I've read various methods in art books on how to block out and sketch a pose or a full-body image of a humanoid character. Some involved used interlocked or overlapped oval shapes of different sizes, others drawing the basic shape of the skeleton first and fleshing it out with shapes, some used the block method like a stick-figure base and then fleshing it out by making lines or shapes like a doll's arm, and leg, on those statue things, the wooden ones that artists can pose with the ball-joints. One other method was to use a basic stick figure to start off with and then to flesh that out with lines and curves.
Basically I found the whole concept too confusing to actually be useful, and all of the various methods in use in the artbooks too complicated to follow. Some would start you off with the stick figure but not explain the sizing of the ovals, or lines, or blobs or whatever to actually visualize the overall image.
Useless in my opinion.
The only real use I got out of the lot of them was one book that went through the entire process from stick-figures, to using lines, and ball-joints like a doll's body or a mannequin to figure out the thickness of the arms, legs, and the proportions. The six or seven heads in height thing never worked for me. It's too damned complicated to understand I found, especially if you can't draw uniform circles, and haven't a clue about true realistic male and female body proportions.
Again, utterly useless.
The book I found was a guide on drawing fantasy characters in a more realistic style that appealed to me, which was fantastic. It also took you from the fleshed out stick-figure form to showing how to actually 'adapt' that basic figure to the sizing of a male or female, something that standard artbooks, or even basic manga guides and such for drawing don't do. I found that way more useful than any of the guides that I saw. I mean if I couldn't understand how to flesh out a stick-figure, how the heck was I supposed to understand how to adapt that shape to form the basis of the overall drawing?
Now basically I start off with a stick figure, block it out using the mannequin technique, head, body, torso, legs, and all that. I don't bother with the six or seven heads in height thing since I have a good enough eye to figure out if proportions are wrong. I do use guide lines alot for the face, the positioning of eyes, noses, and ears though, and I use them again to figure out where the joints are for the knees, hips, and elbows.
I've actually learned more about drawing and detail from doing non-human subjects like birds mostly, and drawing feathers, fur, or just plain abstract concepts of such things. People-art is something that I've done occassionally but have been incredibly bad at. I find people more challenging since by the look of them I can tell immediately if I've drawn something wrong. I had be more free with non-humanoid subjects, and that's mostly non-elven too. I've worked better drawing birds, beasties, and cats than people or elves.
More creative freedom, and I can experiment more with the artwork. I find people too limiting since they always have to have a nose, two eyes, two arms, two legs and so on to be familiar enough to be human-like, unless if course I was to draw a zombie. Than again I'd need to be more familiar with the human skeletal system for accuracy of bones, and all that stuff too.
I prefer a more realistic style than most artists, though I try to blend it out with contemporary since I'm not going for hyper-realism.
I also like to use plenty of photo-refs on various subjects to give myself references. For example if I need to draw feathers, I'll reference images of birds with spread wings and so on to give myself a better understanding of how feathers should look, be positioned on the wing, and should fold over and under. I'm not a fan of too abstract concepts or expressions of things like wings and feathers when birds are a real-world example I can follow for greater accuracy and understanding of the subject-matter.
I'm the artist that takes the long way round when it comes to arting something. I've found art-books only partially helpful, and learned the rest by teaching myself purely through observation. I'm still learning and will not be a grand painter, or Picasso, but I'm not striving for perfection, merely to learn so that arting for myself is a state of constant improvement. What I draw today I can do better tomorrow.
That's how I look at arting and for me it works.
Challenge is fun.
~ Pyre
