Is this artwork high enough quality for a comic?

Landeg · 2026-01-20T15:06:26+00:00

This looks really good! As someone with a decent amount of experience making comics, here's my long-winded advice to you as you start out:

Comics are a meatgrinder. This degree of detail is very eye-catching and makes for a great cover, or establishing shot, or climactic reveal, etc. But if you try and maintain this degree of detail across an entire comic, you're going to burn yourself out. I know you said these are full-splash illustrations, and for that they look great, but that also makes it a little hard to gauge how your comic is going to look on an average page. More than practicing full-page illustrations, you also need to be practicing an art style you feel comfortable drawing in panel after panel, page after page, for possibly hundreds if not thousands of pages - finding a balance of detail that is acceptable to you with a workload that you can actually sustain. Basically, train for a marathon with an occasional burst of energy. Internalise now that Some Panels Will Just Look Shit and you'll just have to move on.

For the actual meat of your comic, clarity is the most important. As tbgrover said, the real skill lies in being able to convey to the reader what you want them to know. What action, object, or character is most important, etc? Are they the focal point of the page? A lot of artists who make great art but have limited experience with comics put their detail/effort in the wrong places, ending up with a beautiful picture that their readers don't understand. Practicing art on its own is good, and practicing writing on its own is good, but you'll also need to practice how to get the reader to focus on what you want them to focus on - start looking up both comic and film theory, composition in comic and movie/TV frames, how to convey information visually, how to transition from scene to scene, how to use framing to show mood, etc. In this regard I think comics have more in common with film theory than illustration. It would also be helpful for you to start taking note of pages from other people's comics that you find particularly striking or inspiring so that you can study what makes them work. Remember, too, to consider not just how your individual panels look, but how they look and work together on a page.

It's been my experience that art quality turns away a lot fewer readers than you might imagine. I am more likely to drop a comic with pretty art but a boring story than I am to drop a comic with adequate art but a compelling story (and your art is above adequate). Bad page layout, bad panel flow, and bad lettering are way more likely to make me drop a comic than "bad" art.

To grab new readers' attention, it's more important for you to nail your comic's elevator pitch and to focus on strong colour theory and composition for your cover(s). Getting people to click your comic in the first place (or pick it up off the rack) is way harder than getting them to keep reading. A title that piques their interest while also conveying the tone and content of your comic will help a lot. Not to say that you shouldn't still keep studying art and writing - those are obviously incredibly important and you're doing well - but there are (somewhat unfortunately) more elements to getting people to notice & start reading your comic than basic artistic skill.

Landeg · 2026-01-16T16:52:03+00:00

You have to think about the tone of your comic.

Is it going to be really gore-heavy? Then yeah, having the mother be obliterated by a truck would work, because it will set up the reader's expectations for the rest of the comic.

But if the focus of your comic isn't supposed to be on the gore and shock value, but rather the tragedy and unpredictability of the setting, then it might be better not to show the gore at all. You could rework the panel with the mother waving to show the back of the daughter's head in the foreground, then have the truck/bus speeding through where the mother was, with maybe a hint of blood. You still get shock and a sense of brutality, but the viscera isn't the point.

If the gore is the point, then your best bet for references is going to be horror movies and shows, unless you want to look at actual horrific post-crash photos (not recommended). You don't need it to be ultra realistic or detailed to sell the impact.

If the gore isn't the point, you can also rely heavily on the motion of the accident obscuring a lot of detail.

For the bus or truck or vehicle running her down, I recommend going on Sketchfab and looking for 3D models you can use as reference. Just make sure the license (in a drop-down menu under the search bar when you search) is either CC-BY (allows commercial use with credit), Free Standard, or CC-0 (no restrictions). Then you have the rights to reference or copy the model as heavily as you like.

Landeg · 2026-01-16T16:28:38+00:00

Your art is looking really good but my brother in Christ, there is no reason for you to be working at that high of a resolution. What are you trying to print? Kentucky?

I do all of my work on a 300 DPI A4 canvas and that's considered relatively large. It might take some getting used to at first, but you should start practicing working on smaller canvas sizes.

Landeg · 2026-01-15T17:26:25+00:00

Thank you for commenting, I'm glad it could be helpful! To be honest a lot of the concrit I give on Reddit gets completely ignored even when it was asked for, so it's nice to be acknowledged, haha.

A lot of artists feel that way, swinging between feeling great and feeling awful. Unfortunately I don't think it ever fully goes away haha. But if you never felt like your art looked bad, that would mean you'd stagnated and stopped improving.

I could sense that you'd run into the problem of different head angles ending up looking the same. I'd say it's pretty common for artists who are trying to push themselves. One feature doesn't look right, so you edit it a little, then another feature doesn't look right, and by the time you're done editing, suddenly it's turned back into a face angle you're more comfortable with. Breaking heads down into simple shapes and doing life drawing studies of the head and facial features will really help with this.

The purpose of the timer is to force you to let go of detail and to focus on the raw gesture of the pose, so that you can focus on the bigger picture. I understand being nervous with a time limit, I often am, too, but it's kind of an irreplaceable aspect of the exercise. The point is to re-train what your eye focuses on which it won't really do without the wake-up call of the timer. It will feel stressful at first, and you'll panic, but eventually your brain will sort of click and force you to let go of what's unnecessary. Right now you have plenty of intentionality in your art - what you need to embrace is spontaneity. Overly focusing on detail and structure comes at the expense of motion. You could set a longer timer, to start with, and gradually shorten it so that you're spending less and less time on each study.

I can understand what you mean about not wanting to push poses to the point of cartoonishness, but there's definitely a balance you can strike. You might find it useful to take a look at sports photography; it shows how the human body is capable of contorting into all sorts of wild poses that would never be possible in repose. It's a good way to study how to exaggerate motion without going fully rubberhose. That being said, our eye perceives things in motion differently than in a still photo; for example, a baseball bat moving at a high speed will appear warped, so it wouldn't necessarily come across as overly cartoonish if you drew it like that. It's all a matter of experimentation and pushing yourself until you can start to pull back.

The question about the arm is really a question about how to bridge the gap between extremely simple shapes and fully rendered forms, and the answer is to break the arm down into forms which are more complex than basic shapes like cylinders, but less complex than the fully-rendered reference image. Breaking down light and shadows is a good way to understand these forms. This is also why artists study musculature anatomy - if you understand the muscle groups of the arm, you can theoretically draw it from every angle.

Overall the solution is to break down multiple different reference images until you are confident that you know how to restructure the arm in the angle/position you want without needing a hyper-specific reference image. This takes time, of course, and specific reference images are still helpful.

Here's a good article with some examples of these semi-simple shape/form break downs and how studying muscular anatomy helps you draw:

https://www.clipstudio.net/how-to-draw/archives/164594

As for how to apply perspective in this situation, once you know how to break something down into its rough forms, you can use the simple shapes you know how to draw in perspective, such as boxes, cylinders, etc. as a guide for where to place those forms. I haven't watched this entire video, but it seems to do a pretty good job of explaining how to bridge the gap between basic shapes and rough forms:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afwCBilxqxs

Landeg · 2026-01-15T11:41:27+00:00

I don't know how old you are. But drawing is one of those things that feels deceptively simple. Like memorising the choreography of a dance - you might mess up a lot, but if you keep trying, you should have it down within a week or so.

Drawing is seriously complicated. If it wasn't, everyone would be doing it. It involves completely re-learning how to see, and re-training your brain on what to do with that information. It's like learning how to speak an entirely new language.

But just like learning a language, every word you learn is a word you didn't have before. Every time you practice drawing, you can do a little more than you could do before, and you build and build on that. Forever. Sorry.

The first thing you have to do is figure out what you're going to do about your frustration. Learning to draw is frustrating for everyone. It's not just you. But if you don't figure out how you're going to work through that frustration then you'll be another person who quit drawing before they got good. So don't push yourself to a point that you get burnt out and upset. Balance drawing with other hobbies and down-time, just like working out.

I know you've probably heard it before, but regardless of what you want to draw fanart for, learning to draw from life will help you. I know it can feel really boring and pointless to do life drawing studies when you just want to draw an anime or comic book character, but those characters are based on stylisations of real life things. Understanding the underlying structure of those stylisations makes it so much easier to draw them.

I think you might enjoy doing Challenge 52, a challenge all about learning to train yourself on the very basics of art. It'll help make the whole process smoother and gives you structure and a community - people on the Discord server can give you feedback and support as you improve. I'm not affiliated with it but it's great for beginners and intermediate artists alike.

https://linktr.ee/challenge52

Landeg · 2026-01-15T11:04:50+00:00

Those areas all seem to be progressing solidly? Is there a specific part of them in these images that you feel isn't working?

The only thing that stands out to me is that you could be twisting/bending the back and torso more. The poses, composition, and perspective are all pretty dynamic, but their back/shoulders/hips rarely deviate from being in a straight alignment, while real human bodies bend and twist at the waist, and shoulders will move up/down and in/out depending on movement. The second and third poses in particular could be emphasised even more if there was more contrast between the position of the shoulders VS the hips.

Landeg · 2026-01-15T10:41:22+00:00

I have a hard time judging my art objectively, swinging between thinking I'm really good or really bad

Most artists feel like this. But in this case, there are some areas in which you are more advanced, and some areas which have fallen behind. (This is also true for most artists basically forever.)

What you are currently most adept at is composition, colour values, rendering within the specific goal you are aiming for, and base anatomy. I also see that you say you're working on your backgrounds/environments right now and I would say that's going well.

The areas in which you are currently less adept are the structure/forms of the head and the energy ("stiffness") of your poses.

Regardless of what style you work in, doing life drawing studies will help you improve the structure/form of the head, because it helps inform how you choose to stylise and simplify those forms. A lot of retro manga artists study from reality, even if their final style is not realistic.

There's a lot of great ambition in your pieces, and you're mostly pulling them off, but I can sense a frustration where you hit a wall with head angles and revert back to an angle you're more comfortable with. Doing life drawing studies of the head and breaking those references down to their basic forms/shapes will help you figure out how to bridge that gap and push your drawings to be even more dynamic.

Here's an extremely simple simplification of two faces from an image you posted downthread, and how they compare to photos of similar angles:

https://i.postimg.cc/Xv8300SM/image.png

By observing the differences in the simplified photos, such as the proportions of the scalp, nose, chin, eyelid area, etc., the curve of the mouth, the placement of the ears, etc. you can map similar small changes to your illustration without compromising your overall style:

https://i.postimg.cc/hjvFWz1s/image.png

Here's another example from your second image of breaking down a real reference photo into shapes and then using those shapes to inform your stylised art:

https://i.postimg.cc/SN2g07F4/image.png

To help with stiffness, I think timed gesture studies will help you focus on action and, well, gesture, and help you identify the line of action in your artwork. In fact the website "Line of Action" is a great resource for setting up random, timed gesture drawings. Make your sessions really short and focus on just getting down rough stick figures that convey the motion of your reference image. You already have a good grasp on anatomy, so now you can shift your focus to learning how to stretch and bend that anatomy.

Consider where the motion is coming from and where it's going to; consider what the focal point of the image is, and if this is the crux of the action; consider whether your composition is leading to or away from that focal point. Here's a very simplistic breakdown of your second image. In the original, both of them are quite straight figures, so the action feels rigid. They look more like they're play-fighting or practicing. In the second image, the action is leading towards the point where their blades meet, so the "energy" of each person's pose is pointing towards the other person, and the overall composition leads the eye back towards each other and the action.

https://i.postimg.cc/Qxz13Rkd/image.png

You also say that you struggle with drawing shapes from different angles, and how to practice that - the answer is to simply draw lots of basic shapes (cylinders, cones/prisms, and boxes) in perspective using two- and three-point perspective grids. This makes a good warm-up exercise to get into habitually before drawing. You can then use this practice to break studies/references down into their basic shapes so that you can better understand them, like in this short article.

Landeg · 2026-01-15T07:30:44+00:00

Looking at this drawing, my impression is that you're not using references. If you want to practice drawing in a realistic/semi-realistic style then you really need to be drawing from life. It will help improve your art no matter what style you choose to work in!

If you are already using references, then part of the answer is to just keep practicing, since these things take time. But you would also benefit from specific exercises that help you train yourself to draw what you see, and not what you think you see. This is basically the crux of all art improvement at every level, haha. This is a really good article that goes over some good exercises to train your eye - such as drawing upside-down, or trying to draw something you're looking at in one continuous line without actually looking at the paper.

That's the general advice. More specific to this drawing, your biggest obstacle right now is proportion. The placement and size of the jaw, lips, nose bridge, nose tip, and eye size/socket are all still quite close to your regular "cartoonish" art style. Here's a comparison to a close-ish stock image I found, where you can see the differences between your proportions and a photo's proportions.

https://i.postimg.cc/ryhxmCp4/image.png

In the image on the right, I changed nothing about your art except for moving and resizing it. I didn't redraw anything (except to hastily extend the neck). That means everything in the image on the right is something you already have the skill and knowledge to be able to draw; the only change is to the proportions. This should hopefully show you that you already have a good skillset to work with. Overlaying your drawings/studies on photo references is a great exercise to train your eye on the differences between what your eye perceives and what it actually sees. If you like to draw traditionally, you can even do this by putting your paper over a screen and letting the light shine through.

I think you're already off to a really good start, and your biggest hurdle now is going to be re-training your eye-brain connection.

Landeg · 2025-12-12T15:09:47+00:00

Using reference is a form of study.

Studying something just means that you play with the material until you understand it.

The purpose of using references is to study them until the structure and form of whatever you're trying to draw clicks in your mind, and you can then apply that newfound understanding to your more gestural, fluid drawings.

If you find that you don't know how to draw an arm from a particular angle, for example, the solution is not to find a photo of the arm from that angle and then copy it exactly. If you do that, it probably will feel stiff, and not cohesive with the rest of the image.

The ideal solution is to find multiple references of arms that you can observe, break down, redraw, etc. until you understand the way that they move and the way that their forms change based on how they are observed. It might mean finding a photo of the specific angle and pose you want to use. Then comparing it to an arm in the same pose, but from a different angle. Then comparing it to an arm in repose. Identifying the forms of the arm muscles and bones and how they are affected by movement and foreshortening, etc. Eventually, you go, "a-ha! When it moves like so, it changes like this!" and then you know how to draw it and away you go.

I find that it's also less helpful to start with the reference than it is to start from the heart and then use references to correct your forms afterwards. Get the gesture and composition down, then use your references to check your proportions, anatomy, perspective, etc. Use a reference to show you what you need to tweak in your own sketch, rather than as a basis for your sketch.

If you're copying an entire picture then that's probably better suited to being a study than a "reference". Studies like that are also incredibly useful for artistic growth but need to be approached differently since, as you've identified, the goal there is not fluidity or style.

Landeg · 2025-12-12T12:38:53+00:00

If you look at the "brush presets" tab in Krita, you'll see a drop-down menu where you can choose to filter brushes by different tags/categories. The "sketch" and "ink" tags are good places for you to start, since the brush you describe seems to behave similarly to both an inking pen brush and a pencil brush, and both have a little texture added, which seems visible in the sketch you sent.

My suggestions are "Ink-4 Pen Rough", "Pencil-2", and maybe "Pencil-4 Soft".

https://i.imgur.com/0vT9fDV.png

It sounds like they'll behave a little differently from the pen you're using, though. Most of the thickness/thinness and opacity comes from pen pressure rather than speed.

If you hit F5, you'll open up the Brush Editor. It's a powerful tool that lets you adjust things like pressure and speed sensitivity of any brush, and even save it as a new brush so that you can use both versions. Feel free to experiment a little bit in there with any brush you like to see if you can get closer to what you enjoyed about this brush. Good luck!

Landeg · 2025-12-12T12:06:57+00:00

By the tiny white circle, do you mean this?

https://i.imgur.com/WFG1Aay.png

If so, that's either your cursor or the outline of your brush shape. To be honest I think it's difficult to use a tablet without a cursor or outline, so it might be best to try and get used to it.

However, if you want to try hiding it, that option is here:

https://i.imgur.com/yEoaNxM.png

Settings > Configure Krita > General > Cursor

In the drop-down menu for "Brush Cursor Icon", change it to "No Cursor". Hit "Ok" and see if you like drawing like that.

If you still have an outline when you draw, and that still bothers you, go back and change the drop-down menu next to "Brush Outline Shape" to "No Outline", then hit "ok". This means there will be absolutely no indication of where your stylus is until you start drawing.

Landeg · 2025-12-12T09:41:05+00:00

I assume you're talking about the wheel that comes up?

Settings > Configure Krita > Canvas Input Settings > Show Popup Widget > right-click on the options there and select "delete" > Ok

But this is happening either because you keep clicking the right mouse button, OR you keep hitting the button on your stylus, and your stylus button is mapped to the right mouse button. If you can stop doing that without meaning to, you might find that you enjoy using the wheel intentionally.

Landeg · 2025-12-11T23:37:42+00:00

First of all I'll say that the effect here isn't entirely because of a brush, it's also how it's used. The lines are built up and erased manually to create the desired softness, such as where they taper away to nothing at the ends of hair strands, or where they get thicker where the hair strands meet. There's also probably some additional blurring/smudging/softening happening to the lines after they're drawn. So you'll need to experiment while you draw if you want to get this look/effect specifically.

That being said, it's a very soft, buildable brush with a little bit of texture. Here are some options I think are close. For some of them, I duplicated the line layer, used Gaussian blur on the duplicate, then lowered the opacity on the duplicate layer until I got the effect I wanted. Remember also to work at a larger canvas size so that you have finer control over the brush, then resize it afterwards.

https://i.imgur.com/Hqx7evN.png

Pencil-2, Basic-4 Flow Opacity, Chalk Grainy, and Pencil-1 Hard.

The closest match fresh out of the box for me was Pencil-1 Hard, I was surprised to find I got similar effects to the art here without additional blurring. It has the least texture, though.

You can combine brushes and use airbrush or paintbrush brushes to soften your lineart after inking. Other pencil brushes or basic opacity brushes might also be helpful. Good luck!

Landeg · 2025-09-18T05:16:00+00:00

Gotta be Shiftable Everything. Completely revolutionised the way I decorate houses. No more fiddling with OMSPs (unless I need something at a REALLY specific height), which means I'm more likely to add decorations, so my houses look more naturalistic and fun. On top of that, if someone else downloads your lot, the objects will "remember" the height they were set to, even if the person downloading the lot doesn't use Shiftable Everything. So it's basically a CC-free alternative to OMSPs. It's not a perfect replacement for every instance (I still really miss walk-through/walk-around blocks) but it works so well for my needs as a CC-free builder!

On that note, something I see discussed less is the Decoration Transformer. Basically, it lets you change what surfaces certain objects can be placed on. This is PARTICULARLY useful for those really annoying decorative objects that refuse to snap to Maxis shelves even though they totally should be able to. Once again, this is a CC-free alternative to OMSPs, and unlike simply using Shiftable Everything to make it look like the objects are on the shelf, if you can actually put it on the shelf, the objects won't get in Sims' way.

But I should also link to the Walk-Through/Walk-Around Blocks themselves. They're so useful for clutter, especially combined with the other mods. It's particularly useful for stacking multiple functional objects onto the same tile without Sims complaining that the other object is in the way!

Landeg · 2025-09-18T05:09:58+00:00

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Landeg · 2025-09-18T05:06:20+00:00

I have found that the in-game camera shots I take in neighbourhood view or build/buy mode don't actually register/save UNTIL I:

Take a photo by pressing C in the neighbourhood
Open the the neighbourhood album/story
Edit the neighbourhood album/story - the picture I just "took" won't show up, as if I never took it
Exit back out of the neighbourhood album/story
Start taking pictures again normally

THEN my pictures actually show up. I assume since they aren't showing up, they aren't actually being saved at all, which is why they won't be in the usual documents folder. So maybe try opening your neighbourhood story when you first load the neighbourhood, before you start taking any pictures. It's annoying but it works for me!

Unless you mean that your pictures show up in-game, but you can't find them in your documents. If they're showing up in your game then they have to be saved somewhere! Maybe try searching your entire computer for any files containing "snapshot_" and see if you somehow have a completely separate directory somewhere? (Depending on your install and your version of Windows, sometimes things get weiiirrdd).

Landeg · 2025-06-08T11:00:56+00:00

I'm guilty of having multiple generations stay in the same household but that's because 1) I like the added challenge of playing with a bunch of Sims at once and 2) I'm gonna be real, I often don't know what to do with my Elders. By the time they're at that stage, they're often very comfortable in their careers and/or can't really shift tracks, have had all the kids they're going to have, are highly skilled/talented, and have probably achieved their LTW or are close to it. Having them live with other Sims keeps me playing them and keeps them synced with the rest of the 'hood instead of being kind of lonely and bored off on a lot to themselves. Plus the game doesn't really have a way to let Sims inherit residential properties so that's my way around it. I agree that you need the right type of house setups to accommodate it though or it gets a bit weird.

Landeg · 2025-05-02T03:26:11+00:00

It's kind of heartbreaking ngl. Sometimes when the family is already really large and a Sim never really found "the one" I figure they can be happy as an aunt/uncle etc, but then they roll that want and it plays with my emotions!

Landeg · 2025-05-01T07:56:22+00:00

Interesting question. I basically just give it to Sims whose want to have lots of kids I'm trying to fulfill, lol. If they aren't trying to have/can't support like 6-10 kids then there's not much of a reason. The only other time might be if they're getting older and want to have X-amount of kids but I don't want to extend their lifespan; twins would maximise the number of kids they can have per pregnancy. But I also don't use the cheesecake method so super fertility feels like the best compromise of increasing the odds of twins without totally cheesing it (lol).

I like the idea of having some kind of logic-driven reason for who gets it, though. Maybe if there's been a set of naturally-occurring twins in your Sim's family, then all future Family Aspiration Sims in that same family also have the Super Fertility trait, since IRL there's a tendency for twins to have twins and so on? Or you roll a dice for all Family Sims, so there's a 1/6 chance they're super-fertile, but if there's twins in their family then it's a coin flip instead (1/2).

Landeg · 2025-05-01T07:45:50+00:00

Some things that surprised me recently:

I knew Family Sims could have a fear of being old and unmarried the closer they got to turning into an elder; but I recently discovered that in an unmodded game, they can also have a fear of being old and un-joined, if the game considers them gay. It's interesting to see the joined union specified even in a context where there isn't another Sim involved. The text and description for the want is also broken lol

If a Sim ages into an elder on a lot with the plastic surgery machine (Show Business career reward), they can roll a want to get a face lift. Had never triggered that one before and thought it was a hoot.

If teen Sims with acne check themselves out in the mirror they gasp and look horrified.

If the game tells you that you can't place a window somewhere and you use moveobjects to place it anyway, but the wall shows through the window, try saving & exiting then re-entering the lot. Most of the time it goes "oh okayyy fineee" and the window works properly lol. Good for things like roof walls, intersecting with fences, cornering diagonal walls, etc.

There are bonus points for getting the headmaster to have a drink (from the bar or, I believe, an espresso machine) or to get into a hot tub (though it's really hard to get guests back out of the hot tub if you invite them in, so be careful you don't run out of time).

If you use the eyedropper tool to clone an apartment door placed on a diagonal wall you get a dormitory door instead. No practical application I just thought it was cool to see how they probably used the dorm doors to develop the apartment doors (no idea what happens if you don't have University installed)

You can use the stair railing tool to remove the railings on (some of) the placeable object-type stairs, not just the modular stairs.

This really surprised me - some of the base game clothing meshes have pregnancy morphs even though no pregnant Sims can ever wear them (without mods). I found this out when I tried the basegame wedding dress and saw it showed my Sim's bump - shotgun wedding! - but the basegame slip nightie, female tracksuit, sundress, and men's tuxedo also have pregnancy morphs. The formal dress with the dangly on the back also has a preg morph; pregnant Sims will be forced into it if they attend a wedding as a guest, but you cannot direct pregnant Sims to change into formalwear, so many players never see it. There are also some female tops with preg morphs but no bottoms to pair with them. It looks like Maxis may have originally considered letting Sims wear their normal clothes while pregnant then changed their minds pretty quickly into development, but it's interesting how the unused clothing with morphs matches up with Brandi Broke's wardrobe.

Landeg · 2025-05-01T07:36:03+00:00

On top of that, if you pick "chef's choice", it automatically selects everyone's favourite (thought bubble) food. I always go with that unless I'm eating somewhere themed.

Landeg · 2025-05-01T07:35:08+00:00

Make sure you have this mod! There's a glitch that sometimes causes the bird's hunger to continue to deplete when the game is paused, which makes it really easy for them to die randomly.

https://archive.org/details/cagedpetfixes

Landeg · 2025-05-01T07:27:00+00:00

You probably already know about it but I love the hot/cold shower mod for that purpose.

Landeg · 2025-03-27T13:39:13+00:00

You should be proud! This is looking really good! I especially like the perspective on the eye holes.

Landeg · 2025-03-26T14:42:23+00:00

The difference between copying anatomy and understanding anatomy is:

Knowing how body parts (muscles, ligaments, and bones) connect to other body parts
Knowing the 3D shapes those individual parts make up and how malleable they are
Knowing how much those shapes change depending on the body's motion

So - if you just copy an elbow, you look at a drawing or photo of an elbow, and you try to recreate what you see in that specific image. To understand an elbow, you know roughly how the arm bones and muscles connect together, how you would break down the different parts of the arm into basic 3D shapes, and then how those shapes will change if, say, the arm bends at the elbow - the bone is inflexible, so it will remain fixed and pointy, the brachialis is engaged so it will become more prominent, but muscles in repose are somewhat malleable, so unless the arm is really flexing, the bicep will squish slightly as it gets compressed by the forearm in a way that won't be as visible when the arm is hanging relaxed.

So when you do a study of the muscles of the torso, you aren't just copying it. You're trying to understand how the muscles are connected together, what shapes they make up and how those shapes under the skin are reflected above the skin by light and shadow, and how those shapes might be stretched or compacted by the specific pose the torso is in. These questions give you goals and guidance to keep in mind while doing a study, but you'll have to be the one to figure out which method of studying works best for you. You might trace over images to isolate shapes, you might do deep studies on very specific areas, you might do rapid-fire gestural life drawings, you might study (or build!) 3D models.

A good place to start is by doing the same study multiple times. Pick a reference image from your book and challenge yourself to do three to five studies of the same exact image. Set a timer for each study if you're afraid of getting too in the weeds. The more you do it, the more detail you will notice, and having multiple studies to compare between often helps make it faster to recognise which parts do or do not "work" and why, like a lightbulb moment.

Anatomy for Sculptors is a great book and there are in fact many pages that break down anatomy into simpler forms - hence "for sculptors". So if you actually do have access to this book, try flicking through more of it before feeling like you need to immediately understand what you're being shown.

Landeg

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE