Anatomy and Pose Study

I came across this piece while looking for anatomy references on dA and there was something about it that made it particularly interesting. Normally I'm inclined more towards ectomorphic builds as opposed to mesomorphic ones (think Zac Efron vs Ryan Reynolds), perhaps due to some underlying egocentrism since I'm more of an ectomorph than mesomorph (technically an ecto-mesomorph, at least in potential), but the pose, lighting, and clear muscular definition made this an interesting study and practice piece for both anatomy and greater contrasts of shading.

As to the production of the piece itself, it went through three full style changes, haha. I started off doing just a basic sketch, but then I realized I wanted more shading so I refined it a bit and shaded it solely with pencil (altering the style), but then I decided to make it a full-blown realism piece and erased most of the pencil shading and used the remaining tortillions and Q-tips for shading. Due to the switching of styles some of the previous ones might be visible.

On another note, my gosh, the undersides of shoes are so hard to do. I need to get some new tortillions because mine were so dull from use that they had lost all of the precision needed for the details.

Hmm, I just realized that a lot of my recent pieces have been of people with their arms up in one way or another. I think I've been interested in those perspectives. xD


Reference: [link]

Specifics:
- 4.5 x 7 in size
- About 5 days to complete, off and on

Tools:
- A 6B graphite pencil
- Tortillions
- A Q-tip
- A kneaded erasor
- A ruler
- A toothpick (yes, a toothpick - it was an experiment )

I'll be back to reply sometime this afternoon/evening. Sorry for keeping you all waiting for comments and replies - I've been swamped over here for the past week!