Practising Details

Both of my chosen illustrators have their own individual style and they are dissimilar in many ways however they do have one thing in common...the fact that the details in their illustrations appear almost lifelike.  I therefore think that it is a good idea for me to to improve my skills a little more in these areas.  I basically want to practice drawing some of the more challenging details such as eyes etc. as this should be of benefit to me when completing my next illustrations.

I began this process by completing some sketches of the hands and feet which are shown below.  The hands are an essential component of illustrations, especially for Arturo Elena therefore this should allow me to achieve more realistic hand positions and proportions in my own illustrations.

Sketches of various hand positions

Although I am aware that I will not necessarily be drawing naked feet on my illustrations, I still felt that this was an important area to cover.  I often struggle when drawing footwear so I thought that this exercise would help me in the future as I will hopefully be able to imagine the position of the foot in my head.

Sketches of different foot arrangements

I decided to work a little more on the realism of the hands by completing a tonal study as this allowed me to pay close attention to the small details.  I had to consider the shading and proportion of the fingers which I believe should give me an advantage when drawing hands on my illustrations in the future.

Tonal study of hands

I have noticed that the eyes are a real focal point particularly in Hanna Muller's illustrations however she does not necessarily use the same technique for them all.  This has led me to draw various sketches of different eyes in order to practice capturing different emotions and  I really enjoyed completing this work and feel that it will be very useful.

Sketches of various eyes

Both of my illustrators usually draw closed lips on all of their illustrations which I normally draw on my illustrations however Arturo has featured a laughing mouth in a few of his drawings. As a final practice exercise, I thought I would carry out a tonal study of a laughing mouth as I feel that this could perhaps help me if I wanted to feature a similar mouth on my next illustrations.

Tonal study of an open, laughing mouth