all these things that I've always messy lines. I'm trying to clean it up obviously. But when I say organic, I don't just mean the curvatures. I mean, I definitely mean that because that's what gives it the feeling of organic scan Anatomy and all that. But I still throwing lots of angles based on style. I love what angles do for the work. Sometimes I see work that looks really good, but then it's like curves everywhere. So much soda where it just has too much of a soft feeling to everything. And although there's definitely a time and a place for things to appear soft, they need that rigidness in there as well to kinda counterbalance, I think so. You got to play around with that. And maybe I'll do a lesson specifically in Angular versus organic to explain more what I mean there, but it's something we all have to develop within our style. Figure out what works where there's some general ideas like angles are better for bony landmarks. But not just that. There's, there's times I I see nice sharp angles and muscles as well. So just have to play around with it and see what works for you. So stylistically, I could do a lot of things like just imply certain shapes, certain definitions like so for instance, I guess the stomach muscle here, I wouldn't trace it entirely. I mean, some characters are more defined, but I usually will do something like this where I maybe sculpt the first muscle, wanna get a little bit more curve in there. Something like that. And then I might imply more of the others. So again, like line breaks. I can always go back and soften some of these up even more. Something like that. I might do just a little bit of segmentation across, kind of looking up at this parse and maybe been that upward. But I feel like even that's too much, there's just less is more. Also. I kinda don't like what I did here with the ribs. More. I thought I would probably simplify that and just go with the basic shape. And here it probably just imply some of the serratus like that. Again, if you want the collarbones to look more natural, you put more curvature, but they do tend to look a little bit more straight from an angle like this. So usually when you're looking up at something like that, the curvature will either fade behind the other muscle, like the deltoid will fade behind there. Probably makes more sense. But just, you know, the curve itself doesn't look as noticeable, is still there. You do stuff to put it in if you're going for that natural look. But yeah, it's just a little less noticeable. Shoulders around and then the neck. You usually see a little bit of a dip from the sternocleidomastoid. It goes up the neck, but then there's another little branch of it comes off to the side. Trapezius are gonna be a lot less visible for looking up at this. Mischaracterize my bat. So you see a slow way down right here, a lot more careful about the decisions I'm making. See some people, they can throw lines right through all this really fast. I'm not that at way. I just have to take my time. Now. I generally refine this one more level as well. So you see it's pretty loose and maybe because of that I'm slowing down even a little bit more. But if you're eliminating an entire step and that's still gonna be time-saver. If you're not ready for that, don't feel bad. So again, I want us to tell you like if you're if you need 234 levels of refinement before you can get to the shapes that you're comfortable with, then that's where you're at and there's nothing wrong with that. You'll you'll skip steps as you progress. There's definitely a time not long ago where I couldn't even do this. I couldn't even do it this way. I would need more refinement. And there's times even today with the way I am where I need to go back and say I'm not drawn as well today, I'm not getting those shapes down like I wanted and I just use more levels of refinement. Maybe draw from some reference and study from life and all that good stuff. So it's not, it's not a big deal. Like you just don't want to put that at a pressure on herself thinking that you have to keep up with what you see other people do. There's no there's no way to really quantify if that's even I'm inaccurate comparison. We can't we can't really know what other people did to get good and all that good stuff, how long they'd been at it. Even if they claim certain things, like I just don't I don't think it's a good thing to do those comparisons. Just allow yourself to be we're at, enjoy the journey. Be patient with yourself and you'll get there when you get there. But the main thing is that you enjoy it so you don't give up. You just keep doing it because you love it. And that's, that's the real joy of all this. Let's quit and stop right here. We'll head over to the next lesson and continue refining this Pose. So with that, let's move on. 19. Refinement of the Torso: Welcome back. So now let's go ahead and continue cleaning up this Pose. My brush, right? I'm always adjusting this for different drawings. And as I think I mentioned in a couple of these and I'll continue to mention, I really think a thinner line as you're trying to find shapes and forms seems to be a little bit better. And also I feel like a thicker line seems to be better for the overall gesture. That's might vary based on your style, but something to think about, something to consider. So what I'm trying to do here. So I've kinda let me go back of step just to explain this a bit better. So I started with the glove approach. Okay, So just a mitten luck. Its way to simplify the hand to get a little bit more gestural. And the hand is pretty complex, where a lot of stuff going on there, some basic things to think about. And I'll probably address this in some very specific ham lessons. I think that'll be a nice add onto this content for it, but I'll kind of brief over some of the stuff. Some of the easy ones to remember are that basically a halfway point from the middle finger and it's real noticeable in the poem. So the middle finger is roughly the height of the poems. Little bit awfully. So I'm me anyways, we probably all very there. But it's a good thing to pay attention to. And you see, I've kind of establish that right there. I'm will start there. Obviously, we all know that the middle fingers, the tall one, right? Another thing that's not as evident in people always seem a little bit surprised. I know I was when I first started to pay attention to it. Is, your poem is taller than the back your hand, that the skin in the folds slopes, okay. It's kinda hard to see or maybe you could see it, but it's real noticeable when you just looked at the knuckle, the position of the knuckle, you flip it over like, well, it's way back here because the skin is higher, so that's something to pay attention to, that the palm is taller, that the knuckles sit back further. I guess this is the skin is angled like this. Again, these things, it's really the knuckle placement that plays the biggest role as far as paying attention that now the other thing is, is it your knuckles? One back here, that's hidden. Alright. This one of the thumb lines up pretty well, not exactly to these tip of your thumb lines up pretty well on exactly these. And notice the arch or ARC. And also that's something to pay attention to as well. And then obviously for the tips of the fingers, It's a bit more of an angle there to there. But anyways, the thumb relationship is very important to the knuckles. So you can bring that tip of that thumb right to those first row and not close within Arc. Okay. Forgive me. It's hard for me to I'm trying to look at the video so I can make sure I'm on camera. It's hard for me to get the ARC the way that I want to show you there. So anyways, those are some of the general proportion principles that we can think about what the hand, there's other things like the hand is roughly. I've heard people say two-and-a-half for the forearm. But I don't know. I think that that's that's kinda tricky because some people just have really big hands. Some people probably have longer limbs and shorter hand is smaller hands. So I would say roughly two hands, but I think the role that most people go by or guideline I should say, is about two-and-a-half. So again, all those things kinda help. Even right here, I can start getting in the AHRQ a bit. I could play around with the the distance right off the bat. So you'd say, well, you know what, I'm gonna make the polymer at longer this way. Then to here. I still want a nice gestural field of the hand. So maybe I do a couple iterations. Remember what I said about the thumb being to this first row and knuckles. So this is the row in the hand or consider in the hand is the first row. The next row, the thumb lines up to his right there. And I usually will do two divides. And then I can always add that third divide. Especially for Comics, are simplifications because I think it's really the tricky part about getting hands right, is getting a good sense, a good strong sense of gesture. But Refinement can a lot of times kill gesture. And it can zap the life and energy right out of Comic Art, in my own opinion. I mean, I guess again, that could be subjective, but the gesture if you can retain that almost always makes sure it looked better. Yeah. Over Refinement can make things look the body. They can make them look older. They can look more rigid You gotta be very careful with the way you choose your refinements. So what I would do here is just maybe start by getting in the pointer finger. Again, going for these two segments at first middle fingers longer. It's right up the middle. Obviously the divide, the line is right down the middle. So that's pretty obvious, but something to pay attention to. What else here. A lot of times the pinky and the, the point while the pinky, a little bit of the pointer, but the pinky and the thumb have a very different relationship than the rest of the fingers. So that's something to think about and you'll, you'll see that with a lot of your Gestures. And we'll talk about drawing lots and lots of hand gestures because to me that's probably the best way to get all this information in the forefront of your mind is to start with lots and lots of hand gestures. But what I was going to get at here is it, you could easily take the pink and do something like this. It looks relatively natural. I don't know that I captured it as well as I would like to. I think I need to bring the knuckle back more. So again, there's gotta be at more of an ark here. And then the pointer finger is definitely a little wide there. So I will still adjust it as I go. But the pinky and the thumb kick out just a little bit differently. So you'll notice immediately when you open your hand, how these kinda stay together a little more. These to stay together quite a bit. In fact, almost to where it feels awkward to separate them. You know, everybody knows that expression and some people can't even do it. I've heard. But the pinky of the thumb chum they shoot right? Almost like claws. Sounds a bit funny, but then the thumb, if you zeroed in on this and again, I don't I hate to get too awfully overly Explanatory in this part, but hands are just tricky, so I'll go ahead and continue on. But this one's more about the overall Torso, an expression, but I don't want to leave you wanting in this areas and we'll come back and as I mentioned, we'll talk more about hands because they really are important. It's one of the things that you can actually improve probably the most dramatically about your Art by just really taken time to focus on these, you're going to learn so many things that help you with the rest of the body. But the thing about the thumb is it really kinda sits off to the side. So I'll put a fingernail in there just to explain. Like so if you put your hand down liquid, it does, it kicks off and out. I mean, I guess I'm kind of forcing it, but it just does that a bit naturally. So that's something to really pay attention to. And again, how the other ones stick together. Something like that. But you could really bring the pink, the pointer finger over as well and get another sense of gesture. And let's try that. You could say, well the middle, to stick together pretty, pretty well. Let's bring this other pointer fare over just a little bit. Make sure to make it almost as big as the middle finger, but a little bit shorter than the ring finger, which I've heard that's not always the same for everybody. Right? I know my ring finger is bigger, but I want to say that may have a difference there. I'm not sure. A lot of times they just look at my own hand for reference. Then you can get in here and you could add knuckles, remember it the knuckles or center to the finger obviously, and not the divide. So as you draw an angle pose like this, you would really get the divide maybe first because it doesn't matter. But just don't. Here's the thing for an overly stylized look. You'll see a lot of people do this. It's not bad. It definitely probably would look more like that as the hand angles away kinda sorts of blend into the the edge, the peripheral or the perimeter of the shape. So you could get away with that and you'll see a lot of styles do that. Tend to think it looks a little better if you put the knuckles just an inset. But again, as that hand shifts away, that's going to blend into the edge. More and more total things like that. So that's it. I'm not gonna get too far off into that. I just wanted to show you how to refine it. One thing I would say, like many areas, like the face, especially in female characters, less is more because the more you will find this and we add all the tiny little details, the tendons on the back of the hand. You're going to start to age the hand. It's generally better to just err on the side of less is more hedge of this Arm and I think they'll keep that. I think that looks fine. And then up here, like the shape of the head going. Again, I know I deviated a bit, but it's kinda hard when you start getting into these more detailed renderings of the body. There's just more complex areas. And I feel like it's all worth discussing because I want you to be able to work through the entire Pose. And yeah, it's, it's just one of those things where the body is so super complex. That as we get into the, again, the more advanced renderings it's going to almost require that I talk about some of these other things. So what the hat, I'm just trying to get the head shape and the positioning of it using that kind of Andrew Loomis method. Figuring out some basic plain changes, some basic Shapes, but a simplified mannequin for the head. It's all I'm gonna do there. And again, just really focus on some of these poses where you have a pension extension. This is a bit light as far as that goes. You could definitely take that a lot further and also find, find ones where you can get the twist as well. So this doesn't have hardly any twist. But the main thing that I just really want you to zero and a focus on at least for the Torso, is how the the ribcage and the sternum is pointed up. The pelvis has pointed out this way. And because of that, it gives a little bit more life to the Pose. So there's just a lot of artists out there that will be pretty good at Anatomy or all sorts of aspects of their work. But maybe they just don't explore the ability to twist and contort the Torso. And I think that really does do a lot for your Art. Now if we take away the Line Work, the other thing that I wanted you to be able to see what this development of this particular one is that you're trying to imply certain forms and maybe, maybe trace other ones, but not trace every Form, not connect every line. And we could really keep taking this further. Like I just feel like areas like this probably don't even need that. You need maybe a little bit of a hint to it and you could render some lines out. We'll get more into rendering later again, I wanted to take this nice and slow for you. You can put heavier line weight on the shadow side. Obviously a value study of a pose like this. It'd be great for, great food for thought. So we'll why it's a mom. I'll clean this up and add some gray tones for you. And yeah, I would just go through here, thicken up some of these lines to really push it a bit further. I would still play around with some ideas. Maybe I tend up the waste. Maybe I change the curvature just from here to here and create a little bit more of a dramatic band. They're constantly explore these these changes along the way. I felt like maybe the hip, it looks a bit off. Let me try and move that. Just a little extra little wrinkle there something or bring the, bring the wrinkle up. The folders scan. We also play around with that since this pain's fine. To really play around with the line Weight because you can take that a lot further on a pose like this. You know, again, heavier weights at the bottom. Alright, but let's go ahead and stop here. We'll head over to the next lesson and continue rendering this. So what that, Let's move on. 20. Adding Shadows to the Torso: Hi, welcome back. So again, I would get in here and probably even clean it up again, my, my lines feel a little messy, but I'm more interested in adding some line Weight. Actually, you know what I feel like I'm going to change the proportion or two as well. So I felt like the head could be a little bit bigger, feel small for the body. And then also the foot. This butt right there, I would say. So. What I'm gonna do is just extend the shape out because I feel like the shape overall as it's close enough, it's just not big enough. It's going to try something like that. Move the ankle as well. Good. Probably installed be bigger. So a lot of times I checked proportion from a distance. I feel like you see proportional differences better from a distance and from taking a day off. I don't know what it is about that I can have some very horrendous miscalculations and proportion. And then all sudden I come back the next row when it hits me in the face like a ton of bricks. So there is that thing were taken off some time and coming back with fresh eyes can be a great thing. So much soda where I try to avoid sharing work the day or night of the illustration process because I can sometimes come back and go What was I think and yeah, just be aware of that. But as far as shifting the head size now, I'll be honest, it's as simple as when you're working digitally. And if you're working traditionally to use a light table, you can pull off the same effect copier machine to just do something, put that back to just do something like that. And that's about the size that I want from a distance here. If I go back to the old size, see it's a lot smaller. But I've kinda made the commitment with this series of license to not take advantage of every digital means here. In fact, I really want to quit, take an advantage all the tools anyways and use this stuff more traditional, like a more traditional manner. Because I don't want it to hinder me when I go to work traditionally, and I do like to go back-and-forth. So what I'll do here is the same way I would do it. So I'm still trying to connect some of this some heavier line weight to see, even though that's the, the top side of the breadth, I still put a heavier line in there, so it's not always the very bottom. But a lot of times, a lot of times it is like right here, it's very easy and I probably have taken advantage of this and I shouldn't, but it's very easy to get a curve like that with the software. But if you just give it an am using I do. So I guess that's the difference there. But if you give yourself enough tries like this, I feel like this is a better way to use the software because what you're doing is getting your hand to eventually get that shape. So kinda re-throw on the line. But if not, you can just sketch the line just like this. And you'll be amazed at how good you can get with that. It takes. It takes a little practice and you might need to go back and erase bits. And so again, if you're working traditionally, Well I don't, can't sketch line nice and clean. Lots of artists get really good with white out. And that's all I can say is that I've been amazed watching comic artist over the years use white out. Not only to fix their mistakes, but just to generate some of the coolest effects you've ever seen. So even when I'm sitting here racing and click this and it seems like it might be that kind of easy process digitally. You might just want to perfect your use of white out because there's a lot of good ones. One that I really like is by posca, right there. You can work wonders with this. Makes sure you shake it up good. I'm not going to use it on this illustration obviously. And then another good one is Presto. This is harder to manipulate, but it's super white. So the other one is, can be a little bit more transparent. You really gotta make sure to shake it up good. But those are lifesavers when working on paper and having to fix these areas. Okay. So now I feel like I can even make that foot bigger, but I'm gonna, you know, again, I'm going to fix the head. And I'm gonna do it the way I would just soft erase this. Or if it was ink, I would put a piece over top. Translucency paper or transparent paper or a light table. Usually use a light table. The same idea. Or if I'm fixing it and pencils, which is really where you want to fix all your proportions. I'm just going to emulate that by cutting and pasting it, dropping the opacity. So it's like a soft erase, same concept. And then this is how I fix the proportions. So as I look at this from a distance, you know, the head has three heads wide to the shoulders. I think two-and-a-half for females but three for males. Broad shouldered males. Again, all these things vary, but I don't know that I want it that much bigger. But what I could tell you or what I can tell you is that when I increase the size, Let's just do a really rough, It's kinda look pretty bad. I wanted something more like that to me that looks a bit better. And I don't really have to be this critical considering this is more of a mannequin style polls that we're trying to refine. But it's just good to really zero in on things like this and fix them when you can so that you start getting better at this. We start going, you know what? The hips you to widen this character. What if I send them out? What if I extended the Legs further? There's all sorts of things but you have to get in here and see how you would fix it and what changes make your work that much better. So I'm gonna do is extend the line all the way around. So I'm going to increase the size that way. Still using obviously the, the other work is a bit of a template. Visually. Ignore the ears for now. I don't think I need to go really far around. Maybe I'll need to add more. I don't know, but let's start here. Check it from a distance. Yeah, I don't know. I guess it could be a little bit more even, but that's the tough call. Because then when you start adding like say you're putting this style of hair or whatever. Hair kind of floating around. Almost needed sometimes need to see it like that to make the judgment call because it really changes it. But I think you could actually be a little bit bigger. So I'm gonna go back again. Okay. And let's go for a little bit more. That's about right. So I'm just gonna go right back to the sketching process. I was trying to be clean about it, but feeling I feel like it's working. So I'm just gonna go right back to Sketching through all this, refund those plane changes on the side of the head. Designate the brow line. And remember that's in conjunction with about the top of ears. And actually the top of the ears is really the brow line. I'm probably a little bit more where the eyeline is this, keep that in mind. And sometimes I'll do two lines across and I'll use that to place the eyes right there. Sometimes I'll find the plane change for the cheekbones coming down. I typically do that more and male characters just say No, especially more of this type of bend. But again, I'm just going to use this mannequin, so I'm not really worried about it being perfect. What I'm gonna do here is get rid of the sketch. Repeat the process of toning it down just like I would soft erase and redraw over top this up one more time and then we'll drop in some Shadows. Now I always tend to slope. You can probably see it right there. I've got a sloping to the left. So I'm going to try to correct that, but it's actually one of those things. It's really difficult for me to visualize and see. And I usually correct it later in the illustration or I've put here on most of the characters, so that really helps out. But yeah, it's something that I've tried to become more aware of. Infixes I go just like misaligned ears, as always been a problem for me. So a lot of times I will draw lines and even use another layer with lines going across To counterbalance the fact that I know that I struggle visualizing that on my own. I do tend to tilt my head a lot as I'm drawing it. So maybe that might have something to do that. But the point of the me sharing that with you is that we all have to figure out those things about ourselves and figure out ways to correct them. You'll look at other artists as other artists and pick their brains about ways they've corrected certain issues. If they've experienced at some don't experience. I've noticed like summer just really good at spotting symmetry and center and proportions. And we all have our own different bag of tricks. And we all have different things that hold us back. But the good thing is I can assure you there's other artists that are just like you that you'll be able to find and learn from. And it'll all make more sense. We seem to do better when we find somebody that has the same battles that we do. It makes us feel a little bit better, especially if they're really amazing artists. So one of the stories that I absolutely love, it's helped me. Is it a Da Vinci was notorious for not finishing projects. I'm sure he struggled from perfectionism and things like that. But it's a neat story because when you look back at people that were so amazing by even today's standards, they still had battles. They still things that they had to overcome and you just assume they were great all the time. So it makes them more real. I think when you see that, I'm gonna go ahead and add some shadows to this, like I mentioned. So I'll just pick a light source. I could start with the head. Bring it over this way is a Shadow. I'll turn this back. Remember, for traditional and good way to do this, just, you know, some markers. So just like that, I like to picture an actual light bulb in the scene. So you can actually take and draw like a little sun and you can radiate lines from that. Now, obviously it's not as simple as that, but it's good to kinda think that way. And try to imagine this three-dimensional space, right? But sometimes it does help to simply just add that off to the side for doing something like this. But the real trick is to imagine all of these muscle groups as three-dimensional shapes in interlocking shapes. I think that's the hardest part really. So it's easier to start off with cylinders and football shapes and diamond, diamond like Shapes, or I should say pyramids at that point. So I've rolled depth to them. But yeah, the fact that they interlock and create all sorts of other shapes and Shadows makes it a bit trickier. But hopefully through this process, you will start to gain a competence for it and an understanding of it that allows you to do this much easier. Okay, we're gonna go on stop here. I don't want these lessons to be too awfully long for you. Let's head over to the next one and finish up our shadows. So with that, let's move on. 21. Final Drawing of the Torso: Hi, welcome back. So now let's continue adding the shadows here. So one thing I wanted to mention for this, if you find that you need some good source material for something like this, for where Shadows might go. They have some pretty cool apps that you can get for your various devices. And they allow you to drop in a model and move the light source around it. I actually prefer 3D. I do a lot of, maybe not a lot, but I do a bit of ZBrush and stuff like that. I'll make my own models. They come with some great models, but I like to make my own. I play around with that, but at the same time, just keep in mind that there are lots of little apps. Pose. Just type in Pose apps and it'll come up. So that can be a neat way to generate some ideas for Shadows and how, how big some of the volumes of Shadows and how they interconnect might look. Now, that being said, I really prefer just studying Comics because I'm looking for style choices, I guess I'm looking for over dramatizations of the ideas. So for me, I think it makes more sense just to look at Comics and the way that people do it there. I just, I just think it's super cool because it shows that you can just add a whole nother level of creativity to your work by your decisions with the Shadows. It doesn't have to make sense and be housed on a bit of knowledge of the implied version of three-dimensional space. Like there has to be some knowledge there. And you're gonna get that from real life. And even like 3D, 3D does really well because it's based on physics or in design of reality essentially, you can definitely take it past realism. But it's, it's pretty accurate. And obviously, for water, what real light would do to the objects in that environment. So again, you can learn a lot from that. But you can also learn a lot just from studying amazing artists that have a really strong ability to do light and Shadow. I guess you study from all of it. Take nothing off the table. Never trust one source. Be diligent in your pursuit of knowledge and development. And never underestimate the fact that you can learn from anyone. Really. That's the thing about the time that you look at somebody's work and think that maybe you've surpassed them or there's not as much to learn from them. You kinda shutting off the process and you never wanna do that. We can learn. We tend to learn from places we don't even expect to learn in people as well. So it's good to just keep an open mind. And what I think is amazing as some people, they might not be as good at will say Anatomy or whatever. But they might be exceptional at Line Rendering, cross Hatching or whatever it might be. So yeah, it's always neat when you see that. I think I saw that a lot. An independent Comics where people will do their own comic and maybe they weren't great at everything yet. But some you would see that they'd be super amazing at something even early on. And that's probably what fueled their, their passion to they found that thing about their work and it fueled them to keep going. But yeah, I feel like the Shadows here or maybe not as good as they should be. And that's part of my own inner critic as I do this stuff. But it tells me, go back, go back and study some more studies, More Shadows make time this week to do More Shadows studies. One of the books that I'll recommend to you that I, that I like. I should say love, I love all of a burn Holger stuff. And I think it's dynamic inking Shadow. Let me see your dynamic light and shade. I always mix up the name, but I swear to you, I love it. It's been on my shelf for a long time. I probably bought two or three copies at this point because I seem to lose things or lend them all. But yes, excellent book. Highly recommend it to anybody who is trying to get better at light and Shadow. And Comics and general To me that, that man was way ahead of his time. Is work on Tarzan super cool to look at. Okay, so now I've got a lot of it in there. And then also no priority mentioned this, but also I could take this. I'd like to try to do as much of this from memory, okay? So I kinda look at it like this. Sometimes are bad memory can be our best road trip to style choices. Because if we study from life, so if I was looking at a model, doing this Pose, it would book came out very differently. Maybe better. I mean some ways, definitely better. But in other ways, not as stylistically motivated. Just because I'm going to start locking in on what's in front of me and trying to pay special attention all those areas. It's just going to come out differently. What I actually like to do, what a FUN that I do more these days is I'll give it my best effort. Just like I've shown you here, by developing a gesture. You can definitely start with the model as well and grab your gesture. There's nothing wrong with that. Just like I mentioned, there's nothing wrong with doing that. Even with Comics, I really recommend that you do do that. But then put that away. Work through your Basic Shapes, your knowledge of primitives, your knowledge of orientation, relationships, the three heads wide or two-and-a-half percent, whatever your decisions are for proportions and you work through that, tried to picture proportions there as much as possible. Then even imply or Shadows are implemented shadows. But then there's no reason to not go back and check this against other artists you'd like, other styles you like. And then see if there's something that then sticks out like, oh wow, you know what? They bring the shadow together right here for instance, is this. I'm just thinking of some artists. I'll see you do this and maybe it'll work here, so I'll try it. But whatever it is, it's just another way to kinda mix that stuff altogether and learn and grow. Yeah. And again, you can do that with life. You can do that with Comics. Everything, everything is, take nothing off the table. Give it all, give it all a go. I don't know if I like that. Maybe. I kinda want to bring the shadow up even further this way. So the more I bring this Shadow up and over, the larger this volume becomes, and I feel like that that's helping that area like it needs. I wanted that volume to look pretty heavy. And then I have to think about okay, if the light source over here, so I'll cast a shadow. The foot's probably going to be predominantly Shadow, if not all the way. I don't even know if there'll be any light making it to the calf here? Probably not. So let's try to fill some of us. Yeah. I felt like a lot of those could just be in shadow, if not the whole foot. I'll do some bounce light examples as well. We're just again, I'm trying to start as basic as I can and work into it, which may make this content extremely long. But hopefully in depth and hopefully you're learning and growing because of it. That's my goal. So I'm going to bring the shadow up even higher. And I could probably say now the shadow would be way up here on this Leg. Really depend on the exact location of our little sun there. But I feel like that feels a bit too high. I'm going to go with right there. I also feel like this isn't working right here. So I'll cut that back a bit. Kinda like the implied wrinkles all not that you can see it each time I Edge out the shadow a little heavier, just making that Volume feel, hopefully feel a little bit wider, a little bit taller. More more depth and dimension. So the bottom of the Leg here, I don't know that we would get any row light on that area based on the rest of the drawing. What I've kind of implied. But sometimes I will leave that. So I just mean that light source on the calf right there really would get a little bit of drop shadow into that area. And I don't know what you would have much light there. But I kind of like it, so I'm going to leave it. I still know how to feel about this area of the hip right there. I want that. I liked the size of the Form, just not really enjoying the bulk of the shadow for that area. I'm not sure why, but I don't take it to deal breaker. I just want you to be aware of again, how I'm looking at this hom critiquing it, and what decisions I'm making. Ny Remember you can also add in little angles, are back bends to the Shadow. You can do a lot with that. Like it just looks more interesting, I think then the smooth curves everywhere. Like even something as smooth as the Leg Right there. I think it does suit that error more, but I can I still can make a decision like shorter, more abrupt curve here, a little bit of a back bend and curve here. And then just a little bit of angle where the knee is like back-and-forth. And to me that that looks more interesting than just a sweeping S hook. There's, there's a time and a place for those sweeping SOX because they do denote beauty. It's called a beauty curve, beauty mark beauty lines, something like that. But you can also get very creative with these Shadows. And just kinda go back-and-forth and just really play with it. See what kind of decisions you can make. Their some of it I think becomes just your shorthand method for what you decide to seeing your work. So there's definitely that. And a lot of what I do, like, I've done a certain thing like this Arm. I don't know if you notice and I barely explained it. I just threw it in there and I kinda moved on. Well, the reason being is that it's almost like what I'm considering my best decision for that area that I've done a lot. So it becomes that very habitual kind of process because you haven't come up with anything better yet. Like I sometimes I'll get in here and do all this and separate those two divides, the forum. But I generally will wait to do that because if it's something that is a more defined character, then I'll do that in the rendering. So it kinda add that later. Mainly because things like that can become very powerful, are overpowering and the design. So I tried to keep it as simple as possible. This is really about as far as I would take it. I still feel like this area could be that Eric could be a little bit heavier. And that's really it. So now just to finish off again, we've started with some gesture. We got into some shape Refinement cylinders, adjusting proportions, focusing on directions and even a little bit of implied planes of the body, different plane changes. And then we got into refining the, the Pose, making some different adjustments and then adding some shadows. Hold on 1 s. I just got to as I was looking at this, I was just like I got to make some changes to it. So again, I've kinda mentioned this to you like I'm always analyzing the work. I'm always making last minute changes. I don't know that ever stopped developing something. There's poses that I've pulled up from old drawings and reworked just because it irked me so bad. This isn't horrible, I could definitely use this. Hopefully you're not seeing huge glaring mistakes it making not like it, but you never know. You might have a better eye for certain parts and I do. And you're always welcome to let me know that as well. But I just feel like I'm gonna go ahead and fill in this area right here. So I'll show you the areas that just started to bug me. And I thought I probably could segment this a little bit more. As long as it's like, you know, bigger pockets of shadow that cut into smaller areas. I feel like that segmentation could look good right here. So I try to avoid overly segmenting the work too much. But I don't know. There's times I like now, I'm kind of stone the fence about this area right here. I mean, realistically, that's more would it look like we see from a distance? Yeah. I just feel like yeah, I feel like it's forced even though I really like leaving little bits of light like that. But I just can't see the light actually hitting it like that. If anything, it would probably be let me show you. It would probably be a little bit more of a drop shadow from the Leg way down here somewhere and maybe just a little bit of light. And now with that brush, so home on a little bit of light down here, maybe, I guess that would be more plausible. But I still feel like even that's a stretch, like it just doesn't doesn't feel right. So I'm just going to put, put that shadow back in there much as I like to have it now. This was a bounce light one and again, I'll show you another version, but then we would do stuff like that. We get a little bit of bounce light, which does happen a lot on the body. So it, it really helps you to not have all those forms bleed together. And there's a lot of times that I will at least add a little bit of bounce light at the edge lighting to an error like that because I don't want it to blend all together like we took that all a solid, which eventually we would do if we're inking it fully, I would clean it up again and ink it and render it. Will do that in later versions of this. Bye. For now, I would say I would fill it in solid first unless I'm really looking for that bounce light effect. But when I went to ink it, I would erase back a little bit of edge lighting at the very least right here because I don't want those forms to blend together two months. So I will use it right there. Just so that we see that bit of definition and separation. Also right here. This is really the area that was bugging me, the Molson, I wanted to come back and show you if you notice the shadow right here being this wide on the back of the character, it kinda miss explains this section. I don't know why I wasn't seeing it right away, but the more look at it from a distance, it's just not thick enough, it's not wide enough. So in reality, the Shadow probably would line up, at least with the rib cage. Let's try that. Yeah, immediately, that looks better to me. So again, it's moving these shadows around and trying to perceive how much depth you're getting on each volume, on each form. Is it looking dimensional as it should? Is it, is it pushed away from the other forms and volumes and a way that that represents what you're after. If not, just keep sculpting the Shadows. So hopefully that helps. So what I'm gonna do now is we'll go ahead and stop here. We're gonna do a lot more of these are a good amount more of these different poses because there's just so much to cover and all of them are kinda unique. And I want to give you a nice variety of ideas that can really elevate your thinking and allow you to draw the characters that you want to Draw. So thanks for watching and let's move on to the next lesson. 22. Drawing More Gestures: All right, welcome back. So what I wanna do now is talk more about gesture drawing. So I've just started my day. And the best way to start your day is poses as small sketches, thumbnail sketches, gesture drawing. Yes, super, super important. I've never found a better way to go about doing things is because it's the the basic structure of everything we're doing. Once you get in the habit of simplifying the character and drawing them all sorts of potential ways. But seeing into your initial sketch more freely is super important. And the only way you're going to get there is lots and lots of gestures and little, little thumbnail sketches that are perfect, but they're discernible to you. And you find a sort of freedom in that expression. Sometimes I will totally zone out to what I'm trying to draw. Like not even thinking about a particular thing, just being a bit random. And other times I will go in with a very distinct idea and I will do the iterations like I talked about with these previous ones out there. I believe I talked about that. That was already a week or two ago and my time, so be aware of that. But I want to give you a lot of different ideas with this stuff. I want to show you that this is a creative process that you have to let go and do a lot. More importantly than all the other advice I can impart on. People. Say, Oh, well you're now you should study this and now you should study that. And I need to work on your anatomy. Now you need to work on your proportion, blah, blah, blah. You're going to hear those things over and over again from different instructors and from different artists that are more advanced in you. And although that can be very true by them looking at your work and trying to give you some insight. A big, big part of this stuff is you finding your rhythm, your flow, your happy place. I don't know. But to do that, It's developing a comfort over time with your mistakes. Like things that you know, aren't particularly write about your work right now. But being accepting of that. And then over time you're going to look back and go. I got past that. But if you sit there and stress about it and you're still negative, but it'll, it'll freeze you. What I like about this type of drawing is that all that goes out the window because this is a judgment free zone. This is a explorative fun zone. If it allows me to stop being so critical about my work, which is super important for growth. There really is. So there's that part where you need to be critical to get better obviously. Then there's a part where you have to shut that off and you got to just do the thing. So it was let me put it this way. You always hear the 10,000 hour rule, right? I don't want you to draw or not just draw anything. You do anything for 10,000 h and you'll be a master of you heard that one? Well, I somewhat believing that I'm sure the number is arbitrary, but it's I believe in the concept of lots and lots of volume and you get there. This is a big area where I like to put a lot of that volume. These sketches aren't perfect, but there's probably something in each one of them. This is either I've learned from or I can utilize them for an iteration. So sometimes you'll, you'll draw a pose and you're like, Oh, it's so close, it's right there. But something's not right. But what you should do is try to look for those areas where something and it is right and utilize that, memorize that, build upon that, things like that. Because if you're always so super-critical of everything, you're just, you're just going to change gears and you're going to slow down. You're going to go back into I needed to I need to start all over. And there's nothing worse than starting all over all the time. It really is a bad, bad habit. One thing I want you to think about too. When doing these, again, keep them very simple, basic shapes. Get more into the idea of maneuvering the forums. At first, it's harder because you don't know what shapes to put where I get that. But hopefully by the end of this course you'll have a lot better idea that you just keep studying from people that do it well. But the other thing that I wanted to mention this I think is super powerful for me and hopefully for you. Is that when I look at artists that I admire that were so amazing. Well, put it this way. A lot of them, you notice when they're at their peak or maybe not at their peak, but you see their work when it's pretty powerful stuff and that's why you're seeing it, right? It made it pass all the gatekeepers and it's now in the mainstream. I you know, it's, it's out there and you're able to become a fan of it, right? So that's, that's something you have to consider. That took a long time, that took a lot of hurdles before you ever got to see their work. And so are like going back and seeing artists in their development. And in through comics. It's kinda crazy because each comic is a large body of work. I mean, make no mistake. It is not easy to make a comic. I mean, I think let's see, I've made five full comics since I've been doing it. Well, I guess more than that I did. Aaron assault wanted to did it again, 3M for Blackstone would be number five. I'm almost done with Blackstone to number six. I guess five and then almost six. Okay, so I've been added a long time, which really I should have more and I have learned to drive and Heroes book and I've done some other things. Lots of covers, lots of interior short stories, different things, right? But the point is, is it comic is a massive undertaking in when you're seeing your favorite comic artists that has done just a huge amount. Again, a big body of work, multiple comics, I mean, a series of what you're going to see a big transformation in their work in you should. Even before that, there was a huge transformation that you didn't get to see. Don't put a bunch of stress on yourself. Definitely don't compare yourself. I'm not asking you to compare. So what I'm asking you to do is look at this and realize that a lot of them come a long ways just in the work that you see after they made it into a massive industry that was hard to get into. So again, it's like just allow yourself that patient and realize that retrospectively you're going to look at your work and go, whoa, whoa, I got so much faster. I learned so many cool techniques. I learned when to simplify, went to just throw in a basic shape and hint to areas. When do you use a big pocket of shadow to make a scene look more dramatic but also easier to draw. Like there's a lot of techniques like that. You just don't get until you draw a lot of work, until you express a lot of different ideas. But again, I loved the volume of ideas that you can do just with these little sketches. I'm actually doing them a little bit bigger like it really, they should be super small because the smaller draw, the more you'll get revisited pretty much the same poles without meaning to. So that'll happen as well, but that's something else to kind of pay attention to. Where does your mind keep going? Is there a reason it keeps going there? Or are you trying to perfect a polls that you really admire, that you really want to see in your work? Or is it a bad repetition because you lack ideas and inspiration? In which case, again, what's the best way? They're probably picking up some of your favorite comics. I like nostalgic things. I feel like the idea, nostalgia does a lot for me, awakens my sense is a little bit, so I'll pull nostalgia using music obviously that's, I think we all do that. I'm sure we all do the nostalgic thing as well, but I'll sometimes go way back like humans, stuff that inspired me when I was just a little kid. And so that can be fun. There's all sorts of things. But it's, it's really just the volume of work. So what are you excited to draw? And maybe sometimes asking the why, like why are you doing this particular drawing? Because I know with myself is that I can get caught up into doing something that I, I don't know. Maybe I think others think is cool, which isn't always the best. Rarely is the best thing to do. It's acceptable, It's understandable because you're trying to build an audience. You want people to love your work. You want to see what they think about characters they know and love. We all do that for sure. But is that why greater than while maybe today I should be studying anatomy for my composition or whatever, for my own comic. That as we work on whatever, you got to ask the y's, as you're doing this stuff, why am I studying all the time versus completing work? Is there, is there a real benefit to that? It's not as simple as just doing the work. I mean, it is in the sense that it's better to just do the work than nothing else. So if you're doing nothing else is better to just scribble and draw, and draw whatever pops into your head. But then if you want to get more determined about something Then asking yourself the whys of what you're doing can give you more bang for your buck. Because now you're more focused, right? So creating a journal on some notes about what you're after, what your short-term, medium-term, and long-term goals are. And then the y's that get you there. Like, why am I drawing on this date will also achieve that short-term goal that I need that I'm currently focused upon. Versus maybe just blindly go in and say I'm just going to draw because whatever happens happens. I mean, I don't know. Maybe there's a time for that to de-stress your mind and allow yourself to just free. I mean, there's, there's definitely a place for that. Maybe it helps you get near your zen state or something like that. But, but then other times I I like having a game plan. I'm just that type of person where I like having a bit of structure. I'm not saying I always stick to it as much as I should, but I like I like doing it. Now I'll just expressing again another big carriers. Let's make sure I don't repeat my poles there. But I'd like to draw a variety of character sizes as well as all like to draw these big hulking brutes, big shoulders, little head. Remember the smaller you make the head bigger the body gets. I like practicing one leg back, one leg forward. I always picture these big hulking brutes to, I don't know why I'm remembering when I do this, but I always picture them like stepping out of something that I think it's easier to draw. That big monstrosity when you bring the one leg up, another leg maybe out of a hole in the ground they just made or whatever. And then same thing with the arms. Try bringing one forward. Maybe not this. And it usually wouldn't bring the one forward with the leg for it, but I guess it doesn't matter. We can play around with that. So bring one forward. I think right from here. So I'm kinda bouncing around to create these lessons, but again, I want to show you that that's kind of part of it because each day you're going to work on your poses, your compositions, your rendering. And I almost always, almost always start the day with what you see here, just some basic poses. I think it's really powerful stuff. It gets the brain box going, get your imagination flowing. At least for me, it does hopefully for you. Well. And remember, just don't be too critical. So these are all just basic shapes. You are a director and you can maneuver these shapes anyway you want. It just takes time to get a comfort level with what your shapes are. Shapes relate well on your mind. Study from other artists you'd like, Look, look for their basic shape utilization and things like that. But yeah, we got a few more gestures will continue to do more because again, this is something that we all have to really dedicate to. But I'm also going to move into showing you how to foreshortened the body. So don't think that just because I glance over some poses that I'm not going to show you some other techniques for that. It'll be a whole section on foreshortening the body and drawn it in perspective. But remember, it all starts here, just playing around with these little sketches. Hope that helps, and let's move on to the next lesson. 23. Refining the Arm Pose: Hi, welcome back. So now I want to clean this one up. So when I come back and show you how you can take these and refine them. So get rid of that part. So this was the basic action on it both. So this was the basic shape. And keep in mind to, I think I've already mentioned it, but if I didn't, this is these, if you're thinking about real Anatomy, these come towards the middle like this. Okay, this one's off to the side. That one makes up for the volume of that. Generally, though, what I tend to draw as more, again, I think I did mention this. This is the definition of volume that I see. I do More like that. That's what we're gonna do. We're going to take this now and develop this further Shadows up a closer representation of how this would look for Comic. This way I would draw it. Okay, so that's just tracing over the lines obviously and putting a little more definition there. But then I would also start to segment this little details like this. Pull back. I feel like the tend to look at it from different angles as well. I feel like the hand is too far away, so I'm going to bring that in. Just draw over a little bit the poem to about here. Just keep nudging everything over. Now, keep in mind it's digital so I normally just grab this and pull it over. But then I feel like, well what if you're working traditionally, alright, so that might frustrate you. So this is how I do it work in traditionally. So now I got enough of that in there where I can now get rid all the messy stuff. I got a little bit cleaner version. Still not as clean as I would like it, but I can generally will get it to about here. And then what I can do is as I add my shadows, as I define other things I can render into it and fix it. I'll show you what I mean. There might add some wrinkles or here a little veins here and there. Have our veins. I just fake it. I guess I do this zigzag, swirly thing like this. And so I start off for a light like that, but I can always be from arpanet Shadow. I particularly like the one that goes through here because I can add a cool shadow right through here. Immediately adds a little bit more depth. I'll show you that as I progress forward. But what I want to point out is this part of the illustration. It kinda looks like. So if I didn't know what I was looking at and if I haven't done this, hadn't done this 100 times over 1,000 times over whatever it is. I would look at it and go, Man, I really don't like that Line Art because I don't at this point in this juncture, I don't like it, but I know enough about the process now. My own process, I mean, hopefully you're starting to feel this way by your own process. Well, is it you're like, you know what? I can fix it. I can keep moving forward. This will come together, this will look nice. That's one of the reasons to, I like doing these iterations. I really do it like this and say no what, you know what? I want to see this come together because I'm not feeling it right now. And then all sudden, by the end of it, I'm like, Well, I'm glad I stuck through it. Just stuck it out on that one. Let's see if we can make that happen here. So there's no little things like you don't want to Line flying off the side are there. So we can beef up our line Weight here and there as we go. That always makes the more impressive interior lines can be thinner, as I've already mentioned. So like that. Also, you get a little divot right there in between the deltoid and the pectoralis. And then here the pectoralis starts to spin outward from there. So you get a little bit of that in. Again, I always like to draw the neighbouring thing to whatever, whatever it is I'm drawing of the body, something like that. So now let's go ahead and get a little bit of shadow in here. Give me a lot to work with. And again, I'm going to keep cleaning up these messy lines. Now I could really get in here as you got to look how bad that hand is But I think I can or not, I think I can fix that as I move forward. If it's really bad, I'll just copy and add a layer over top and redraw it again. I really think that what the Shadows and everything that should be enough, we shall see. Okay, so now I'm dropping some Shadows. One thing I like to do and you could say, well, I'm not working digital what I do, just grab a gray marker, but one of the things I like to do, or even a pencil that's something that's erasable. So you can maneuver if you don't like this, which I don't know, they might have erasable markers, right? Let's look into that. But I like to block and the shadow here. Some reason using the gray allows me to see into it a bit better. I think it's like less. It's not so dominant right away. Which it's weird because a lot of times I will just convert it right to black and then sculpted a little bit from the black. But it's, it's weird. It seems like I would just be able to see it just as well, fill just as good about it in black. But I don't know I really liked this technique. It seems to work out pretty well. Just playing around with different shapes here. Again, I'm going to overlay, define this segmentation. Look even though it's not accurate. So the point that out when I'm clearly doing things that I know are not accurate, but I still liked the look of them. That's worth style takes over, I guess. Even beef up some of the Shadows. What the veins I just Shadow to the one side. Then obviously if it hits another area of the body, a couple of little Shadows together and I make a deeper recess look to that area. And then also advance. I noticed that it helps even if you just do like a little. This is, I'll have to erase this back a little bit. But these little bumps of shadow like that, I think what happens there is, is it helps to give that look that it's not just this clean line because you have veins are like thick and thin and some are more dominant. So you need that organic feeling to them. Every now and then I will put a mark on the other side if I need it to show that the thickness of the vein like that, but I keep it very light on the light source side. So just be aware that it's very light. Like less is more when you're on the light source side. When do as much in the shadow side is you can to explain all the forms and volumes. And then a little bit on the light source side. And again, I don't want to like this one, but I know I can fix that with when I come back with what basically would be like a whiteout. Still not feel like the volume here are the bicep needs to be shadowed here. So this is another thing to think about. And you see up until this point, and I'm trying to keep things simple relatively until we get to the more advanced sections of this course. But basically, it's easy to just trace the whole side of something, right? Just keep going down the side, down the side. Don't say, you can really flatten it out. So we have to think about these shapes is compounding curves. They curve this way. A curve this way. I mean, they're, they're, they're curved all or other organic. They're bubbles, but they're not hard to explain other than, again, if we go back to the wrapping lines, that thought process, alright. They are compounding bands all over the place. Like, even like this, it might start where this is the highest point facing your right butt as you get over here, this is probably curving away from you. And as you get over here, this is probably curving away from you in this direction, this scribbling away from him that direction, right? So it's very dynamic shape. Well, because of that when you go to Shadow IT, you have to consider that. And you can't just run a curved down one side because now you've turned it into a flat to like object, I guess. But what you can do, you put little cuts here and there, Stylized the shadow. Areas that are higher Then you can also have Shadow along another edge. So now it's making it look like, okay, yeah, it's curving down and away this way. So it's curving away this way, it's curving down and away this way. And lights over here. So anyways, just think of things like that. So instead of just running a shadow like this, maybe you would Shadow this, but then thin it out here. And then maybe it would pick up this way. Possibly. But I don't want I liked that. I'm just giving you a for instance. I'll leave it for now, but I probably won't ink it that way. Over here. We want to also think about the Shadow the bicep is casting. So there might be just a little pocket of light right there. I would like to leave those here and there when I can I pick. It. Looks more interesting. Likewise, I'll make sure to leave a little bit light on the vein here as it goes into the shadow. I think that makes sense because what it does is it's like it's raised pass the the forearm flexors. I believe there's a flexor muscles but anyways it's raised pass that stands. The reason it's going to catch a little bit of light and I don't know if it would go all through here and do all of this. It looks cool stylistically. So definitely play with that. Their styles that, that looks amazing, but I'll just err on the side of less is more for now, something like that. But I'll do that all throw. I love negative drawing in the Shadows. It's, it's really powerful stuff and it's easy, like it's a nice, easy add-on to the word. So again, i'll, I'll angle these Shadows bit differently versus just going through a nice even curve right there. I'll try to dropping these little bits of shifts and the angle. Also, I feel like it's helpful to do this because if not, you're saying that the muscles is just too awfully straight and even just these little cuts in the angles, in these little bumps in the Shadows. To me just makes more sense. So give it a try. See which come up with their also even play around with this grayscale. And I'll do like some of the grittier kind of definition and some of these other areas like this. It's not that necessarily ink that sometimes I just do it for food for thought, I guess. Has a here anyways, and this is a very easy add-on to the work. So something like that. Shadow under these fingers, those are Shadow entire inside of the palm, side of the thumb, side of each finger a little bit. Something like that. Alright, so just like that, we've got some Shadow introduced. Will go and stop here, and we'll go to the next lesson. I'll show you how I ink this. And again, I know it's a pretty boring static shot, but these ones hopefully, as I've mentioned, will give you the tools to get into the more advanced section and have some bond with it. So let me know what you think. So Let's move on. 24. Inking the Shadows of the Arm: Welcome back. So now what I wanna do here is I'm just gonna do move this over a little bit. Again. I really liked these iterations. I think that you can learn a lot from them just by saving your steps like this. Probably good to name them as well. I don't do a whole lot of that. This one and this one. Those together. Duplicate it. One over. Okay, so now I've got those stages of the work. Then I'll take this one and ink over the Shadows. Let's, It's all pretty much right there anyways. So I could really just go right over top of it. I typically will do something like a blue line or whatever, but it's not a big deal. I mainly just want to show you how I'm cleaning this up. Again, how I think about it. Like I really try not to worry too much about all those little hiccups. I mean, there's definitely times they go on with a very clean approach. I'm not totally innocent of that overthinking mentality. But sometimes I'll see people going in the cleanup as they go. And it looks it looks like it's saving them a lot of time and it looks like it's More Fun. So sometimes I think I just over render when I don't need to. So just be careful that with your own work. Sometimes it's good to be messy. Let's say that's the only way I can put it. The simplest way I can put it, I guess. But it's hard when you're really trying to perfect what you're doing. So it's find, find ways to overthink it, I guess. Is you're basically just like, oh, I gotta get better, you'll get better. So you're, you're putting so much frustration and what the process when you don't need to. But I get it. I'm totally guilty of it. So you're not alone if you're hearing this message relating to that part. But try to get in here and just know that as you keep adding things, you are cleaning it up. And you can always get in here and nodule line over, erase something back. You're never really stuck because the main thing, so fill a lot of this in as you go. I think it's really great if you can hit a certain area and get it finished and then move on, It's a good way to be about your process. On can't say I always do that, but at the same time I feel good when I do to it. Like, it's nice to know I got a certain area down and I don't have to revisit it. But then again, I'm always bouncing around, so maybe that's not going to be as helpful for you. Feel like me and you bounce around a lot. So again, just kinda picking apart these Shadows. We're having these little shapes here. And also I think it's helpful to do these little line breaks like that. So whenever you have a little bit of a break in the Line, it's, it's more of an implied light source. Looks like you're shown a light source is hitting one of the very simple look to the fingers there. Lot of times I'll get in there in detail those more, but keep it simple right here. And a lot of times I will leave like a little gap like that, mainly so I know where to come back with the arrays like this. And actually since I'm working over top of the other one, I'm just going to use white. It's almost like a whiteout. Same time, I'll just clean things up with this as well. Can always just convert this to multiply, multiply layer. If you're working digitally, it's not a big deal. A little line breaks are here as well. Go back to black. Because some of the sides of these shadowed go and so on and on with that process, it's really simple. I think I like to do all the shapes as Shadows first before I get in here and start rendering. So I can kinda look at it and say, Okay, yeah, that is working. Or no, I need to come back with a few more negative shapes or whatever it is. Sometimes it's a matter of getting it in here with finer details. But also sometimes it's a matter of less details. It really depends on how far away you are from the shot. I think that's the way I usually gauge it. If this is a close-up shot, like a close-up panel, then I'm going to really get in here and add some details. But if it's not, then all these details are wasted. And I really need to think from back here. So super important that you get a grip on that because you can spend a lot of time refining things that no one's going to see and that's just a horrible way to spend your time. You wanna make sure that the work you've put in there as valid. I think it needs to be there. So now I could speed this up as well by doing these drawn shapes and then not filling this. But I always have to go back with this brush anyways and clean up the edge, but I'll show you the difference. So if I go, Well, I thought that was closed. Whereas the opening again, no hit opening right here. I think it is one anyways, I'll make sure that that part's close. Now, the other particles right there. So what it does, it leaves that little perfection now, again, kinda that thing of if you're working from a distance, that probably doesn't matter, especially when you save something out. Because a JPEG or something race even you, when you scan your ink to work from traditional, you generally fixed stuff like that. So there's ways around it, but you can blur the line work just a smidge. I usually blends areas like that together. I know I was even doing that back when I would scan my traditional Inks, but always put like a tiny little blur on to make it look a little better. Okay. So there's that can get some nasal bumps in there. So it doesn't look too awfully smooth. The bumps can go into the vein as well obviously, because really you do want you want it swaying back and forth. Like to me, this area up here looks more natural than this down here. So another thing that I do is if I do get a certain area right, I really milk it. Like I go Oh yeah, figure that part out and then I transfer that bit of information around through the illustration. So yeah, there's definitely that has, and that's one of the reasons why I think it's so helpful to work from other artists that are doing a certain thing really well. To stop and kinda study and do some redraws of their work and there's nothing wrong with that. And what it'll do is it'll kinda give you that boost of, of of clarity to work through whatever it is you're facing. It's not meaning that you're naturally going to be great at that thing that day. But it does seem to give a significant enhancement to what you're facing in laws. We will get through it. And that can apply to all, should apply to everything. If you're struggling Shadows, looking at Shadows from another artists, if you're struggling with compositions and do some quick sketches. And the thing is, I don't think they need to be like all day studies either. They can be some almost gestural, quick interpretations of it. It's better than nothing. And just like I tried to always tell people, like if you see a pose that is really good and you love it, like stop and draw it. Again. That applies to everything, not just the Pose. It applies to a Anything that resonates with you, that you see my wall, That's cool. Me at least get a picture of it. But really you should stop and do a quick sketch of it. You'll time well-spent. Now, the one they I don't like seems like as I rendered this, it feels like it's going flat and not curving with the muscle. So I don't know if that's the way a shadow to see here. Again, we can use white if we have to erase some of those back. I'm going light source side. Windbreaks. I feel like it needs to look heavier down here and then really trail off up there. So maybe that's why I don't know. A little butter line breaks really do help. And then same thing over here. Little implied forms here. And we will have your shadow on this slide winded up right here. And play around with the curve of it. That back-and-forth. Really don't like this part for some reason somebody get that right out of there. Come back. Try it again. That's all better. Kind of a bit. Too much. You know, actually what I'm gonna do, I'm going to soften it up right through here. I still want this connection point through there. I just don't want it to look so connected. So sometimes it's nice to blend it again in and out of the Anatomy. So yeah, I liked that better. And really the colorist could come back and pick that up and make it look cooler and connected, but I just don't feel like it needs it. And then down here, while I get this white out kind of thing going on, draw another one right through here, which I connect those. Maybe again, pick up on the shadow side. And you can go crazy with this effect. You can do these Chris, Chris cross veins all over the place. I don't do a lot of it from my style. I do think I need at least one more right about through here. This needs to be a tab wider. I just want to show you how to do it. But you really need to take this and just go crazy with if that's your style, if that's what you want. I mean, you criss-cross them all over the place and sprawl them wherever somebody does. My favorite artists for veins is Dale can. Veins are on-point like it doesn't perfectly I don't think I've ever seen anybody do it that confident in that while. But yeah, so that's really it. So that gives us all it gets a little bit up here. So this gives us the Shadows. And then next we would render this as far as like cross Hatching in that. But I think what I'll do is I'll give you a few versions like this, little pick some to go back and Rendering. You can always request which ones you want to see as well like any of the content here, I tried to be as receptive as I can. But essentially what I'll do here is I'll do a few of these were really focused on the shapes of shadows. Get you warmed up to that process, gets you to where you're, you're doing more refined artwork. Then we'll get into some rendering examples and some full body examples. It's Pose all that good stuff. So thank you for watching and onto the next lesson. 25. A More Dynamic Leg Pose: Hey, welcome back. So what don't want to talk about here is making even a boring Leg or a Leg Pose more interesting. So we already did that kind of stiff upright Leg Anatomy Pose. And I think it's good to practice that. I think it's good to really think about where the muscles go in a very basic pose, right? But then you have to explore how to make it look more interesting. So first off, I'll say gesture is essential. So, or rhythm of the Leg or whatever. But when you take a Leg and you kick it out to the side for instance, right? You can look at it like this. It's already got a Leg out to the side. There we go. Here's our characters Leg, throwing some cylinders. We've got some shape going on there. But bring it out to the side. There we go. Right? You could draw on top of this and you'd probably come up with something pretty close to what I explained in the the basic breakdown of Shapes. But it wouldn't, wouldn't be very interesting and wouldn't have like, I don't know what nice power and rhythm to the Anatomy. I mean, if you start here, you might get through it and look past all this and still Draw a cool looking like. But chances are it's going to hinder you a little bit based upon your startup. So let me show you how try to think about that. Even in the gestural stage of it, even in the basic mannequin or basic skeleton. So I would really bend this first line to the knee. So here's the hip. Remember you've got the Von jets out like this. You get the basic floating underwear. You could get into Tilton that all away from camera, different ways. But we're going to start basic with that. And you put this band right here for the upper leg. Not because the upper leg bone is bent. That's not why It's because they Anatomy has been then we get down to here to the knee. And same thing. I'm gonna put a band right here. And I could really make the argument that it's a back bend as well because if you looked at the inside of the calf, it does this bends inward you this. But again, I'm going to ignore that. I'm going for almost a little bit more of the outside of the Leg. Remember what I mentioned about the bend to the outside of the Leg and the inside was relatively straight, even though it says nothing on the body straight. But Let's say something like that. And then attach the foot and an angle. And then if I was to think like a silhouette but still gesturally about that silhouette. I might do something like this. Okay, so now what this is is I've established the lengths. I put a curvature in there to remind myself, you know, I want something that's, you know, it's got more bend to it. These limbs are never straight. And especially in Comics, you can really take that a lot further if you want it to. Some people go really wild with it and get really good at it. I'm just going to say something like this, but now I'm working on the silhouette of it. Okay. So there's parts that I feel like a widened out. There's parts that I feel like they straighten out right there. Parts I feel like they protrude out like a diamond. Talked about that with the calf ankles, trying to get those those edges in there too that I like to see in my work, the angles and the sharp here is bring the heel down to the ground Petco to hear the tall Front. And so now I'm getting a little bit of thought process of the foreshortening in as well. But I am still going right for the silhouette. So if I erase everything on the inside, my previous step, basically it all that out of there. Even this. The silhouette should read pretty decently. If it doesn't, good time to change it, right? And it's usually pretty, pretty easy to do at this stage. Just proportions change. So I think it could make all this work. This looks a little funny right here. So I'd probably lighten that up a bit and then try it again. I want it to be wider up here. The knee actually come jets out just a little and then points back again. Now, I think I've already pointed this out, but I'll mention again because one of my favorite aspects of this part is just remember that have this relationship. So up here somewhere else, say is the ASIS, anterior superior iliac spine. You have AS long S curve of the sartorius. Sartorius stops here, but don't call me on that. What I'm trying to say though, that you want to pay attention to is this rhythm where you get this nice little curve right, all the way down to the medial side of the ankle. And that can really help you to make legs that are not so straight up and down, please. I find it to help me. And I feel like it just adds that organic You know, a bit of curvature that you need evident in the Leg. So just, just keep that in mind. It's like a long stretched out S. Let's continue on here. So what I would do now is start to get in some of these volumes. So the other thing is this, remember that the Leg, legs usually bow out a little bit. Alright, so that's the curves I was trying to get. And remember, like I basically don't want to put the knee like right here on the front. So I'm trying with you that so I might even need to change this silhouette a little bit more. And then also the vastus medialis is gonna be lower. Then the latter alice, which is right over here. And the quadriceps can look like this big teardrop shape. I think I've already mentioned that in the other basic shape version, but you can group them altogether like that at first. You can divide the rectus femoris like this. If you want. Some people show up more defined in their work, others than others. And then, but the main thing I think is really important for a shot like this. The foot orientation usually matches the knee. Almost want to say always, but I don't think it does because if I looked down on my foot I can rotate a little bit away from my knee. Not much. Maybe different there. You guys can't do that then I need to go see a Dr. but see how the knee is not totally centered. It's kinda pointing outward at an angle a little bit. I mean, that's what you'll see in a lot of athletic Leg Poses. Nobody's feet are really pointing forward like that. Unless they're doing it intentionally. Maybe some do, but it's generally, it looks kind of athletic to point them out a bit, to have more bold to the Leg along with the big Anatomy. Powerful legs at all, just kinda works together. So try that. Now the foot looks a little small and funny, quite honestly. We keep adjusting that, but just remember that this is a starting point and a bunch of guides to get you going so that you can draw the more interesting light poses and not have things look so flat. So hopefully, you realize that this will take still some refinement to make this look good. Also, another thing I like to do that I think helps a lot is when you have these almost wanted to say wrapping lines are not wrapping lines, but they kind of do the same thing. So you have these little wrinkles in a suit design or something like that. But you haven't go round the muscles and interact with the segmentation of the muscles. And it really adds a lot of depth and dimension. So I'll show you that as well. So what the Front of the Leg, this part kinda bows out More right here. You actually have a muscle that goes across here. It's escaping my memory there, but it goes across the Front thick the soleus is on both sides beneath the calf muscle, gastrocnemius, something like that. A lot of times you don't see all these different separations, but it's good to have an idea of them. Hey, and really the media, unless it's pretty closest. Now we're doing Stylized drawing here. You can really go to town with this stuff and explain it and all sorts of ways and add muscles. I mean, there's there's styles where there's just divisions on top of division striations on top illustrations. And it just looks cool. But again, I swear, like even the people that do that and go very stylistically heavy and their work, you can just sort of tell that they know what they're doing. They could draw it realistically. They just choose to take it to a whole nother level. I think because of that, it's a little tempting to just think, well, I'll wing it. I don't need to study anatomy. And although I want you to experiment with the way that you develop Shapes, Shadows, the way that you explore proportions. I do still think that it needs to be housed upon a basic understanding of real Anatomy. I just feel like for me what has happened and then the most effective is not to rely too heavily upon drawing from the Figure all the time and only coming up with my character designs based upon what I can find. In real life. I would rather keep developing the ability to perceive the shapes, have an understanding of them, explore variations to that. And then again, be able to draw characters from my imagination, from any, hopefully one day, every conceivable angle. But again, remembering that we all have to make time to study what's really there. And make simplifications, as well as things that allow us to commit to memory when we're not looking at the reference. And that over time will help us to develop our style. Okay, so I'm going to stop right here. This gives us enough to work off. So what I'll do too, is as I'm still making Changes, I feel like this calf muscle silhouette can come up higher. Again, this is very exaggerated, but that's, that's what I'm after. But I'm mainly wanted to show you to get that outward bend. Something didn't look so flat, like the other example, you could slowly start introducing more gesture and expressiveness into something that's still looks and feels kind of solid, has some strength to it hopefully. So let's stop here and head over to our next lesson. 26. Shadows to the Leg Pose: Welcome back. So now what I'm gonna do is going to clean this up. If there's any changes I need to make. Again, what I drawing will do here, soft erase and, or light table or whatever. Obviously I'm using this device. And I can take this and say, okay, let me get in here with just a thin line and finalize the line work. Now, keep in mind, there's a lot of times I do multiple revisions. I know I did a few revisions here in front of you. As I've mentioned before, don't put too much pressure on yourself for that as far as like oh, he didn't to revisions, why is mine still need some work? Never compare yourself like that at this a long, long time. So just in case and hopefully you got it done faster and that's okay as well. Just whatever it takes, it takes. The main thing is that you feel good about what you're doing and you keep moving in a forward momentum. I'm a big fan of the thought process of you can go as slow as you want, just don't stop. I really think that applies heavily to our and i've I've used it to save myself from worrisome behavior with my productivity in my, my progress with Art. So awesome doing here is I'm going to start out pretty thin. I'll get a little bit of hint to line Weight as I go. I'm also going to explore different shapes. So you'll see that as I do this, I will agile shapes a little bit differently here and there. Some of it's based upon previous drawings that I did that I liked and it just kinda pops on my way. I remember when I did the knee with this little back bend right here, I kinda like that and when I added this shape here, I did something like that, whatever. But some of it is just decisions on the fly as well. And that's how I think we're always continually developing our style. I like to add these little hook lines like that. I'm not sure, like Dara there. So they're not all winners. Sometimes it's as simple as moving a band from. So if you notice, I started kind of like this inward bend to kinda don't mind that either. But I'm always playing around with little variations that somebody do something like that. Instead of bunting muscles up side-by-side like the soleus right here. And forgive me if that's the soleus. I think it is. I'll sometimes just wrap it in front of and then make some kind of connection this way, right there. We'll see how it looks layered by doing that versus everything being side to side to side. It's right here at all. Kinda looks like parallel. Where here. I think hopefully you agree that I was able to make it look a little bit more stacked. So I'll try to point that out when that occurs. I think that's a really good thing to try to be aware of. So basically, a lot of times what makes or breaks these types of Poses and definitely in foreshortening is overlaps. So I will definitely be doing more on foreshortened poses because it's very tricky, but a big part of it as the overlaps then proportions come into play. Mine way. There's a few things, even the way you render, I guess, but the biggest part is definitely the overlap. So if I just get in the habit of connecting all these lines side-to-side, the side like this. It's going to look a little more flat. Look a little more like cartooning at this point. But then as soon as I bring these overlaps N in front of one another. Now you have a distinction that this is in front of this, this is in front of this, and that's just from that overlap. So right here, same thing. If this comes down into here. Look how that fights the look of it a bit, right? It's not the way it would be. It would be this in front of this and I can even use this little Stylized zigzag, but I like to do, you see I did it twice right there. I'm kinda overusing it. So it's getting those overlaps and then even works in the anterior or forms of the anatomy. If I go like this and like this, this isn't a real muscle group and just trying to make a point. It looks like it's well, actually it looks like it's parallel. This looks like it's behind this because this is kinda looks like a heavier muscle group. But I was trying to get the overlap. I'll try to find another spike because that's that's actually not why'd you oh, yeah. So what I was going after is just this little bit be I want this way in front, so I'm gonna make a heavier line there. Like something like that. Okay, So let's see if I can find another area to showcase that. Likewise, if it's a very dominant or big muscle group, I'm going to, again, putting some nice heavy weighted lines, bring that out. I don't know that I liked that angle right there. So these are the adductor group abductor. Yeah. I think it's abductor. Abductor. I think it's a Dr. but anyways, these muscles right here and I'm just going to try a couple of different ways to explain that group because yeah, I really didn't like that angle there. I thought I would. So I've tried to get as many angles as I can into these areas because probably bored you to death by saying, angles are going to give you a very rigid, strong feeling to certain aspects your work. It's not that you want to put angles everywhere, but you definitely want to experiment with them because they do, they solidify that give the great for bony landmarks. They're great for powerful looking characters. They generally convey masculinity, all sorts of stuff. Shape language is all throughout this stuff. So if you're doing like very powerful character, you might use a very blocky kind of approach to his shoulders and his head. Obviously the angles, if you're going for a villain, definitely want to overuse the angles. Disney as a good reference for that. They do that a lot with their characters are given like the, the villains all have the pointy noses and stuff like that. You know, they, they, they really know how to mock the shape language in their stuff. Yeah, I think that's good reference for anybody really to utilize that. So there we have some cleaner Line Art. I'll go and do the gray scale will drop in heavier shadows on this one as well. So I'm gonna give you some examples where we do that. We'll go back and watch your render, some of them as well. So that'll again hopefully give you a nice variety of the approaches that use here, the techniques that you use here, and how to put them all together and make your own designs and how a car. So let's go ahead and drop in a grayscale now. And we'll use that for our next stage where we will inking and clean it up one more time. So I like to do probably already know I like to add these same with a grayscale first. And so it's probably a good idea to work into this lightly as far as your line work. So the previous step where he did the Line Art. If you're gonna do some heavier or Shadows, then you probably want to avoid line Weight a little more than I did because you might lose a lot of it as you did this bond. I don't know. Line Weight can be helpful anyways, I guess because it still gives you a sense of depth and dimension to each of these muscle groups. So it kinda helps you warm up to the idea of the way that you might add Shadows. Anyways, if you go to a secondary light source, It's helpful because you'll end up seeing some of the line Weight anyways, maybe we will do that on this one. I really like secondary light sources are probably overuse them. Just kind of blocking in some of this area. The plane change engine under the knee here. Some of the separations of the muscles throughout the Leg. And as I already mentioned, I like getting the wrinkles and show him the way that they react around the muscles. Just like wrapping lines in that way and they really do a lot for the Illustration. Quickly. Remember you can cut into these and shifting angles around as you go. Shadows do not have to be rounded and even this part, why kind of leave these points at the end of a lot of my Shadows. I know that can be distracting and really hurt the design of it. So there's times you want to get away from that. I feel like this muscle cross the front looks a bit distracting and it's not always that noticeable. So it really feels like the entire leg is just to flexed. I might get that out of there, but I can always fix it in the inking stage when I finalize all these Shadows anyways. And just like we've got some base idea of the Shadows here, generally it's gonna give you a nicer solid vibe to the work, which is great. Times I avoid shadows on my R and yeah, I really got to quit doing that because it does, it really, really gives it a more solid appearance on the page. You can always add more as you go as well. Okay? So what we'll do now is we'll stop here. We'll head over to the next lesson. I'll show you how I refine this a bit more in ink and N. So with that, let's move on. 27. Inking the Shadows of the Leg: Welcome back. So now let's go ahead and ink this N my watch off. It's always distracting the way a bit. Okay, so now I'm just going to ink right over top of this one. Then you can play around with these shapes if you want. You don't have to go as curved as I do work and try more curves. It, I think that what happens here is if you use too many rounded curves around the muscle groups, it softens up a bit too much. Then if you use too many angles, it can feel very robotic. So it's, it's finding that balance. And I think we all have to just find that for ourselves. Part of it. You'll see other artists do really well, you know, grab from that. Nothing wrong with that. And then other parts are just like you've kinda find it on your own. And I think even still, some of what I've noticed is when you think you've founded on your own and then you realize, I think I pulled that from somebody else, but once you see their work, it's almost subconscious. So yeah, and we all do it. Don't, don't beat yourself up if we're grabbing from your favorite artists, it's part of the process. The more I learn about this and my study other people, they all talk about it and you're paying homage to him. Write differences. If you do a carbon copy all the way through and you don't say that. So that's, that's the difference. But taking little pieces of the puzzle, that's just, that's just our Besides when you, when you implement it, you'll, you'll put your own creative spin on it. You almost can't help it. Okay, so again, try to play around with different ways of angling these and edging out these muscle groups. Think about bouncing in and out of the forms and the volumes like, you know, highs and lows and everything's not just so smooth and aligned. You know, there's a little bit of definition in different areas. Just kinda play around with that. I don't know if that part works, but I'm gonna try it. So another thing I tend to do is I race back a lot. See if I'm on a floating layer. I'll just go back and forth from light to dark. So if you're inking, that just means ink and then your whiteout. And it's it's kinda funny because then you, you start to figure out ways to correct your work. And then you never feel stuck. You start experimenting more because you realize you're not really stuck. You know, obviously I'm not stuck. I'm working digitally, but even with white out on paper and ink, I'm feeling more and more comfortable all the time because you just get creative with that white out. Here. I'm just trying to get the little pockets of Shadow. Now I could do better with these. I can have these wrap right around the forums. I can even go around each muscle groups. I could come up here, I can have it fade to white. I could pick up down here. Actually, I'll kinda over illustrate it first and then color it back. So let's say that I went around this muscle group with a curve back this way, around this muscle group, pig, pig high curvier, pick back up, we'll Shadow another curve. And then I come back with white. On the very top edge. Level of separation there. See how that just looks raised in it. It helps to explain this form right there. Even though there was nothing there. Without that, I wouldn't need, I would need to colorists to do that, which I draw the color, my own stuff, but not always BCL that does these little techniques really do a lot for the work and they're super easy once you get in the habit of implementing them. But at first it's just like kinda like where do I put it, how do I, how do I put it down? And again, that's where watching others do it. And then doing it over and over. And then not expecting yourself to get it the first time. It's such a big deal. Never expect yourself to get it the first time. I like to imagine that no one ever has gotten it the first time. Maybe that just makes me feel a little bit better about home, how many times it takes me. But the other thing is this, if it does take me 1020 tries, 50 tries, whatever the number is I tried to focus on the fact that that is just an opportunity for me to work on my diligence and hard work ethic. That means more than the the part of me that would get something immediately by being gifted. I don't know. So I feel like bask in the idea that things are hard for me. I'm wanted to put any effort because then if something hard pops up, I'm ready to take it on and don't freak out and grow. Goodness, I got everything else. The first trial, why can't I get this? I feel like when people talk about being gifted, talented, a savant, things like that? I know I'm definitely not that I'm okay with that. I guess I would expect it to be harder for that person when they ran into some real tough areas in the work. But hey, if you're like that and you're out there, good for you. I'm happy for you. Just not just not YM does not will how it's been for me about successes for all of us, as long as we just keep pursuing what we're after and truly believe that. Okay, so I don't know about this muscle right here. Excuse. I can't even remember what the name of that. I'm pretty sure the ones on the side of the soleus have to look, but I'm still going to try it. I can always get it out of there after the fact. So see, I'm just grabbing a little bit to these pockets of shadow from the gray excuse me, that opportunity to clean it up. I like to shadow a little bit heavier down here. I don't think we would see a whole lot of light against the inside ankle, but I'm probably going to put it there anyways. Sometimes they just do things based on style. Not necessarily always. You know, an idea of oh, yeah, it would definitely be there. I don't know. Would it be there? I don't know. Like that. Nice. It looks a little funny there. Inside of the foot. I'm probably a little too close to this backup here and check this. Something else we gotta be careful of when working on, especially digital mainly. So you can zoom in too far and all sudden you're over Rendering are detailing. Sometimes it's not looking right from a distance and you should always check it from a distance since most of our stuff gets reduced. Okay, So as far as like segmentation, I mean, you could just keep going and going right there. You'll see some style. You go absolutely crazy with it. Totally up to you. I'm gonna go back. I feel like that's a bit much. Also. I will usually add something like this right about here. So remember I was adding those divides there and I feel like I could probably get another one right there in a very thin line. So as those other lines come over to the light source side. So like right here I could say this is a heavier one, but then it needs to be thinner. Maybe even disappear right here a little bit. I think I liked that a bit better. So there's that there's that back-and-forth of heavier stuff on this side, thinning it out over there. How did the other shapes interact with one another? I guess I really don't like all this right here. It just feels distracting. I'm going to bring that all the way down. I don't know if I like any of that. See what it looks like without it. Yeah, That definitely looks more natural, but there is there is a bit more to it than that. Yeah. I'll just leave it. What I don't know that I liked now is this arrow right here. I could just probably add a couple more wrinkles. So this is another thing that I do and I'm sure lots of people do, is if there's areas that look weird and generally it's segmented areas. It's areas like the hip, the knee, ankle, elbow, right? The shoulder. You can just render things into those areas. I mean, look at how many character designs have knee pads, shoulder pads, right elbow, back. Like there's a reason I mean, yes, part of it is it makes them Tougher, right? They have these armor pieces. So there's that with the care design design. But come on, I mean, there's characters that are impervious. The part of their strengths are being impervious to darn near anything. And they'll have shoulder pads or knee pads. Alright. I think that just means the artist's original designer just didn't want to Draw knees. But maybe I'm wrong. So just play around with concepts like that, that you can like. So right here we've got the wrinkles already gone for the hip area. All we can easily incorporate a couple right through the knee area. Have them wrap right up and around. The knee. Change the side ageing just a little bit. So it changes the silhouette just a tiny bit. Grab this, go to, go to white, bring that into here. You see this is really easy to do and might just add a little bit more of a interesting vibe. Maybe, maybe not, maybe was too much, but again, it's easier to do, it's easy to try. You can do this. Again, if you are working digitally, you can add a layer if or not does just means like I've said, white out and all that good stuff. Let's work into some of these real quick. Can go for the top edge. So as you're doing this, you're just putting the light on the top edge and the shadow on the bottom edge of that little bit of light. It's just repetitive kind of thing that you're doing. Here. Shadow here. And what I would say two is be careful not to make the folds to identical over and over. So if I got a big one here, probably want a nice little thin one right here. And I can even zig zag that back-and-forth. So it just generally looks a little more interesting than if you have like a bunch of similar size folds back-and-forth and back-and-forth. Sometimes some materials will look like that, but play around with variation even in that area. Okay, so now we've got a leg that's got a bit more angle to it. I'm sure if I like these little areas right here into the knee but generally draw those in. So I'm gonna leave that I think. But now we don't wanna do is I think I'll go ahead and render this one with the Torso. So shadows are definitely part of the Rendering. And then another level of the rendering is this Cross Hatching. And so I'm gonna do examples where we do, where we don't. And again, hopefully that gives you a lot of opportunity to experiment and try different versions and see how this stuff looks in different, even different rendering styles. But alright, so we'll go and stop here, head over to the next lesson and add some more Rendering 28. Cross Hatching on the Leg: Okay, let's continue on with this one. So we'll do some rendering. There's a couple of edits I want to make as I'm looking at this. So let's see if we go to the Shadows here. Feel like this could be larger. And also, if you notice, and I could just say, Hey, this is my style. This is the way that I do it, but I'm constantly studying, again, different things around me, whether it be live, will there be other illustrations? But I knew something was bothering me about this. I liked, and I think I mentioned this in the previous lesson that I liked this muscle here it is, is there it starts on this side, ends up on the medial side of the foot. You kinda have to. If you look down, you flex your toes out and widen your almost like widen your foot. You can kinda make that protrude out or just flex your foot up and you basically see it. But then right here, this part was bothering me. More than just that part. It's actually a combination of so as I mentioned before, you have this relationship to pay attention to. It comes down through here and down through there like an elongated S and see how it kind of falls off right there. I just feel like that would look a bit better if it didn't. So I'm going to bring this in Shadow all through here. So hopefully by doing this, what I'll do is I'll push that calf muscle back visually, especially by the time I render it. That already looks better to me. So again, it's these little incremental changes. They don't all carry a ton of weight with them. But when I see something that sorts the irk me, then I just have to I got to mess with it a bit and see if I can fix it. So now we're going to add some rendering to this. I feel like that's a little bit better for what was bothering me. What the rendering. I'm just going to come up from the shadow side. Obviously, you can do this all sorts of ways. You could start this way if you wanted. Just going thick to thin. Like to keep these lines very thin. And the beginning, I guess it depends on what I'm rendering really in this style I'm going for. But lately I've been trying to really thin out these lines. Now I will taper to one side. We'll try some little line breaks here and there. I like adding these line breaks because they make the Line feel a little more interesting. I could obviously go back and just erase those and get that same effect. I think it's good for me as well because if I don't do it, then I might get into this very repetitive mode of trying to make every line look the same. And I'm not doing that. I don't know how well it might look like that or how it might look to you as the viewer. But I'm really trying not to make them look the same. I want them in the same direction. Resume up on that soon. See. But I don't want them to be all consistently designed or whatever I want them, I want there to be a little variation. It's more interesting. It's easier, which is great, to let go and just only focus on one element. And the one element, if anything, is just the that they're parallel. That's all I'm really shooting for it there. And really they could have been a bit more curved, probably to make that even a bit nicer. Then what I'll generally do is go a bit of an angle. I tried to make these lines different in some way. So in this case I'm just going for a little bit of a longer thick to thin line. Generally, I try not to pull up. I do a little bit better this way. Definitely speed up a little more like this. I do like to challenge myself from time-to-time to do it the other way. Just so I can eventually bridge the gap. But it just feels awkward from my hand position for some reason. Okay. So there's that so I've got that one kind of blended. It rounded a bit. It's not like it's super round, but it gives a little bit more, an interesting look. So in this area the wrong, the adductor group, this particular part of it. I'm going to try to put the fade and gradient over the whole thing. And then just dark and from here up and around. So let me illustrate that for you because I think sometimes it gets lost as to why I'm doing what I'm doing, okay, so I'm going to cover this entire area like this. Then I'm going to cross hatch, at least through there. So that's my that's my goal. Now I could obviously put a layer in their tone down. A red layer would probably a good way. I'm just going to go for it, but I want you to at least understand My thought process previous to me just jumping in and doing it. Now, same thing, pick the thin using pretty thin lines. What I like about the, the smaller thin lines is to me it makes the volumes in the forums feel bigger. So it takes longer to do. And if I get in here and I use these big heavy lines, are tapered lines, it will definitely give a very solid feeling to the work. But I tend to like it more like this. I feel like it has a neater design to it. And again, it makes the volumes of the study, the area bigger. So if it's a smaller illustration, I'm obviously not going to do that because it's just, you know, you don't want to waste a tremendous amount of time on things people no one's going to see right now as I cross hatches, I just want to round out the side of it like this. You don't want and I'll bring it right into the top of Leg here. Does my as well Shadow all that. So I guess if I if I darken this more by adding maybe heavier coverage right there, then it says, Hey, the light source is now lighter here, darker here, darker there. Right? I'm trying to curve that a little bit more, I guess. Hello. I still feel like that looks a little flat, but hopefully that'll come together as a new section by section. So now with this area, I'm just going to bring it up to about here, like this. Like this. And as it gets down into here, I'll go ahead and bring that together like that. Okay, so that's the goal for those two areas. Pretty simple. Now a lot of time zone, longer, skinnier bit of the Anatomy. I will pull lines up the side. Try this first. My time. Again, kinda breaking up those lines. One reason is because I want that other shape to show through that kind of wrinkle effect. But also again, as I mentioned, it's just more interesting looking to do that person is trying to get all these perfect bits of Rendering everywhere. So another thing that you can do right here, as you can actually space the Cross Hatching to the highest point of that muscle. What it does, I think is it gives it almost like a Tritone effect. You got light, you got a couple of lines and Shadow, you get this cross Hatching back to the lines of Shadow with no point to them. Yeah, it's a little different on the side and it feels like it just rounds it up and over. So just a little bit different technique. I like it. So I'm gonna go out and leave that in there. Same thing here, the spacing that away from the very edge. Likewise with the hatch work as you pull up in a way. Remember you can have a tighter and then just faded off. Practice that as well, that I can offer a nice little variation as well. So you see that error is pretty quick and I feel like that's enough, that's adequate. So now over to here, we continue on with the same kind of method like that. In FY, a lot of times it's better to not go edge to edge and these little areas. Just go through them and come back with some whiteout. It's you're almost always gonna get a cleaner effect. I don't know why I do that. I think I'm just a glutton for punishment. I'm just trying to perfect something, perfect, something I really don't have to. There's an easier way to do it, but I still take the more difficult path sometimes. Okay, So again, coming up here and I can even bring these into that area and then stop a little bit ahead of that very edge. I think that looks kinda neat. So a lot of times this stuff, I'm just trying different things and finding different patterns. I don't want bad things if you experiment too much all over it can, it can look a little disjointed or not very well thought out. So what I'll do is I'll do this rendering together. I just want there to be some continuity. But I really kinda like that. I could probably and try to bring that down here. Now I can still incorporate some of this kind of effect right through here as well. So I could just bring you something right up through the middle. It gives it a little bit of texture. Can still be nice to round it out. I can bring that right down. And so it's basically a third row, cross Hatching. Let me try it another way. Because I feel like that could look pretty nice. But I could come down into here, make some heavier marks. And then as I bring them up, just having kinda round over and then space out and go right up that at vastus medialis, I could probably make those even bigger. Then I'm getting really tiny up here. Yeah. I don't know. Not digging that entirely to leave it, but I know there's a there's a possibility there I could mess around with that, pull it off, but let me go ahead and recreate similar to what I did with the other one. Don't turn it this way so it's a little faster. So again, a nice thin lines. Trying to picture how I could round this out as I do this. A little bit thinner. So it's good to practice these variations of thick to thin variations of how much spacing in-between the lines you're leaving. Variations of the way that you break them off into the light source side. Variations of angles. Sometimes it's really messy. Lines can be phon, like you to remember. Messy lines have more energy. But if you get too tight and rigid with the way that you're creating these. So, so clean, ultra clean, you lose a little bit energy. So there's, but there's a time and place for all this. You might want a very rigid look to certain things, very clean look to things that are mechanical and engineered, things like them. And it was pretty to get a couple of little lines are here. I also think it's neat how you don't really need a lot of these little lines, especially the colorist, whoever you're working with is going to pick up on that. They're going to see that and I'm going to take that as an opportunity to really make things look even more interesting or emphasize it. So always look at this stuff. Like you're just kind of a director and there's people behind you that are going to pick up on the, the direction they're given your hand that off to your teammates, right? And then becomes something cooler with each, each person that adds to it. It's a team effort, right? It's very rare when you got a comic artist that can do it all. And even if you do, you're going to see probably the best work when they work together with a team of creative professionals. So there's most of the Leg. Let's go ahead and stop here. And I will do some more rendering to this. So with that, let's move on. 29. Finishing the Cross Hatching: Alright, welcome back. So now let's continue on with the rendering of this Leg. Now another thing we could do is we could Shadow more heavily as we get down to the base of Leg. Typically light source for the most part, not always obviously will come from the top. In which case you could slowly work down on the gradients and dark and down here even more. Which really you even start from here and work up. And that would kinda help you visualize that as well. But it's not something you have to do. You'll see a lot of styles where each muscle group is shaded. Very much the same way. Deal breaker. And again, the colors can come back and fix that anyways, I guess, but add some darker values to the base of Leg or whatever it is, the same, but you could definitely do it in the rendering here. Probably should. So as we get down here, because the other thing is, if I rendered say this, this particular and I rendered that here, here, here, here. And I did the same kind of up and then stop up and then stop up in this style, every little piece, right? It would definitely start to look pretty weird. I mean, that's not indicative of light and shadow. That would be like more like, Hey, Rob got stuck on a rock. Just kept doing the same thing. Kinda zoned out, right? So it's better if you can pick apart some of these areas and figure out, okay, how can I make some A's look more in shadow, which either as pushing them behind the other form or it's giving us a gradient effect of light to dark, you know, in a linear fashion, but light's hitting up here. And then as we get down to the base of the Leg, maybe we Shadow all through here. Something like that. Let's see all that rounds it out a little more and you could definitely take it a lot further. You could do some type cross Hatching through the bottom here. You could do three rows instead of two. I've seen styles where people just almost scribble and it looks really well done. It's just, it's a matter of the artists and their understanding of light to dark and their confidence to implement this stuff. It's not that it has to be so clean. But I do feel like there has to be a game plan. It's gotta be a bit well thought out. Even if it's like this messy kind of scratchy style. I can't, I can't remember who it is. There's tons of artists that do it well, but they will literally get in and scribble, but they do it in just a way that explains the it looks cool. I don't also put it not something I'm the greatest that I would like to practice it more. But ultimately, if you can just really keep thinking of all this as light and Shadow, say, Well as I add this little bit of cross Hatching down here, I'm just trying to I'm trying to do two things. When I when I do those little lines there, I'm rendering a cross hatch. But I'm actually trying to Shadow this muscle as it intersects this other volume of the Leg. So we try that again a little tighter and hopefully it becomes more apparent. So I want this muscle group right here that starts on the side of Leg, finishes out Down here. I want it to blend into that. You could say that it kinda does that already, but I feel like it doesn't go with the direction. If I go with the direction of the muscle, I feel like that that does it, that shadows a bit differently from here. So it makes us look, will say higher. And I guess it looks like it kinda raises off of this. Then if I went to render again through here, I would avoid this spot. So let me show what I mean. I would render through here and I would avoid that. Why? Because I'm trying to keep that little bit of segmentation. See that it's not real noticeable, but it's there. And again, I think a colorist would pick up on that and bring that out hopefully. But it doesn't work from back here as a question. And I think it does good enough. I mean, could it be better? Probably. Alright, so here, same thing, I'll Shadow with these kind of consecutive little lines at first. Like that. Same thing. Pushing, basically trying to push some of this back. And then for Hatching, I will just create a couple of little marks going this way. Nothing too crazy. I don't want that to be too awfully distracting, but I want something there And then for the knee will just render up with these little abrupt lines. So keep in mind too, when you do these little abrupt little marks, you're basically saying that the, the, the Form and the volume is just coming up and over. There's just so this is the way I look at smaller marks versus elongated marks. Smaller marks like this mean. If you were looking at the volume from the side, the Form, you might have something that rounds over like this. Okay. So that's what I'm picturing there. Here. I'm picturing that you have something that rounds over more like an ark. And that's why I bring the lines up higher. Now that's not the only aspect of it. It's really dependent upon the light source. It's also dependent on the specularity of the material. But just so you know, that's ultimately what I'm doing. I'm just saying that this has a very short little round over. If I wanted that round over to peer elongated or I wanted to bring out the round over of the knee across. Then I'm just going to render from this side or whatever side, the opposing light source. You see I've kinda shadowed along this left side, so I'll keep it consistent here. And so now these are a little bit longer, really doubler, most triple, then these little abrupt marks. But that's what I would want. I want the need to look like it. It has a longer span in a more not so abrupt, round over. Hopefully that makes sense for you. So it's not just as simple as thrown in these marks wherever you want. Again, there's a little bit of thought process and don't not much, not too awfully advanced, but it's the thing about okay, so I'll get rid of these because there were just expressions of what I was thinking there. Right. So now under the foot, same thing. I would bring that up. Not too abrupt. I want a little bit of a transition there. I can really tell when I pull from my an awkward angle. Show you kinda as well that I get very inconsistent lines. I also have to tell myself to slow down at times, especially at the end of the artwork, whatever the, whatever the area or piece I'm working on, I will almost get excited and start speeding up. And sometimes it will compromise the quality and I just have to relax. Now sometimes they'll literally take a break, just kinda breed and chill out a bit and come back as, you know what, why mess up at the end or why rush through the finish. It's not a race. I mean, we're all kind of in a race against ourselves to be the best versions and constantly strive to become the next level up the next level on our Art Game. But you don't want to attach any unnecessary stress to that. Just kinda learn to relax into it. Especially rendering. I feel like Rendering is something you really just have to chill out and enjoy the process and relax. And do. I mean, obviously you should enjoy the entire process. But to me, rendering is a little more of a tranquil experience more than the rest anyways. Okay. And as we get to the Front of the foot here, I would use more abrupt marks again. Hopefully you see the difference there of where you've got this rounded overshadow, but then here I wouldn't want that. I mean, at least what I'm envisioning for cross Hatching, keep it kinda basic. Run a couple of lines on the side. So these folds, same thing. You could use a lot of tiny little bumps to get the feeling of these folds, wrinkles and clean up edges and marks as you go. Alright, just kinda analyzing it, see if there's any glaring mistakes, but that's really it. I mean, that's that's the process of using them. Usually at the very end, I can go back and try to beef up the line Weight. So usually what exposes that for me as well, is when I take away the sketch lines, the rough sketch lines below it And so then I'm just seeing the ink work, right? And solve for that. I usually have to go back and say, Okay, now it's really exposed. Now it's very visually. What you see is what you get kinda thing where the sketch lines can sometimes adversely or not adversely actually make it look more impressive, but it can make you not see what you need to see, and that is without the sketch lines. So at this part, now given this white gap right here on the why, but I didn't see that as being bad. I feel like I could use a little bit of rendering in there. So final touch UPS, little bit to line Weight. And then I would call it good. Obviously, you can also go back and add a little bits of secondary light source. A lot of people will draw this in as they're doing all the other stuff. But I found it's pretty easy to add in as well. So providing there's enough, enough of a shadow there to work from and there's plenty on this one. So this can be a neat thing to do as well. And actually what I would do here, again, this will unfortunately apply to digital artists if you can use layers. But I'll show you, I would actually add that as a layer because then it just allows you to experiment a little bit more. I'd probably try both what I just showed you where I go right for Rendering. And then also do one where you try a little bit more of a solid line or shape, I should say. Going around the, the bottom parts they Anatomy. And this is a really neat way to, to add dimension and effects. Because again, with the coloring you can get in here. And you can add this kind of mood lighting, this dramatic lighting, something like that. I can't like that. And then let's see if we are in, you could render this all sorts of ways as well. You could bring lines up the volume like that. Not too shabby. I think that looks kinda me. Then another way is like the way I just showed you. I think I might have liked that Moran's try it again. So just kinda start heavier. And then just break the lines off towards the picture that round over of that part of the Anatomy. Yeah. So all sorts of ways to be creative with that. That gives you an idea of how to Draw and render a Leg that has a bit more emphasis to the curve and gesture to it. So let's go ahead and stop here and we'll head over to our next example. 30. Male Torso Top View: Alright, welcome back. So now what I'd like to talk about and show you is how to Draw a torso leaned over. So this is great for those threatening Poses, those animalistic Poses. Think of somebody like Wolverine or even like the hawk shots or whatever, just any sort of characters, ominous and coming out the other character, these are a perfect shots for that. So this is where we start to think a little bit more about perspective and the body. And it's a bit tricky because we spent so much time learning to Draw Anatomy that we think is there, we know is there. But then omitting it becomes really tricky. In fact, there's a lot of drawing and I find myself doing this as well. We're all force parts in and I just kinda know like that shouldn't be there, that that'll be covered. So we'll talk about that. But one of the things to get us started with this is a basic sense of perspective. So we're gonna go back to the primitive shapes effect. Very good for leaned over shots and really just keeping perspective in mind as we draw the body. So if you were to do this based upon perspective drawing, you would drawback to a vanishing point on a horizon line, right? And you can say this particular point, it goes back to here. The rest is horizontal. Lines are parallel and horizontal, right? So that's the basic idea of perspective. Now the trick is you might be drawing a scene where the horizon lines here. And it'd be like, well, why is it tilted like that? Well, it's because of the body is more independent of the scene, right? So everything else in the scene, you're going to want buildings and everything converging to the horizon line here. But the character may just be leaned over. And in which case you're going to draw a different I'm vanishing points to parts of the body. But really I don't even take it that far. I'm just giving you an idea of what this particular plane or prism would be like in a one-point perspective. Something as simple as that. Now you could say really, this is a two-point perspective and there'll be another point down here, which I think it's referred to as a vertical to point. It looks actually really cool for buildings, but, but again, we're going to jump pass all that because I feel like you need to know is you need to practice drawing basic primitive shapes like this. As I mentioned earlier in the course, you should really practice this right here. And it may take some getting used to your Shapes may look wonky at first. You're going to also play around with overdraw monetizing the perspective. Really squeezing it down to a very extreme vanishing point. But you don't necessarily need to draw those vanishing points. I just think it's good to practice these shapes and even shapes on top of Shapes. So for instance, as soon as you do something like this, almost start to get a sense for a head that's tilted away from the Torso. So again, practice these basic block like Shapes. There. There are a lot more important than you'd think. And again, you don't have to run vanishing points all over the place for these. It's better to think about them as floating prisms. Practice that fact. And then you'll, you'll have a lot of the information you're going to need for parts of the body. So back to this, we've got our Prism is going to represent the upper torso. And so when we do this, we have to think about again, what areas are going to get covered. And so what I do from here as I just basically kind of work from the center out. I might think about the ribcage if I want to get into those simple shapes, right? So my start with the W, the chest, I always find tricky. So I start with this shape like this at a downward view of the chest. But the really tricky part I guess is giving it overlapped to the ribcage, even sometimes over the stomach muscles. It just depends on how far we're looking down at this character. So we can use the V like shape for the collarbones. Again, overly simplified. The little dip there that you get for the jugular fossa. Then an opening for the neck. So you see how, hopefully you see even at this stage, how the box-like prism really gives us a lot of reference points and that couples with the other points we've already talked about. Connection points, bony landmarks, you got the clavicular fauces over here. We'll just draw those in the basic shape and fill that in. And keep in mind, that's this isn't to say, that's exactly where they go, right? This is all basic landmarks that we use to guide us through the next stages of the process. Just like a center line. It gives us that reference point from here out. It's not that it's perfect. It's not that these shapes are going to be symmetrical. You see, I always draw asymmetrical even when I'm not trying to. And but it gives us that reference point that is super important. I mean, the center line is probably the most important. So draw your prism, get these basic shapes in there. Now as we work down to the abdominal muscles, I find this really to be the trickiest part. And you have to practice forcing some of these shapes in there. So just like it's called foreshortening or even I've heard it referred to as forced perspective. You have to sometimes squeeze information into a smaller part or really go, go a bit more heavy on the overlaps. So as I draw the first two abdominal muscles, which really there's two more up here. But in Comics you'll see that often not drawn. And even in people you typically see these ones More like if somebody squeezes their abdomens together, the other to kinda get hidden a bit. So let's say that we do something like this. So that's not bad. But then what you might practice doing is if you're like look the belt cutoff for this character is right here. Okay? I know that's where I want the final point to be. Alright. But you get, say, for more abdominal muscles that fit in there, well, you have to kinda practice pushing those behind in under the other ones. And also as you start to Shadow, that really covers it up. In fact, you might just put very little light on the bottom ones. Maybe none at all. Maybe you block all and maybe will block those in all the way. But by the time we get down there. But you have to play around with this idea of like, how do I make it look like they're underneath one another. So shading does that, size relationships, does that. But it all starts with that force perspective kind of idea. And if you don't think about that enough, you'll do like what I find myself doing and I go, Oh, just keep extending the muscles down here. That looks about right. And what I'm really doing, because I'm drawing two parallel to my view. Even though I should be focusing on the reference points of the perspective which is not parallel to my view. It's receding away from my view. So it's a tricky thing to get right, let's go back. I feel like even putting this here might be messing with me a bit. Now, another good thing is just like like I've kinda pointed out, is figuring out where the belt line would be in it, even thinking about, Okay, if we're looking at the belt line to a character forward facing, what does that look like? So we come over here. Let me say, all say we're looking at a superhero belt line, right? So here's the belt line. Here's the famous on these. Alright? So this is a curve there. And granted, I'm imagining what this looks like forward-facing, alright? So let's say it's perfect, pretty close. And so something like that. But then it's definitely not going to look like that over here. We have to kinda play around. That's okay. What would it look like over here? Well, I'm going to add a shape to help explain this. And actually I'm gonna make it run, make it easier to visualize. I'm going to draw through this. We know the waste is somewhat of an oval, not perfect, but it's close to it or an oval than it is a square, right? So if we take that over when we put it over here and we look at it at a downward facing view. It could be anywhere around here. But notice the curvature right there. That's the main thing that really has to round away from our view to have that feeling that we're looking down at that area of the body. So this could be a pretty good reference point. Now see you needed another step with that and you wanted to go off your prism here. Duplicate this just so I got a backup. And actually let me go back to red. If you were to draw down in through the prism, you could almost make the argument or guestimate that. It would look something like this. Alright? That looks about right as far as a prison goes. Let me make all this in red, see if that makes it stand out better. I don't know if you can see that any better. But basically you see that it does basically work as, as a rough guide. Well then if you took that same oval and you put it here, you see it could even probably be a little bit smaller, which I guess that would vary. But you could squeeze it into this area. And all sudden you have a reference point of what potentially could be the opening for the ways. This probably looks a bit messy, but let me hopefully clarify this a little bit more by I'm going to take the red down on this. I go back to the prism and get rid of the red here because we just needed that as a reference point. Let's get a clean it up real quick for you. This is where I really should use separate layers, but it's just a guide just to kinda check your work. That perspective can really allow you to do some neat things here. But since something like this, and then now we go back to wanting to draw onto this direction what this would be on time. So now I'm going to say, well, that means the waistline would be around something like this. Okay. And then you get the ribcage coming out, the serratus with their little bumps. I kinda put them on the outside of this first W like shape, right? Again, that's a simplified approach, is not really how it looks, but it's cool. It's close, It's similar. Bringing the chest muscle to hear like that. One of my favorite landmarks event, the pictorial muscle pectoralis, something like that. And then now that I've got the belt line here and I could really go further, right? I could put the extra lip on the belt. I could really start thinking, remember every side edge will taper N. I could really draw that belt out them. I'm not going to do that by just maybe that helps you. But what I'm gonna do is really pay attention to the curvature. So now I've got this reference point right here of the curvature of the waste. To me that gives me a little better idea of what the abdominal muscles, how far they should curve back. So that's, that's really what I was trying to show you there is that these things become guides and reference points to each other. Just like bony landmarks, it guides you are at least gives you a point of reference to start from. It's better than just I'm guessing and maneuvering. You know, some people can do it without any of these reference points. So he's just Draw and draw on. It just comes out. Some of us who needed a little bit more help. So hopefully that's coming through for you is something that hopefully you don't need it, but if you do need it, it's there. Okay. So now we've got the collarbones back here. I just put a curve for the trapezius, but it's obviously not really that simplified. And I'm gonna go ahead and duplicate this again. I'm gonna get rid of the red ring for now. And then I'm, I've got the duplicate. I'm going to I'm free form. I want to keep it uniform. Get rid of this for now and the more floating underwear. And then duplicate this over. Just to kinda stage the work for you. And I actually wanna make the other one's smaller because I'm going to attach some arms on this one. I think this is a very important pose to see. See the arms in relationship with. Okay. So we'll soft erase this back. So what we'll do is we'll go ahead and stop here. But what we're gonna do in the next lesson is we're going to refine this a little bit more. Attached the arms. Really bring it all together. So what that, Let's stop and move on to our next lesson. 31. Refining the Male Torso: Welcome back. So now let's take this and turn back the opacity function. Am I just put this on a separate one. Make it easy, easy, peasy, like this. Alright. So now I'm going to attach some arms to this and same thing. So now we've got a sense of perspective. I feel like this pretty much works like that. To me. I can see through this, I feel like the ribcage connection point could be a little higher. So some little things, but little things that I could fix along the way. Hopefully you see that as well. But then the shoulders, this is where it gets a bit tricky. So I think I've already mentioned this once or twice, but the collarbones bend up a little bit more like that. Alright, so again, we could go overly simplified. I mean, there's collarbones, people will just do something like that. Like that. I mean, you could, you could take this all kinds of ways. But yeah, we'll keep it simplified like this. But when you get to the shoulder, It's good to think about the spine of scapula coming this way, the collarbone coming up this way, the shoulder going right around it and then also hooking in connecting into the chest area. And that's where you get this little pocket of the navicular fossa is right there in-between the two and so the chest goes through here. And I think I've already explained all this, but the main thing is that you get this feeling that you're looking down at the top of the shoulder, right? The Torso is now leaned over. And we really need to get that top down view of the shoulders to make this work. So I'm going to start there. I feel like the rest is pretty close anyways. So opposed to simplify the shoulder shape, it would come in like this back out and dip down. Not saying that's perfect. I'm just saying that's kinda how I start to shoulders for something like this. Another tricky thing about the shoulders I think, is really the proportions. So you want these nice big, heavy shoulders for strength and imposing character. And it's kinda easy to get that particular proportion wrong. I think so. Nice big shoulders. Now, here's the other thing. I need to think about how I draw a shoulder forward facing. So let's say that I draw the shoulder forward facing like this. Okay, trapezius back here, chest over here. There's that clavicular fossa, jugular phos or whatever. I'll get I'll leave that one. I'll center of the chest. There we go. This is maybe my shorthand method for the shoulder. And as I've mentioned, I kinda see a heart Leg shape. You might see or recognize it as an upside down triangular shape. But this is basically to me a circle with a point. Okay, if you wanted to really keep it simple, I just put a few angles in there because I'm used to draw on it over and over and over again. So what does this mean to me as a break it down, it means you've got the one head here, the one head in the middle and one had on the back that we can't see. They're not this simple shape. Again, that's my over-simplification of that. So as I come over to here, does that translate well? Well, it doesn't it doesn't and my own opinion, I mean, we're all going to have a different visual opinion of this stuff, but I feel like this part works. This part makes sense. The point does come down further into the Arm. What I don't necessarily feel like it works is this spot right here. So I think naturally, I just went up and over because that's what I would do here. And a lot of times our force a habit seems to mess with our ability to draw more complex poses and scenes. And it's like, what, what do you think it looks like? And you go right for what you think it looks like an afford facing shot. I've done this plenty of times. So what I would say is here, I need to rethink this In downslope it. Even if it's like this. Let's check that against the other side, see if it makes more sense. Sometimes it's as simple as maneuvering, something like that. So let's see if that helps. I think it's a little better. I don't think it's great. And then I'll know more once I attached the rest of the Arm. But what I do feel like is that it definitely does need to go down because the Front had of the deltoid is going to come up and connect over something like this on Miami, you need to drop down more. I'd probably put a little Strand and muscle in-between there. Well, that's a striation. I believe it would be called Illustration. And then on an on and I would wrap those around and down. So let me try that again. I feel like that's a bit messy. So I do like that better than the other side. Let me try the other side down. Then also tend to find is times I'll make a change on one side, but then it doesn't click until I do it on the other. I don't know why that is. I tend to draw because I think I've mentioned I tend to draw differently from side-to-side. And sometimes that benefits me and other times it does not. So I feel like it doesn't need that downward that so again, we're looking down at the shoulder, we have to really try to get those curves down and around. So anything that would be straight to our view. So let's say we continued with the abdominal muscles. Maybe those abdominal muscles are a little more straight. For vielleicht does not box. I'm doing here though. They still have to round down, but not as dramatic, but here they have to be more dramatic. So everything you see from a straight on shot is going to get more dramatic as it comes to this. And that's why a lot of times I will draw or at least pull one of my straight on shots off on the screen or whatever as a reference point to look at. It helps me make sure to put the more extreme downward curves into this. Now, I'll attach the arms. I know that was a lot of explaining there, but at the same time, there's a reason areas like this are tricky and some people can do it well and others can't. It's just not easy. So don't expect to get it right away, but definitely, definitely try these techniques. Hopefully it'll work for now with the Arm going down. Now we could start with cylinders here. Okay, so remember a big downward curve. You want to perceive, like if you were drawn through this, what would that cylinder look like? You should be able to see the top plan of it. Now, we're drawing the upper arm. And let me go back because you see I started to draw the Anatomy and I don't want to confuse you. Let's go ahead and add a layer on top of this with a red. So if you need to cylinders and cubes and prisms for your perspective, right? But the trick is the upper arm is really going to get more shallow height-wise from an angle like this. That's what I've noticed anyway. So I tried to draw this stuff over and over. And then I realized, like just making it too tall. So again, it's that idea that you're drawing something parallel to your view. But as soon as it's not parallel, it starts to look very different. So I would really focus on making that upper arm very shallow. I would also focus on maneuvering the Form and the upper arm to be at different different angles. Let me give myself some more real estate here. Oops. Okay. So what I'm trying to show here is that in the red, this is the top plane of the Arm. Hopefully you can see that he gets a bit confusing when I do these overlaps. So let me illustrate it like this. That is the top flat plane of the Arm that's gonna get hidden by the deltoid. Okay, So now what the green, it's going to come out and down. So this is red is going back, back into space, Okay, and that's why you can see the top plane. The green is the opposite. So we're going to see the Form come towards us this a bit. Not, not all the way. I guess we code, we could put it wherever we want, right? But now we're seeing the bottom plane of this one coming towards us. So the curvature wrapping up would be here. Like this. That makes sense. But for the red, the curvatures wrapping down like this. So you're wrapping lines would go like this. But a lot that's going to get hidden and it's gonna get hidden by deltoid, which went like this. This was our deltoid shape. The brush too vague. Shape right there. And again, I'm not saying this is the exact right shapes, especially based on your style. It's going to vary, right? Hopefully you understand that. Then I'm just showing you the shapes that I see in the way that I use them to construct my characters. So essentially like that. And then I'd probably take that just for visual reference like that so that you could see how far those cylinders for the upper arm go behind it. So now at that in front of us, we try to draw over top of this with black now. And actually I would want to see is all this good right there? I'm probably just bring this up and draw for this. Yeah. So now I will use what's there in front of us and seek this a little bit lower for opacity. Here we go. Now, I would attach the anatomy of muscles. I'm sorry, I said Anatomy and muscles. All of its Anatomy, right. So you've got the triceps back here. You're going to have the chest kind of coming in front of prior right about here of the bicep, right about here. You can get depends on where the thumb is. Let's say the thumb is over here. Okay, So in that case you're going to cross this bit of anatomy over this down. Like that elbow. You gotta kinda play around with that and see if you would actually see it from an angle like this. Something like that. Maybe you've got the am going like this. Feel like that looks a little more natural. Remember, like I mentioned, I tend to draw one side different and then I'll either relate that information or I'll leave it asymmetrical because obviously the arms, you have a good range of movement from one another, right? I don't don't need to be symmetrical. I feel like I would probably make sure it's on camera for you. I would probably just bring this right up, like this. Okay. The collarbone simplified. Bring it out towards the shoulder. Ok. And then the tricky part, as I mentioned before, getting the ribcage tucked under the chest muscle. Muscles is just right. So a big part of what makes areas like this complex is omitting certain areas. So I have to like play around with these shapes. I have to get them to feel like they're stacked and behind one another. So as I draw the first setup, abdominal muscles are gonna be taller. They're going to More likely cast a shadow on the neighboring to. But then I have to start shallowing up the distance from the height to get that sense of perspective. Really the Shadows to a big part. Also, you can bring up the connection point into the rest of the, the wastes. They're at an angle. That's going to help give you that sense of perspective where if I was to bring these lines out like this, it starts to flatten out those shapes. So that's something else, something. And you can over-exaggerate these as well, right? It's imaginative, Stylized drawing. You could go crazy with that, with the obliques here. And probably bring, you kinda get this a little bit of segmentation from the top area of the obliques. And then I would quickly dropping the other one. Remember, I got to keep that belt line in mind. There were playing around with it, so something like that. And then, I don't know on a real person you would even see the lattes, but on a Stylized character, I would put them in there. So I'm gonna go and do that. But I'm going to try to push those back when I try to imagine those behind all this and and recessed back there with Shadow them online as well. So you'll see when we add the Shadows, it'll really help push the concepts here. So let's go and stop here and head over to our next lesson. 32. Making Changes to the Pose: Alright, welcome back. So what don't wanna do here is show you how to change one of the arms to be tucked back even further. So realistically, I really wanted the arms to feel a little bit more like they were down and pulled back where I basically feel like with what we got so far, they're just they're just out in the front a little bit too much. I liked the perspective on the Torso. I don't mind that. But again, I would just at least want to show you how we can hopefully get even more of an exaggeration to the Arm pulled back. It's very important to play around with Arm positioning. Anyways, this should be a good opportunity for that. I made a copy of it, but what I wanna do is just take this existing one here. I'm going to erase this back. What I wanna do is perceived the upper arm going back further behind the deltoid. So I'm even gonna get rid of our little makeshift diagram here, practice gear with all this for now. And let's see, I could draw that back in as a reference point. So the shoulder is going to change shape even more. And I think that's what led me to point it down too much and then bring it forward. Is that the deltoid pointing down in the medial head right there. Just starts that process of thinking about it directionally like this. So what I probably should do is first omit that part of the deltoid temporarily so that it's not pushing me to think that way. In fact, I could probably say, well, if the arms pulled back really far, the deltoid would protrude up higher. You know, we'll get into some more dynamic versions, but there's There's a point when you start raising the shoulder, is that even your the chest and the collarbone, everything's going to change. It's going to follow the direction of the scapula, pulling back the shoulder going up and back or rolling back. All this moves with it. But we can start with just moving the shoulder back a little bit. I don't think it's going to be this dramatic. But also getting rid of that point there that might otherwise make us think about making decisions towards that direction. That makes sense. So the upper arm, I don't know if it's gonna be about one here, but I'm going to really make the point where it gets to the the point where it gets to the Form. Like hardly any space. So you see we've got a lot more distance here. If we really play around with this shape right here. And it's basically just remember, it's just that cylinder behind the shoulder. So it's a pretty simple shapes. Sides are pretty flat at this point. Curve at the bottom. Keep it very simple and just maneuver it. And think about, well, if this Arm was really pulled back, then this bicep would be extremely hard to sit, not hard to see. It's just not as much distance there to show it. And so you have to play around with how you bend the bicep down and around. But I'll show you that here in a second. Let's just get our Basic Shapes. And so now the arms are pulled back. I can play around with maybe moving this line back here. Lot of times getting these overlaps and just the right way is going to help get that feeling of, of forced perspective foreshortening. And then we'll bring the same shape out for the forearm. We should keep the size relationship in mind. I'm going a little bit big here. We'll say something like this. Again, we're going to have to keep this simple because we're still, we're still maneuvering these, these primitive shapes around to figure out if this will even work. I guess the thing I want to point out here is that the more you can look at this, this is your problem-solving arena, right? You're just messing around and moving shapes around. But you're not jumping in and just refining everything. I think there's a lot of room for growth at this particular juncture of the work. So again, these simple shapes play around with the manubrium, all sorts of different ways. Sale the body reacts when you move an arm back and you try pulling the other muscles towards that Connection point because obviously that has to occur. You got things like the sternum which is very stationary. But then the mid section is not an even when you pull the shoulder back? Yes. The sternum stationary, but all these muscles stretch and pull different ways. So hopefully I can explain lots of these versions of what you'll see. But some of it you're just going to have to pick apart from, again, your favorite poses, looking at life, different things, but you're going to use the same approach. And I'm showing you here with simple shapes for breakdowns, which can actually be a lot of PFK-1. And again, once you find your rhythm in your flow for it, it can save you a lot of time. Model headache, let's say something like that. Arms now pulled back. And again, I still want to play with this. I still feel like as I look at this in to the next stage of it of Refinement, I'm probably going to shape the bicep like this. I'm probably going to bring the Form up higher. So now I'm thinking a little bit more about the anatomy. I'm probably going to pull this in a little bit more on an angle. Just a little shifts like that to see what I see. If that's kinda feeling it out and seeing if that's going to work, if they'll shapes, you're going to work and I feel like they're I feel like if the arms pull back, all the chest is gonna be in front, right? So this, these muscles are going to go over here, connect into here. It's not the shoulder never looks like it's in front until we're really raise the arm forward and up, then it definitely starts to look like it goes in front of the jazz. But the connection points don't change. So it's always good to pay attention to that. So there we go. So now let's go ahead and this over a little bit. You can attach the hand. The hand. Just remember that these are your flexor is back here on the bottom side. Here your extensors. If you're always aware of where those are going. These extensors always point towards the thumb. So if we take the hand or so all want a bit of a pronated view of this hand. We could see some of the side of the fingers obviously, but it's still pronated because the palms facing down. So we do something like this. Kind of a clunky him there but just something to get us started. I picked all open that down just a little bit so I can give it a little more expression. Well, since I'm making the hand to align to the wrist area, that kinda looks boring. So likewise with the fingers, try to roll those fingers. If you can. Show the thumb here at the base, make the risks thinner. Zeros probably a bit heavy, but proportions are going to vary, right? I'm going for a pretty bulky character, but this is still just a basic representation to get us rolling. And then remember, use your wrapping lines. Kinda figure out where these, the direction of these forums never underestimate your wrapping lines. Super powerful, simple technique. I love it. So again, probably have something about like this, the Anatomy. And that's really all I need. I mean, again, I could refine this. Obviously, it always makes it easier when you refine it. But I'm just gonna go ahead and turn this back now and go back to the Line Art layer. I'm gonna reshape the shoulder and just try to connect it all together. So none don't feel like a whole lot of this is going to change this the shape of the shoulder a little bit because they arms pulled back. You got the Front head of the deltoid, which looks, it looks like it's a bit higher and it looks very triangular like a bit of a pyramid. I'll just say a triangle. But then when you get into here, going to have to picture these muscles rolling around the curling over like this, right? But the thing is that we're, where is this medial head ads? So it's, it's kinda tricky. So if you start with too many segmentations, you can get messy, is what I've noticed. Bring this medial head way back here. And then I'm just going to avoid the segmentation for a moment. So to me, the medial heads right about there. We're seeing some of the posterior had something like that. Okay. So now we get like we're looking down at the shoulder a little bit more. I haven't drawn all the segmentations because again, they can get very hard to read. Same thing with the tricep. Tricep would really be pretty far back on the Arm at this point. So I'll just go for the silhouette for now. I find it to be faster anyways. I want some of the other fingers and view because it helps to make the hand look more dimensional, right? A little bit of a downslope difference from the risk to the first. I think that helps. Just a little bit of segmentation. Anatomy. The bicipital really curl down in front of the forearm at an angle like this. There we go. So now we've got a basic Arm Pose shifted. Again. What I mentioned about the chest, it's going to come in front of this area. Something like that. More notice we're thank work. As this arm was to move forward, eventually the bicep would start to come in front of the chest. Even though you've got to remember it does still intersect right here. No matter why, just the shapes change, the look of it changes. So let's attach the other fists. Quick here. Again, the extensors on this side, the flexors on the bottom. So that means the thumb is over here. So just remember these always point towards the thumb. So that means the thumbs over here doesn't mean you have to Draw a fist every time. But for a lot of these I will just because it will do more on hands. But for right now I want, I really want the focus to be over here. But again, I like to show as much of this as I can because I don't want you to feel like you're missing out on some ideas. It's kinda tough to know when to stop showing you stuff because there's, There's so much that goes into making cool poses and drawing full pages and characters. And I mean, obviously it's just complex topics. So lot of times I don't I don't want to stop refining something because I'm afraid afraid you miss miss out on something important. Don't want that. Okay. So I'm just going to keep that simple, but that's all I really need. Same concept where we see a little bit of the side of the knuckles. Probably could bring this finger out more little messy, but I think I can still read it relatively well to fix it. Just like that. We've got that Pose refined and hopefully you can see to that just by making it asymmetrical, it makes it more interesting, right? So when you get something like this, there's certain things you might want to do that for sure. But then generally asymmetrical poses like that are gonna be, they're just going to look more advanced as long as you can do them without too many hiccups. I mean, I've got a bigger fist over here and stuff like that. So there's things that need to be refined, but generally, asymmetrical poses will give you a little bit more of an interesting look. So let's quit and stop here and head over to our next lesson. 33. Adding Shadows to the Torso: Welcome back. Now, we'll go ahead and add some shadows to this. So it really don't need the base primitive that we started with. But again, remember that's a really helpful technique for keeping perspective in mind for more difficult parts of the body. I want to also point out that the actual me get the neck and but I wanted to also point out, remember when I talked about placing the three major muscles of the deltoid and they're not this even by the way, but again, for stylization, I find it to be okay. You know, your opinion may vary on that. But the main thing that I want to point out is it, since I didn't put that point to the base here, it actually helped. And so it makes it read better. And the reason why, at least to my understanding, is it because it's receding away from our view and as spherical way. We might not see those points. Or at least for the over-simplification and stylization. It makes more sense, right? So if I, if I draw that same shoulder and I show that point, it's going to be really hard to get that feeling that we're looking right down at the shoulder. But as soon as I cropped that off and it's not that it's not there. It's that it's basically receding away from our view. So if we use are wrapping lines to imagine this is a pretty bad wrapping lines and we try that again. So there arcing all the way around. Well, just like something that spherical. This. If if your camera angles up here and that's where you're looking at it from. Your line of sight. Can't really make it around that edge, right. So if you have a shoulder muscle that has a point, striations or whatever you wanna call them. But the different heads intersecting with the Arm down here, you can't really see that, right? So that's, that's what this is. Hopefully it's not confusing you. It's just one of those things where that's why it looking at all this stuff is the simplified shapes can make a lot of sense because you'll have to do a lot of maneuvering to problem-solve these areas of the body. But I feel like that that works. So hopefully you see that. So back to finishing off the neck area, the trapezius really comes up and goes up the back of the neck. So it sweeps and goes up the back of the neck. The neck would actually be over here unless it's pushed down really far. And that's kinda what we're showing that it's pushed down more. But just keep in mind that trapezius goes up the back of the neck like this. It looks a little more like that wasn't attached. You'd actually have the muscles coming up the bag. But since we're not going to see that, we're just going to go across like this for now. It's actually good to draw through. Anyways, I've found, instead of trying to go one to, the more you do that, the more you get asymmetrical asymmetry to the work and sometimes it may not be what you're after. So draw through as much as possible for that. So bring down the neck like this simplified version here. We'll say the opening for the neck or something like that. But again, if we're trying to move that over a little bit, if we're trying to really push that, that leaned over pose, we're going to bring the head way down. Just a representation, get us going. So there's that will get rid of the base primitive. They're probably get rid of these as well. Now, let's drop in some shapes of shadow. Let's just pick a spot. Again. I liked this effect where I tone it back and also making the brush bigger so that I can kinda blob it in there. Now, another thing about placing Shadows. It's a good idea to try it. The way I'm showing you, also, to try to draw them in. So some people do better with drawing them in. Some people do better with, I don't want to say blah, but amendment sounds kinda funny, but that's kinda how I look at it. Then I'm just placing almost like I just think of it like I'm using a big marker, going to town with it. Now, this is the other thing is well Can always add your shadows. You will. In this way, you can add and subtract pretty easily. But say you are just working with more of a permanent marker effect. You don't have an erasable marker or you're not as proficient with whiteout. Just remember you can always add. You can really ease up to what you're doing. Kind of analyze it and a little more lines to add a little more. So just know that's pretty like an of course type situation. Of course that's what I would do. But sometimes we're just in a bit of a rush and pacing yourself and slowly coming up to the edge of what you're looking to do can yield some good results. A lot of times quality work is really the subtleties. I found. I think that a lot of people are on the verge of making really great Art, but they just blast right past it because there's just too, they're moving too fast. Maybe they're trying to be fast. That's definitely a thing. We're just trying to get faster with your work so you blow right past the mark. Then another part of it is just having the I for where the subtleties are. That's probably the biggest part, takes years to develop that. I'm just going glycolysis in from the side so your obliques would be pretty covered. The ribcage, again, Stylized, serratus areas, Stylized ribcage. Around that over a bit like that. Some heavier shadows on the side of the chest. For the deltoid. I'm even going to have to Shadow this differently because here we're seeing more of a parallel or side view, the medial head. But here we're seeing all three heads. But also since the Arm is tucked down more on, need to incorporate a larger shadow. On the bottom like this. I think I will. And I don't even know. Let's see. I guess this would be the medial head. So you get just keep in mind when you started this shoulder, you'll see that it actually has a bit of W like striations going through there. I don't do a whole lot of that. Again, I go for a simplified version. But when you study anatomy books, you'll see what I'm talking about. But here I just want to get to the, the round over of it. You can always add more divides as I render this, but I like that way that divide us. So I'm going to simplify it, taught that for now. Just go with this. Then for the bicep here. Probably put all this in a shadow, but I'm going to heavily Shadow this again. So a lot of times when you drop in Shadows, you're pushing forms back. And likewise with the light, you're bringing them forward. So if this arm is receding back, then chances are it's just going to get less of that light, right? So I'm gonna push that back. I don't know that a block the whole thing, but I might I mean, there's definitely times it was just kind of test it out. So it looks like definitely times you'll wanna do that. And I would say this side of the arms still going to get some white maybe to about here. And then we'd have to cut the Shadows into this area. About like this. Yeah, I feel like that kind of works. But then it'll, it doesn't allow me any rendering there. So let me see if I, taking something like this, I might want to render that area. And if not, I can always fill it in later. So I know it already works as a shadow. But I did want to show you a bit of a rendering technique right here, so something like that. And I'm also trying to get a little bit of a cast shadow from the deltoid going down as well. Let's try that. And the Shadows are actually little more to the right of everything. But the reason I have some to the left here is because this isn't just the same. So if everything was parallel, then I'd put the Shadows all against the right, like right here. It all kinda be on the right side. But as soon as something goes down and away from our view, it's also not going to receive light. So that's why I'm putting shadows here. This is a cast shadow from the chest and shoulders. This is as well. But again, I have to think about these as compounding shapes, not just Not just boards right there. More dynamic in nature. There are multiple components, multiple directions that these shapes are curving into. And so that's why sometimes it'll look like I'm adding Shadows inconsistently maybe, but I'm trying to be as consistent as again, the most part a lot of it will be to the right. But then I just look at certain areas and along the tire here, it's lower here. This ridge of the risks would give a little bit of a Shadow. And sometimes it's just throw in little things because again, they look cool. So that's another part of it as well as I've mentioned a bunch of now at this point. All right, it was that trapezius. You could draw more of the separations of the chest. Ready? So there we go. I think that's about it now. Again, if we wanted to push this further with the Shadows, so we've got a basic Shadow map or whatever you want to call it, shapes the shadows. But experimental lot with areas like this, make copies of the work and just say, Okay, I want to see this side-by-side and I'm going to really I just really feel like the bottom part of these abdominal muscles wouldn't receive any light. The characters really leaned over. So play around with this blocking, blocking larger shapes of shadow. The lights only hitting one side will really I mean, I probably would stand to reason that wouldn't be any light at all on the labs. I don't even know that you would see him that clearly. I just kinda like it. I could probably bring those up a little bit. But see how just by adding more shadow like this, it does kinda reinforce that the Torso is receding back away from our view more. And autonomic goals, once you attach the head, you'd put a nice big cast shadow from the head right down to the center. That's going to help. Another thing is you might really post a Shadow more heavily on the base of the deltoid from this angle, the inner part of the tricep, inner part of this arm. So again, there's a good opportunity to practice here and see what you come up with. Let me go back and see if I liked that more in Canada like that more actually, but, but that's what's neat about shadows. You can always add to them. Yeah, like that almost feels like it's safe, but it's not really is accurate as it could be. So let me go back. Yeah, I think that that actually looks a bit better. So let's go ahead and stop here and head over to our next lesson. 34. Inking the Shadows: All right, welcome back. So now let's go ahead and add a layer over top. Let me go ahead and ink this and render it for you with yeah. I just feel like it's kind of an important policy practice and we'll do some full poses obviously. But my hopes, as I've mentioned, is that these poses is incremental. Poses will help you feel more confident about this. Because again, it's kind of overwhelming at first. One of the ways I feel more comfortable with this stuff is just to break things down. And you can always piece it back together with new knowledge that you gained along the way. Definitely take advantage of that as well. So now I'm just going to get in here, try to make some clean lines. Grab these shadows as well. And we'll also add little details are along the way that I've kinda hinted to seize little marks that I like to add in there. Sarah, it look a little more interesting. Remember you can play around with the angles in which you cut your shadows. Just these little shifts in angles. Try to find a nice balance of curves as well, so it's not too angular. Start to look a bit robotic. Always check it from a distance as you go. The wrinkles from the hands, just remember they spin out towards the knuckles. Shadow this base of the thumb is because it's going away from our views. We might as well simplify it with a shadow. So another great technique is to use these shadows to your advantage. You got to figure if you, if you don't put an adequate amount of shadows in your work can sometimes become harder, not easier. Shadows can be a great time-saver once you use, use them effectively. So we make the work look more solid. My opinion. And then also they can be great time savers. Some little line breaks. No, not really to the texturing part, I guess it's kind of resembled texturing about the cross hatching, but I like to kinda get those in early on. Hands bother me a little bit, but I'll I'll figure out a way to fix it. Okay, so again with the deltoid here, you can play around with breaking off these bigger shapes as well. You don't have to leave him this way. But I do think if you don't have a good idea of where you want to see your segmentation to the muscles. Just start simple. Because it's like basically these simple shapes right here work. There's a lot of artists that will just draw the three heads. Sometimes not even that. Some artist just draw like what looks like one big head to the shoulder in a couple of lines there and they're randomly and call it a day. So there's lots of ways to really go about it. I find that if I just at least draw these three, I can always add to it. And adding to it can be as simple as just cutting into it some different ways, detailing it like that. You can pick it apart as much as you want. I'm going to keep it pretty simple for now. And always do more when I go to actually render the crosshatching. And I'm going to push this lot back further. Honestly, I don't even know what you'd see it, but it was just feel like it looks cool. So I'll leave it, but I may feel the need to turn that back. And each time I erase here, it's going to push it further back behind the character from an angle like this. Probably just fell down. I was thinking I wanted to leave a little negative line there, but I can always go back and add that if it bothers me. But I wasn't really, there. Wasn't really liking that. Let's surrealists not really reading as well as I would like, healer. But once about, I'd probably want to add negative one is right here. It's like the chest is getting a little too lost. Could also come back in and do some bounce light effect like I showed you on the other examples. But start with this for now. Just saw the shape doesn't get lost. Now. Working into the abdominal muscles Okay. Hopefully that fills them. Okay. So messiness which affects and then what I would probably do there. So I actually liked the impact. I don't know. I'll come come back to this and really not liking the way that I'm trying to fix the chest. But you know, what I might do is is I might add a little bit of negative line work or shapes to these other areas. So here's another one of the serratus, right? So if I continue this line like this, just a little bit of light, maybe on the lot. I don't know that might be too much but or maybe that's not the right placement. But what I wanted to explain to you there is that you can build this line back by the shapes under you see it. Since I haven't filled this other area and it works better over here, maybe because I brought the shadow up too high in the opposite direction. Sure. But it works better over here, but maybe it won't work as well once I've filled with sand, let's see. So some of these shapes do get lost in the shadows. But there's ways to bring them back and be strategic about it. And we'll keep making these adjustments along the way. So let's go ahead and stop here and head over to our next lesson. 35. Rendering the Torso: Okay, So let's continue with the Shadows here. Phones very back finger. The next one. A little bit on this one. There's that someone can sum is a little line breaks. So a lot of times it just makes the, the bigger bulk of the Shadows not feel so overpowering. So just practice these little bits of texture in line break to add details. Times outbreak right off the existing line to do more of this as we render, but we're almost there. So like to add it as I go a little bit. So I feel like the shoulder here we're going to see more of a separation because the arms pulled back. That's what I'm trying to get some of these divides in there. You could even take this and say, well, you can see a little bit of this head back there. Can the trapezius aren't this straight? But for this type illustration, just gonna go right through there. And I feel like what the chess, and it's probably just as per array here. So a lot of times when I'm looking at one side of the other, almost always there's one side that looks better. It's not that that's always a reason to change it. Because again, you really have to get used to drawing in more asymmetrical concepts. The Shadows, definitely the position of the lens, in which case everything else changes. But it's, it's kinda distracting if things are too symmetrical anyways, in the body. So it's finding a nice balance so that the fact that we're drawing it means that we can make things perfectly symmetrical and all sorts of crazy decisions in our work. But yeah, we have to know when to when to do that, when not to So now I'll go ahead and render this. And I wanna do. I also want to thicken up this area right here a little bit. So I'm going to take a pretty thin line and rotate this. And as I've mentioned what this is good to play around with variations too thick to thin. The tightness of the lines, angles of the cross hatch. All sorts of ways to be creative here. How far up you bring it on the forearm? The biceps, go about that far on the base of it. Along the sides, I can go up a little higher. And that's pretty good for just rounding out that area. For this area, I'm gonna go right through the entire Form. I'm trying to push this muscle group back. Then for this area. And we'll go crossed. Let's see, cross hatch this way. Actually I'm going to show you both ways just to see, just to show you how experimenting can yield different results. So like that's fine or even and, or, but say or just going to bring them off to an angle like this. Yeah, I actually kinda like that. I looked at those little patterns, they create the diamonds or whatever. And let's see, along this area here will start straight or parallel to the length of the shadow. And then bring a couple this way. Be very creative with it. Do all sorts of things. I'm not liking the shapes and hear a whole lot. Mainly I don't like the back of the tricep. It looks like a straight objects, which wouldn't make sense. I definitely should have got more creative with the Shadows here. I also feel like the tricep almost feels like it's too much on the side of the Arm, not on the back of the Arm. So just keep that in mind that a lot of times you might need to push shapes around to avoid bad habits like that if you do that and your own work. So let's see, let's try making this wrinkle smaller. And put another one here. Just to make it look a little more interesting. Back with a negative line right through here. And this also feels too straight and boy, so it really is a bad habit and a repetition. But I'll see in my work and generally, when I'm doing it, I'm doing it kinda all over and I need to go back and kinda clean those things up and fix them. And that's what you see here. It's a little too. Like I was just going To habitual what those points. And to me it's something that I don't always find myself doing. But when I do it, I kind of run through the whole artwork and I've gotta go back and look for them and fix them. That's what I'm seeing here. But not a big deal. Easy enough to fix that. Okay. So go ahead and Shadow for this area, probably come across to here. I'm gonna ignore that little kind of design element wrinkle I put in. Lacrosse had Sierra first. So it looks in that I can always put that back. So a lot of times just getting these cross hatch marks to wrap around the Form is a lot of the battle kind of explaining the Form. I'll tell you a lot of times I think of them just like wrapping lines. So it's a similar idea. I don't always, as you can probably tell, make them go right around the Form like maybe they should. But again, that's why he's cross Hatching to still give the illusion of shadowing without always getting it to wrap directly around the Form. So like what the deltoid here, it's a lot easier to perceive it going up and around the medial head of the deltoid with the direction. It's kinda set at. But it's not always that easy. Like there's certain angles to the body and certain muscle groups, which I just find it harder to try to wrap right around it. So again, I think that as long as you're getting a sense of gradient to it, I think that's, that's pretty adequate. I know there's definitely styles out there where they do a lot less Rendering. And I've definitely seen styles where it's not very well thought out other than just a few little marks kinda thrown in there. Obviously, if you look back at Comics from the '90s, the Rendering was a lot heavier, a lot more predominant then comic styles of today. But ultimately, I think we just have to experiment with a lot of different various ways to introduce it. Obviously paying attention to artists you admire and paying special attention to how they incorporate their Rendering. Love doing that. I love learning from other artists that do it well and just saying, how can I understand that a bit better? So inking over their work is a great way to do that. And ultimately just being creative and open-minded to new ways of doing this. So let's head over to the next lesson and continue rendering. So what that, Let's move on. 36. Adding More Rendering : Alright, welcome back. We'll continue just cross Hatching this and adding more and more. So remember, you can go to three different directions. What the Rendering, usually three is my max, but I'm pretty sure I've seen people go overboard with it, you know, four or five different directions. Again, it's really effective. As long as you just keep the volumes and the forms in mind. Then a lot of times you can get the dimension you're after. I mean, like anything else, any other aspect of this type of work? It takes a lot of practice and a lot of patients. I would say that this era of the work requires probably the most significant amount of patients. But it's also tends to be the most relaxing for me. I'm not sure why I think that for me. A lot of the work that was done to build up the artwork with the knowledge of anatomy and shapes, the shadows, and wondering if the symmetry is right. And all these other things. To me that is a bit more of a if any, if you could ever call any of this a stressful experience, which it shouldn't be obviously, but there's times it's tough. I would say that end of the work is more stressful where the Rendering feels like a bit more of a relaxed state for me. Now, that could be totally different for you. We all have different strengths and weaknesses obviously. But what I, what I can say is that once you find the sense of patterns and your values, you're like, you know, I just want this area to be shadowed in this area to be raised. And once you start to feel more comfortable with that and realizing that all sorts of Rendering types can help you achieve that, then you just start to lean into it more relaxed and just experiment. Have FUN. One artists that I'm always going to refer that I always admired for that ability is Todd McFarlane is work where he uses a lot of different rendering styles throughout his work, a lot of smaller lines that'll little bumps off the edge of the line Weight. So many, so much variation, so much thick, thick to thin or big to little lines, which I think is really neat like he basically creates a lot more depth and dimension through the illustration with that process. So if you think of it like you're bigger shapes of shadows. And then you have your tapered lines that render off of those shadows. But then what about all the little tiny details and textures that you can create along the way. So now if it's a shot like this, we have a little bit less that we can introduce with that unless they're wearing like a cool suit that's maybe has like a metallic finish or some textured material of some sort, right? Carbon-fiber, whatever it is. So then you can experiment a More. And if it's a suit with multiple materials and you can go in and crazier. But it doesn't really mean you can't just incorporate blemishes and dirt and grime and little bits of imperfections. And other artists that does it amazingly well. And I'm sure if you know my work, you probably already know is, but it's David Finch. And again, he takes the rendering to a whole new level of depth, dimension, texture, and style. So again, this Torso probably isn't the best version of that because again, I'm just trying to show you how to shade Anatomy. But every now and then practice on your pieces and do, do a bunch of little imperfections, do a bunch of little mark-making Jamaica copy so that you can just totally go wild with it. I think that's important to do because you can be very Critical. Again, like, like everything else we've talked about throughout these lessons, it's easy to become overly critical your work. And then all sudden, you're not exploring style as much and opportunities to be different. But if you do a few pieces here and there we let anything go, Are everything goes, then you're definitely going to find some new style choices. So again, in this one, I'm really just going for value, so Shadows. And I'm not even going for a lot of variety in the depth and dimension and Shadows. It's just like to me, this is like a small bit of round over from dark to light. I'm and I can always add more, but I like to do that for the Anatomy because I want to make sure that I'm explaining the anatomy and hopefully similar to what it might look like if it was ever drawn in this way. And I'll but not no, I don't want to go to awfully crazy when I'm trying to explain Anatomy. Because then we're going to have to talk a lot more about texturing and different surfaces, specular versus matte finish. So you have to practice all those different finishes, right? So you have to practice. Common one that I remember an old are magazines, was practicing drawing, shiny boots And also get an image of some shiny boots with the folds and everything. I wanted to say this was even one of the Comic Art Books. I can't remember which one. And it's a really good exercise because what you learn there, you're learning the folds of leather. You learn the sheen of the boot. You learned so much so zigzag pattern that you have to get really good at for clothing and Comics. It's very evident there. All these things relate really well. You just have to find them you gotta practice on. But it all starts here, I think where you're just looking at some basic shapes of shadows. You're learning to cross hatch away from the Shadow and to the light. I mean, look at the shoulder right here. It could pretty much be a It's definitely like a football shape, but it could pretty much be a ball, sphere. Each one of those kinda looks a little bit spherical, maybe too much, as a matter of facts, but that's really what it all boils down to. And let me know to if you guys need some exercises where we just work off some spheres and sum square them. I'm happy to do that and add that to the content. I, I wanted to give you whatever you need to feel comfortable with this. But remember that all of these things are really just Basic Shapes. And you're learning to interlock them together. Then when they look to divided your Shadows and you're rendering or another way to pull those shapes together. But they really are a lot of Basic Shapes. Footballs, diamonds, prism, different cylindrical shapes with a taper. They're all just Shapes. And I think the more that at least for me, the more that I started to pay attention to that, I started to feel at ease about the process where at first I was just so consumed with the fact that I couldn't draw a part of the body to look like that part of the body. And it took a lot of painful revisions and mistakes for me to ever get there. So again, I want to stress that to you that it's, it's a patient process. You have to be extremely patient with yourself and take your time. So hopefully you're in it for the long run because it's not an overnight process. There's a reason it's called the artistic journey. So like you mount the bicep here. I'm just trying to Shadow and most of it. Now. I was kinda thinking that this part and saying wall, I probably should Shadow the whole thing entirely. Why I'm trying to do well, I'm trying to show that the bicep under the rest of the Arm or the Arm is pushed back further. So now the bicep starts to get under the shoulder. It's definitely behind back behind the shoulder as far as depth wise from us, the viewer and the scene, right. But then also the more tucks under that shoulder and back, it's getting even less light, right? So again, these are all things that you just have to envision, especially if we're not looking at reference. But again, there's, there's so many great tools and nowadays for even getting referenced for something like this. So what I would recommend here is that you draw the Pose a way that you want. And then if you're struggling to get the Shadows envisioned and say for instance, you can't find a good reference shot and the Comics that you source or whatever, there's 3D Pose apps. I'm not going to say any of them just because I don't sponsor stuff like that and I don't know if they one-minute there around next minute they're gone. So I don't want to date the content by doing that, but at the same time, I've seen a bunch. I use a few and they, they're pretty great. I actually like to sculpt in 3D. That's gonna be cumbersome for something like this. But there's these great apps that you can find for your devices. And you would Pose your characters in a similar pose and the app, and then you'd move the light source around. Well, that can be a great way to get your Shadows. Another one that's even better in my opinion, but I know a lot of people don't really think this works out as wallet. So I have a camera tripod and for shot like this, especially if I can't get something right, it just seems faster to me to take a few pictures. And I can even amplify the light source. And I can definitely maneuver the light source, but I can amplify it in Photoshop. And so it becomes very easy to grab this information. Now, the trick is to not get distracted by yourself or your model or whatever, and not be able to look past that and draw something very stylistic. And again, as I mentioned with reference earlier on, I like to start with the drawing first to help me avoid the distraction of the reference. So for instance, even if it's Meet me in the polls, right? Not so much that I'm entirely distracted by myself. It's not that it's that I will start to think about the reference. I will start to draw differently than I did before, because I sort of enter into a copy mode of the reference and the photo. Well, when I go to draw from a photo, my Art looks totally different. I don't know why. I don't know if that's just me, but something to think about. But when I draw stylistically with nothing, my proportions will maybe be skewed but in a, into me and a good way, in a way where I can explore ideas. I'll use more angles. I'll make it look more edgy. I'll throw in random details that might be nowhere to be found in reality. Well, To me, that's all kinda what I'm looking for in my style. But again, if I start with the photo, then it comes out very different. So you have to test yourself. You might be somebody that thrives and does really well photos and has no problem. Look and pass it. Now there's a ton of great artists out there that use real heavy photo reference. And then you can look at their techniques. It's amazing stuff I would never say not to try it. I want to give you what works for me. And again, when it comes to style choices, I seem to do a bit better by pulling back from that and avoiding that a little bit, but not entirely. There are definitely days every week where I tried to draw from life. So again, keep that in mind. I'm not saying don't draw from life. I'm saying, if you want your style to come through a little bit more, you might want to start with your rough sketches first and then maybe integrate some of those other aspects. So just again, be aware that I'm definitely saying don't draw from life because to me there's a bunch of other stuff that we get from drawing from life and that's what you know, accuracy for one. But then also just a sense of fluidity and knowledge of the body that you're just not going to get by, drawn from your imagination. So again, it's finding that balance. So let's go ahead and stop right here. We're going to head over to the next lesson and finish up our rendering. So with that, let's move on. 37. Final Rendering on the Torso: Welcome back. So now just to go through this little bit more, so now you can see I'm just selecting back-and-forth from black to white. Same idea. And I know it's repetitive, but I really wanted to give you all this in real time. I know it's been a request from a lot of students, so I just want to make sure to deliver upon that. And I get it because I'll watch time-lapse videos of stuff like this. And although I still glean some information from it, and I'm still happy to see as much of it as I possibly can. Because it does feed the idea, process and thoughts of what they're actually doing. The speed of it tells us another story. I mean, I always like seeing it done in real time as well because I want to know I don't want to compare myself and I don't want you to compare yourself to this, but it's still good food for thought. And it kinda gives you a better idea of how the strokes are made. And so a lot of times people ask me, How are you getting those thick to thin lines? And hopefully you can see, especially by watching it in real time, that I am doing multiple strokes per line. There is Line sensitivity somewhat in the brushes that I used for the Procreate app, but it's not that significant. In fact, I pretty much turn a lot of that down. I want pretty close resemblance of what it's like to use Micron pens. So I've never mastered or crow quill and I need to and hopefully will soon. A brush obviously gives you a very good range of thick to thin. So I've done a little bit more with those. I can't remember the type, Winsor Newton 104105. I can't remember the brush type, but I don't use them often enough to be proficient at it, to tell you things like that. But what I can tell you is I have different brush pens that I've used over the years, which I can no longer get. Those have a very good thick to thin ratio with one stroke, but it's still a different kind of drawing for me. I'd rather use a plain nib, so a micron, a pit pen. Let's see, There's another one that I, that I use quite a bit. But I'll say microns, microns are by far the one that I use, the moles. So with those, you're going to taper the Line by doing multiple strokes over and over. And that's essentially what I'm doing here as well. I'm also purposely skipping the lines. As I've mentioned. I like the texture that it provides. I am pretty sure I picked that up from watching David fence like, I don't know if he would go back and erase the lines or the anchors that I've looked at when over his work, the more that it's just one of those things where you kinda see a certain thing and somebody else's work. And then you adopt it because it just looks cool. And you just go on and off from there like even the chest muscle. How I did the lines going down and then down the side that's parallel to the serratus. And then across the bottom of the pectoralis near the ribcage. So those two different angles. And then I pulled those lines up along the side of the chest and make the Cross Hatching. If you look at that pattern. I know where I got that. I got that from watching Wilkins work in the way that he doesn't now he does it masterfully and I'm nowhere near to that level doing it the way that he does. But what I'm trying to say, there's it's okay to do that. We all do that. All artists pickup techniques from each other. It's a great thing, not a bad thing. And you're going to put your own spin on it over time. You're just going to add little bits and pieces and then eventually you're just going to try something altogether new as well. Your yard is just going to transform over the years. So be okay with taking everything you can end developing it that way. But again, it's, it's first experimenting with all these different concepts. If you don't know what to do and what experimentations to try, then the best thing is, is just to look around and take little bits and pieces from people that you admire that do things really well. Now I will say this, that there's, There's been plenty of things over the years where I've tried to emulate it and put it into my work and it just didn't work out. And that's okay as well. That teaches you something else about yourself. Like well, let's just doesn't really apply to my way of thinking or my style. And I say my way of thinking More than anything because I feel that, that all of this is a language, it's a visual language. And so some of it you can appreciate, but you can't quite understand. There's a lot of styles that I absolutely love, but I just can't do, for some reason, it just doesn't click with me. Now, the good thing is, if that's the same that you've experienced, not a big deal. It is what it is kind of thing. But the thing is there's so many different styles and ways to go about this that you're eventually going to find what you love and what you're good at. Those two things will coincide. They don't always need to be on. I got to draw just like this person or that person. And that's why again, going back to comparisons are really don't like them. Your comparison should be against the you of today and tomorrow. You've yesterday, I should say. So that those are the comparisons you should make. You should strive to be a better version of view. And that's it. That's where happiness is because expectations can sometimes lead to disappointment. Not that you shouldn't strive for excellence, but if you're comparing yourself to things that you can't quantify other people and their success, for instance, then that's a recipe for disaster, right? What I've found, and again, it might not apply to everybody, but what I've noticed in my own life is that if I just drive to keep performing better and look back at my my work retrospectively every few months, six months is usually a good marker for me. I'm usually pretty amazed and I'm definitely amazed by five years in a decade. Now, not everybody is patient enough to think that way, right? It's like real easy to say, oh goodness, I don't want to wait five years to be good at this stuff. And maybe some, you won't have to be and that's great. But the good thing is if you're in love with what you do and you're ready to put in that time anyways, then you're not going to feel a ton of anxiety by pressuring yourself for that short-term gain you, because you're just hopefully gonna be having FUN with it. But again, looking back, heels go, whoa, not only did I learn a ton, have FUN doing it, and that should always be the goal, I guess so. Enjoy the journey, enjoy the daily routine. If you can fall in love with the process, the day-to-day grind, your chances or successor Weight greater. Again, I don't mean that to somehow take away from hard work because hard workout that is part of it. That is not easy to Draw. Figure Drawing, Anatomy, Comics, compositions, backgrounds, perspective. These things are not easy. These things are in some ways amazingly difficult, but that's why people appreciate it and that's why you'll appreciate yourself after you get through all that hard work. So just be patient, grind it out, have FUN with it. But remember too, that the fund does not replace the hard work ethic. They actually need to go hand in hand. I don't think of metal, whole lot of comic guard, especially ones that work on actual book titles that I've been fortunate enough to talk to. And by the way, that could be independent Comics doesn't have to be the big name guys. Always keep that in mind. Independent sector is just an important and people worked just as hard and honestly they're having a lot of successes days. So don't discount that tickets all about working for the big guys because I really don't think it is. But then, but all of them that I've met that have worked on these Full books which are a huge undertaking, right? I've never heard anybody make it sound like it was easy. I've heard everybody pretty much make it sound like it was worthwhile. So that's, that's the main thing. Not easy, but you will definitely be entirely grateful to yourself and to your people you work with to get something like that done. I know that some of my best times, my, my greatest accomplishments are just the five books that I did. The book that I did for Learn to Draw Action Heroes. It took me six months and it was really grueling and hard, harder than I thought it would be. But when I got done, I've felt so great and I can look over and sit on the shelves and I can go into a bookstore. It's it's totally worth it, but it's a lot of hard work. So you've got to be able to marry those things together to get to then get the end of that, that race. So again, forgive me for getting off on a tangent and speaking about some other things, but this is really redundant at this point. Alls I'm looking at as different angles and different ways of generating this cross Hatching. Hopefully you can see that I am trying to keep it lighter and the light source side, heavier Rendering, heavier shadows and the shadow side, I perceive the light being up top, shining down on this character. So you see there's very little to no rendering on the back of the arms and the trapezius. And I'm mainly trying to pull lines From the shadow side up towards the light source side. Now, I don't always stay entirely consistent with that. I need to get better at it. But I'll tell you the main thing is I'm no longer avoiding Shadows. And so that's another thing that I wanted to make sure to teach you guys in this course, because I think I have been in a really bad habit of avoiding shadows, but at the same time, just knowing that I could fix them in the color stage. So I would think, well off, I'm going to color this are anyways to, I really need heavy shadows. You just learned so much by forcing yourself to Draw Shadows. It's It's not just that it can look cooler and very neat, very professional. It gives a very solid feeling to the work on the page. It just teaches you a lot. But if you void them, you'll never get good at and like anything else, right. And that's where I found myself because I didn't feel like it was naturally good at it. Realistically. Again, not to sound too preachy. I know I do, but it's when you when you avoid things that are hard for you. Sometimes I don't all about every time, but sometimes avoiding the, the most, the biggest transformation that you can make an yourself. It's really kinda crazy and I think that definitely applies to our light. If it's not everything, that's what's tricky about it. You can't say, well everything you avoid some big transformation that you're missing out on. But for me, I know that it can be I mean, oftentimes we do avoid the things that we know we need to be doing. It's almost like we're tricking ourselves with some sort of fake reward. But the reward is actually making ourselves do it. So now just going around the edge, picking apart from line Weight. Now, here's a funny thing about line Weight to is like you could say, well, if it's on the light source side, wouldn't that Line be very thin? Maybe even some areas nonexistent. There are areas where that does work. So try that out like so you got it works on an area like say, the very top most area of a helmet makes a good example. So you've got the shiny helmet to your character array. It's sometimes it looks very cool to go to the very top edge where the light would be very specular and bouncing off the helmet and erase the line back a little bit. You can put a little drawing of a glare but no connected line there. Why? Because it basically implies that the light GOT so bright and intense that you didn't even see the shadow of the line Weight. Okay, so just little things like that kinda makes sense now I wouldn't do that on Anatomy as much to me, I like to put heavier line we all around the character, even on the light source side. So the top of the muscles at this particular drawing, because I want the artwork to pop off the page. I want it to fill solid all the way round. But again, keep that in mind. Sometimes you will erase lines back, you'll definitely do it on the interior forms. And you can see that throughout this even a little bit that I tried not to connect the lines all the way through. I really could have played with that a bit more as well. So on the Shadows, the Shadows are going to connect around the forums more. But then on the light source side, you can really erase back some of those lines. And if there's enough of it around it, the shapes will still show. So it's something that's, that's kinda neat to play around with. So here I'm just kinda analyzing it, looking for a little ways to adjust it. Do that a lot. Usually at the very end, I'm going back-and-forth from light to dark. I'm putting little lines. So right here I'm putting tiny little lines on the serratus because I felt like they were they felt like they were to forward too close to us or competing for the distance of which was in front of the Bode ribcage, which really would be the serratus. But I did this Stylized W that I talk about, that bold ribcage. I know I pick that up from following Jim Lee's work for years. It's just something that he's, he's done even talks about it and his YouTube videos about simplified rib-cage design. And I think it works. It's, it's, it's kinda a little bit extreme if you think about it, like ribs don't really look like that of the serratus. It's almost like somebody is like breathing in heavily in bowing out their chest all the time. But I don't know how it works great for Comics, I like it, so but yeah, that's it. Just final touches and we'll call this one good. So we're gonna get into a lot more examples. Hopefully this has beneficial for you. Again, I love to always hear your feedback so I know what to deliver upon, what poses you want to see, what we can delve into further stuff like that. So I'd love to see your work and let's continue on to the next lesson. 38. Drawing a Full Figure: Welcome back. So in this particular one, I want to talk to you about foreshortening of the body some more, but also why I like to utilize kind of creepy Anatomy. Alright, so exaggerated Anatomy, creepy monster like Anatomy, crazy proportions. So every now and then I need to draw things that are something no one could really contest. I mean, someone will always contest your work. Unfortunately, it will say I could've been better suited to this. And other times it'll just praise it. And for the sake of praising it, I guess don't buy into that stuff too much, but at the same time, think about what you need. I know that for myself. I need to draw things that are a little more exaggerated and wild and disproportionate because it really lets me let go and lets me make whatever I want to make. Where if I try to draw something that's realistic, I might fall into a portraiture style of drawing are looking at reference too much and all sudden it, it's not as exaggerated or creative as I would like to have made it. Okay. So what I'll start with first is just the concept. So I'll maybe I'll draw a couple, but let's see. I usually draw these until I feel like I really see something and I like where it's going and then I, I carry it to what I want. So I might draw like, you know, big shoulders, chest going down and away from our view a little bit. At attached. Tried to keep this again, like I've mentioned what the gestural lessons very loose, very sketchy. I think the more like picture, like you're looking through some fog, like you never see people squat there is and I'm trying to blur their eyes intentionally. That's one of those things where it's a good thing, even the broken up lines are to me symbolic of that. Like I don't want a nice strong, clean line everywhere. Because then I'm, I've already committed to the idea too much. But if I do these all broken up lines, I could do, definitely do some gesture lines as well, but that's what I'm gonna do here. I'm just going to go for the shapes. Might overly curve a forearm or something like that to me, that's kind of an idea of gesture as well. So do something like that. I'm pushing Arm back with the monsters wants to, i'll, I'll even sometimes, lot of times unnaturally curve something back. So I kinda like that, like it just depends on your style if you want to see that kinda stuff in your work, but I think it's cool. Okay. My bring a leg up and I bring it up too high just to start. Just to see if the exaggeration looks cool. Bring the other one down this way. Most resembles like they're looking up. Also tilt the body away from the head. Little things like that help. Just kinda looks like they're leaning up on a ledge of some kind, but I'm gonna put the foot down. That'll reinforce that kind of jumping expression. Took this hand back and want to go for it, kind of a monstrous character. And then I'm not liking this arm in front of the body, at least not right here. But now remember, if I change that, I have to change the upper arm as well, which is always keep that in mind that when you change the Arm and you start to pull it out word for instance. So I'll start with the Form here. Bring it up. I hope this way. Well now I have to bring the bicep way over here. Tricep over here. You have to bring the shoulder out and around and chest over a little bit. All that has to move around just to simply rotate the arm. But just look at your arm when you rotate it, how the shoulder reacts and, you know, I don't think this is one of those things you really need to pull reference for. A mirror by your Art tables. Always a good idea. But it's something as simple as this is very disproportionate, but I liked that. I'll probably even push that further. Honestly. Bring your foot down like this. It's still a relatively easy pose. You'll see as we refining this, I'll explain more about it and hopefully get you to see that, that it's really not that bad. But the trapezius are pretty darn high there because it's, well, let's see. The body is really straight, right? The hips are really straight to the upper. Here's the shoulders, right? So it's really not that bad. But let's go ahead and take this. And let's say one of these creepy hand poses for these I just draw on like a little gestural version, bunch of points and figure out where the fingers go after that. Again, I'll probably keep lowering the trapezius. I'm probably going to lower the pelvis too. So let me drop that right down now because it just feels a little too squeezed up there. I still got to get these bill lattes and bring that down on paper in this laid down as well. Okay, so there's just a sketch and that really took longer than a gestural sketch should take. But I think it's something I could refine. What I'm gonna do is blow that up a little bit on the canvas here and make a copy. But I'm just going to work off of this and draw through it. And so there's, there's things that really needs to be fixed. This a lot of times when I need to make something better, but I kinda like enough of where it's going, where I can see into it. I just I just go for those things. It needs to be fixed for that. I can discern whether or not, like I know right now, I've drawn this kind of Arm Pose 1,000 times. I can draw that. That'll work. This will work. I'm not so sure about the Leg and the Torso. So what I'm gonna do is start there first. Now, the good thing about exaggerated Anatomy is that you can really kind of hide things quite a bit just like you can with your rendering. So if I get in here and I say, okay, I'm going to start with the shoulders. And when I draw the shoulders, I generally think about them right with the chest because they're they're so interconnected. They work they work together like they, you know, one moves, the other one moves. I guess it's the way I see it. So what I'm gonna do is just draw that as one big shape. And I'm gonna go for that first and then build out from there just because it's really the area that I'm the most concerned with, like looking at like, I don't know if I can fix that. So I'm going to get that out of the wave first. Actually, you know what I'll do two times. I don't like CMD. Gray in there as much. Throws me off for some reason. But then after I add that blue layer is a screen, I usually have to darken that a little more, but now I can clearly discern my Shapes. And at least in the way that I look at it, I can see it hopefully see it better. But just like this, I might get in some of the, the deltoid. Notice here too that here the medial head is more visible because the way it arms tucked back, at least again in my stylization. But as the bicep comes out in the arm is rotated out, Supinated right palm up. The shoulder, rolls back. So the rear head is gonna be back here. The medial head will be off to the side. The bicep will be here. I don't want to get off from the Arm Jack because like I mentioned, I feel like I can fix those. No problem. For me. Let's swallow the biggest frog first. I know it's gross term, but the idea is that if you get the things out of the way that are hardest for you, the rest becomes easy. I like to apply that even to my, my comic work. So I'm really wondering if I can solve it just like I might even need to reposition it, changed it all together. So again, I'm just going to get in here and try to fix it or I'm really I'm actually not even change it that much. I'm going with the initial pose just to see if I add these Stylized muscles over top. Will it look okay? So just throwing these little curves and shapes and they're kinda simple. And keep in mind, this isn't the refined Line Art by the way, it probably looks like I'm doing that. I gotta be careful with that. I don't want to mislead you. I would still refine this again. So as I probably already mentioned multiple times, that when you are sketching phase, it's the design phase, right? You're, you're looking for ideas, searching for ideas even in your own mind, even in your own work on the page. But if you get into these clean lines, it can sort of shifts you from that to a finalization state of mind. It's not that you can't use them together because you can't. I've seen lots of people, they throw lines. You'll see a lot of people on YouTube throw lines and undo, redo, undo redo. And it's kinda neat. You can tell they're still searching for their shapes, but they do it in a very, I don't know, a different, more methodical way. Maybe. I don't know. It's which I typically don't do. It typically do a lot more Sketching. But there's a time and place and it's good to practice all these different ways of doing things. Especially when you feel like you're kinda burnt out and you need something to reinvigorate your creative process. Well then that's to me, that's when you pick up a new technique or you utilize a technique you've been using, but you do it in a different way or some new Art supplies That's one of my favorites, will grab some new Art Supplies and then try to try to work with them. So you can even draw the same type of stuff you'd like to Draw. With some new Art Supply's, it becomes our new pen, something you're not used to using. It becomes a new process. That's fine or like the one that's pretty interesting as pickup like a really big marker. And then try to, try to draw on a big sheet of paper. And here's a FUN one. You take a big marker like the big Sharpie. You get the next two down. Yeah, that's that's pretty cool and you only use those. So it's not easy, be ready, but it's Fun. And so what it does on a big sheet of paper, it makes you rethink your scale of the way that you work and it can actually be pretty interesting. So give that a shot. But I don't know if I'll keep that leg, but i've I've at least made it, I don't know, feel more relatable like I feel like I could keep work on that and keep it but I might still change it. So I'm going right to the Torso, abdominal muscles, simplified, rib-cage, BIG W shape, bright. These little hooks off to the side. I would say get a lot, a lot more detailed in there, but I'll just start with that. Obliques up to here. Here. Maybe a little bit of a lot. I feel like that's kinda forced, but I'll leave it for now. Definitely would see a lot more to this side. But it's covered by the Arm as well. Alright. Say that again. I'm not sure that I want to keep that, but I feel like it's doable now if I could roll with that, I kinda like giving them smaller legs. The feeling of smaller lakes, that bigger upper body. Again, I'm playing with proportions. So what's the next thing I would say? The next thing for me is fixing this Leg even though I feel good about that shape. So this is a shape I've used countless times, again, higher up on the one side, lower on the other for the medialis vastus medialis, the, the silhouette of the Leg overall looks decent. So I'm pretty sure I can make this work. But what I'll do is grab some of these shapes now. Make sure that I can make it work and just never know, I guess they finally do it, but pretty sure. Then higher up on this side, bring that curve down. And I should bring this foot out towards our view more. So it's not pointed straight down. So that's, that's something that's really easy to do. Just pointed straight down, fill it in, no one's going to notice, right? You can do that. But the other way is to say, well, if it was coming at us just a little bit, this would curve up. This would curve up. You just try to figure out the volume a little differently. There'd be like a curve over the toes right about there. This part of the foot would go up and around. So you can use your wrapping lines that kinda figure it out. In a lot of times the reason you won't see a lot of artists do it because if they're not wearing shoes or shoelace is kinda hard to show it. It's lot easier to just fill it in, but I got to take the extremely easy road here. So middle muscle Leg only this. Again, just to own these basic shapes might not be exactly where they need to be. But It's good to just make a decision, get something in there. Yes. C. So that's funny. Like so now I throw in that leg and I actually don't like it. I'm going to do that again. But I really liked the silhouette that time. So mind-blowing, just somewhere. I see I even like at that stage I think it's the way that I segmented the muscles. I'm gonna try that again. The feet could even be bigger. But yeah, we're we're getting there, but this is something I want to show you, want to show you how to break this Pose down and build it back up. So let's move on to our next lesson. 39. Adjusting the Pose: Welcome back. So now let's get back to this Leg that somehow threw me for a loop. So let's try the wrapping lines. So I feel like this part of the Leg is going down and away from our view where this one's a little more parallel. Maybe even rapping and curving up a little bit. And then obviously each muscle group in these areas have their own bending curve. That's when you work, usually starts looking more advanced when you can really delve into each muscle group and get the dimension going on there. But at first, I think it's helpful to just really pay attention a silhouette, like I said, I feel like the silhouettes working. But as soon as I start cutting into it, somewhere along this path, I'm losing some of the look and feel that I'm after. I'll be honest, knees are always a pain for me. I usually my simplification for that is just a shape like this. Something like this. This. Alright, let's my over-simplification of a knee. The shape right there doesn't always work though, and these are actually pretty, I don't know. They're just there tricky like you gotta kinda look at the knee joint, know that you got the bone that comes across like this, like this. You get the patella and the middle there. It actually points up more than, you know, it doesn't point straight at us from an angle like this. You got the other bone that comes down the side like this. So it's just tricky. Remember this bone comes out at an angle, connects into here, right? So it looks something like that. You were to think about the skeletal structure. Then obviously this one comes over, gives us the ankle here. So yeah, it's a bit tricky, but if we avoid all that for right now, just try to simplify. You know what, let's do this. Let's simplify it by just drawing the lower portion like this. So if we were to draw that as a simple shape and that's it, nothing around it because I think what happens is the more I put the other shapes around it, the more it becomes more difficult to, to illustrate, I could just, I guess that applies everything right? So if you think about simplifications in general, the more you learn to simplify things and just grab as much as you need, right? Kind of a minimalistic approach, then you generally get a better read on the work. Now it's not to say that you can't draw intense and crazy detailed, imaginative stuff. It just you have to be more aware of what's going on or it can actually start to expose flaws in your work, I guess is what I'm trying to say. But think of cartooning. Cartooning is a lot of simplifications. And some of it, most of it reads better because of that. So yeah, it's, it's something to definitely think about like sometimes less is more. If you don't understand exactly what you're where are you going wrong, then I would say just to get yourself out of that is approach it as less is more. Be a little bit more of a minimalist. And then over time you'll be able to bridge the gap, figure out where you need to add in the details. So I'm gonna leave it like that for now. Kind of sit on it a bit, just kinda keep glancing at it. See what else I need to adjust their give bring the bottom abs. Don't like this. I know a lot of people don't like you want to draw eight abs, but that's what I see. Some people can actually have ten just so you know, that everybody agrees there, but it's, it is what it is. I mean, it's imaginative. You can draw 20 abs if you want it. I guess. So now the bicep, and as I mentioned this to me, this part seems easier. It's not to say I still have problems with it. But generally you'll you'll draw enough poses of any given thing and then you'll go, Oh, you know what? I remember doing that and it was easy. Eric came out just the way I thought it would. All that's just you're finally getting to your comfort zone of drawing a particular thing enough and well enough that you just have a bit of a process for it. So, you know, the bulk of the muscle here. They're Muslim, another side of the Arm here, you've got the extensors. It would still reach to the back of the hand. So I'd probably go to bring those around like this. Something like the end. These are just basic directional Shapes. Sensors for the back of my hands. And then a bulk the bulk of the extensors on one side of the flexors on the other. Kinda closer to the pinky side. It's this it's not exactly where they go, but it's close enough where I can I can discern it. So not close for the fingers. And then obviously I didn't draw the third segmentation for the fingers, so I'm gonna get that in there now. I oftentimes start with two. I believe I already mentioned that. In then I draw the third and on the next iteration, it just helps me to kind of process it. Also like that. Another creepy hand, one to do. Now that's a pretty bad thumb. So I'm going to bring the, you know, again what the knuckle, this one's, this one is back here, right? This one's kinda lined up to these. So this bring it over and curl at buying these fingers. Something like that. Remember these go to the back of the restraint. Morning here. You also have a on your pinky side, you've got the the ulna. The ulna, head of the ulna, something some kind of actually, I'll have to look. I don't know if that's called like a lot of times these are called my backyard and other called epicondyles. I don't think that is here's just called like the head of the ulna, but every bony landmark has a name. I just can't tell you. I remember him at all times. But when you are looking for additional studies, a good way to spend your time is not just drawing the muscles and insertion points. That's obviously part of it, but also just knowing your bony landmarks, maybe not knowing the terminology. I don't know that that's I don't know what that benefits you a whole lot. Not a bad thing, but definitely knowing where they're at, drawing them in like that. I mean, it really is helpful. So you see on this big bulky character, I didn't draw the collarbone. Lot of times what I'll do on these types of characters is all draw just the area where the jugular fauces, That's that little dip down right there. And these are the clavicles? Clavicular clavicle some and then I'll just bring, bring them up like this maybe. But I actually purposely tuck them behind the muscles, make the muscles are bigger. It's just something I do. Southern you have to do. You can definitely bring that up higher. Remember they kinda handlebar out? Did I kinda thing? And I might still change that because that since we are let's change it since we are looking down at the Torso area more clearly. I would think that they're going to get covered up less. So from a top-down shot, I would definitely show lots of them. Just show the this middle jugular fossa area. Remember over here your clavicular fossa on both sides. So here I've got this muscle pretty high but I can just put a little dip in there somewhere by the shoulder. Okay. Trapezius are like out-of-control on this one. So I'm going to bring those down quite a bit. I'll probably increase the head size as well. You see it's just a basic starting point of the head. Make sure to roll the trapezius back, the neck in there. Trying to point it down, you see the center line is way over here. So obviously the neck has a huge range of movement, but at the same time it still needs to center up to this point. But then we can bring the head way over to here. That's not a problem. I feel like as long as the point where the jaw line just below the ear hits right above the neck, the Sternocleidomastoid. Then you're pretty good to go and then you just go up from there. Obviously the head shape was already kinda funny, so I'll change that a bit as I go. Usually have to Draw head shapes. A couple of good times. Yeah, starting to get there. And so what this arm tricep on the back, it relates to the extensor muscles pretty well. By step on this side. Flexors way back here. Get that curvature. Checking the silhouette of the Arm and making sure to tuck the arm back. And I could I think I've already talked about we could move that back further and further. You can really play around this. A lot of times. Maybe even just moving the tricep up and back like this. So you can kinda move the tricep back in the bicep down or cover it more. But you can kinda play with those. There's just, just remember they shouldn't look too aligned in the more you tilt the Arm back, they should probably look less than line basically. So again, getting in the creepy Arm Pose, go for the back of the wrist. And hopefully you can see two, I'm really trying to bring out bony landmarks with angles. That's part of what I like to do here. It's also why when I'm drawing the creepy vellum like characters, I'm doing a thorough, unlike sharp fingernails. Obviously it's got to put the character, but Sharp angles in general are just going to make the character look more villainous. You could do that in ways that are a lot more subtle. Doesn't have to be sharp fingernails. It can be even appointed face like a pointed chin, just all sorts of ways you could do it. But that little bit of line and shape language makes a big difference. There's some of that. Can even do it with the wrinkles even I mean, there's all sorts of ways to drop it on there. Okay, so now we got also it's good to flip the work. It's usually one spot, something kinda weird. For me, the weirdnesses that Leg. I'm just going to get it out of there. I was thinking I could salvage it, but what it does look even smaller now than I wanted. I guess the Arm could I could say that looks weird to but I don't know, I don't mind it. And now this is again where these creepy characters or whatever. A lot more of it is acceptable to me. Like. So really, I liked that because I want to be able to experiment with these characters. Don't want to bring some of that, that oddness that I allow knees back over to my characters that I think or I don't know, more, more refined. Like I think that this stuff is super important to let go and be more expressive. It's very easy to get caught up and saying, trying to refine something and saying, well, it needs to look a little more realistic, like actually can't stand that word as it pertains to this type of drawing. That's just me. Like I want things to look imaginative, creative, supernatural, and not realistic. It's just not a word that kind of relates wall for me in my mind. But it's hard because all the things that we do have to be housed upon a knowledge of the real-world. Or they look, it looks like we just don't know what we're doing and we didn't study or something. Yeah, It's a tricky thing. But when you can learn that stuff and then go far past it, when you can explore ideas that are just super expressive, then I think you're doing a whole lot better. I'm gonna try another pose here. I'm going to get rid of the initial sketch and see if I can now clean this up. Again. Basic Shapes will start with the knee, since the knee gives me the most trouble. Again, just go for rotate this photo, bring this way up. Troponins are Basic Shapes here. So what I can find and see if I get rid of this now. Analyzing it. Yeah, I think I like that. So one of the things is making me want to do though, is it's actually making me want to go back and change this Leg now because now this Leg feels a little to save where I'm actually liking the energy and the curve of that Leg more. So again, it's a little bit of a pen ball process for me, but let's go ahead and stop here. We're going to head over to the next lesson and keep refining this Pose 40. Cleaning up the Line Work: Welcome back. So what I meant by this Leg being less safe is I feel like the angles, even though I don't know, this kinda looks like a bit of an awkward pause really, but I like it more in the sense that it's a tiny bit more exaggerated. So if we take this and we just bring out a little bit more of that type of feeling. Let's see, I think I'm stone that Leg. We want to merge that together, but I want to just exaggerate it. So sometimes just adding More, bend. The, you know, especially when you got to portion of the body that's going away from our view. Adding More bend from the knee to the ankle even can make that look more interesting. Even from the hip area, you could bring this out, bring this lower. So sometimes just sculpting this stuff a little bit differently can help to add that. I don't know that a little bit as zip, explain it. But again, it's kinda from here to here. So you could push inside to outside, high to low. And you can also push from connection point to connection point with more curve. So bringing this out, We're like that. Bring this end Quaker slope. Tell you what you could do like that. She could bring the calf muscle out like this and then sweep it right in. But the more you push this end and you get a little bit more of that bend occurring. We see that this those little intervals make the Leg look and feel different. So yeah, tripe tried curving. So again, from the elbow to the rest, you could put more curved. They're like This, could use it. Actually what I want to see here is actually what the hand to be bigger. So, but I'll just, I'll just set as I redraw again, it's easier for me to select it and just shift it. I just got to show you since the season, but I'm not going to leave it because I do feel bad when I do this and somebody is working traditionally, it's easy for me to do that, too easy for me to turn it right and call it good. So there's that, but I'm not going to do that too. Yeah. As I mentioned, I want to try to keep this as traditional as possible just to keep everybody happy. So what I'm gonna do now is bring this below the blue line and I'll do the cleanup. So actually I'll start the hand just because I want to increase the size anyways. Okay, So also I have to do is go outside of this a bit, should be able to show a little bit of difference in size that I want. Also, I can shrink down the rest. I think that's enough because I really didn't like when I resize it, I think I want a bit too big anyways. But also I want you to see there is a lot of times subtleties. Subtle shifts make a big difference. So you just have to ease into these changes. And you'd be amazed at how quickly you can maneuver and get things done. But if you're making big sweeping changes all the time and you're just missing the mark sometimes, least that's what happens to me, I think so. That thumb over there. See I do the one side of the tendons in the Ham and come back into the other Lot of times I'll turn back the opacity of the blue line layer for details as well. I just find it easier to see into the work. But for now with the bigger shapes, I like a darker. So I'm kinda kinda weird like that, I guess. Seems to be more discernible for the bank of the Arm here. I guess really what it would be is it all this would really come over more. So I'm going to bring that down to here like this and then get these extensors that go to the back of the hand, something like this. Let's go privately moved over. So again, a lot of times this stuff is in the realm of where it should be, but then I have to play with a little bit, move it around. Lot of times you'll see I'm putting these bumps. It may seem somewhat random land and sometimes it is. But I'm just making sure to put like these little hooks in there. So it feels more like Anatomy unless like, I don't know, repetitively, even shape or something like just Anatomy has these variations of bumps and we can't say I know whether all that definitely don't, but I tried to at least emulate that idea by putting those variations in their someone, the blue line is really defined like this. This aqua blue, greenish blue. When it's really defined in visually strong, I just feel like it pulls me more into a direction of tracing the work. So the other thing I'd recommend for you is that you play around with variations of the intensity of that than mine were, even the colors. So I don't know that that plays a very significant role, but I will tell you that I liked, I liked experimenting with it. If nothing else, I like shifting the colors that I use for the screen layer like that. Just, just for a different mood, just to mix it up. But the other thing is this. Just trying. As I think I've already mentioned this, but the method where you use a blue line for maybe your rough sketching, a red line or purple or whatever you want for your refinement, or maybe grab your big shapes with a color in-between those. Yeah, I I really need to practice that more of myself because to me, I truly enjoy the part where I break things down systematically. It makes me feel easier about the process. I think it eases some of my anxiety for the process that unfortunately like to say I don't have but I do it's there, um, because I want to be able to create more quickly and repeat my success. And so I don't know something about breaking things down into those iterations and those bite-sized chunks in those repeatable, I like to say repeatable process. Set of processes that are set of techniques makes things better for me. I don't know if that's just the way my brain works. But yeah, it's something that I like to do. So working with those different colors for each step can do that. It's probably also why I ended up Enjoying and creating so much step-by-step content. Because that's just the way that I like to work anyway is it gives me a sense of ease. Plus I can go back and I can look at those step-by-step. So you go okay, I see what I was doing right here. Why did I veer away from that and start doing this? And it just gives me a blueprint and a roadmap to follow. So hopefully that helps you, but it's, you know, we're all so different. It's it's hard to tell what, you know. If those things will help you. You just got to implement them, try them and maybe they don't, maybe you're just better at doing whatever feels right at the moment. Yeah. I think I mentioned there's a time in a place for just letting go and doing whatever a random thing, even drawing random things can be so beneficial to loosen up and stuff like that. But for me, for the more complex stuff, I will lean back to what I just mentioned and that's breaking things down step-by-step, really paying attention to each stage of the work. So you see a lot of this. Everything is in front of me and I'm just going back through and small changes. It's nothing too dramatic. But these little iterations will add up to the style that I'm looking for and give me the look that I'm after. But it's all pretty much right there. It's just adding little bits and pieces as I go. I think a lot of times getting good at this stuff is getting better and better at knowing how to get close to the mark. And then saying, okay, you know what, I can problem-solve my way through that. I can I can figure this out now because I'm pretty close. And that's to me, that's what gesture drawing is so cool or why it's so cool because it's not a refined drawing, but you can look at it and see like the energy and the imagination. Your imagination kinda thrives, right? There was a good gesture drawing. And certainly like, Oh yeah, I can totally make that work. In fact, a lot of times I will feel a general excitement at the beginner sketch level. Now it's not that every time those will get refined to something I can call a finished piece. And sometimes they make it, sometimes they don't, but most of the time, more often than not. I can tell right from the sketch, and this comes with long duration of drawing as well. But I can tell right from the sketch like, Oh yeah, that's got the energy I want. I'm definitely gonna be able to refine that in that energy carries through to the end results. So that's, that's a goal. You draw that initial gesture. You start to see into it, your imagination starts to fire up and you're like, Oh yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna turn that into something cool. And then you just cross your fingers and work really hard at it. Let's go and stop right here. And we'll continue on with this one. So let's move on to our next video. 41. Finishing the Initial Line Art: Welcome back. So now let's finish cleaning up the perimeter lines and interior lines. Yes. Is Line Work in general? It's all pretty much right here in front of us. And play around with line breaks. Like to also play around with lines side-by-side, even though it's a little bit more like Rendering, I just throw some of that and food for thought and then I can add to it and find it more in the next stage. And it goes my Pyramus. You can see I also like to rotate the canvas a bit. The best feeling to my hand mechanics, which is always for me down and towards myself. I pull sideways across the screen. I just can't do it effectively. I mean, I still try because I'm always trying to figure out ways to improve my abilities that I'm weekend anna. But yeah, I just I cannot do it. So much soda where when I even do the guidelines for a phase, I will either cheat and use this method. Or I will turn the screen sideways, Draw the first-line. And I almost always copy the first-line. So again, to another cheap, but it's really important to me that I get good guides for areas that have to be somewhat symmetrical like the face. I mean, you don't want everything to symmetrical, but it's going to have some can't have one I up here, one down there. It looks a bit funny. Let's you Draw an Igor or a monster and then you can do whatever you want. Okay, let's see. Like this. Another thing. Here's the device. My son, I've got all of that. Another thing is I don't know if I've mentioned this, but I'll just say it just in case is keep in mind the rectus femoris right here actually comes down and connects to the knee like that. I think the tendon connects right there. So you don't have to draw that end. But it's good to think about it like kinda like a landmark or just something to remember about the muscles. Again, the medial side is always lower. I think I've got that a bit too extreme. You do want a bit of tilt there. I'm gonna leave it for now, but I might fix it if it hurts me later. The adductor group goes towards the crotch there, but I'm not going to draw all of them. There's, I think there's two, there's two divides, three muscles, something like that. I don't draw them all. I just want you to see that there is a line that usually goes up there. Sometimes you see it, sometimes you don't want. And then as far as the quadriceps, they all kinda grouped together and I've already talked about that. But they grouped together as like this big upside down heart. And point up here to the aces, which is on the front of the hip and it's the anterior superior iliac spine. I think I see that one just because I'm proud of myself fraction remember on that. But it is a really good landmark. All the bony landmarks are super effective and very worth learning. You don't have to memorize all the names. Just have to get a general sense of where they are and some of the alignment. So even like the ankle, the inside ankle is higher, so little things like that can really help out tremendously. I've been drawn this one more where you come down and get this little bump from the will that be you got the you know what, I'm not going to I'm going to mess up there, but you do have this little bump to the bone. I think it's tibia, fibula, but don't don't quote me on that. Again, there's some things that I have to be looking at my anatomy books to fully remember. There's some that I've just over the year has been able to commit to memory. But it's really not what's important, right? That's, that's kinda like icing on the cake or something. It's a good thing, I think again, I've never tell anybody not to try to learn and memorize this stuff. But it's more important that you find these shapes in these patterns in this flow of the Anatomy. Yeah, To me, that's a lot more important. So one I already mentioned and you can kinda see evidence here that the Leg is relatively straight. Again, nothing straighten the body. And then there's a more noticeable bend back-and-forth on the outsides of the Leg like that. So that's one I always look for. And then after a while you start getting a bit better at where to put the exact way it protrudes out. And that can be based on your style. So I'm not saying like, Oh, the Leg has to bend now right here and it has this peak here and come back. And that's just my particular style. I mean, I think it's relatively consistent with the way that it is, but a lot of, again, can be just style choices, right? So at the Leg here I think I need to show just a little bit of the glute on that one. Yeah. Feel like it doesn't look right if I don't know, this Leg does feel a bit wonky. But I like it more curved. I feel like I can fix it maybe by somehow adjusting my knee. Like maybe this sharp point of the knee right there is just a bit too much. I don't know. It's not it's not a total deal breaker. Like I would totally just go with this and not feel guilty. I guess. Where there's certain aspects of work where I tried to go kinda crazy with style. And I just make up something about the Anatomy or do a funky bend the arm or leg or whatever. And I feel like it's just too much and I just can't like proceed forward with but I don't know. Then then I'll see somebody that has real good, really good sense of freedom in their work and they're expressed expressive nature in there. Even though character designs. And it's so cool to see like and then I'm not even just talking cartooning. I'm saying like some really gritty, kinda cool Comic Art that they just really let go and do something pretty wild. And it kinda makes me feel like that's where you got to learn to adopt some of that. You got to learn to not get so caught up and making everything look just right? Yeah. I don't know. It's hard to explain. I wish I wish I knew how how some people manage that. Like we get just so good at the expressiveness. And they know when to pull back from stylistic choices and went to just really let go and just do whatever they feel like doing. Some can do it in some struggle with it. So it's, it's constant battle, but we just have to keep exploring these ideas, playing around with Shapes, playing around Line Art, rendering all that good stuff, and see what we can come up with. So I'm trying to figure out this new shape. I feel like if I bring it over like this, come down, It's a little too simplified, but I don't know that. And almost reads well, but let me try it again. So like anything else, it's good to always keep playing. Changes in mind. Alright, so when I'm thinking of the knee here, if I was oversimplify it, it would be this this that would move maybe back a little bit further. So almost like if I'm thinking prospectively and just getting a basic sense of a plane change, maybe something like that. This comes up. Sometimes I'll actually do this. We're all draw like almost like constructing robots or something. I'll draw it very robotic. But that's what basically plane changes look like to me, is like robot parts. But it's super-important to do because it helps you really decide that along with the wrapping lines as to where these forums are going. Because if we just sit here and do this stuff, it's pretty like angles definitely help as well as I've mentioned. But until you start connecting it across, sometimes it doesn't read as well. Now, it should read perfectly fine without connecting it. That's the goal. So let's say something like this. Actually, I'm going to probably connect even though it was going to try not to, but if feel like you have to there. Well, let's say some point that yeah, I can live with that. Okay, so now this medialis, a lot of this, I feel like the shapes are pretty good. I'm not feeling the need to change a whole lot. Just go with it. So here we need that Leg to really be in front of the hip. And then also I feel like this feels a bit off. So a couple of wrinkles. So here just to imply clothing, you can use those like wrapping lines and curved those around. You can curve around this part of the Leg. So it really what I usually used for clothing. If not, we're not gonna get a whole lot into that. It's just a zigzag pattern. Use backward Z right there. And then this actually has a forward Z, but I'm just saying the zigzag back-and-forth and then float around the forms just like you're wrapping lines. So that that's usually what I go for there. So there's most of that, it's going up here now. The trapezius. Can you see me do a lot of these repetitive line zigzags and Marx it. Again, that's a bit of my simplification process. Oversimplification of what's really there. In these quicker strokes. A lot of times will help me avoid overthinking and getting in there and saying, Okay, what does this really look like? What does this really start and stop? I mean, if I do that, I can get very critical very quickly. And then I'm pulling reference and I'm looking at Anatomy illustrations just for this area. And I look at the clock, I like, wow, I should have already been done with this. So these quick lines are a little bit more like what a cartoonists would do. They get good at throwing lines a to B. I think I've already talked about that, but I call it a to B, but point-to-point. And so you say, okay, I'm gonna go from here to here. I want to introduce that with one line. Yes, it can lead you to be more angular, even though once you get really good at it, you can get really good at throwing curves just as efficiently. But I usually have to throw shorter curves and connect them. And sometimes I still miss the mark on areas like that. Now in this software it becomes really easy to go. I'm just going to click here, hold here, and then put that into place. Again, I'm trying not to use too many of the features just in case you are working traditionally, but that is really what I do a lot of times, especially if I'm getting frustrated in my hand is not working is good. Some days it's weird. Some days it works better than others. And then I will use tools. Now, keep in mind though, a lot of people will look at angle I worked traditionally, I can't use that yet, but you do have a French curve or you should have a French curve. And those are excellent. One, that, one thing that I had an no longer have it. I used to use it when I owned assign company and I had to cut vinyl, but it worked really well for lines is I had a bendable magnet. Now, you wouldn't use it on paper. The cool thing was it worked on paper really well, even though it was made for, I would use it on a metal sheet or something that actually attached to. And then I could lightly cut, cross the vinyl with my exacto knife, right? Will also worked really well for drawing because it was heavy enough where you just bent it, kind of place your fingers, shoot. And it had a really good amount of band. So it was, To me it was better than a French curve. But some people get really good with a French curve. These are all, there's always a tool, so just be aware of that. Obviously, I forgot the knee right here. Now let me look at the way I did the other knee because sometimes I'll I'll change it. I think I mentioned Art and sometimes it'll change it from side to side. So you gotta watch out for inconsistencies. I am always exploring different ideas. I tend to change things up a bit, sometimes too much. Okay, so now we got here. So I think we're pretty much ready to play some shadows. So we've got our line Weight in. We could obviously add to it as we go. But let's head over to the next lesson where we're dropping some Shadows and let's move forward 42. Adding Shadows to the Figure: Hi, welcome back. So now we will get into this and dropping some Shadows and we could start, it doesn't matter. I usually start below the blue line or I shouldn't say usually sometimes they do. So we don't want to first do is pick apart where I think the Shadows should be. I know folks, he's got a little head, but I think I mentioned smaller head makes the body look bigger. I also like bigger hands on the monstrous characters, so he has just, just kinda something I do there, but that is intentional, I assure you. But let's start with placing the shadow under the chin. So just by angling it over, we can say, we can start the process of, hey, where's our light source that you don't want? Let's even take and go like this because really the head would probably cast a shadow over this. Drop down to about, let's say here, maybe a little lower. So here's like this. Obviously if you drop the shadow further, right, So you're you're putting it down further this way, then you're saying that the head is taller and away from area of the body, right? So it's good to really play around with that concept all over. Like, how far do you want that cache shadow. You're also, you could also be seeing the light source is at a different position. If the light source is behind the head, it's obviously going to cast a very different Shadow until the Front. Then if the shaft of the sun is high noon kind of thing, if it's the sun, right? So anyways, the only way I can try to help you here say just you gotta practice moving that light source around. You gotta do lots of variation. Think of them as Basic Shapes inside the muscle groups, but then connected. So you don't want to, in my own opinion, you don't want a whole lot of segmented shadows. So imagine if I say, well I want Shadow here, then I want to shout on this muscle like this. And honest shadow on this muscle like this, right? See all those segmentations is look kinda weird. I'm not saying you can't do it occasionally for particular styles. I guess you just wouldn't do it like this. But to me what makes a little more sense is that they would group together. They kind of interconnect. But then you also need to worry about, as I mentioned, not making these sharp points over which I tend to do. But I'll, I'll start there for now because I can always go back and change it. But I tried to add these little differences in the shadow and try to find a more organic way of doing it. Not always. I mean, there's some areas I leave pretty angular but star here. I don't like that little bump there. I was thinking I would like that. Then as we get back to here, I'm going to perceive that the chest is pretty big. It's gotta be casting some sort of shadow over to the Arm here. Not much because the arms coming out towards us. But there has to be some. Likewise, all of this is going to cast a pretty heavy shadow against the white. I could probably block a lot of that end. And again, I'm always trying to think about, well, if I push that back, you know, what parts come forward, what parts go back into the scene. And he's got these massive shoulders. I feel like I need to add more to the base of that area. Do want to show the striations here, the chess, I'll get some of that in there. Thinking I might try a little bit of bounce light this time. The last example or one of the previous examples of the Torso, we fill this all in. So I'm going to put a shadow under the chest. Those I'm going to figure out a way to good shadow here, but I'm going to leave a little bit of light source on the bottom and I'll have to render that because I think, like I mentioned before, like by itself, it actually just doesn't look as good. So what I'll do is I'll go back and I'll render this way to try to get that feeling of a round over. That almost does it there, but I'll I'll do it a little bit better than that. I just want to show you the idea for now. Same thing, I could probably do that on the bottom of the light as well. But one thing I will mention is that if you're unsure about a secondary light source, well, two things really of how to approach it. One is just fill it all end with a single light source, but maybe just a touch heavier on the shadow side, so that you have room to go back and introduce a secondary light source. So Firenze is I can fill all this and first. And then the other thing is, if you're not sure how to do it, don't rush it and don't ruin and otherwise good piece. Just save it for your practice pieces and Figure completed works. Just do a single light source. It's very important that you get better at a single light source versus guessing and maybe looking a little bit less polished by always doing a secondary light source that you're not completely sure on how to well, I shouldn't say completely sure, but you're not confident at yeah. I don't know that anybody can be completely sure where the light and shadow goes. Some habits they had a lot better idea than others. I know I'm not completely sure, I just piece it all together and that's what you see me doing here. I'm basically saying, okay, this muscle groups should be larger. I also feel like it would be thicker down here. And also feel like the light one reach down there, all those ideas combined. Then I go to the next muscle. I said while I don't think this would be too big, it's a thinner muscle right here. Again, I think it would be a little thicker at the base. I also feel like the Shadows when intersect through here. So I'm going to connect them. I don't want them all to be flattened in the same depth and dimension. I taper some of the lines. I'd bounce some lines and maybe add an angle or reverse bend to the Shadows just to see what it looks like. Kinda liked it. So maybe not so much. Yeah, I don't like it, but sometimes I do like that effect. So again, I just tried to figure out how to connect these in a way where the shadow looks cohesive. Because if it's overly segmented, it can look, you can look weird. Thing is to, if I think that's part of the problem when you go to start doing this bounce light. We have to really get a good sense for it because if not, you start going crazy with it. In the Anatomy, it looks overly segmented. It will tend to look more segmented when you do this anyways, but it'll look overly segmented and you can get messy really quick. So people that do it masterfully are Dale can, Steven Platt did it really well. I think he I think he still does it, but I think he pulled back from it is like as 90s where he was doing like it was on everything and it looked very segmented, but still masterfully done. Just super cool stuff, but great eye candy. So a lot of times I feel like when you do this stuff, you can kinda make up for it in this kind of eye candy factory. And I go, well, that doesn't look great, but it sure does look cool. And so there's that as well. Because ultimately, you know, you're trying to share a bit of your imagination, right? I mean, it's not just how good you can draw a bicep or whatever. Whatever the thing is. It's like, Hey, checkout, this bit of style and imagination that I introduced into this wall trying to draw a really cool bicep or spaceship or whatever it is you're doing. I don't know about the fingers here. I feel like it would probably definitely be a shadow up this part of the finger. Alright, thanks. So here's another thing too. It's like if you're not sure, just had a little bit kinda kinda I don't know. It's like, I don't like telling people to bounce around the illustration, but I guess I will say because it's what I do. I do bounce around, but I do it in a way where it's not Avoidance. Okay. So I'm not going to avoid figuring it out. I'm not going to stop and not finished this piece for you. Alright, I got to finish it. I will add something and then kinda chew on the fat a little bit. Just sit back and say, All right, you know, working. It gives you a little bit of time to get some fresh eyes on it, to look at it comparatively through the rest illustration. There's times I go to a different part of the same illustration. And I have a little bit of a eureka moment and like, Oh, this makes sense. I really liked the look of this. And I feed off that energy. And then I move, move around to the Russell illustration. So I think it's far better than beating your head against the wall on just one spot that's not clicking. We could we could vary there, so just take it as you well, but I think that Definitely helps me solve. It will help you. And I am going to fill this in for now. It's a bit distracting for now, but I am gonna go back and introduce a secondary light source. But again, I'd like to show you in a way that is hopefully more simplistic Nicea add also added the drop shadow onto the chest. So it changed the volume of the chest. So what I wanna do is just show you that the difference as I go. But if you are working traditionally, you just, you know, sometimes it's kinda nice to leave a little line there, come back and fix it, but you'll still have the other side. I feel like that's something we have to drop in there. It's got these big chest muscles not going to be just a shadow on the base suggests there's gonna be at least a little bit a cast shadow, I would imagine. I'm not sure that we have to put that there, but I'm going to go and put there for now. So now let's W shape of a ribcage. Bleak. I see I added that little double line there, but I might come back and salvage that are just fill it and doesn't really matter, but does seem a bit weird to put it in and then not use it, right? So simplified version of the serratus. Obviously the serratus go a lot more like come out and then the angles, some kind of emulating that with this little shorthand method. So keep that in mind that I am aware that I'm overly simplifying that area just faster. Okay. So we got most of that and I'll same thing kinda what we did with the other version of the Torso. The shoulder is tucked back so we can get a heavier shadow on the bottom of the shoulder muscles here. Right into the chest. Probably even get a shadow against the collarbone that would push the chest out a little bit more. Definitely could render into these areas if we wanted to. So far I liked the direction it's going. Good. The stomach muscles go in here. So kind of a similar thing to the chest as I mentioned. You're going to have a bit of shadow to each muscle. Then a bit of cash shadow. I'm going to put all the Shadows On the bottom of the muscle group first. Something like this. Then I'm gonna put a little bit of shadow to this segmentation like this set is just that little line. Also going to put a little bit of shadow on the indentation next to the muscles, next to the obliques. Just helps to create that sense of definition. Overly segmented definition, but it is abs. And then I could say, okay, what would it look like, what the shadow dropping down to the next muscle. I feel like that's a bit much so I'm gonna go back on that part for now. I can always add it in later, but I just want to show you that process to award. Sometimes it's helpful to just do piece-by-piece in a very systematic way, I guess, can be helpful to get areas like that to look right. Alright, so we're making progress. So let's go and stop here. We're going to head over to the next lesson and continue adding our shadows. So with that, let's move on. 43. Adding More Shadows: Welcome back. So now let's continue adding Shadows. And also what I want to point out is it so far I've a very evenly dispersed set of shadows. But as I mentioned, we can always add to it. And so what I'm planning on doing is I really want to bow out the chest more, right? So I could even start down here on the abdomen and say, You know what? This bottom row are, even know if you'd see it real well and then just block in a bit more. I definitely would like to add more shadows as we get lowered to the mid section because it makes us upper portion look bigger more in light. Where you'll see if I add a little bit more to the bottom, and I can keep adding to this to see how far I can post the effect. Will start to round up and over because I'm trying to, trying to do here. This a little more segmented, but I feel like that kind of represents chest better. Likewise over here, I'm going to keep pushing this over as well. I like the shapes that I have here. I don't want to lose those, but I want to increase the shadow to him while trying to retain those Shapes. Little by little. Adding to it, right? Okay. Even the Bicep really probably make that feel a little larger increase in the shadow here over here. Okay, so now let's work up from the Leg. So same idea. I could probably Shadow this portion of the Leg. Darker. So again, instead of going like this, this this. All right. I said this is better than nothing. So I just go like this all the way through the Leg. Almost like an even even better Shadow. Now the good thing is it's quick, it's easy, and it's better than nothing. Okay. But it, it starts to almost flatten out as little to linear. I don't know, It just doesn't have the curvature that I would like to say. I'd like to see the Leg feel like it curves here outward towards us. This bends back but also has some curvature in subadults wrapping lines to the left end, but it still curves outward. And then as far as the whole thing that there should just be some shading down here at this part of the Leg is should be further back than this part. So to do that, I will place a larger Shadow through here. So remember, whenever you want to make something look like it's either receding away or it's larger. You want to kinda shadow from the bottom-up. Just helps to kinda get that feeling of scale and you know, for tobacco pushing things back. So if I put a Shadow through here and then I picked back up the light here. It to me, it says that this has receded down and away. The foot is coming out so it catches the light again. Even the little shadow here shows the difference from that portion of the foot that we have it as, you know, kind of an angle and the toes come out a little more. So just little things like that helped to explain that. And I think you can play around with this. You could try blocking in all of this and Shadow, but I'm gonna stop there for now. And sometimes it's just got to see it for a bit and kind of analyze it. Then for this portion of the Leg. Same idea. I'm going to shadow from the bottom up. So I'm going to put heavier shadows at the base of these two big muscles. I'm going to blend those up a bit. I see we got a little bit of shadow more to this left side. So I could probably get a little bit that segmentation, this muscle is higher than the side or back of the Leg. Also get this little V right there. Yeah, I might leave that in there. They're there. And maybe a little shadow here. I don't know. Havi well is that sometimes I'll add this stuff and Am I pull back from some of these ideas? Likely to accept for this shape right here is bugging me. I don't know why. Seems like a shaped by what I used before but widening out this area and also Shadow a lot of this end. So one of which is I feel like the Legs going to cast a bit of shadow. And I think that it just makes sense. Shadow and most of the pelvis anyways, lower pelvis or just pelvis is lower Torso is what, a second because it it just generally isn't protruding out. It's we we talked about it's angled down and back from the upper torso. So it makes sense that a lot of times it's going to receive less light. So probably just highlight maybe a little bit of the cloth like material, whatever your whatever you got there. But just less light in that area, I think helps to push the Legs out, push the upper body out. And again, it makes a little bit of sense because it tilts back and away from the upper torso. Okay, so now on the Leg here, I could probably get away with shadowing the whole, I mean, I could really bring that Shadow all the way up through here. Alright, and then cut into these other muscle groups. I might, but let me, he's up to that as well. But awesome picture and it's like area. So if you see the shadow from the head casting onto the trapezius and down this way to angle of the light's hitting here. How far could it realistically wrap around there, right? But it could be bounced light. It could be atmospheric, or the tricky thing about light as it bounces everywhere, right? So I think you'd call it ambient light, but, but essentially it's like an Comic Art. You try to simplify it a little more. You have to get more, I guess, knowledgeable in it. And 3D, 3D is pretty wild. Light gets very, you learn all sorts of things about lighting. But in Comic Art, you kind of emulate and Stylized, simplify all that good stuff. But you still have to have a pretty advanced knowledge of it to make it right? I guess so. Again, I think it's best to start very basic and then keep adding to it. But you have these rounded forms and they're receiving light, say, directly from one or two sources. But that's not the that's not the entirety of it. I mean, that's most of it. But then the light bounces off all sorts of objects and skin is highly reflective. So that's when it gets really trachea like you have, does radiant light that's everywhere. And then you have the idea that you're trying to make things look very, I don't know, very solid with Comics. Or you can make, tend to make things look very solid. So it's tricky, but just think of these as rounded volumes and forums. And you're trying to explain the depth and dimension of each. But also not in a way where there's so overly segmented to wherever muscle group is in and of itself, every muscles and, and of itself. How it met. I've done that quite a bit with this character. But hopefully there's enough of the interconnected Shadows to where, you know, the segmentation isn't as distracting. But I do find it harder on, you know, very defined characters. I'm going to show a little bit more segmentation, but it can be, can be a little bit of a balancing act. Also, we can get some implied wrinkles, even what the Shadows Keep pushing this shape further and further if we wanted. Because again, Arm being rolled back, the deltoids pretty large on this character. Really play around with the Shadows that we get in here. And try to think of the fingers like basic plain changes. A little easier to envision if you do that. All right, well, let's do the take away the wrapping lines, now, see how it looks on its own. And so I'll block and little things like this where it just looks like a distraction. So I'll look for areas like that. Usually just kinda sculpt it here and they're a little bit more, you will want to see a little bit more separation in a certain area and muscle group. Maybe less, maybe this is a distraction, so I'll fill that in. Also, it's a good time to experiment with things that were on the fence about. So like I could take the side of the Leg and just block it in real quick. Okay. Would it read better like this? I think it probably would, but let's try up there. It's a tough one. I feel like that does read better. I feel like if we did that would probably even carried up through here as well. Alright, seems like a lot of that would be in shadow. Versus let's go back. And definitely like the ankle filled in. I'm gonna leave that for now. I guess I a bit unsure about what don't want to see their Maria this muscle that comes across this but I don't know how to find that would be. I just feel like without it, this area looks to to plane. But really it's getting this sense of scale where this needs to feel like it comes up and wraps around. Like there's a lot of curvature on the front of the Leg Right there and these are back. Further write a calfs are to the side or back of the Leg, related the back of the Leg. So they need to look like that. Then over here, I'm trying to figure out the fingers I probably block in the back of the fingers here. To about here maybe not. The pinky says is starting to curve away. Then usually in-between here I'll do some texture, something, so I'll get a little bit of that in there, but save that for the rendering. It's really the process. I'll just keep nudging these shadows around at this point. Again, I might introduce a little bits of detail on segmentation, but that's really most of it right there, just getting that sense of shadow in there. So let's go ahead and stop here and we will continue on and add some rendering. So let's move forward 44. Cross Hatching the Figure: Welcome back. So now we will convert this to full black, and a lot of times I'll convert it to gray. And especially if I go into this stage, very messy. And I'll clean it up one more time over top. But I feel like we can save a lot of time just by doing it right here, the cleanup. So another thing is I'll put the, this particular layer if you're working digitally, I'll put it on top so that if I want to go back with whiteout, it lands on top everything. But I still have the Line Art saved as well, so it's kinda neat way to work. But essentially what I wanna do here is notice I shadowed in the back of the fingers right there, which I don't think is wrong. Maybe it's a bit too heavy. But you know what makes it look funny? I was sitting there. Look how it looks so funny. Well, it's because of the back of hand isn't Shadow. So that's another thing is as you can have to have this consistency, especially in the lower part, triazole would definitely be in here. The back of the fingers are shadowed than this era definitely has to be shadowed. Then I don't think those would be high enough where they would receive light like that. So I'd have to figure out, okay. Do I just leave a little bit of negative light to the tendons because I don't think I would fill it in entirely. So I'd have to look a little bit more like something like this. So let's see how, you know, a lot of times one thing will lead to another, one thing will connect an idea to another. I'm not saying this is perfect or anything like that, but I think it reads a bit better from back here. I feel like it's actually too strong overall. So I'm going to try a different approach. I think I don't think I like that big shadows on the back of the hand, but it might render more in that area. But again, I wanted to just show you how just shadowing the back of the fingers didn't work as well as I thought. Now I could just Shadow to the side of the finger and the side of the knuckle. I think that would work a bit better. And likewise down here, I think that probably works a bit better. Let's try it, you know, work over from here, see if it pulls together or not. A little bit. So rendering in there as I go. Okay. Yeah, I felt like that reads better. We could keep going on with some veins cross the back of my hand. Remember to use your white out on the highest point, light source side. Back the Shadow. And so here, I mean, it's probably self-explanatory, but I'll just get into it a little bit. Is I would put the Shadow, I would connect it. I have to look at the tendon here, the back of the hand, like it's the next raised area. So I've put a rounded shadow against the tendon, is probably a bit much for the distance of which the Poses. But if you're trying to get in here and add these details, ram this Shadow over top of the tendon, right? Even if it's just really slight. But then as you get into this next here, this area is the furthest back right there. It's more recessed, right. So you could Shadow down and around into that area and even a little bit more heavily. So up and around the tendon. Again, you want to keep the Form in mind. Hi, I'm sorry. I know this is messy, but it's actually pretty small. I really wouldn't do this much detail in this area. But I think it's worth pointing out to us. So again, drop shadow into this area and really, okay, I actually made them a small mistake there. I think that the pocket of shadowing here probably bend down and inward. So the reason why I'm saying that is because this, this area here, I'm kinda perceiving it. If I was support wrapping lines in there and perceiving it, going like this doesn't have to be, that's just the way I'm doing it. But Again, as I add these little pockets of Shadow, they need to reflect that. So up and around the tendon here, you could kinda really push that, are really kind of extreme with that. And then down in to these neighboring areas, that makes sense for you. And you can just hint to the top side as well. You don't have to put lines all the way through it. You can do very little better when you use the Shadows around it to really convey it seems to work better than you pull back and see if it reads well, that's good enough. I feel like I could use another vein right through here. I can really go crazy with these obviously. Then we go. Then I'd probably also, just the way I like to do it, I would add a little bit of texture on this side. Depends on the character I'm creating, but I like to have these creepy little textures. I would roll in some of these textures and a downward curvature. Like this just makes it a bit more gritty and von. But again, it does depend on the narrative, right? It depends on the character you're going for. That's the stuff I do also like to have these tendons come right up to the knuckles back here. Then I can figure out how much detail I want to add to the fingers. But again, I do want to stress, that's if you're doing a bit more of a close-up, we don't want to get too into that. But if you're, if you're closer to that part of the illustration, then you can kinda go crazy with it. You get more of the wrinkles in that phone stuff. Just don't lose sight of it if it's possible. Let's character on the background. It's really easy, especially digital zoom in there and just go crazy, like whoa, wasn't one's going to even see that. What was I thinking? Maybe share that one with with all your ear buds just to get some eyeballs on it. Like look, I put all his work into this area. Someone's got to see it. Okay, so something like that. And then as far as Rendering, same ideas apply like how do we want to convey the Shadows? I would say this area is going to be more in shadow. So I'm going to start with these tapered lines again, I pull a few lines forever one. You can also go heavier to one side. As you do that. You can go heavier to every side really, you can go heavier to the tapered sides. You can go heavier as you'd get to the shadow on this side. And you can even pick back up. You'll see some artists even go back up here and taking them. There's so many ways to be creative with this. And then check it from a distance. If it reads wall, then that's probably the right choice. Let's go with this. Let's try something like this. My block in here with my hand there. So down here I'll try to blend this off right to the side end of the white. And I can even go with where I've kinda perceive the shape of that muscle. So I tried to do that. Hopefully that reads the way that I was thinking, but that's what I was thinking anyways. I can go back, I can add to these bits of taper. And for Hatching, I guess I could go this way. I could go this way. I don't know if there's an actual right choice there. Let's just try try this, I guess. So as I mentioned before, I will try to make these thinner. I like the variation from one angle to the next. I don't know why. It's just something I like to do. Not exactly sure where I pick that up. I mean, I've already mentioned other artists who this course, a lot of those artists of the main influences on my work. There's others but that's, you know, there's, there's usually those main view that I really look to their work to gain insight. I'll tell you that I didn't really like Hatching like I thought it would, so let me try it the other way. I don't know if it was the thickness, I think it was the pattern. So a lot of times I'm just looking for this, this bit of pattern. I like it to look a certain way. I guess. It's better. It's cleaner. Yeah. I can live with that one. The other one I couldn't live with for some reason. Let's see. So through here as I go also touch up these little bits. So remember we're on that floating layer that I put in kind of haphazardly little bit. I wasn't too crazy about it. But there is a lot to be said for throwing a lot of these shapes in and then sculpting them as you go I feel like it leads to more creative expression, so be careful of getting in there. And really, and I am probably said this a few times as well. Be careful of getting in there and being too awfully clean and precise with everything. You know what I want to try for some, this one, I want to bring these lines over this way. I'm always experimenting with little bits of variation from what I would, because I was gonna go up the side of the muscle which might go back and still do. But I like to just say, well what if I try it this way? What if I do this instead of that Zig instead of zag, right? Almost like that by itself. So some of these bits of Rendering, do they work? Well? Even without hatch work, I generally will go back and add at least one more line the other way. But sometimes it does work just as simple as some little points off the side. It's definitely faster. There are styles where the rendering is very light. There's lots of styles where people don't get too awfully crazy with the Rendering. I don't know. I just personally, I seem to like the stuff that's highly rendered. Yeah. I kinda like that. And it goes right. So when you go over here, some of those. Now one thing I'll say to be careful of, It's not a big deal, but you should kinda keep an eye for it, is when you're Rendering. And say I've already introduced some texture, you want to make sure that the rendering is a little bit different of an angle than the texture. Indefinitely waited a little different. It doesn't have to be much, but if it's it can blend together. I don't know that it's a deal breaker and a lot of areas, but it's something I also look out for. So I just wanted to make sure to let you know. Sometimes you don't want your texture and you get lost or muddied up by some additional cross Hatching that could have just been maybe applied at a different angle. I always think of Spiderman suit. Like if you do a lot of cross Hatching, he already has the webbing that's got to go through there, right? So you kinda have to be a little more strategic about the way you introduce Rendering because it's a live already going on there. So stuff like that. Sometimes this adding these little bumps to the various side symbols they are can do a lot for it. Alright, so what we'll do is we're going to stop right here. Let's continue on and add some additional Rendering to this. So with that, let's move forward. 45. Adding more Cross Hatching: Okay, let's continue on. So same thing that might come across here. I'm thinking I'm gonna go with the angle of the shadow here and try to bring it all the way up this way. So just seems like it made sense. And then also, I feel like if I add this throw here, it will push the Form out. The product could be a bit more curve. I feel like it is flattening it out. Let me try to wrap around the Form a bit more. Then as a cross hatch from his will bring it this way. And I think I'm going to bring it up and over these lines, There's my son, Optimus, if I fix that real quick. So unfortunately these devices can be a bit finicky at times. And this one anyways, ever had that problem with myosin 800k. But I actually really prefer inking on this one. So synthetic data while ago. But enough of my problems, right? Okay, so there's that I feel like that rounded it out just fine. I mean, again, I probably could've went more curved with that first row, but not a big deal. I'll also touch up the shadows as I go. Here, I will just render up and around, but I'm going to try to get more curvature in my rendering as I go. No, I just feel like why not? I should be, should be shooting for that. Even this little dimple right there. A lot of times they'll render off stuff like that. Bring out the bicep has two muscles, right? Also play around with line weight as I go. I want to continue on with the same concept going up the deltoid here. And I'm going to try to get a little curvature in there, taper and curve. For this rendering. I think I'm going to pull in this direction. Also skipping the line just a little bit. At the end. I feel like right here I want this to be heavier on the line Weight, so I'll get that one. I'm over here. Same thing, try to wrap around as far as Form. And I think that if the minds are too far apart, it can look a little funny, but you can always go back and just try to beef up the base of it, the thickness of the taper to the one side of the shadow. Shadow side. It's pretty easy to do. But you know, it's I don't think it's something you have to do, but I just felt like it looks better when they're closer together. That's another part of your style, what you might experiment with. Then keep checking it from distance. And this one, I'm actually going to bring some over on this side as well. Feel like he could use it. And same thing here. Now here I will go with the chest. Kind of parallel. These lines. Now have those fade back over to here a little bit. Pick back up right here. Kinda repeat that process. And I feel like they could almost be that way by themselves. But then I feel like this shadowing looks heavier. So just to kinda keep that Consistent, a little bit of cross Hatching here as well. Okay. So you're saying just had a little bit of marks the other way? A couple of marks the other way. Ones is you will miss direction. Yeah. I feel like I like that. I guess I didn't. The tricep here you get that. You see this. It's pretty time-consuming, but you don't have to take it as far, okay, So hopefully you experiment with your own variety of work here and realize that this is just a style that I've adopted for this type of work. It's not something you have to have to put all these marks and you can get away with a lot less. And likewise, you could add a lot more if you wanted to as well. I'll put a heavier line weight right here. Feel like it needs it. As far as the relationship from the Interior hatch work to the line Weight? Personally, I would just make sure to make the the outside lines heavier by comparison to everything on the interior step for the bulk of the Shadows, but the lines is what I mean. I just wouldn't have hopefully wouldn't do any illustrations where I have heavier lines on the anterior and thinner lines on the very exterior just I think it would be it wouldn't read as well. So just play around with beefing up these line weights until you will know it'll have a nice solid feel to the work. So that's, that's what I'm looking for. Remember, you can render off the side of lines like this. Just as easy. You can cross hatch a little bit into there, but things like that. They're nice for falls. So if this line looks awkward to you, you could just render on an angle like that, kind of softens it up. Alright. Let's get the for the portion of the ribs, serratus or whatever. But it's kinda like a simplified rib-cage really is. I will go against this way. Let's try a few. This direction. What I'm going to do is actually bounce around the line right through there. You have a little texture. Picked back up on the slide a little bit. Again, just, I don't know, just kinda fits that shape. I think it's also clean up some of those messiness. So you see, once we zoom in pretty tight, my shadows are really, really kinda crude, but I don't know. Again, I know it's already said this. I'm going to have to keep repeating things. It's such a contents along, but you really do have to allow yourself to be messy at different parts and see what you can come up with. The, I mean, it's a balanced again because you want to clean things up. Obviously. You want your look, your work to look professional, clean, concise, well thought out. But then there's a part of it where some of that messiness adds a little bit of life and grit and grime, and it's a tricky one. It's a slippery slope for me to figure out myself. So So I guess we're all well on that road, that path on our own innocence because our style is something that we have to develop through a longer duration of time. Again, I really feel like studying from other artists is super important. But who knows what decisions we integrate into our own work and why. And when that doesn't have probably ever stop and probably always transforming our work and our ideas of what our style means and what we like about it, what we want to, what we deem worthy to, to commit to our style. So I still feel like even though the light source is kinda radiating from this side, I still feel like they have to Shadow this bit of the lat. But I'm going to at least start the lines from the darker side and then radiate them or thin them out towards the light source side. Maybe that'll help. I'm not sure. Same thing with the bits of the serratus. I feel like they just need just can't be in plain light. That was something I feel like anyways, something like that. I'm not sure if I like that, but sometimes they'll just throw some extra lines and just to see, it's probably better, but I'll hold off on that part. But I do want the serratus to be built on a little bit. Me know what, Let's try this. Let me go back just a bit. So I'm gonna do is come over here first. I'm add these little marks right on the edges. And I know when you typically do this, it makes things appear a little too segmented. You know, when you just kind of approach each area individually like this, it really does, but I don't know there's certain areas of the work where I just feel like what else would I do? Now? I guess what I could do even though as I could apply it like this and I could go back through and I can just hatch over like a zipper tone or a tonal value of the whole side of the Torso as 11 unified object because that's really what it is, right? So you have the idea that you're trying to render these forms to be dimensional exclusively from one another. But then realistically it is one big connected Torso, right? So you have to have that unified feeling as well. So that's where light and shadows really tricky. I'll tell you if somebody, if you can translate from another artists a painterly style to ink to work, one that I would always recommend. And you're gonna hear this from a lot of different artists because it's so influential was Frank for xydA, especially his later work where his Shadows are just so well Designed. I don't also put it like he just has a neat artistic designed. There's so many aspects to his work, but as Shadows are one of my favorite to pay attention to. And I think he's influenced a lot of comic artists over the years. I mean, I have no doubt heard plenty of people refer to his work, so definitely somebody worth checking out. So let's go and stop right here. We've got more to go obviously. So with that, let's move on. 46. Additional Rendering: Welcome back. So now let's continue on with the Arm Right here. Too dark. So my bag or cross the other way. A little. Arrows like this. I like to put lines right through it two more on the Shadow. Let's see, Let's work on the tricep here. I feel like this area because this is the brachialis, if I remember correctly, this needs to be rendered to look a bit more rounded. And I might have the tricep a little off in conjunction with that. A lot of times this middle muscle brachialis will raise up and tricep will push back from a shot like this. But I'm just gonna go out and leave it. Just keep that in mind that sometimes you might want the effect where this actually comes up through here More and the tricep move back further. Okay, So now let's get this area right here. I shall bring the lines up this way. First line, we're right there again, we can render off the Shadows. Some point that I think would soften them up. Abet seems to work. Play around a little textures as we go. You can these wrinkles, although it's safe for stuff like this as make sure it's not too awfully. Even. Seems like when you just put a couple lines parallel. Kinda doesn't read like wrinkles of any kind but you know, skin wrinkles or even clothing and folds. You just have to have like a bit of variation to them. The way that they wrap around, in the way that they're shaped through to awfully even it just I don't know, it takes away from it a little bit. We can go back with a negative line as well and work into this side if you want. I always think that looks kinda cool. These are a bit, a bit much, but I like it compared to the other side, there's more going on there, but that's fine. Alright, so now let's do I'd like to add more to the back of his hand. Texturize through here Well that's rendering to here. I'll clean up somebody's messy Shadows, slums, really kind of messy, kind of hard to read. Little bit of rendering off here. Got a phone so many spots, so hello crazy in here, get a bunch of little imperfections. I need to touch up. Texturize the back of a hand a little bit was like I did on that other one and the other side. And really you can texturize all through something like this if you wanted, but it would take me forever at this point. So I don't want to bore you too much. Again, I really hope that these real-time versions are good for it because I know I know a lot of times I would tell him time-lapse through this just because it's repetitive, but I don't know. I just feel bad for the people that want to. We're requesting to see this stuff all in real time. But it does take awhile. It's not it's on a quick and easy. I mean, I think that I think it's easy relatively once you once you get used to it, once you start feeling comfortable about the process and it becomes easier. I should say not easy. But it's definitely not fast for me. Not in this regard, like not in the type of style that I'm doing here. And again, that's why I mentioned where I started to compromise some of the detail. There's times I still do, I still do a lighter style every now and then. Just to get a piece out. It's just tough because like for instance, I can digitally paint. Say I hadn't bossed, and I can do that in under 2 h easily. But if I do an entire detailed comic style rendering with the detail that I like to see. There's times it takes me a day. Sometimes two. You just got to have a lot of patients and sometimes that's okay, Sometimes that's suitable and everybody enjoys that kind of detail. And then other times you need to be able to hammer something out and just get it done faster. What amazes me though is when you see the ultra detailed work and they somehow get it done so fast. So speed does come with it. I'm definitely a lot faster than I used to be. So try not to burden herself with that idea of speed. We're all trying to get a little faster what we do, but it does come with just practice and you start to learn to take little shortcuts that you want aware of when you first started. Take a big part as you, you learn when to simplify, when to block things out. And Shadow has all sorts of little techniques that you pick up along the way. Okay, I think that's adequate for there. Let's move down into the Legs here. These are pretty messy. Really messy. I have just flying through the spot. I got to pay the price because I can see a lot of hair is I need to clean up here now. So I feel like the shape here is getting lost. It's not looking like the way I would normally want the Leg muscle looks. I'm going to work on that. Can go pass the Line Art too much without dropping in some white out. Like this seems to be closer to the knee. The knee feels. But two disjointed from here. I'm probably just going to take whiteout and all this will help me cover up the previous Line Art layer at the same time. Probably need a little more light to this one side. Maybe that's what's bothering me. Remember, sometimes you can even cut right through the shadow there. You'll make it look a bit more like the light's hitting. So like if you go up here, same thing with this spot, the spy probably introduce it here. And it just gives it a fact that the light is coming down hitting that area more significantly. You see, I've made sure to leave it open there on the shoulders, stuff like that. So we could do that here because what I think happens is if you leave it like this, it can start to look overly segmented real quick and then there's not as the light source doesn't look as noticeably correct or sometimes just doesn't look like it's being displayed properly. So play around with swiped out here in a sense. And just keep pushing these shapes around until I get what I'm after. Maybe even just feel like it's a little to segment and on the top portion of the Leg down here, I don't mind it as much. But evenness didn't think this bother me. Even this right here is kind of strong. I think part of it too is since I know we're gonna go back and render this, that I feel like a lot of this maybe doesn't need to be so bold, so boldly explained with these shapes. And I could probably even go heavier on this side. I think I liked that better. So let's try that. Also. I felt like the shape needs to be in here because it's looking all it's blending altogether, so it's just not reading well. I also feel like this Shadow can now go this way a bit more. Yeah, I think that's a little better. Right. So there we go. So let's, again, let's go and stop here. And now we'll get into rendering this Leg. So with that, let's move on. 47. Rendering on the Legs: Alright, welcome back. Let's continue on this journey of rendering. So like most of us know, so little messy, but once I render over it, it should be. Good. Trick is, is that you can keep zooming in, zooming in, and it just gets messier and messier. You really do have to stay back a bit. You don't want to just over overwork something. I feel like that's about right. Let's let's go and test it out. One thing, it's still a little is this shape right here. I don't quite want it to all blend together right here. I don't like that. It was just a little bit more of a downward curve here. Little bit more of a point up here. Let's try that. It's really tricky sometimes getting, getting the right shapes, but I think that's a bit better actually in over here, I'm going to also like to take a thinner line. So a lot of times they'll do these negative Shapes. Left end. But then I'll refine them at the end with again, almost like this bit of white out. Yeah, I think that looks better. But it's that relationship of big to little shapes that there's a lot for this stuff. So that's where I keep thinking about sculpting the work and why I don't mind Blocking in a big shapes. Sometimes I pay the price, sometimes too messy and I feel like I can't work myself out of it. But the challenge is a good thing. You should try to blob and some ink and then see what you can pull out of it. Yeah, it's not always not always successful at it. But it shouldn't be with enough practice have definitely gotten better at it over the years and I was, so that's the main thing. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Let's That's what I'm looking for. Okay. So now render up from the Leg here. You might remember it is I usually don't render up. It just seems like I can show you a bit better. My hands covering the work a little bit less seems easier to get my hand out all the way. So that's part of it. Any other thing is that I feel like I'm starting to get a bit of a comfort level with it. Maybe I don't have quite the control of the speed as I would pull on it the other way. But it does serve a purpose. I feel like I can see it come together a little bit more this way as well. So it's not just blocking your view. Sometimes it's even black and my own view and I'm just kinda feel where I'm at with the way that I'm rendering. But in this case I felt like it should be pulling up like this. I want a little too straight. I'm trying to come back and rounding that over. I should work this way. Go Cross. Actually, you know what, let me beef up just a couple of these really get bothered by those little gaps between the lines. I don't know why just hurts me. And it's something I have to really be conscious of as I'm creating these lines. It's very easy to leave too much separation between these marks. Alright, so again, round the other way. Here, I'm really trying to compensate for the fact that I didn't round as much on the first one. So I'll try to curve these little stutter step. I feel like that's fine. Okay, So over here, let's kinda start heavier break-off to just these little bumps. Quick way to introduce some rendering there. Do the same thing here because this isn't a very big muscle. Minus x1. I get too crazy into their Same thing over here. I'm not going to see as much shadow on this side. So I'll just add just a little bit of rendering. So it's not too awfully plane. So it doesn't look unfinished. And then I get down here to the knee. The knee area, I typically wouldn't render as high off the knee, but we're getting lower to the Leg. So I want to bring this Rendering up. But something else I could do is I could render as high as I need to across this knee area. Alright. I could go back and I could create either a cross Hatching or another thicker pattern right at the base. So then I'm just trying to explain that round over of the very edge of the knee. So I can even go back with a little bit of white. Also kind of create that next pattern to make it look like it's running over at the base me. So there's just so many, you know, there's a lot of ways to think about it. Again, I could cross Hatching cross here. And if I stopped the Cross Hatching pretty low, it'll give me that little round over as well. That kinda feels a little messy. I'll actually go back to about right there. I feel like that's Let's good enough. When thinking I should have the lines thinner on this side. Again, that's kind of pointing that there's more of a light source on that side. Heavier weighted lines over here. Even on the very edge. Bigger shadows in general. And soften that up, pull back a little bit. So another exercise it's good to do is sit here and render something and try to bring the lines as close together without, without zooming in. If you're working digitally, obviously, if you're working traditionally, you can't zoom in, but it's still practice bringing those lines as tight together as you can. Then variations of that and then variations of the Rendering. And all that will help you for when you get ready to do your next piece of it will just kick in muscle memory and will kick in and super-effective. Now this is a longer area. I still feel like I need some kind of segmentation here. So I'm going to bring something over like this. I don't want to pull these lines nice and straight then right through here. So just another way to do it. Obviously there's no taper there, but it just quick, easy. I can still cross hatch this way. A little bit different look. But it is much faster. So there's a lot of people that get really good at just pulling a bunch of straight lines. I think I already talked about that. You get priority, talked about everything twice at this point because there's just, you know, unfortunately this is just a bit of repetition here. Same thing. Bring some lines down this way. Cross here. Then over like this. I wanted to say that if you're not good at carving the lines around and I I know I definitely struggle with it. Places. I don't think it's a deal breaker. I really don't like, I want to say there's plenty of styles where they just keep good at Rendering and keeping the forums and the volumes and mind. And then just different angles of cross Hatching about looking at his work right now, I want to say if you look at Scott Williams. Scott Williams and Jim, Jim way, I want to say a lot of their cross Hatching is straight lines. I'm pretty sure without pulling it up and analyzing it again, but my memory serves me correctly and it showed since I've looked at their word for many, many years, it seems like these a lot more. I'm not saying they won't use any curves in there cross hatch work, but it's less it's more of a Designed way of cross Hatching where the patterns generate the gradients that they're looking for. These, that's why I see, yeah. And I'm going to push this bags. We have a little bit of light, a top of that leg a little bit. So now if I stay consistent with this, I should probably bring my curves up and make sure my camera so straight for you. My lines up like this. Again, try to curve them and break them up as I go this way. I'm actually going to try one more roll around this way because I feel like it just didn't curve enough right there. Like I wanted. Doesn't have that sense of bend or air. So let's this sense, this idea of compounding curves. That can be tricky to get. That helps explain a little better, but it's still a little flatter than I hoped for. But again, when you go back and you have this stuff colored, McCullers can really work wonders. I feel like the shape here, it looks a bit funky for the knee. The relationship of the muscle almost would need to flatten out over here. Shoot down this way. I think that looks better. Just looks a bit odd for a knee, but I think if I just had a little bit right here, maybe maybe we'll get there so we're reading close. Alright, so let's go and do this, will stop here and head over to the next lesson. So with that, let's move on. 48. Final Inks on the Figure: Alright, welcome back. So now I want to work into this error right here, mainly two, because the more I look at it, this area is too far and feels like it anyway, so hopefully the rendering will help that out. But if not just black and some more shadow and see what we can do to fix it. I wanted to show you some downward polls to see if it is a little faster. I know it might block a little bit more of the work with my hand, so forgive me for that. But I do want to show you how I might speed up as I good. I would get a certain game plan going right with any piece. And then I tend to pick up a little momentum at the end. Now, I might speed up and get a little bit messier as well. So sometimes it's not a bad thing, it's just got to be aware of how far you take it. But if you're under the gun time time-wise and you gotta do what you gotta do. So there's times that I will speed up just because it works. Gotta get done. I don't typically you see how much messier that is that some of the areas like some of it's cleaner so it's messier. I could always go back and say that's just too much and I got to clean that up, but I'm just going to go into cross hatch over it. I'm just kinda warmed up to pulling pulling upward now, all of a sudden do anything enough times and becomes second nature, right? Alright, so I'm not sure if I flick this needs to be shadowed back even a little more. I could probably bring the Shadows all the way through here. I feel like that's better. Like the Leg just wouldn't beside the Leg just wouldn't receive that much light. This side fills to to close into the lower pelvis. So push that back. I can bring these wrinkles back out if I want to keep those. Do add a little bit to it be I would just keep pushing that over a little bit. I think that by itself does a lot for it. Minus or here maybe ram the Shadow going this way. We could also cross hatch this way as well. Right? So just keep darkening that area. So all sorts of ways to do that. Then for the calf here, same thing is what we did on the other parts of Leg. There's draw upward, curve that a bit as we go. As I mentioned before, just try putting these parallel lines. A little bit of cross Hatching, read through it. Same thing for the foot. Shall go ahead and pull wines over this way, first, breath View and this other direction. Okay, So now let's kinda check this over. I don't think I'll add any rendering to the head. So I feel like that's starting to or not starting to notice is this is looking pretty good. I could go through and play around with the line Weight as I usually do right at the very end. I'll do that intersecting parts of the anatomy as well. But then just mainly just give it a nice variety to the line Weight so that it's not so even all the way around that it's got a little bit more intensity on the perimeter. Then it does on the inside. I could also add, let me get this little part right there. That's bugging me. I could also add, as I've shown, like little details like this across the muscle groups. Basically like wrinkles and a suit design. But again, it's To me it's almost like beneficial, almost like wrapping lines like you see around lower pelvis. It just it just makes it look more interesting. It's easy to do. And also as I mentioned, secondary light source. So let's go and do that real quick. So I'll say now you've got it to a point where you've got all those in place. And we went through an integer beefier line way to put some more curves where things look a bit flat. All sorts of little designs in details. And you're ready experiment with that secondary light source. Me personally, I would add a layer. But if you're working with whiteout, sometimes you just gotta go for it or an overlay on a light table. But what I would do is just pick words that secondary light source. So typically, I bring the shadow up higher on the side that I plan on adding the secondary light source. And I know I've already alluded to this with the other lessons, but then just to try it out on a character, more of a Full Pose, I would start like this. And I would just go around and try to connect the light and then blend into the shadow, something like that. Now, I think the big trick about this is not to go too awfully crazy and put it everywhere. I would go for the biggest muscle groups first. Just do a little bit of a gradient. Play it safe if you want to see what it looks like at first. Feels a little to Angular. So let me try to round that down a little bit. I don't like that. They're not all gonna be winners and you're not going to need secondary light all the time. It's just what I like about it, is when you go to color it, it, it just really looks kinda neat to add that extra color in there. The bounce light or it just gives it that it rounds over the anatomy really well or whatever it is you're applying it to. I like the effects, but it can be overdone real quick. So you gotta be careful. But it's just like highlights. I always, I always used to love adding the highlights at the end of the airbrushing, set airbrushed T-shirts and license plates, all kinds of stuff when I was younger and I used to love the part. We add the little highlight in the eye as with the airbrush, it was like folic a little bit of magic. So that's kinda what I look at. When I do this. I just feel like it's it has that extra bit of depth and dimension. For not a lot of effort. All the hard work's done. This is kinda easy. But again, it's kinda easy to overdo as well. Okay. I probably wouldn't add it to those side. I mean, if anything on this side, it would just maybe be a little bit on the bottom of this deltoid. But that's, I don't forget to go too much further. And even that looks weird. In a lot of times it looks weird. If you get like, you kinda like negative drawing here. So if you get a weird shape and they're kinda changed the Anatomy right there. So I'd probably go back with black. Just show you. I would maybe it changed the shoulder like that. Then I could bring the white out even further. So again, it's just changing the look of it a little bit. We might need to edit that as you go. I don't know if it's your whole lot here and let's try it though. Kinda on the fence about this part, but I think I'll leave it. It's It's kinda hard not to put everywhere when you start doing this. It really is like, Hey, it looks cool, so more cool is better, right? Not always. But I feel like it needs to be consistently on the bottom left of the bigger forums. Yeah. It's just one of those things where it kinda has to flow through the the character to make sense. I think I like it right about there though. And then just so we're here, any other final things might be you could soften up some things. Maybe think the knee is to predominant right there. You can soften it up like that. So many cool ways to use this kinda little whiteout affection come into the neck area. And so I'm just losing too much of the detail. Maybe put a lot of cool details in the neck or the Shadows just wash away too much of the detail for it. It's not reading as well as you think it should. All then you just get in there and add that back in. Remember what I said about maybe extending certain parts over. The negative shape reads, well, just little things like that. I think that's pretty good. Again, I can go on and on, but there's, there's our finished character with full Rendering and I know it took awhile, but hopefully that's showed you a lot and we'll get into some more variations. So yeah, let's conclude here and continue on. 49. Class Project: And so hopefully you've enjoyed these lessons and they've opened your mind up to all the possibilities and how you can rework the Figure into basic shapes and forms. Now for your class project, I'd really like to see you take everything you've learned here and express it into a Full character design. The polls can be anything you want. If you feel more comfortable following along with mine, then that's more than fine. But don't be afraid to venture out and express your own ideas and really explore these, again, these volumes, these forms, sense of direction, some foreshortening, just, just have been with it. There's no right or wrong way to do this. There's just a series of techniques that help us to recreate our successes. So I can't wait to see what you come up with. And thank you so much for watching this class.