Character sketching
It is often a rough and ready rendering of a person or character we have in mind , it adds a lot of interest to the character depending on the details we add to it , it helps understand emotions and people , in turn ourselves better in the process.
Although it sounds like a simple task , it takes few steps to get into the hang of sketching characters in art .
To give life to artworks and telling stories through it.
It takes vision and techniques to achieve it , let us just look into few techniques which might help.
Continual line drawing
A continual contour or line drawing is an exercise that will help you to focus on the line of your drawing.
This methods develops confidence and drawing speed ,encourages your eyes, hand and brain to work together.
Some steps to go about it
01. Reference
Highly recommended to draw from life but it is ok even if opportunity does not permit to do so.
02. Eyes
Contour drawing involves tracing something with eyes . We must try to study our object and start drawing it from the contour we see.
03. Hair
Try not to back and forth on one line and to not pick up your pencil at all .
04. Details
Continue with details , but don’t pick up pencil at all . Draw slowly to get proportions better .
05. Final result
If your drawing doesn’t look like your reference , don’t worry!
MUSCLE MEMORY
This is a form of procedural memory that can help you become very good at something through repetition .
Blind Contour Drawing :-
This drawing involves drawing the outline of the subject without looking at the paper.
In this exercise , avoid lifting the pencil from the paper so that the line is as continuous as possible .
Don’t look at the paper.
Exercise focuses on attention to detail to improve your observation skills and helps to make more use of right side of brain.
In order to draw poses , stick figures really help to start with to get an understanding of the subject’s movement , we can further build on details with the help of it.
Geometric forms
We can go with geometric forms to build our characters
We can also achieve this by separating the torso and hips , legs and feet , limb by limb geometrically separated with the help of ghost lines.
Do not go with dark initially when you start , go for weak subtle soft lines to start with.
Fun tip on character sketchig
Keeping some general lines symmetrical instead of mirroring every small part . Keeping some elements asymmetrical helps to avoid repitition.
Your creativity is all that takes to get the maximum out of character sketching in the broader picture , and that takes practice , so start somewhere , anywhere and keep going with it , never hesitate to start all over again , keep starting over and may it help us find ourselves in the process.
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