30 second drawing



taken from posemaniacs



I've already mentioned the site posemaniacs here, but I think it's time to bring it up again, since I've been using it a lot lately. Observing people and drawing them gives us a better sense for body structure and posing, which helps with the balance, appeal, shapes/silhouettes, and so on. It is also a lot of fun, so don't postpone it any longer :-)





taken from posemaniacs



It's amazing how some people get the hole pose across in 30 seconds!! But I felt that was too fast for me so I started with the 90 second drawing tool.  In the beginning, that wasn't much and sometimes it wasn't possible to finish a pose. However, sketching 15-30 minutes every day, I managed to get to 45 seconds.

Each person has their own approach to sketching and it might change over time. I started using some of the reference lines in the body that show how chest and hips are positioned. I also use the negative space to help: seing how much white space there is between the arm an the body, for example, might make it easier to position the arm. It's also good not to get into small details, since it's speed drawing.

So here are some of my sketches from last month, just to show they don't need to be perfect, you just need to feel you're learning. Get the proportions, the angle the person is viewed from, the basic pose, etc. And as one of my mentors once said: if you're struggling, it's because you're learning. Sounds simple, but it's helpful to see things that way.

60 second sketches

Another interesting site for poses is http://pixelovely.com/tools/gesture.html were they don't show the internal body structure. You can set some parameters for the drawing session: male/female, clothed/nude and for how long you want the image on screen. You can also chose the animal drawing tool - but I'll get to animal drawing later.

I hope this was interesting and wish you happy drawing. It's actually addictive, you always want to sketch one more pose :-)