24 July 2010

True Confessions


To drag my point even further into the ground, I conducted a little experiment. The figures in the top sketch are outlined from two photographs. The outlines were pretty basic and I filled in the rest with my imagination. However, what I find very interesting is that all of the markings on the drawing are edits from a tutor. The corrections are purely from his imagination. My point is, when a figure is reference in action from a photo, it will seldom look "correct". This is my main beef with this type of work. Perhaps it's like the Greeks who on purpose, made the lines of the columns not straight in order to look straight. People really don't look 'right' in photos, especially action photos.

2 comments:

  1. This made me think of all the animated stuff I watch. The best ones actually do a style where they 'blur' the animation when fights and what not happen. They do that because it mimics what the eye sees, which is an impression of the actual action rather than it's specificity in all it's anatomically correct glory. So in this case, even if you traced it, we've been trained to 'correct' what is already "correct" to make it more dynamic and what not.

    To give a little credit to the tutor though and not totally ruin his/her day, they might have been confused on some parts of the anatomy since maybe some shadows etc. are missing to show foreshortening/things receding?

    IE, people who take pictures of sports during a game take tons of photos, but only a few of them ever look very good. Most look bad because the human body doesn't fit the 'image' we've given it and expected to have at all times. But when you're just watching from the sidelines, it all looks incredible, because every 'frame' is blurred together into an overall impression.

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  2. I actually did use some of this suggestions, and I "see" what he means. It's just sort of matter-of-fact for me really. Drawing is illusion. BTW, the tutor is very skilled in dynamic anatomy, to which I cannot claim such a skill...yet perhaps.

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