Anatomy practice - Yoga

The last practice in the weekly rotation is classic anatomy and posing. I don’t even dislike doing pose practice but doing it for a week straight is a little much and by day 4 I’m tired of it. But I still want to push myself through the motions so I don’t just try to keep cutting corners with it.

I am still trying to keep these weeks on a theme to be a little more focused and also to keep getting new kinds of poses. This week is yoga, so not the most natural of poses but a good reminder in the ways bodies can bend and move. With the extra difficulty of really needing to focus on the length of limbs because they often need to land in certain places.

Day 1 - Drawing from imagination

Drawing what poses I can remember, which isn’t very many.

Day 2 - Figure sketching

Doing some quick figure studies to remember shapes better.

Day 3 - Reference studies

My current approach to the study days is to do a trace version as it really helps to figure out the limbs you can’t see and then do a free hand version to try to reinforce what I got from the trace. What I want to add to my practice days is one for pushing the pose. Which wouldn’t have really worked for yoga as it’s already a rather extreme shape for a body to take but I think will work well for other activities.

Day 4 - Reference studies

Day 5 - Drawing from imagination

For the test day I wanted to try different angles instead of different poses. Since I struggled to get much beyond profile shots for yoga poses I thought it would be good to make my brain work by changing the camera angle.

I did two basic poses first, warrior and cobra. Then I did front angles for both and then a top down, birds eye view for warrior. I think I maybe kept things too sketchy and worry these might not be readable. But since it’s mostly practice on making sure body parts are in the correct place and not using this for a future piece I do want to keep things sketchy and light.

Conclusion

Something I struggled with this week was finding references of yoga poses not in full profile. It’s just how most photography is done as it’s the best way to view the pose if you want to replicate it yourself. But it made for rather static looking bodies when they’re all at the exact same angle. Next anatomy theme needs to be something that’s, weirdly, photographed less.

This anatomy week brings my first practice cycle of the year to a close. Did one; Style study, WAP, Reference study, and one anatomy week. So today the cycle starts again as I return to style studies, with this week's style being The Art of Hades (the video game). A fairly iconic style now, the game has a huge fandom of people replicating the style so I know I’ll find Youtube videos. But there isn’t as much from the studio and art director, which makes sense as you don’t really want another game copying your visual style.

Pinterest board of yoga poses.