Nuki News #79 - Legs! Legs! Legs!

We're starting the year off with me going over what I've been doing art-wise since I completed my December batch of commissions! And the answer is EVERY DAY IS LEG DAY. Kinda, haha.

Y'see, getting to work on commissions for a whole year has led to the nice thing that I can get pinpointed aggregate feedback on something I can improve on- in this case, it was pointed out to me I have trouble with legs and positioning them. Now, it isn't like I'm bad at drawing legs, but when it came to the occasional sitting down pose or laying down poses, I tended to have some trouble with them. So I've spent the last 10-ish days drawing legs and doing focused studies on leg/hip anatomy and such. 

Here's some of what I've got done; most of this is extrapolated from real figure drawing poses I reference from photo, but others are from imagination, where some are direct studies of other furry artist's work:

One fun thing you will see below are indeed Dracozolt legs, haha. You know, the pokemon from Gen 8 who has thighs for days? Dunno what I'm on about? Here's some drawings I did of this pokemon back in 2020:

I figure it'd be a good mon to study, haha. I also have plans to do a YCH where you have their biiig ill-fitting thunder legs, hah. It'd be pretty amusing. x)

Admittedly, I started enjoying myself in these studies more when I got to add more 'chonky' ness over the 'skeleton' beneath. I've been drawing with a different brush than my usual, and I'm finding I quite like it. Also, using this method of more directly constructing a skeleton then drawing the form over it is not my go-to, so that took some getting used to(and still am). But this may bode well for future commission work, I think. The underlying problem I'd run into is because I hadn't been considering the bones of the legs underneath it all. Getting to the root of the problem is an important part of studying smartly. 

A good tip I've found is the balance of a character's body is actually more centered than you'd think. While the spine is more directly on the back of a character, the belly and butt for instance seem to actually generate around this 'center spool' that is in between the hip plates of the pelvis. Often I'd have trouble because I'd treat the belly as the central force of gravity or weight to a character. 

Keeping your studying focused to a specific body part of group of parts(in my case, it was the lower body in general) you can learn a lot of stuff applicable to other things. In my case, the legs are vital for balance in a character's pose, or the lack thereof. It may seem weird or silly for it to just be legs and butts and pelvis' everywhere here, hahaha, but keeping what is relevant and leaving out the rest is ultimately helpful for practice to remain focused I've found. Otherwise I could get distracted by things not related to the legs.

Anyhow, I think it's practically been a year since I'd last done a study Nuki News post; the last one being about hands. If you'd like to read that, here ya go: 

https://www.patreon.com/posts/49451550

Otherwise, I hope this helped you some or gave you an insight to what goes into my approach to studies for art! Or if seeing all the posteriors made ya amused, that works too. x)