Many students in Japan who look at my drawings often say "it looks like it has volume" or " it looks like it's moving".
Many people have heard about "squash and stretch" in drawing. Often people will show it in the bean or flour sack/ rice bag model.
Some people apply this in a very graphic way. Nothing wrong with that, but if people are interested in making their drawings look more believable, then weight should be considered in the volumes.
In animation there is the famous "bouncing ball" model to show squash and stretch as it applies to weight and time.
With weight we have two forces applied to the forms: "expansion" or "contraction".
If we had a piece of chewing gum on the floor. It just sits there because there are no aggressive forces acting on it. However if we push in it, the forces applied need to escape so the forces push the volumes outward as the gum expands.
Let's now imagine that the gum is now stuck to the floor and we want to pull it away. Since then gum is stuck and will not release from the floor part of it will stretch and thin out.
Volumes closer to the ground tend to spread out and expand, while things pulling away tend to thin out or seemingly contract inward.
How does this apply to drawing the figure?
When I draw a figure crouching on the ground, I tend to expand the muscles and draw them rounder as I imagine the center of gravity being heavier. My lines are slower and heavier as well.
However when I draw a dancer lifting upward, I imagine the dancer pulling away from gravity and my lines are faster and thinner.
Volumes affected by gravity will be drawn rounder and heavier. Lines that are resisting gravity will be thinner.
Imagine the forces of gravity working on everything you draw.
The first drawing class at IAS Croquis of 2025 will be on January 11th with the very cool model Ai Kumamoto! SeeIASクロッキー教室予約 for details and to reserve.
Classes will be held by art instructor: Kayoko Tozawa.
Ki Innis will be in attendance as a guest and support instructor.
I have covered this topic before in a previous post but it is worth revisiting.
以前の投稿でこのトピックを取り上げたことがありますが、再検討する価値があります。
When I was a beginner at figure drawing I was often stumped with where do I start? With the face? Many beginners start with the face because that is what we consciously connect with when we look at people.
Unfortunately the face is a very insignificant when understanding the body as a whole.
残念ながら、体全体を理解すると、顔は非常に重要ではありません。
The face reveals things such as the expressions in eyes, the mouth, whether the person young or old. But these are low priority compared to the figure itself. Is their body rigid? Slumped over? Is their weight heavy in their legs? Are they twisting or leaning? What are they doing with their hands? Are they about to run?
The gesture is what the person is actually doing. The gesture is the action, not the person.
ジェスチャーは、その人が実際にしていることです。ジェスチャーは行動であり、人ではありません。
Sometimes people set out to draw the person they think they see, and not what the person is doing. If you set out to draw what the person is doing, you probably will get closer to "who" the person actually is.
As the saying goes " We are not who we say we are. We are what we do."
My suggestion is to understand the gesture as a whole from head to toe. What is the biggest and broadest understanding of what the gesture is so we can avoid assembling it together piece by piece like Frankenstein's Monster.
Each line should work together in harmony with every other line as a complete whole.
When I put down random lines on a page like this, they are meaningless.
このようなページにランダムな行を置くと、それらは無意味です。
However when I put the lines in succession each one just a little different than the last, we automatically feel that they are not only related but connected to each other. And from this we have created a "harmony".
Where do we actually start? It doesn't matter if you start with the head or the torso. What matters is that you see the whole figure in your head before drawing. For the sake of making things easier in this example I will start with the center of the body. That way I can have an idea of how far I need to connect the legs to the floor in order to have the right proportions and feeling of weight.
After that I might place in the arms because that might aid showing what the figure is expressing. Later, I place in the head but in a gestural manner. The gesture of the head shows what the character is expressing or doing. Not the face.
