Loosen Up!

My main goal with my drawings this year is to loosen my line work and give more animation to the figure.  Since my current project this semester is a sports-themed graphic novel, having an understanding of the figure in motion as well as utilizing dramatic perspectives and character expressions, are key for making this project engaging and successful to my viewers.  Many early studies of Rayne and Riza (the two main characters of my story) were stiff, flat, and generic.  I am also influenced from the manga style.  I have been trying to broaden my range with my artist research outside of just manga and comic artists.  Some of the fine artists I've researched so far include:  Isabel Bishop (loose line work), Michael Angelo (figure studies = amazing), Jacopo Pontormo (longation of the figure), and Francisco de Goya (narrative prints).  Some of the manga/comic artists I'm looking at include:  Ashley Wood (Metal Gear Solid), Frank Miller (Sin City, of course), Yasuhiro Nightow (Trigun), Marjane Satrapi (Persepolis), and Ito Oogure (Air Gear).

In my character concept art, I am still experiencing problems with proportions, foreshortening, motion, and expressions of the characters.  While my goal isn't to render them realistically in the graphic novel, I still want them to be believable to the viewer.  It was for these reasons that I joined drawing co op at the beginning of the semester.  My inventing skills are still inexperienced and underdeveloped, so I need a model for referencing my characters and their poses.  I also want to continue studying the human form so I can be more expressive with it and capture the energy of my characters in my work.

I also use quick gesture poses to help me draw my characters in these same poses later.  I began doing more gestures outside of drawing co op to get specific poses I wanted to illustrate my characters in.  Gesture drawings have also been helping me loosen my line work.

I also discovered this semester that I really like sketching in colored pencil rather than just pencil.  I feel more freedom with exploring the form of the figure and how I want it on the page.  Colored pencil also cannot be easily erased, so I'm not tempted to fix every line that doesn't work.  Using the colors also helps me build value in my sketches.  This makes me less hesitant to add in the ink marks over the finished colored pencil sketch.  I'm enjoying the interaction between colored pencil and ink.