Hi, how did you learn to draw Steve's physique?
Ohh what a complicated thing to answer...
When it comes to how I learned to draw anything, it's hard to say anything too specific since it's always a culmination of many years of assorted study and practice... but I can try to do my best to explain some of the biggest things that helped me learn, some tips I keep in mind, and maybe at least some places to start/delve further.
(just a little disclaimer it's not like my drawings here are going to be 100% medically accurate.. they're just to illustrate concepts!)
The main thing about learning various physiques is understanding anatomy. Which feels obvious, but I don't mean proportions; these are important, but perhaps more important is understanding the skeleton and how it moves and learning where muscles connect to bones and where fat grows on the body. When you understand how these function on a more mechanical level, depicting form and movement in a way that feels natural comes in tow.
For instance, understanding things like the pronation and supination of the radius and ulna, as well as the fact that muscles can ONLY contract or relax, will help you understand a bit better which muscles will be flexed and which will not while someone moves. It's inherent to the positioning based on the structural makeup of the body... It's not like you NEED to memorize all the muscles and bones, of course, but understanding and gaining at least a passive familiarity with the concepts really helps.
In tandem with this concept is the way parts of the body flow into eachother. Muscles ALWAYS come in groups because they can only contract. Whatever muscle is there to lift something, there is a muscle on the other side to pull that bone back down. What this results in is a series of straight edges next to curves, which gives us a lot of really lovely "s curves" and dents and folds and so on and so forth just naturally occurring.
I would suggest at least learning the "bony landmarks", which are bones (usually) visible on the surface of the body. things like the iliac crest, the great trochanter, the 7th vertabrae, the acromion process... These can be used to help you understand the parts of the body as angles and relationships, rather than trying to remember lengths and sizes, which vary immensely... (since you asked about steve, he can be our model... also study these on your own don't just take my word for it haha, these are the ones I personally keep in mind)
I've done the same thing with body hair... learning where it grows and in which directions... It helps me make up variations without needing reference, because I have a set of rules I can follow.
The biggest thing that helped me understand all this on a much deeper level was my ecorche course. I sculpted this guy. We started by sculpting the entire skeleton to understand the bones, and then we added muscles on top. Not every single muscle, of course, but the "artistic muscles" AKA the ones which directly affect the surface of the body. Doing this let us see where muscles connect, because we would make a shape, put it on the bone where it actually goes, and then you get to see how other muscles overlap that.
This helped me, perhaps, more than anything else. But I also didn't just start with this course, I had been drawing for years before I even took it. I had been in school for years before I took it. Not that I think it wouldn't be helpful to someone just starting out, but I do think that the more you know going in, the better an in-depth course like this will help you and stick with you. Classes are also expensive, though so I'm not really like... recommending you pay potentially thousands of dollars to take one... But it did help me a lot, personally.
I also, of course, have done many figure, gesture, and master studies...
These just help you quickly gain a stronger understanding of generalized anatomy, and gives you real life examples of and practice with of how people move and balance.
What all this does when combined, is gives me a very solid ability to depict movement and form in a way that feels relatively natural from my subconscious without the need for reference.
The rest of how I've learned to draw his physique is honestly mostly just stylization. I understand the body, and this is how I am depicting it for his level of musculature.
And as I move into depicting him in other ways, either moving in comics or in animation, realistically rendered, or extra stylized, these concepts inform every step of that process for me! When he keeps the same/similar relationships between parts, he gets to still look like himself.
It ALSO really helps when putting clothes on, because the way cloth falls and bunches and lifts is all directly related to the form it is on... So the more you understand that form, the more you can depict clothing and movement in a way that feels natural.
This is all, of course, true when I draw anyone, you asked about Steve so I'm trying to mostly show with him! But because I'm just drawing from raw information of general anatomy rather than trying to study one body type at a time, it allows a lot more "give," I think!
Like, here's most of the cast from TTA so far... actually, they're not as varied as I thought they were nevermind LMAO ignore this part
But, it also makes monster and alien design much easier! It's a lot easier to come up with non-human anatomy when I understand human anatomy, because I can manipulate the knowledge I have...
There is infinite more to study in the world of anatomy... The complexity of the human body goes extremely deep. For our purposes as artists, we need only depict a fraction of it, but more information rarely hurts the process.
I'm sure there's something in here that's wrong on a technical level, I'm mostly going off of memory. But that's kind of my point - I understand enough generally and conceptually that when I am missing something and need to find reference for it, I understand what I'm looking at. It's much easier than trying to learn AND draw at the same time.
I hope even one thing in here helped you! Sorry it's so long.
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Been doing some sketching lately~ I have the Silmarillion on the brain~
This last one is evidence of the sad fact of smudging that occurs with soft lead in a well travelled sketchbook~
(which I could fix by removing the page or applying setting spray, but I haven't bothered 😅)
Also-
That one with Maedhros standing next to a young lady with hobbit on her other side- is from when I was reading through What the hell is happening? By Leader_in_red? And I was thinking 'what would the height difference actually be? If Maedhros is 7 ft tall, Hazel is normal human height, and then we have hobbits in the mix-
Anyway,
I don't think I got the heights quite right, but it was fun trying to imagine just how insanely tall Maedhros actually is. (he's not weirdly tall by elf standards if you look at the elf average height which is around six feet, but still. I like height differences. It's just so fun to draw :)
I think 'Leader in red' was the username. If it isn't I'll just edit this later :)
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hey. i'm alive :/
i just deleted all my post because I'm restarting what I'm doing. in my life there was a change of plans and that's how it is. i will change my niche and the purpose of this blog or whatever it is. rn life has been HARD but its nothing I can't take. i will be posting again :)
also I have an insta and Youtube now, also a pinterest account.
heres a amazing digital circus drawing cuz why not (tadc)
(I suck at drawing Zooble)
I am starting a new passion project (ahem) I mean I've been working on one this whole year so that's the change of plans... yay...
also college and high school is just hard like I'm almost there. summer college doesn't help with that either
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"oh silly goofy idea i HAVE to doodle it real quick!!"
"....okay but the punch line needs a set-up"
".....yeah sure whats a few establishing shots this is how they got to situation it's important context"
".....also just a few panels to show their reactions, the reactions are like. the most important part."
".....wait this arm. this arm needs to be here but. hm. yeah okay another panel. while where at it that expression wouldn't shift that fast, an extra panel where they're just thinking. another where they blink. for the timing. i think."
"... okay! but! they would NOT fucking leave it at that???? a few extra shots okokokokok aND-"
".... huh. wouldn't it be funny if-"
and then it becomes THREE PAGES LONG, the original joke is no longer funny, and while you're drawing it you get a different "oh silly goofy idea i HAVE to doodle it real quick!!" AND THE CYCLE REPEATS!!!!!!!!! FOREVER!!!!!!!!!!! AND THEY WONT BE DRAWING THEMSELVES NOW WILL THEY!!!!!!!! AND ITS WIPS ALL THE WAY DOWN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! hhhhhhoooomygaaaaaa
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the covers for issue one and issue two of alice in grungeland!
i thought i'd be fun to use a lot of grunge album covers as inspiration for the covers of alice in grungeland. so there's a lot of little references to them in the covers.
issue 1 was largely influenced by my favorite, in utero, and it's back cover. for those who don't know, the back cover is a photograph of a collage that kurt cobain made (he was really into like assemblage art and sculpture) so i thought i'd try my hand at it. other inspirations taken from a lot of early graphic design for soundgarden albums (also green river).
issue 2 was heavily inspired by mudhoneys superfuzz bigmuff! there's a little bit of bleach in there to. i was also inspired by zines in the grunge and punk scenes and went with a photo collage of bits of issue 1 art
art only blog - insta - inprnt - redbubble (image description in alt)
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