Figure Drawing from imagination + Mcfarlane interview

Even though I've been drawing figures and characters for a long time now, I still really suck at making up my own poses and drawing realistic anatomy. So time to unleash those 1000's of bad drawings and see if we improve over time.


These are done without reference, I tried going over my sketches and refine or fix ideas. I'll probably make up a schedule to tackle different parts of the human anatomy, and build up my knowledge over time.

While I like the line and rendering in the final drawing below, the pose is incredibly awkward. That's a trap I keep falling into..I just draw figures without purpose or story...something I'll try to work at.

There are a million things wrong with the image below, but I was really enjoying drawing lines to represent forms. I hope that going back between working form reference and drawing from imagination will eventually come together as one.

A bit of critique on my own drawings

Been watching those artist interviews by Stan Lee (God knows what age that was recorded in), Jim Lee's was really great but I also recommend watching Todd McFarlane's interview.

Few noteworthy points:
- At some stage Todd worked about 80 hours a week / 7 days a week
- Todd is very obsessive, so when he is turned on to something (like drawing), he'll work at it obsessively. That's kind of what I'm trying to do myself at the moment.
- From all those interviews I can say that there were comic book artists working only 10 hours a day (which is still a lot). These guys all put in crazy hours, because it wasn't about earning money. They love their work, they can't give less than 100% all the time. I'm going to say that this is part of what made 'em stand out from every other artist and why they have kept evolving and had such great success with their work.
(Great layout pointers from Todd in the clip as well. )