I’m having a break from the human figure and doing some abstract paintings. I tend to do mixed media painting in watercolour and pastels, and underdrawing in charcoal or soft graphite pencil.

There is no such thing as “correct” human proportions and there are many different systems; The statistical average for male and female is also different.

My version is something of a idealized figure. The legs are exactly 1/2 of body height which is the proportion of Leondardo’s Vitruvian Man.

Luckily, the human leg can’t be pronated and supinated (or not much anyway), so I don’t have to do as many studies. Legs are possibly the most boring part of the human anatomy; Study using Copic markers and fineliner pens.

Arm study, using Copic warm gray and Sakura micron. Doing the prone and supine version for this part of the body. Supine is like holding a bowl of soup.

Continuing my anatomy studies with the muscles of the torso, based on the anatomy books of Gottfried Bammes and S.R.Peck. Musculature has been exaggerated.

I’m doing master studies after Stephen Rogers Peck, Sheldon Borenstein and the Florentine school of renaissance masters, as well as from various and obscure anatomy books.

I love this quote by Michelangelo: “Who is so barbarous as not to understand that the foot of a man is nobler than the shoe, and his skin nobler than that of the sheep with which he is clothed, and not to be able to estimate the proper worth of each thing accordingly?”

It’s motivational for the study of the anatomy of the human figure.

Some new pages in my watercolour sketchbook, mainly sketches of people and some splatter.

Wings of Steel is now available as paperback book on Amazon worldwide. As I write this update, the InDesign layout has been completed, I’ve finished the cover image, and I’m currently doing pre-flight reading of the paperback. Enjoy!