“If there is no struggle, there is no progress.” F. Douglas

I’ll admit anatomy of the human body was not something I particularly wanted to study, but I have learned a wide variety of skills that can be incorporated in much of my work to come. My sketching abilities are sought out as too loose at first, then I am too tight in replication. I cannot find a happy medium between the progression overall. I wanted to share my progress over the last few ( few as in 3) weeks, in order to show that I have that the abilities and skillset are in progress, there is always a struggle in getting better, but without doing there is no result. Below you will see in order of the sketches progression I have made through the past few weeks.

I felt like I needed to start over and start from a presentation of my work that seemed more fit to my abilities. I began to sketch more and fluently develop the skills needed to replicate the anatomy studies within my sketching and sculpting. I began with a bone structure, only because I felt that every time I started something it became stylized, and gave a feel of not so realistic. This gave me ability to build around the skeleton rather than sculpt the overall structure and shapes of the human leg/foot to give better presence to detail in the end result. I felt as a great starting point would be the Adductors of the leg structure, because without this volume the rest of the leg will fall into a semi inflated and or weird thigh structure. I then began to form in the structure of the Semimembranosus muscle which would give me placement of the quadriceps and the knee once in the overall finished structure. One thing I noted in the study of other human legs besides the reference shown, the patella of the knee is by far one of the most visible pieces of the leg, and the indentations behind, and on the sides where the muscles meet to warp around the the leg. The reference I used was from the anatomy for visual artists by 3D Total Publishing, captures that are photoshopped together and deleted nonsense of the reference in order to proceed in the study, After continuing to build around the femur, I created a tibia and fibula to give the structure of the bottom half of the leg. Since I extended the muscles in the upper leg this gave me placement to work from in the reference to structure and start from the Gastrocnemius muscles of the calf and worked around building the overall structure of the lower leg, into the foot. At first I noticed once flaw and workflow I need to iterate and develop further in my own pursuit, is the toes section, along with the overall structure of the foot. Within reason I gave a Dynamesh and using the Dam Standard brush I was able to structure the toes in an overall better format to represent the reference, compared to my prior study, this foot I feel is an accomplishment. I continued to pursue a more fluid and smooth approach to give a better structure of the leg from reference images, this is still a work in progress.