Anatomy sketches - contains nudity!

I've been doodling quite a bit this past weekend trying to use the new things I learned from my newly purchased anatomy book. The goal is to improve upon my figure drawing and to be able to draw the human figure without it looking stiff and unnatural which is sadly one of my problems at the moment. Below you can see some of the results from my recent efforts. I think I've done a good job and have taken some small steps towards achieving my goal.

I do have to  point out that staring at bottoms, fannies and penises for hours on end is not something I am accustomed to, but since I am not a shrinking violet in any sense of the word I don't really mind. I like looking at the human body, as long as it is not my own that is (Like most girls I'm not that comfortable in my own skin).

Boobs!

Penis!

Well that's all for now folks!

Until next time,
Anita K. Olsen Stoebakk

Contact:
anitaolsen.illustration@gmail.com

Website:
www.anitaolsen.daportfolio.com

Art of Drawing Anatomy by David Sanmiguel - book review

I recently purchased a new anatomy book, and since I am usually on a tight budget I had to find something that was very affordable but of good quality. I bough this specific book on www.play.com for 12 euros or something like that which I thought was quite the steal. I bought it because the only anatomy book I had in my possession was not very good and filled with mostly exaggerated super hero like images. It was not very helpful to be quite honest. This book however was infinitely better. Is it one of the best ones out there? I haven't got the faintest idea as my experience with anatomy books is somewhat limited. I will say however that I personally like it a lot. It has all the basics covered like the concept of ideal anatomy, but also goes into detail, naming the bones and the muscles of the body and showing you how to foreshorten limbs and things like that. I found it immensely helpful and realized that I should have bought a new anatomy book a loong long time ago.

I would recommend this book to beginners and intermediate artists. It is easy to read and has lots of illustrations in it that explains the text and concepts of drawing the human body. I think it has a lovely production quality. I wish it had come as a hardback instead of paperback, but that is just me being picky. In general this is a beautiful book of good quality.

Below you can see some simple photos that I have taken of my copy of the book.

Until next time,
Anita K. Olsen Stoebakk

Contact:
anitaolsen.illustration@gmail.com

Website:
www.anitaolsen.daportfolio.com

Scarab tattoo illustration

I recently bought the newest anatomy special from ImagineFX, my all time favorite magazine. I flipped through it and got the intense urge to draw human anatomy. Specifically a part of the human anatomy that I almost never draw. The human back. Let me tell you it is so much harder to draw a good image of the human back than you would think. There are so many subtle muscles and angles that need to be taken into consideration. I needed a lot of reference to do a decent sketch of it.

Just drawing the human anatomy is a nice challenge in itself, but since I love a bit of flair of detail in my art I decided to create an egyptian scarab tattoo on the womans back. I also went for some sort of interesting hair-do as opposed to the loose natural hair I often do.

I actually like this image very much. The colors are nice ant the anatomy looks decent. The fact that you can't see the womans face is kind of intruiging to me. it leaves questions in the mind. Who is she? How old is she? Where does she come from?

(c) Anita K. Olsen

Well that's all for now, I'll try to make a new video for the Anita Illustrated vlog, something useful, but also fun.

Until next time
Anita K. Olsen

Contact:

e-mail: anitaolsen.illustration@gmail.com

Nasal probing...

It sounds disgusting yes?..well, relax it's not what you think it is.
Unless you think it's a bunch of sketches where I explore the concept of drawing noses.
Then it's exactly what you think it is!

One of my tutors at the University of Wolverhampton mentioned to me that I should practice drawing noses because all my noses looked pretty much the same. Given some time to think about that statement I had no choice but to agree (damn). So half a year after the eye opening comment here I am drawing noses, and having a surprisingly good time doing so.

Voila! enjoy the nosy goodness:






Yes, mostly female noseyness going on, not a lot of variety there I'm afraid. So I figured I kind of had to draw a male nose, and I just couldn't leave the nose alone. It had such character and it deserved an equally interesting face so I drew an old man, a lovable little fellow who probably uses a crutch and likes hot soup.



Hoping someone will have enjoyed my sketchy nose special.

Until next time
Anita Night

Style Struggles - how to adapt to different assignments

I just signed on to a project where I'm supposed to illustrate a children's story for a book. At the same time I'm doing a very different project for an app game for a company called Dilemmr. I have found over the course of this weekend that it is quite hard to work with two styles at the same time.

The app project is sort of a Manga/Science fiction inspired style with as proper anatomy as possible and use of perspective and the like. The children's book is supposed to be child friendly and humorous, but inspired by fantasy, and I have to morph the anatomy and work in a more cartoony style than the other. I started sketching some of the characters from the children's story and this is where the trouble started. I just couldn't let go of the anatomy and my usual way of building a character. The characters weren't stylized enough and I didn't find them very funny either. I'm usually good with cool or cute characters, but funny is not really a strength of mine. This problem made me feel stuck and I felt a bit hopeless to be honest and I wasn't sure how I was going to solve the issue.

What I did know however was that I was not going to give up. So I started sketching a bit, gradually changing things on the characters, making things simpler, not drawing all the joints on arms and legs, making some body parts abnormally large or very tiny. halfway through the process I was still frustrated and I didn't know what to do. I bitched a bit about it to my fiancée who looked at the characters and then he came with the most ingenious suggestions of how to make the characters more funny. He is usually no help at all, he says he does not know what to say or look for, but this time he was a great help. I did some amendments to the characters and after seeing Ole's satisfied grin and giggle when I showed them to him I'm certain I'm on the right track.

So what do you do when you're a bit stuck? After having struggled with it myself and having thought about it quite a lot I've come up with some pointers that might help you should you ever be in a situation similar to mine.

1. Sketch - a lot. Don't be afraid to make silly doodles or drawing with the wrong hand. Sometimes it loosens you up and opens the door for that creative spark you are looking for. Don't shy away from reworking things either. I reworked my characters 5 times before I felt happy about them.

2. Have someone else look at your sketches if possible (if your not under a strict NDA or something). A fresh point of view may be all you need to see what's missing in your artwork.

3. Look for reference on the Internet or in books or movies, whatever is relevant to your assignments. For example I needed to do something very cartoony so I looked at a comic strip by Frode Øverli, the creator of Pondus. His drawings are very humorous, stylized and fun. Now I didn't copy any of his characters or his style. I merely looked at the way he stylized his arms and legs, mouths and noses. It really helped me along.

4. If you feel stuck and nothing of the above helps you should put your work down and leave it for a couple of hours or overnight and get back to it later. It gives you brain time to work things over and you'll maybe look at the artwork differently when you come back to it.

Well this turned out to be a fairly long post, but I hope someone can gain something useful from it, or indeed throw in their own ideas of how to switch between illustrative styles when you are working on two very different projects at the same time.

Until next time
Anita Night