Gladiators

[Vandall]

Hey guys, looking for some help on the main figure behind the hands. Been working on this abit in my sketchbook as well, and I just think I'm losing something with it its starting to drive me abit insane really. So any help you can offer would be grand.

[Patrick Gaumond]

Hey there,

I started an overpaint yesterday but didn't have time to finish it then. But then I took a look at your sketchbook and noticed that you've been working on this for a while. I did this overpaint before seeing that, so I didn't see the The last version of this you posted, the line art with the very good perspective in your Sketchbook. It pretty much solves all the issues I have with the piece at the moment! There's a few things to adjust with the values and the rendering, I think, in this version, but I would suggest following that line drawing you did. The composition is better, the pose feels more natural and the forms in the anatomy seem more realistically indicated

The way you've rendered your forms is a bit unnatural . Where they are is fine; your anatomy is fine and for the most part so are your proportions. However, you're rendering all these shapes extremely roundly and with very harsh edges. You might want to try condensing your values and flattening your shapes a bit If you look at real muscles, they rarely end at a sharp edge like that. Even the most ripped guys will always have a bit of a flow to the edges, and the musculature is more rhythmic than this, with a lot of accelerated round edges rather than round ball shapes

Yes they wrap around the form, but really for the most part you can follow perspective lines, albeit a bit loosely, when you start to render the muscles in value. Think of each ab, for instance, as fitting in a box. How would that box look in perspective? You can then fit the contours of that ab to that perspective. Here's a picture. In blue is the "box logic" of the muscles, loosely, and in red-orange is how the forms react to that



If this a piece you're trying to do strictly from imagination, there's no point really continuing for so long struggling with something you don't really know yet. Take a peek at some reference, analyze it but don't copy or reproduce it and then bring it into your work. In my experience you'll learn better than by struggling and getting frustrated trying to resolve it when really its just that you don't know how to do it in the first place

Hope that helps

[Vandall]

Thank you for the critique Patrick, I am going to stick this one out its maddening but I feel if I finish it I'll have learnt a great deal you know? I appreciate your opinion and agree that the last sketch seems to work better, my problem became it felt like he was leaning back if you under stand? I thought I had figured it out here but I feel like I'm missing a piece of the puzzle.

[Patrick Gaumond]

Ah I understand. Well personally I thought the pose looked nicer leaning back, but if that's not what you wanted thats fine.

I get why you might want to tough it out, but I've been there and in my experience if you've spent more than 3-4 hours trying to work out a single aspect of the piece its time to move on. You'll learn more by doing many exercises rather than trying to do one perfectly. The fact the you are struggling for so long is really just an indicator that the fundamental knowledge is missing. It's good to do stuff after your studies, but again after a while there are rather sharp diminishing returns the longer you spend on a single piece