When I was in Sheridan’s classical animation program in the 1990s, I did a lot of life drawing. It was my favourite aspect of a very intense 3 year program of drawing. The focus was on capturing movement, expressive poses, life. My instructors borrowed heavily from the book The Natural Way to Draw, which is a very interesting book about drawing as well as a one year recipe for learning how to draw. I have heard from artists that have done this one year and they report that it much improved their drawing abilities. I teach some of the concepts in this book now. Probably the most popular idea is what I am describing above: gesture drawing. This kind of drawing is about looking and quickly connecting with something essential about your subject: a shape, an energy, an attitude. Then, draw that. In 5 or 10 or 20 seconds. Seems fast, but with some practice you can realize that you can draw a lot in that time, if you understand what is essential to see and draw.
It’s hard to say if this approach is best done in the beginning, when you don’t know how to draw or later, after learning some basics. I teach it later because I think it’s helpful to figure out what are some of the things you could be looking for in drawing something fast: basic shapes, negative spaces, angles, curves, shadow areas, etc.
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