Concept Art

In my work for my other classes I often have to put myself at work drawing life/anatomy/bodies in motion.  The work that I'm doing in life drawing one is without a doubt affecting my approach in this.  Where I would regularly just sketch out some outlines and start delving into surface textures, I know feel comfortable applying cross contours and long axis lines across a surface to enrich the visual information in the design drawing. 

Even when the subject matter is something that isn't something I'm entirely familiar with, even completely outside of my intuitive anatomic knowledge (prehistoric reptiles?), the concepts we've been covering have proven valuable.  I'm getting better at trying to follow shapes with contour and axis lines, although I still find that a strong outline works well in certain areas, and this probably varies with medium and intention.  A lot of the work I've been doing has been on a drawing tablet (specifically a Bamboo Fun) which has been in interesting experience.  This is my first year using it, and it's been incredibly helpful in allowing me to be more free with what I draw in a digital space.  As opposed to drawing something out completely on paper, then scanning it, and spending the time necessary to manipulate it to a proper, workable quality in photoshop is all eliminated.  I can draw anything twice as quickly digitally with the magical ability to 'control-z' any ugly mistakes.  So far it's been a lot of animals for one my game design class, making concept art for different player characters/enemies that appear in the game.  Exploring their bodies volume, shape, and general contour has been a nice crossover, and I'm looking forward to using it more for directly human concept art in the future.  I've also seen examples of people using their tablets to do gesture life drawings right into a computer.  This is also something that I would like to try in the near future.