Day 25: Practice sketches

One of the main reasons I started this website was to try and improve as an artist. Like any other sort of skill, that takes practice. Eventually, just doodling doesn't get it done; I have to try and seek ways to improve that are tried and true methods. For example, weight lifting is a great source of exercise and by doing that, you will get stronger. That said, if you have a set plan that you stick with, you'll see much higher gains in a shorter period of time than if you were to just go and do whatever you felt like on any given day. Keep that in mind for today's drawing.

One of the things I have always struggled with was putting individuals in interesting poses and doing more with characters than making them simply stand around. That led to today's drawing, which was actually more of a practice session for me more than a true sketch. There's a website called Pose Maniacs, and what this does is gives you various figures in a variety of poses (they currently have 40572 different ones) that you must try and sketch out in 60 seconds. By doing this exercise, I'm forced to only acknowledge the bare-basics of the figure, which amounts to mildly sophisticated stick-figure drawings. It's a great way to practice form, and so that's what today's drawing is: a series of forms that I did using this website. You'll notice some of the figures are half completed or make no sense; again, this is a learning exercise, so what you see is what I was able to do in the 60 seconds provided. They were originally much bigger, but to make the picture the actual size of the drawings would have made it enormous, so I had to re-size them.

It's not the most exciting thing, but hopefully looking at my drawings is the least important thing you'll be doing on this lovely Mother's Day :)