Unit 8: Character - "10 Waves" Gesture/Flow - Curves

Hello Everyone,

I took some time this week to explore line & curve advised by Justin to make my poses jump from the page. I purchased a massive A3 book and got cracking of course it wasn't easy exploring this method not that I thought it would be. My arm has become rusty (not that it was ever totally accurate) I found that my bold strokes would often place me in the wrong meaning I was angrily ripping out pages as opposed to fixing...

When Justin said it wouldn't be easy or even achievable in the short period we have this Unit he was not kidding. You cannot change who you are overnight or in a week you can just do your best to adapt and roll something out of the experience... I wanted more finalised drawings from this but I ended up settling for the basic shapes once again...

I began exploring Evalines two identities the sad damaged woman and the angry monster within I just wanted to get the mind-set correct. I wanted to not consider the imagery as Justin advised but I found my mind wandering a little too far changing its mind mid sketch. Research was and still is essential to give me direction in my drawing...
This was just some standing research for her pose one conveying her normal/gentleness the other mid action almost as though she is in a battle. My biggest problem here is representing the action as Justin has told us in the past we have to imagine the curves of the body even the ones that we cannot see... This is easier said then done obviously but mastering it means that you can achieve any pose or drawing with accuracy - it works because the anatomy works...

It was just last week Justin advised me to look back into this book on force (one I have had for quite a while). Looking through it again I could see the confidence in everything but even then I was wandering how every line could hit home. From my experience line making allows you to isolate the void empty space... to be so confident means most of if not every line has a point I decided to give it a shot if anything just to free my mind a little...

One of the first exercises the book advised was to draw on the page with my eyes closed just trusting in the curve and flow of my own arm (image above to the left)... I found myself sliding of the page in some cases but what I ended up with was a complete mess of lines what felt to me to be too many - I think I moved about too long. I repeated the exercise with my eyes open (image above to the right) while I didn't mean to I wound up getting a shape that looked somewhat like a human to me... it was weird.

Next (Fig 0) I decided to convey the direction of force on one of the poses I had researched I did this by drawing lines conveying the direction of posture and the shift of weight vs. perspective. This was quite easy once I considered the downward trajectory of the spine. What bothered me was that the pose didn't appear to show force, the action was sitting so it made isolating it difficult, actions show force but sitting is dormant.

Figs 1 - 3 was my stabs at this pose Fig 1 was deliberate I just knocked the shapes down and got out of there which cause it to be more like a running silhouette in the early stages. Fig 2 was my approach the nervous line making and readjusting until you get something that may or may not resemble the form... Fig 3 was a different approach of the same pose, as I said before tucked up like that didn't feel as though there was action... so I decided to simulate a sitting action as opposed to just drawing dormant sitting... Suffice to say - It worked better then the dormant.

I moved in close for the next drawing I wanted to do something from my mind just to say to hell with the reference. It took a while but eventually I felt comfortable after roughing out the crude form above. I had done an earlier rendition in a previous post but the form in this one felt more alive the body even conforms to the gesture the way it is supposed to. One of the things it doesn't have though and I find this hard to do is a hunched back I honestly have no idea where to begin with that...

I ended up doing a series of standing poses committing solely to the flow of line, again I had my problems and the perspective still feels off particularly for legs but I do somewhat understand the movement and action of forces. Dormant and flat are boring, at the same time maybe its my job to make them interesting. There is no point in drawing things that are not my characters here. I think what is key here is finding what worked in the flow of lines in my top set of sketches when I was just drawing curves on a page....

The key here is not to be so much in my own head when I draw, this is why next time I'm going to skate the page when I consider a pose. I free myself up when I do this and sometimes for lack of trying I get results... Maybe somewhere deep down in my head my brain is telling my arm to do this without my full knowledge or it is drawing what the object is and not what it thinks the object is. What is key here is to be less constrained and more free... I will be doing this more.

For now though I have to consider other things poses are well and good but there is other character work to be done...

I will get down to this much more in the next week.

xXStItChXx