Week 8 - Non-human figure drawing

This week is about non-human anatomy and figure drawing in animals, my first drawing was of a stuffed panda in the Leeds museum's taxidermy collection. This sketch took me about twenty minutes to do, This sketch shows the posture and pose of this animal well. The external lines of this sketch help to show the structure of this animal with its big back legs, back muscles and neck muscle, these lines really show off the bear like anatomy of the panda and also the size of this animal. The positioning of the legs and back posture give this sketch a sense of weight as the weight appears to be shifted on the front paws and powerful shoulders.

The amount of detail is good because the features like the face, ears, claws and fur texture can be seen, the shading helps to show the texture of the dense fur on the panda and the black patches which are so dark and cover the eyes. Proportionally this sketch is fairly accurate and the paws and legs a relevant to the size of the torso and head. The perspective of this sketch shows how this wasn't draw directly sidewards on but at a slight angle as the face and front paws suggests. I feel this sketch could use more shading to get more detail out of the fur and face also shading to suggest where the light came from.

The second sketch was of a completely different species of animal this time and took about twenty  minutes as well. This sketch is of a stuffed horn bill at the Leeds museum, the pose is shown well in this sketch you can see how the external convexed lines help to form the curved body and wings as well as the neck and head which is pointed forward. This is a fairly dynamic pose for an animal because the legs are not side by side instead they are positioned diagonally. Also the wings are slightly stretched and not exactly to the body and the most dynamic thing is the head outstretched from the body. These lines also help to show the anatomy of this bird and how the wings are tucked in to the sides of the torso and the neck muscles stretch out to hold the head up and the long thin beak with the shovel end. Proportionally this sketch is fairly accurate as the legs are almost twice as long as the body.

The posture this seen effectively in this sketch because you can see how the weight is off and looks like it is leaning forward, and the positioning of the legs looks as if it is about to take another step forward. I feel the legs could have been drawn better because the back leg looks slightly bent in a weird way and the foot looks a bit short compared to the other foot. I feel this sketch could benefit from more shading to bring out the feathers of the bird and also a better idea of how the light is hitting it. This does diminish the fact that it is easy to tell what animal it is and also the pose and posture of this animal.

The third sketch I did was a quick 10 minute sketch of a bison seen in the taxidermy collection at Leeds museum. This sketch doesn't really offer a lot but it was good starting point to get warmed up. It offers a good sense of pose but is llimited by the fact you can't see the whole body, the head is shown well and allows you to see how the bison wasn't looking directly forward and more to the side. Also the positioning of the front legs as you can see they are one forward and one back. The detail is mainly in the face and allows you to see the nose, mouth, eyes and horns, this sketch does show some anatomy mainly in the torso and head because the external lines show of the big back muscles seen in the sketch and also size of the head and legs structure.
This sketch is lacking shading and detail which would greatly improve it especially because it is drawn so closely. The posture seen is sketch is a well balanced one that has the weight spread fairly evenly across the body and legs as far as we can see. The proportion looks accurate and the head seems the right size in comparisment to the body which is the biggest and strongest part of the is animals anatomy.