Illustration Week 6 (Extension)

Study page.

 

 

 Reference Image. Kei Nishikori photographed by Hiromasa Mano.

 

Note to self: Action poses for tennis and other sports with bats/racquets can be good for sword-wielding poses.

The full pose could possibly use more movement or fluidity in the legs and hips, but I think it's really good - I only spent 10-15min on it with minimal digital manipulation (only for the eye placement)!!

I'm actually really happy with the whole study page! Something I do know that I need to improve on is facial expressions and simplified/stylised faces. I've had quite a lot of practice with drawing faces but only really in neutral expressions in realism. The face I've drawn here is quite good although it took me a fair bit of adjusting and it's actually at quite a different angle from the reference. It still reads fine though, except maybe the headband and hair should be adjusted accordingly? It's still not very expressive or stylised but the original facial expression is not especially expressive.

The hands I'm happy with - although that top one just looks weird because of how it's splayed originally. In the full sketch, I placed the pinkie closer to the rest of the fingers to have it read better.

I don't normally get into drawing fabric folds in as much detail as I did here, but I was having a bit of fun just drawing what I was seeing at that point. The simplified fabric sketch was a little rushed and I think it looks off in a lot of ways. I was mostly drawing off of my detailed drawing rather than the reference, with the intention of simplifying the blocks in the form that I was seeing, but it turned out quite stiff. I think the sketch of the full pose has much more effective gestural fabric drawing.