Force by Michael D. Mattesi

“This is one of a number of concept sketches for a giant elephant creature, based on prehistoric proboscides, and combined with a bit of sauropod and dimetrodon. She’s alarmed by something, and has arrested her walk to swivel toward it. It must be something significant or unusual, because she has no natural enemies.”  

Design by Terryl Whitlatch

A lot of the sketches in Force are self-explanatory; therefore I’ve created an information mood board showcasing some of the important and what I find interesting pages of this book. I’ll go through it in greater detail below. 

Michael D. Mattesi’s book Force shows his process into drawing animals, he talks a lot about using directional and applied forces as well as rhythm when creating lines. Creating this force is like showcasing the energy and

movement of the creature and giving your sketch life. He compares human anatomy to animals to not only show visually how similar some of our bodies are, but to show how gravity has affected out design to support ourselves. He compares our feet, hands, shoulders and hips to animals to simply show the differences between Plantigrade, Digitigrade and Unguligrade animals. A lot of this book is quite simple and teaching you how to really look at animals and study them using his techniques. He also talks about using the law of thirds in helping us create visually interesting designs.

“Our minds want to create symmetry, and the irony is that this symmetry causes disinterest in art.”

The last part of this book discusses his methods on exaggerating animal designs which I really enjoyed reading. There are sketches showing how he has pushed proportions in a creative and fun way.

Overall, I really enjoyed looking through this book and I hope to put some of Mattesi’s methods into practice. There is also a foreword from Terryl Whitlatch as well as one of her sketches at the beginning of the book which Mattesi is a fan/friend of; I’m really intrigued to learn more about her and to follow up on her own techniques.   

All images in this blog post I have scanned myself from the referenced book below:

Mattesi D.M. 2011. Force: Animal Drawing. Oxford. Focal Press.