Hi everyone! Does anyone have any tips on how to draw foreshortened animals? A lot of the demos in lesson 5 seems to be focused on profile shots of animals but some of the reference images I want to draw are 3/4 views almost or more head on angles. Any tips or thoughts on the subject would be appreciated.
Hi! So my first recommendation is to use easier references for the animals. Remember the goal of the lesson is not to learn how to draw animals, but rather to use drawing animals as an exercise to learn construction. Worrying about things like foreshortening or harder orientations would detract from learning the primary goals of the lesson, and is an unnecessary challenge.
Of course, all of that being said, you are completely free to challenge yourself as long as it doesn't take away from learning the main concepts in the lesson. How I approached drawing an animal from 3/4 view is to not worry about foreshortening when drawing the individual forms, but rather capture that foreshortening in the size of the form relative to other forms.
For example, when placing down the major masses, assuming the animal is coming towards the viewer, I would make the head a bit larger than normal, and the pelvic mass a bit smaller than normal. Same with the legs, while there's no foreshortening within the leg itself, there would be a size difference between the two pairs of legs.
More important than the foreshortening I feel is capturing the correct angles (or degrees when it comes to the major masses and contours). For example, the ribcage and pelvic masses would be a lot more circular in an animal seen head on compared to in profile. In addition, most quadrupeds in 3/4 view tend to have their pelvic mass higher on the page than their ribcage mass (unless they're sitting down or standing). A contour curve across the middle of the torso sausage I've found is also an effective way of really capturing how the animal is oriented. Finally, don't forget that the contour curves defining the intersections between forms are also a great way to define the orientations of forms.
Hope this helps!
Thanks for the advice and feedback. Reading your respons I can see now that im trying to jump straight into the deep end before fully understanding basic construction. First time posting here so its great to get some guidance on the lessons.
As below/above. I think it is better to use references that provide good construction practice rather than ones you want to draw from an aesthetic POV. Almost head on provides to much overlapping info.
Ya I agree with you on this. Ill try and tackle this later once I've become more comfotable with construction in general. Thanks for the fast response.
Let's be real here for a second: fineliners can get pricey. It varies from brand to brand, store to store, and country to country, but good fineliners like the Staedtler Pigment Liner (my personal brand favourite) can cost an arm and a leg. I remember finding them being sold individually at a Michael's for $4-$5 each. That's highway robbery right there.
Now, we're not a big company ourselves or anything, but we have been in a position to periodically import large batches of pens that we've sourced ourselves - using the wholesale route to keep costs down, and then to split the savings between getting pens to you for cheaper, and setting some aside to one day produce our own.
These pens are each hand-tested (on a little card we include in the package) to avoid sending out any duds (another problem with pens sold in stores). We also checked out a handful of different options before settling on this supplier - mainly looking for pens that were as close to the Staedtler Pigment Liner. If I'm being honest, I think these might even perform a little better, at least for our use case in this course.
We've also tested their longevity. We've found that if we're reasonably gentle with them, we can get through all of Lesson 1, and halfway through the box challenge. We actually had ScyllaStew test them while recording realtime videos of her working through the lesson work, which you can check out here, along with a variety of reviews of other brands.
Now, I will say this - we're only really in a position to make this an attractive offer for those in the continental United States (where we can offer shipping for free). We do ship internationally, but between the shipping prices and shipping times, it's probably not the best offer you can find - though this may depend. We also straight up can't ship to the UK, thanks to some fairly new restrictions they've put into place relating to their Brexit transition. I know that's a bummer - I'm Canadian myself - but hopefully one day we can expand things more meaningfully to the rest of the world.
This website uses cookies. You can read more about what we do with them, read our privacy policy.
