So every
Monday for the last 3 weeks I’ve been going to the UWA campus to do some life
drawing. The main reason I started was because I’ve been having all hell trying
to design characters straight from my head, there have been rare occasions were
I’ve had some success but in most instances my characters look deformed, quite
generic or all together without character entirely. Study of proportions and a whole
range of golden rules of the body did help in the early stages of my drawing
but I do find them now to have less of an impact, perhaps because everything
they’re telling me to do I’m already doing (with few exceptions).
2 of my very
few successful characters from my head
I was aware that
it was common practice for big studio’s like Disney to encourage life drawing, particular
to study movement, and after further reading I discovered Richard Williams, in
his book The Animators Survival Kit
devoted an entire chapter ‘Time to draw’ to life drawing. In the opening to
the chapter I read this
· Epitaph
of an Unfortunate Artist
He
found a formula
For
drawing rabbits:
This
formula for
Drawing
comic
Rabbits
paid,
So
in the end he
Could
not
Change
the
Tragic
habits
This
formula for
Drawing
comic
Rabbits
made.
-Robert Graves-
‘Life
Drawing is the antidote to this’ – Richard Williams
‘Thank Lord!’
– Claire Pettigrew
I am glad to
say that life drawing has brought something fresh to the table. I’m still quite
far from where I need to be and even further from where I’d like to be, but I
do feel some improvement, a new appreciation for weight and balance been a big
one.
My life
drawing will continue, I need to work on faces because despite knowing the ‘formulas’
I’m still struggling to create anything new.
