Conveying Action With Figure Drawing
When you’re creating a character, you will need to be aware of the gesture line. This is a line that you can see going through the majority of the action in your drawing. For instance, if your character is striking another character, you will be able to visualize a line traveling from the back of the character through the character’s body all the way to the fist of the character and through the other character being struck. The whole rest of the drawing will revolve around and react to this main gesture. So everything else on the character will move with the gesture line.
If there is an enormous amount of movement, the entire body will move with this gesture. However, characters who are relaxing are often using contrapposto. That is where the body moves in different angles. So if a character is standing, much of the weight will be shifted in an opposite direction to the direction that the majority of the weight is at. So you will likely see part of the body curving in one direction while the rest of the body curves in a different direction, as the character shifts his or her weight to a comfortable position.
Next, you will need to learn to understand foreshortening. Foreshortening is where some parts of the body appear larger and some parts of the body appear smaller due to our perspective. So if a character is lunging forward with one arm towards the point of view and the other arm far away from the point of view, the arm in the front will seem much larger than the arm towards the back.
To further emphasize action, speed lines are useful in cartoon pictures. Speed lines are drawn to emphasize where the motion has occurred. So if a character is sprinting forward, there will be lines that will be behind a character. But speed lines can be much more complex than that. For instance, if one character is thrown through the air, speed lines might be drawn in an arc to demonstrate how the character has been thrown.
Environmental factors are important when drawing action scenes. If its raining, you will likely see rain drops flung in different directions and dripping off the body at angles. Also keep in mind really complex splashes like when a character stomps in a puddle or leaps into water. Dust is often kicked up when things strike dirt such as when a character falls or when the ground is shot at. Also, any light objects that blow easily in the wind like petals, feathers and leaves will be blown wildly in response to the wind that is created by the motions of the character. This is a very advanced technique that will look beautiful if done properly.
About the Author
Alex is an artist and blogger who co-owns http://sketchinghouse.com
Sketching House is an art blog that is 90% art tutorial and 7% art discussion with some rants thrown in. Though this is an ever-evolving website, the majority of the focus will always be on art tutorials.
Photoshop: Photos to Line art Drawings
Compared to the others, my blind contour line drawings are horrible…why?
today we were doing some contour line…..BLIND contour lines in my art class…
and i noticed that all the other people were (the majority) had their contour lines done very well…..my is so sloppy that you cant really see what it is….some people actually looked at their paper when they were drawing, but i decided not to since that is what the teacher wants, BLIND contour……and i felt so stupid afterwards because their drawing were so good and mine was so bad!
so you think i should just keep on practicing it? Is it really normal to have the drawing really wacky once you are done with it? Cuz some of the other ones that ppl drew were so well alligned and stuff….
Blind contours are suppose to look kind of wacky. The purpose of the exercise is to train your eye to look at edges. I agree that you should probably slow down. I tell my students to imagine that their eye should move at a snails pace across the object you are looking at. Every little inch that your eye moves, your hand should move at the same rate. Every time your eye moves, your hand should follow. By practicing this for a little bit everyday, you should improve exponentially as an artist, as your eye becomes trained to find details and your hand focuses on drawing what you see, not what you think you see.
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