Hi everyone! 😄
As you know, I'm doing a lot of sketching exercises these days, and one that I like is the gesture exercise. It involves making just a few dynamic strokes (mostly curves) to create our drawing.
The more a body is in motion, the more you will feel these curves. And that's why a body drawn in a straight line looks static. A body is always going to move in a curved way - that's one of the golden rules of animation. Only a robot or a mechanical object will move without following curves.
So drawing athletes (with dancers) is the perfect reference to see these movements and curves.
When drawing such poses, we have to ask ourselves: "Where is the point of attention? Which muscles should the athlete use and if so, which part of the body is involved?" etc.
I can understand doing a 1 minute drawing. But what I try to do is to do the drawing mostly in one minute, but after some seconds or minutes of analysis. If not, I can only practise the mechanical aspect of drawing, improving my instinct. But what I can't improve in this case is the understanding of what I'm doing, and also the repetition of it in a different context (and perhaps without reference).
So I tried both to let my arms and shoulders do the curves naturally, and to concentrate my brain on what I was doing.
Another important point when drawing bodies in motion is to look at the centre of gravity and the balance of the body. Walking and running is a constant catching up after a fall.
If you know that, you know that in some frames you can see the body unbalanced. And that's why the posture looks dynamic: the person couldn't hold this position, so the brain interprets it as a moving and therefore dynamic position.
At least if you understand how walking works, you can understand why you sometimes fall flat on your face on the pavement 😁.
Hope you will like it, see you soon for more creations!