When it comes to activities like painting or writing, being interrupted every few minutes is kind of infuriating. There is something beautiful about the creative process and getting into “the zone”, but if you’re like me, the big blocks of time are limited. What I do have, though, is loads of little bits of time. I have started using those little bits for simple exercises. First one?
Blobby Body Manequins!
Yes, there is probably a more eloquent way to express what I’m doing, but it sure as heck won’t be as fun as yelling BLOBBY BODY MANEQUINS!
In an effort to train myself to draw from memory, I’m… dun dun dun… drawing from memory. These little sketchy guys below are all about trying to understand the body posture, weight distribution etc. You can see that the earlier ones the weight is way too much to the back of the figure. I’ve been gradually bringing the weight forward, but I’m not quite there yet. How the body moves is a subtle thing with lots of little moving parts.
Heck, I HAVE a body. I move it ALL THE TIME. Surely I know how it all works?
Ha. ha. ha.
Ocasionally I will do the movement myself, and then get back and try to draw it. What I won’t do is look at actual reference for this. This is all about translating what I know into a visual form. In theory, I understand how it should look.
Now its up to the practice.
Acton Art 