Life Drawing

Figured I’d start taking life drawing classes…it’s been a long time coming! Anyway, here’s a pencil sketch from last night’s class, I apologize if the scan is not as clear as I would like it to be.

Aulë The Maker

This is the final render of Aulë, the shaper of Arda (Earth), master smith, and the next Valar on my list to design.

 

Here are some extremely early sketches for Aule. I wanted to give him a sense of power and physicality…

I sketched out a face fairly quickly and then moved on to design some cool hair! With the hair I was trying to go for some kind of viking/native american/east asian hybrid…In the end, I went with a viking style beard and bald head…

By this last sketch I had settled on pretty much all of the design decisions and decided to make his lower torso out of rocky materials to further solidify his connection to the earth and the mountains…

Here’s Some Of What I’ve Been Sketching…

A few female gestures

More detailed females

Some male studies to help with my anatomy & work on shading with pen (getting better!)

And lastly, some concept sketches of my third Silmarillion character: Ulmo, Lord of the Waters. Much more to come from him!

Never Stop Studying…

Gotta be able to draw the upper torso in all sorts of positions, so why not keep practicing?

Lord knows it’s important to be able to draw eyes!

FFXIII Sazh Study

Sazh: A contination of my Final Fantasy XIII studies from earlier. I didn’t color in his afro, but maybe I will later…

Animal Studies for Monster

Some seemingly random studies of eagles, velociraptors, a beetle, and a praying mantis that I’m somehow considering combining into some sort of huge freaky monstrosity! Stay tuned…

Noldor Rear Sketch

My Silmarillion elf from the rear

Angel

A concept for an angel that’s been floating around in my head…his hair, sword, and hand are consumed in fire….

Studies to Show Myself Approved

Here I go again, working on my anatomy and figure drawing. I felt like alot of my drawings of the body were somewhat stiff and it was taking me too long to get proportions right, so these were some attempts at figuring out the proportions angles of the body.

Working out the upper torso in various gestures…getting somewhere

…aaaand the lower torso, which I had been avoiding

 

And now full body poses. These studies has been very helpful in getting the basic structure of the body in my brain. Of course, I have a few thousand more of these to do to get them firmly planted in my mind, but you have to start somewhere!

 

Faces, Beautiful Faces

I was having some trouble capturing women’s faces realistically, so I used this page to practice getting them right (you can generally track my progress on the page from frustration, to indifference, and finally to some sort of peace in an “S” curve from the top left to the right & back to the lower left). The sketch of my wife making a funny face is from a photo reference, the rest are from imagination.