(One day) Hot girls and appealing characters

[Pensword]

The reality is that creating poses 'from imagination' is more like 'from memory' and 'from understanding'.

If an artist hasn't drawn an arm/leg/torso many times in a certain pose, then they will probably not be able to draw it without reference. The general shapes aren't in their memory. If an artist doesn't know what the bones, muscles, and fat are doing in that pose, they'll probably get things wrong, if only a little.

I'm certainly guilty of trying to draw from imagination too much, when I should have been drawing from reference. Nobody wants to be limited to using reference, but it's necessary.

I'm definitely in favor of trying to draw purely from imagination, but you have to be wary that you're getting a mix of practice with ref in there, too. You can't learn anatomy by guessing at it from imagination.

Yes, you say true things. 'from understanding' is probably the best of all.
But even if you understand how something should anatomically be, you dont nessecarily know automatically how to simplify it in a good looking way - which my todays question will be about.



So, of course I would like to be able to just scribble something down on paper spontaneously without looking for any reference or anything.

Understanding is definitely the way to do that.
So I already studied the biggest muscle-groups and most basic anatomy.

I found this ohter Artist on Youtube, who did this in his video:




He starts with a blocky, boxy figure, like I do, too.
But then he just scribbles over it, simplifies things and all of the sudden has these really
feminine and even almost `attractive`-looking female characters drawn.

I did try to recreate exactly what he did and I am not able (yet) to simplify the female legs that nicely.

Does anybody know how he does that?

If I try to recreate this simplified, it looks kind of like this




If I go over all the muscles, over the skeleton and so on, it turns (of course) out very technically and over-detailled like this




But he didnt draw all the muscles! He also didnt just draw simplified cylinders.

Can anybody tell me, how to simplify the female legs in such a feminine and attractive-looking way,
that you dont just draw cylinders, but also that you dont draw all the single muscles,
but you just simplify it, and it is just simplified the right way?

What are the muscles that have to be shown explicitly and what is all the stuff that can be blended together and simplified?
(and what is the knowledge (anatomy and so on) that you have to have or what is the right way to train this, in order to simplify the legs in just the right way? I mean I could do 1000 life drawings, but still not be able to make a good looking anime-ish girl, for example.)