Today I, for some reason, set myself the task of completing the remaining sketches from my mum's People in Motion book. There were around ten of them. I was having trouble getting into he right frame of mind. To get around this I set myself a couple to do and then went and printed material for my next online course or checked what materials I would need versus what I had bought. To make things a little more fun I lifted my mug of coloured pencils rather than the usual graphite. This was surprisingly effective. Just adding that little touch of colour to my work seemed to lighten my mood and and made it all seem less serious.
To my surprise I worked quite quickly through them all and was really pleased with the results. I took the opportunity later on to read through the remaining chapters of the book too. I really love the way he describes things and how he emphasises capturing the movement rather than the body. The last chapter talked of using the clothing to capture movement and how working a sketch too much can kill off the movement in it.
The take home emphasis, having finished the book, is practise! Practise drawing people, practise capturing as much as you can as quickly as you can. Always have a sketchbook with you. Study people and how they move, constantly. Learn to recreate it from memory. And remember that certain movements will create the illusion of longer limbs or shorter torsos, draw for the movement!
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