[ashura]

Hi,

I am currently using this approach in drawing my figures but from time to time, I seem to be having a problem with proportions. My stick figure would look ok but when I try to "volumized" it sometimes certain parts appear bigger or smaller than they actually are. Also, when it comes to poses that have a lot of foreshortening in them, it's hard to represent them only with lines (as in stick figures). Can anyone give me some tips in this approach? I would gladly appreciate it. I use this approach cause basically, I draw from imagination and I can figure out the totality of the pose of the figure in seconds and can adjust what's wrong. But then again, I don't seem to be so consistent as to producing "not too bad" ones.

THANKS A LOT IN ADVANCE

[see]

oh yes .... foreshortening is tough. Well just working with lines will not really alleviate that drawing problem. I would suggest you to use simple shapes to construct complex poses. keep everything very simple at the beginning. There are plain shapes for every opject or bone or whatever that help you to unterstand. Draw the entire shapes even you cannot see them in the final detailed image. Have a look at sumaleth's link archieve for drawing tutorials-

[ceenda]

Just to add onto what see has already said, have a look at that tutorial Steven Stahlberg posted (it's still on this page). He uses cylinders to construct the basic forms, and a cylinder is something you can draw in perspective or at least approximate roughly.

[snakel]

check out the tutorials on www.polykarbon.com, they might help you even though its an anime based site.

[jfrancis]

If you watch some of the old time anatomy-oriented artists (like Robert Beverley Hale) draw, you see that for them, it is all about the stick figure --

-- only the stick figure is a fairly accurate mental model of the human skeleton, and they muscle it up by continuing to use their mental conception of the forms of the muscles and their origins and insertions on the bones.

That's the approach I'm trying to take.