LucyBellwood
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The Return of Figure Drawing Club
🕑 Added 2022-03-19 18:41:23 +0000 UTCBabs New is back to hosting a monthly Figure Drawing session on Zoom! This was the first one I've caught in a while and I'm extra glad I went because there was a VERY GOOD DOG whose name was GUMSHOE and he had AMAZING FACE WHISKERS. You can see him a little bit in the last image of the series, insisting on snuggles.
I've been working my way through a class called Designing Expressive Characters on Schoolism and while I was definitely thinking about the concepts we've been exploring during this session, I'm still not 100% sure I'm implementing them. A lot of the Characters course is about pushing beyond what we see in figure drawing to create characters who feel more exaggerated and alive. My ability to look at something and reproduce it faithfully is pretty well-developed, but exaggeration or stylization often feels beyond me. I get stuck in the stiff replication of what's in front of my eyes—too scared to push things for fear they might be "wrong". This is a huge growth edge for me as a cartoonist, and one of the things I feel most consistently critical of in my own work.
(There's a yoga teacher whose recorded class I do a lot who says "Yoga's not fun, because there's nothing fun about breaking old habit patterns." Been thinking about that a lot while I go through this.)
Being back in a more active learning role—both with this online course and the dance classes I've been going to—has me thinking a lot about how I learn. Often information percolates into the brain and the body without my knowing it, and sometimes I'm pleasantly surprised to come back without having "practiced" a lot to find that I'm a bit better than I was before.
Then again, sometimes I just really need to make sure I do the gd homework.
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You can learn about Figure Drawing Club here, or check out the generous library of free poses Babs has put together here. I'm extra excited that they've started charging a bit more for the monthly sessions because their work is truly wonderful and also still way cheaper than going to figure drawing in person. You can join the club for $5 or $15 a month, depending on your income level. It's super friendly and fun.
Comments
Danielle Corsetto
Ufff I love love love seeing these!! I wanna point out all the things I love about each one but, just, I love 'em. I know that feeling of being able to replicate, but not *create.* The workshop I took with Stephen Silver a dozen years ago was life-changing for me; I think I repeated his workshop online as a guest host with Babs, but I can't remember if you were in attendance? It's basically: do a bunch of fast (5 min?) warmups drawing the model, focusing on shapes, pulling & exaggerating while warming up. Then the model does the same pose at 4 angles (front, 3/4, profile, back) for us to make a turnaround of them as a character. From there on, the rest of the poses are drawn using your new turnaround as a reference. It was empowering!!
Katie McMahon
Ooh, these are lovely! I've also been struggling with stiff figures in my work. I follow a handful of storyboard artists, and I'm always in awe of how dynamic and expressive their character drawings are. I'll have to check out that Schoolism class!
