Mathias Ragnarsson
Mathias Ragnarsson
Sweden
Let’s make something cool!
Mathias Ragnarsson
A couple of figure drawings. Just enjoying the drawing process and not thinking so much of any assignment tasks. Trying to stay loose and alive.
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Mathias Ragnarsson
My assignment. Not too many drawings this time, however I understand the value of a breaking down and studying the anatomy of a made up creature like this.
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Mathias Ragnarsson
Colorful exaggerations, if I’m gonna be short and blunt. I can’t say I have a clear definition of what a cartoon actually is. From the top of my head I come to think of the worlds of let’s say, Looney Tunes, Ren & Stimpy, Johnny Bravo, Goof Troop. Mostly non-sequential shorts, often with a lot of slapstick comedy. Humor is key for me when I think of cartoons. Now I’m curious to find out why you’re asking? :)
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Mathias Ragnarsson
I really liked this assignment! Drawing from live footage feels like it demands more “immersion” into what I’m drawing. Compared to when I draw from still images I can sometimes fall back into just copying what I’m seeing. More difficult to do so when things never stop moving. Thinking in motion also helped a lot when trying to invent poses from memory. It’s a challenge for sure trying to make something interesting out of nothing, but imagining the apes moving around and do stuff makes it easier. I took a somewhat similar approach to the memory sketching as the footage sketching, trying to stay somewhat loose but also allow myself to explore a bit of what I could recollect from the anatomy and muscle groups.
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Mathias Ragnarsson
My assignment for the Muscle Breakdown. I had a bit of a struggle coming up with interesting poses to use with this lesson. So I went off and searched for some references; and while I could find a lot of pretty photos, not many of them were very energetic. Videos on the other hand seems more interesting for this case! Especially wild life documentaries.
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Mathias Ragnarsson
Hello again @David Colman, here’s my assignment on skulls and skeletons. When I drew the skulls I tried to identify unique traits between the three, so it would be easier to distinguish them when I draw them from memory. In my eyes the Orangutan and Chimpanzee were the most similar, with the Orangutan being a bit more round overall but flat around the eyes. Even though I thought I had a good grasp on them, drawing them from memory later proved to be a challenge! It was difficult to really push the unique details when my only source was a foggy memory. I also had in mind your last feedback, that I should try and draw some ape skeletons in various poses, so they’re included here as well. I limited myself to not spend too long on these and also allow myself to be more loose. Maybe a bit small and too messy? I tried to focus more on the overall pose and character, while also showing the skeletal base of them. As always, any feedback is very much appreciated. I’m really enjoying this so far!
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Mathias Ragnarsson
“I completely skipped a phase of teen artistic freedom, when most artists draw their favorite characters, silly OCs, funny comics” – In my opinion, I don’t think you’ve missed out on much. Putting it in context, when I was a teenager I was often in awe of my peers who drew seemingly anything. And I had my fair share of “original” creations I were particularly fond of too. Now, do I feel the same towards these things today, and do I want to go back to when I didn’t know what I did wrong? No, absolutely not. When I look at creative work of let’s say a teenager, adult beginner or even a child, I can find qualities in it that can be appreciated for what it is, works of a beginner. But I understand what you’re getting at, I too can find myself in a loop of ONLY studying, and then when I want to sketch out an idea from my head, it’s stiff, rigid and clunky; rather than loose and energetic. Which is why I would recommend anyone to complement their technical courses like anatomy, with courses more focused on design, like David Colmans Fundamentals of Character Design, or to engage in people sketching like Stephen Silver does here: https://youtu.be/FNXIIf9xTwI Having an idea and putting it to paper, simple or complex, and make it believable and appealing is a skill that needs practice, just like the technical fundamentals. The pro side of having done a lot of technical studies is that when you start to tap into these exercises, you’ll have a wider arrange of tools at your disposal once you’ll get to a more intuitive level. So I think your two ideas for exercises is good place to start with. In short, life informs art! As you get older and more experienced, you will possess more interesting stuff to share and channel into your art. And even if you did make a lot of silly cartoons and OC’s in your teenage years, I would bet you would’ve have felt “meh” about them as a more experienced artist later on.
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Mathias Ragnarsson
Well, these were some weird shapes; a lot to unpack here! I felt that perhaps the most difficult part of this assignment is to decide where to position the scapula in the back. Maybe that’ll clear up a bit once I get to the muscles and have more to relate to. The 5th drawing is from imagination, and in the sixth I tried to not look att the 3d model in the beginning and plan it out from the reference photo, but later on take a look at the models. A question to anyone else doing these kind of studies. How long do you usually take for one drawing? I try to be aware of not spending too much time, but, some days I can spend way to many minutes just trying to get the shape of a torso somewhat ok. Of course it differs a lot depending on my daily mental fatigue as I’m most often left to do these in the late hours after work, daily chores and socializing.
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Mathias Ragnarsson
Rib cage assignment. An egg shape? That can’t be too complicated! Or… Even though the big shape is simple, it proved to be a bit of a challenge to make it read clearly. In some angles it didn’t make for any sharp corners, especially in my second image where the top plane makes it all look flat to me. In contrast I thought my back view had a more interesting angle for drawing the rib cage. Any helpful feedback is always appreciated!
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Mathias Ragnarsson
Thank you for your feedback, both of you. I see what you noticed @Brett, regarding the parallel perspective lines. It’s difficult sometimes when perhaps they should only converge in a really long distance. I had a habit before to distort bodies quite a lot as I thought everything almost had to visibly converge. It all looked like it was trough a fish eye lens! But yeah, maybe they’re too parallel here. I’ll keep it in mind! Thanks for the paint overs @Jesper Axelsson I thought of them when doing a couple more drawings, from imagination this time. I still find the front view a bit difficult to portray with distinct angles, but hopefully it’s good enough until I get to put some meat on it! (Also, drawing a sitting pose from imagination posed a new problem to solve. Does the pelvis tilt forward with good posture? And backwards (or straight up) in a slouching posture?)
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Mathias Ragnarsson
Ok! It didn’t amount to 20 nor 15 pages, but at least I got to 12 digital sheets! I really wanted to push it to 15 but, I also wanted to get going with the other assignments and there hasn’t really been many good opportunities for me to do coffee shop sketching. So a good amount of these has been done a little bit differently; like taking a mental snapshot of people when buying groceries and then draw them from memory. I saw that there’s more coffee shop sketching further along the course so, I’m gonna plan for a day when I can really take my time at one place. Anyway, enough with the excuses. As a first assignment this really made me appreciate simple yet compelling characters even more. It’s difficult to distill a person into a believable character by just looking at them for a short period of time. And to find a balance of stylizing, pushing forms but still contain some similarity, while also not making a caricature. Looking forward to what comes next. And it goes without saying, any honest feedback that can help me improve is very much appreciated!
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Mathias Ragnarsson
I guess there’s no assignment tab here but, as you mentioned that the arms are very important to learn in order to draw convincing apes; I’ll follow suit with some closer studies on the arms and hands. Something I noticed, I find it easy to loose the notion of those really long metacarpals when viewing them at an angle from above.
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Mathias Ragnarsson
This was an early holiday gift, new lessons! And I managed to actually get in some drawing time before I’m overloaded with family matters this weekend. @David Colman I read your comments on Alexis and Jespers assignments and tried to keep in mind what you said about being more loose, let go and get messy, yet aim for decisive marks. I guess you could summarize it to try and draw with intuition? I have a tendency to be a bit messy, and just recently made a promise to myself to try and be more neat when I present any work online. So this was refreshing to go against that and try to find a balance between loose and energetic, but also readability. I really like your take on dynamic drawing and hope to up my level on this as we progress. Any feedback is very much appreciated.
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Mathias Ragnarsson
Wow this was way more challenging than I first thought! Regarding the bucket, or more so cylinders/ellipses in perspective; is it just me or does anyone else find that really difficult to get right? Especially when it comes to foreshortening. I’m gonna go trough the example videos and critique videos next, perhaps I’ll find some good pointers there on how to work with this efficiently; otherwise, some honest feedback here would be very much appreciated! 1. From reference 2. From imagination
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Mathias Ragnarsson
Hello Marek! What course did you get if I may ask? You seem very keen to portray your figures almost exactly like the dolls, so much that it seems like your focusing too much on the contours and forgetting about the gesture. If you forget about the gesture, your figures may become stiff and “fly-swatted”. There’s a lot to unpack in order to make weighty, energetic and believable figures. For that, I can really recommend the Figure Drawing Fundamentals to begin with, there you’ll quickly understand the importance of great gesture and some pointers on how not to lose it while developing your drawing further. Keep at it! Don’t rush but be consistent with your practice, and take your time analyzing the course materials thoroughly and you’ll get there!
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Mathias Ragnarsson
Water apes! I thought I could try a mix between a gibbon/lesser ape and a platypus. But in hindsight, he just looks like a monkey with webbed hands and feet. Anyway! Really looking forward for what will come in this course. I like your take on subtleties and believability and hope to bring some of that into my own work as we go on. Thank you for this David!
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Mathias Ragnarsson
Difficult, but helpful. One of the key take-aways from this is that the thoracic spine is very stiff and doesn’t bend a lot. Which on the other hand makes it difficult to figure out when the model twists or bends, since it then looks like it is flexible. Any feedback is welcome.
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Mathias Ragnarsson
A house-move later and I’m finally starting to get in place and can get working again in my new home. Even though it has been just a couple of weeks, I feel somewhat rusty. Maybe I’m overthinking it. Anyway, robo beans. Sometimes I think it’s difficult to discern what planes should be visible and not. When I’m not really feeling it and can’t grasp why, I’m often showing the wrong planes, and switch afterwards. I think I got it right at least.
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Ken Robert
I found your post while searching for the same answer. I'll let you know if I find anything.
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Mathias Ragnarsson
Hey Ken! I actually found an app that suits my needs a couple of days ago, and I’ve tried it out in my latest sessions. It’s “Quick Poses” on the App-store by Frederic Ruaudel. It pretty much does all the things I asked for in the first post. A little bit glitchy in split-screen on the iPad when you press it down to it’s smallest width; you can’t really progress from the config-screen and start your session; so you have to widen it first. But after you set it off there’s no problem with it. Don’t know if this post will be marked as “spam” or something but; no I’m not affiliated with the app in any way. I hope the mods doesn’t mind; it’s a useful tool I wanted to share with others.
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Mathias Ragnarsson
Things get more difficult, real quick. Of course I want to make images that strives to look somewhat impressing, or at least presentable. But I feel it’s tough to do that with this exercise, without having a firm grip on mannequinization, proportions, measuring and some anatomy. For instance, I understood the seven bumps of the knee, but I have very little knowledge of exactly why and how they should be formed and arranged. But then again, those later concepts might be even more difficult to handle without having introduced where the landmarks should be first. Anyway, here are my studies for this lesson. Feedback is always appreciated!
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Eva Frank
Here is my gesture drawings from the quicksketch video. I have used a little more time, well about 3-5 min. Perhaps they are more contours than gestures, but it was fun and I am satisfied with my first try.
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Mathias Ragnarsson
Hi Eva! I think there are contours in these drawings, however, the gestures underneath I find pleasing. What would happen if in your next run, you would skip all the details that isn’t adding to the gesture? Like the marks to define the ribcage in the first image, bottom left. It can be challenging to decide what is necessary and what is not. And one way I find helping is to limit my strokes. Try to push it down to as few lines as possible, without compromising the gesture. “If I reduce these 5 lines from the hip to the foot, does the pose still read the same?” I hope these thoughts are helpful, looking forward to see what comes next.
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