Basic shapes of legs, and drawing feet and hands

[Rabbi Satan]

Hi, I lurk on the forums a lot and rarely post, as I'm never high enough caliber to contribute anything here, but I'm currently in a bind. I've been following Riven Phoenix's structure of man tutorials, and things are coming along fine, except I'm very bad at drawing the shape of legs, as well as the shape of feet and hands in a foreshortened position.

I've tried following some of the tutorials on the forums, like this one:

http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=87690&highlight=feet

But my feet seem to end up looking wrong with the toes in the wrong order (With the big toe where the pinkie is, and vice versa).

The reason I'm asking is because I don't have access to any formal art education, and I've tried searching google for some tutorials and haven't had much success. I'm trying to learn how to draw the feet from mind, so I haven't had any real experience drawing feet from real life. I'm alright at drawing the torso and head from the mind now, and I never really did any life drawings of them before, so could anyone please help me and kindly guide and instruct me on a method on how to draw the human foot, as well as hands and the shape of the legs?

Should I also post some of my drawings so people can examine them as well, or is it not needed?

[emily g]

Yeah, it would help a lot for you to post some drawings, because then people can give you specific advice.

[Rblackmore]

If you haven't yet, check out Mr. Mentler's work. One can learn more from a single demo of his than from entire volumes of literature! Also, Hogarth and Bridgman simplify the feet very well.

[Rabbi Satan]

Ok, I did a bit more drawing, and I think I have the basic shapes of feet and legs down, I just need to start on the hands now. But I'm now starting to have problems with drawing the torso and shoulder area from the back in the 3/4ths view, I'll attach some drawing of shapes of the feet and some back drawings from the mind. But I'm not that great an artist, which is why I'm trying to improve :(.

Should I try starting the back with its contours and working my way from there?

Thanks :)


Edit:

Also, I'll check the book of bones, mentler's thread, but whilst I find his art to be orgasmic to look at, its a bit hard to learn unfortunately, which is why I'm anxiously waiting for his DVD.

[duoxan]

im lurking in class right now, and hopefully i remember to come back here with some sites that might shed some light
i too have a hard time with feet, and what helps me is to think of the foot as a flattened cone. i usually figure out where the padding (not sure what they are called) is of the foot, and draw ellipses for those. one where the fibula and tibia meet the tarsals. then i draw two of those where your joints are in the feet. from there i just draw the toes as cylinders. ill draw some out and try to post them here, but i wont have a scanner. maybe in photoshop.
and remember, the more you draw, the more you learn, so dont get discouraged or frustrated.
you definitely have a good start
o, and dont scribble out a bad drawing, try to learn from it or improve it

[Rblackmore]

Well, I made a quick sketch with MS Paint(drawn with a mouse too :)) to illustrate how I would block in a foot quickly, but I would then proceed to refine it a lot further. I hope this helps, not sure though as I can't MS Paint well at all.