Project 250 feet

Over the past week I've been doing a mini project to draw 250 feet. It was inspired and encouraged by my instructor Michael Buffington, who once drew 1000 heads for fun over 2 months. Saddened to be done with his project, he proceeded to draw 500 legs, 250 hands and 250 feet. Since that wasn't enough he then proceeded to draw 2000 cartoon heads. Did I mention I think he might be clinically insane?

My feet have never been my strongest point, so I decided to really work this week and crank out a bunch of drawings. I used references from deviant art and google image search. Actually, I contracted a trojan from searching google for feet pictures (safe search! HA!) conveniently just AFTER formatting my hard drive. Figures. At least scrubbing my hard drive gave my fingers a chance to recover.

These are by no means all of the drawings, but I took out a drawing once every few in my stack or so to demonstrate the progression:

Feet 1-7

I started out drawing my own feet, from life. This... really was pretty boring and didn't last very long.

Feet 22-31

Still pretty bad, but drawing from photos is easier.

Feet70-79

Feet 148-159

At this point it was starting to get easier and I felt like I was starting to understand the shape of the foot better from a variety of angles.

Feet 171-181

Feet 194-204

Feet 238-250

Each foot took 2-5 minutes. I wouldn't say I draw perfect feet now, but the exercise has really made some visible progress! I really noticed the effects of this in my last life drawing session - my feet take much less time to draw and my hand knows the shape much better. I'd even go as far as to say that I enjoy drawing feet now. Overall I'm really pleased with the results and I'd recommend repetition to anyone who wants to improve at something specific, it really works!