Looking for design inspiration?   Browse our curated collections!

Two Minute Sketches Push you to the Brink

Carol Allen Anfinsen

Blog #80 of 330

Previous

|

Next

August 12th, 2013 - 09:12 PM

Blog Main Image
Two Minute Sketches Push you to the Brink

If you’ve never done it, now is the time to start! If you want to become adept at drawing people or doing portraits, “quick studies” offer a way to focus on what’s important.

Beginning with gesture and motion, focusing on the way a person’s body leans and moves is critical if you want your images to look vibrant and alive rather than just plastic replicas of sticks or flat copies of people. Gesture is what makes each image unique. Exaggerating those gestures makes for a more interesting pose.

Once gesture and movement are identified, then form comes easily. The form makes the figure three-dimensional. Here the weight of the image and the likeness are developed. Completing your gesture sketches with more fully developed drawings of form gives you a foundation on which to build a likeness and imaginative scenes with interesting characters.

Practice makes perfect. At first, my sketches were out of proportion. As I became better, the proportions were more natural. Sometimes I had to slow my drawing hand down to the same level as my brain. I’m hoping my brain will soon catch up to my hand.

Portrait studies can be done in the same way. The purpose of these quick studies is to force you to see shapes and values before getting into the details. Unless the foundation is solid, the details will still look flat or cubist. If that’s what you want, great! But if likeness and a portrait is your goal, your details need to be placed on accurate solid forms.

Click Here for More Information

Comments

Post a Comment

There are no comments on this blog.   Click here to post the first comment.