extended figure

[DannoBoy]

Okay so the first piece was a 20-minute(I think) figure drawing from class. A homework we had after that was to 'acorchet'(sp?) three pictures. Draw in all the muscles and whatnot, how the person would look skinned pretty much. I spent a long time on it using compressed charcoal and white conte, and the teacher critiqued and I changed things til she finally told me to stop to not overwork it.
Any thoughts?
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v83/Danno/8.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v83/Danno/acorchet.jpg

[FourTonMantis]

I like it. :)

That's a great exercise.

[tobi]

Wow, nice shading and a profund knowledge of all these arm muscles! Nice lines…

If you want any critique: The weakest part, in my opinion, is the person's right arm and the hand in the background. While the lower arm looks a little to long (as there is no seen connection to it's upper part that should be there), the hand is not half as great as the guy's left one. More edges, knuckles, stronger shapes would have been good ingredients to improve that part of the drawing. Without them, the shapes are undefined and without any energy. While the teacher was sureley right with his advice not to overwork the piece, the right arm in the background could have been done better. Either by just showing careful, thin outlines and not too much shading, to keep it from rivalizing with the arm in the foreground, or by more detailled care with the right hand, which is sitting on a prominent spot and is important to the whole sketch. You shouldn't ignore it that much…

Keep up the great progress!

[dose]

"ecorché" is the correct term, although I've never seen it used as a verb.

The muscles are OK in general. However, you've neglected the bone structure. For example, the wrist, hand, foot, and knee are largely bone with a bit of padding from muscle or fat, plus tendons. Especially in the hands and feet, not understanding what the bone structure is will cause you some trouble- partly because the structure is complex, and partially because there are some tendons which are easily mistaken for bones and make things kinda tricky.

The biggest problem throughout the drawing is the perspective. The muscles aren't really understood as 3D forms, and there isn't a consistent viewpoint that they are drawn from. The result is that the figure looks a bit gimpy. Think about what viewpoint you were looking from, and then which angle you would see the major masses from. Every smaller form on the major masses must share the same viewpoint. For example, the figure looks as if it was drawn from above and a bit to the front of a straight profile. Thus, we can see the top, front, and side of the mass of the torso. The abominals cutting across the middle of the torso and turning around the external obliques is quite nice. However, the deltoids appear to be drawn in profile, and in this case they couldn't logically share the same viewpoint as the torso and actually connect (the biceps and triceps could be drawn from profile- possibly- if they are tilted in such a way that makes them parallel to the viewing plane. It's not clear enough in your drawing to be sure if this was the case). The trapezius and neck area has no clear viewpoint at all (the traps are a really strange form- tough to get right in perspective!). Again, without an understanding of the bone structure that supports and dictates the muscle structure, areas like this can be a big mystery. If you don't really know how it all fits together you're not going to be able to put it in perspective, and the viewer will read the form as slightly distorted.

Don't get me wrong- it's actually quite an accomplishment to get the ecorche to the level you have! The muscles are generally right- they just don't fit together to create solid masses. Learn your bones and perspective and you'll be in great shape.

Here's a quick paintover which will hopefull clarify what I'm talking about...

-Tim