Class Three (Drawing as Exploring)

Now we're going to move on to more complex subject matter and more challenging drawing tasks. 

Exercise Five: Rotating a form

Rotating a character or prop to show all aspects was, and still is, an essential part of the design process in 2d animation.  It is a relevant conceptual skill for 3D animation, and a challenging and informative exercise for a fine artist.  I want you to pick a subject, draw it, and then rotate it.  You might have to 'invent' the back side of your subject.  This will require some imagination and some effort to make your drawing look convincing.

Now, we could pick a box, a cylinder or a ball to rotate.  The ball and the cylinder would be hopelessly un-challenging.  So you need a subject a bit more complex.  Think about how confident you are of you skills and pick something you might manage, or, try something easy first, and then more complex.  Don't worry about success or failure, or producing a clean, slick ,clever drawing.  These should be 'working drawings'.  Think about exploring your subject through drawing.

My wife has taught English to adult students.  When looking at their writing, she can always tell who reads and who doesn't.  It doesn't matter what they read; even people who read pulp can write well.  You don't need to be snobbish about subject matter for your drawing in general, and this exercise in particular.  Draw and rotate something you will enjoy.  You might well choose an animation character, as below.  You'll recognise this figure if you've seen the wonderful Miasaki 'anime' production 'My Neighbour Toto'.  I found the image on the far left on line, and sketched it.   Notice how I've used  horizontal 'projection' lines to keep the character more or less proportionally correct in size as I turn him.

Animation characters are always carefully designed; 'built', in fact, with modules such as circles and cylinders, that help the many artists who have to animate and pose them keep them 'on model' and in the correct proportions.  Fine artists have sometimes used modular constructions to create figures in poses. An example are the well known wooden artist mannikins, like the one I have drawn and rotated below.  For this rotation I only used a single pose of a mannikin, and used my imagination to draw the two rotations on the right.

Below is a pen and wash study for a painting by a Luca Cambiaso.  This ink drawing is actually a careful study for a possible lighting scheme as well as composition; notice how the artist is carefully establishing planes that catch light and those that don't.  But if you look at his figures you can't help but notice that they are all quite 'modular'; they are composed of interchangable parts.  A blocky head shape; a torso shape; leg shapes.  It's also interesting to note, after all our study of working sculpturally  'within the box,' how 'boxy' Cambiaso's modular figures are.  His modular figures probably exist in his mind's eye, althought it's not out of the question that artists of his era had 'boxy' precursers to the modern wooden artist's mannikin that I drew above.

Luca Cambiaso, pen, brown ink and wash

In both the above rotation drawings, I've simply turned the character/subject on an axis through it's middle.  But you could try just randomly drawing different aspects of your subject as below.  In the drawings below I first resketched the  'two box' car design that I did for an earlier class and then, from that one drawing, have tried to imagine the other aspects.  This was helped by the fact that the car is ultimately a simple two box design.  I could draw the boxes together in the perspective that I wanted, and then draw the car within the box modules.  Having modular designs to work from, on paper, in a model, or in your minds eye, helps enormously with design and planning sketches for a more sustained drawing or painting.  There is an enormous similarity to the way Luca Cambiaso worked and the way a modern comic book artist or 2D animator or layout artist works.  Or, quite possibly, a modern 'realist' fine artist.

Below is a drawing made hundreds of years ago by Albrecht Durer.  Apparently he spent a lot of time trying to find a divine or magic proportion for the human figure after a trip to Italy.  But his modular drawing, below, could also be used to help rotate figures in space in the same way we are doing.

Albrecht Durer

Finally, below, here's an animation style rotation of a figure.  The figure was in fact a 3D created model of a female.  I sketched the one aspect of the figure (second from left) and then attempted to draw the other aspects by rotating her on an axis through her centre.  This is really quite challenging; like me, it's unlikely you'll be completely satisfied with your result.  But it is a wonderful drawing exercise to do.  And you won't have a supervisor to make you do it all over or revise it.

As you can imagine, it's not just a question of the more you draw, the better you get at these rotation exercises.  It's also a matter of the more you have observed, the better you get.  What I mean by that is; I have drawn...and observed the human figure, male and female, a lot over the years, and so I have accumulated some knowledge of their underlying anatomical structure which helps me in my drawing.  As well, I've drawn and therefore observed the skeleton a lot, so I know a bit about what is going on inside.  In the 'two box' car drawing above, the car is an Austin Mini 'Estate', or station wagon.  My family owned a mini when I was a kid, and I saw many of the mini estates on the roads.  They were used by the Post Office for instance.  I observed these vehicles so much, that it has probably assisted me in drawing the backside of the vehicle.  The recollection of your past observations is also extremely useful in drawing.

Negative and Positive Space

A quick visual review of negative and positive space is in order.  You're probably already aware of this simple concept which can help you see shapes outside of the 'positive' shape of the subject itself.  Review the images below; start with the photo of the subject below left and then look at the positive shape of her in black.  The white is the negative space. Look behind your subject for vertical and horizontal axis's, like windows, door jams, corners of rooms, these can help you to establish a grid of sorts in your mind's eye to create negative spaces which can help you define the positive space of your subject more accurately.

Exercise: Drawing a Skeleton

We're going to use a skeleton for a subject and try and break down it's apparently complex nature into simple modules and then rotate them.  In the process we will practice the 'eyeballing' method of measuring angles and proportions, and also be introduced to a new idea useful for creating accurate drawings; measuring and considering negative spaces.

To heck with Art.  To heck with producing nice clean pretty images for framing and hanging over a couch, with trying to produce something of value outside of the value it has in itself.  All through this course, but especially in this drawing session, we are going to concern ourselves primarily with exploring through a 'working drawing' rather than fretting about a finished product.  Ironically, if we concentrate on the work in progress and not the finished product our final drawing will probably be all the more interesting and powerful.

In the bulk of this weeks class we are going to just spend time with this complex subject drawing it and exploring it, exploring parts of it, exploring imaginary modules that we see in it. We could work on this subject day after day for weeks or months, using drawing as a method of understanding it's dimensions, proportions, structures, and shapes. Drawing as exploring.

There are art historical precedents in both structured and less structured drawing.  Below right is a page from Leonardo Da Vincis sketchbooks in which he explores the human skeleton to help understand, both artistically and scientifically, the human figure.  And below right is a meticulous and accurate etching/engraving of both skeleton and musculature by Benard Albinus from a reference book of anatomy. 

You can see by looking at the three drawings below, how useful it is to explore the skeleton.  You can see how the skeleton manifests itself on the surface of a figure; you can clearly see the shoulder blade, the curve of the ribs and and hips in the far left drawing.  In both the skeletal drawings, I've tried to just describe overall shapes, rather than get distracted by the clutter of individual bones. In the far right drawing I've tried to reduce the bones to extremely simple modular shapes.

Careful study of the skeleton will allow you, when figure drawing, to be able to see the structure below the surface of the skin. 

So, for our main exercise this class, we'll just draw from the skeleton.  You can draw the whole or just parts, like the torso, or the skull, or  knees, or pelvis. As you can see from my initial drawing, below right, this is great practice for eyeballing angles, proportions, and measuring and describing negative spaces to ensure the positive form of the subject is correct. Do notice, that in my sketchy drawing, I'm trying not to get too distracted by all the small bones.  I'm trying to get the overall form of a potential module. For example, I've tried to describe the outline and overall shape of the rib cage rather than trying to draw every single rib one at a time. In this drawing session, just try and have fun and don't have too many expectations about creating a finished drawing.  This should, again, be a 'working drawing'. 

 Class Four