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Appreciation post: My character sketches finally look alive
After a year of stiff poses, I started doing 30-second gesture drawings every morning with my Wacom. Has anyone else found a simple daily drill that fixed a big art problem?
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brian_coleman13d ago
Thirty second gestures are a game changer... I forced myself to do a hundred of them last month just focusing on the line of action in the spine. My figures went from mannequins to having real weight and motion. It's crazy how such a simple, boring exercise can unlock everything else.
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violafox13d ago
Okay but a hundred of them? That sounds like torture. I get the idea but after a while you're just drawing lines on autopilot. My figures still look stiff even when I try this stuff.
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patricia_hayes11d ago
Remember trying to draw a running horse over and over as a kid. I'd get the legs all wrong, like sticks poking out of a barrel. My grandpa, who was a farrier, finally took me to a field and just said, "Watch how it leans forward before it moves. The whole thing is a fall caught in time." I stopped drawing horses and started drawing that lean, that trip into motion. The stiffness went away when I stopped drawing the thing and started drawing the push against the ground.
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