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How did you guys learn to draw poses? I'm trying to learn to draw different poses. Right now I'm drawing poses from reference, and then trying to draw them again from memory. I spend more time looking for good poses or poses that have anatomy in the style I'm looking to imitate, than actual drawing. Is this the way that comic book artist go about learning how to draw? Should I buy a mannequin? Thanks.
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Animation.
Animation drawings are largely one of three types: Animators, assistants, in-betweeners. Animators do "extremes" farthest left, right, up or down, poses pushed as far as they can go and beyond. Assistants do "breakdowns" which are generally smack in the middle of the extremes and are the worst poses for action because all action has been removed. In-betweeners do everything else. Learn the difference between the three and you'll know which type to go for at any particular time. Sometimes you want wild action, sometimes mild action, sometimes no action.
Animation will teach you to build figures from simplified forms (you can always get more complicated later) and how to show balance, imbalance, weight, mass, character...
Preston Blair's ANIMATION should be considered as essential to comics art as are the works of Andrew Loomis. -
I'm tempted to buy this pose book I found on Amazon.
It has lots of comic style poses in different angles so I won't need to spend most of my drawing time looking for references.
The anatomy isn't really 100% accurate, but I can always try to improve and adjust it over time when I get better at drawing.Comment
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I guess yes depending on what you want to draw. So, yeah, sometimes we spend hours and hours looking for a single pose for reference and inspiration, sometimes for a quick drawing that will take only some minutes and won't make a big difference in the work as whole.Originally posted by leosev View Post
At least now we've got Internet to help. I've seen pictures of old manga artists with tons of books to draw landscapes, vehicles, weapons and all.
Like this one?Originally posted by leosev View Post
I don't have one but I think they might be pretty useful. I'm considering getting one for years! lol
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If you’re having a hard time finding poses, I’d recommend reference.pictures. I posted about it somewhere else on this board a while ago. Super cheap packs of 100s/thousands of reference pictures. I haven’t bought any of the poses ones but I did get the expressions and hands packs and they’ve been super helpful.Originally posted by leosev View Post
Most of the packs have a visible sample of what you’re getting.Comment
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Well, only he can clarify this but when he said he spends more time looking for it, I understood that he was looking for these reference pictures themselves.Originally posted by Spiffychicken View Post
Sometimes it's hard to find them.Comment
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I should have clarified.Originally posted by extra skater View Post
“reference.pictures” is a web address. They sell all sorts of reference picture packages.Comment
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My personal answer is "I haven't yet". But from my experience of trying to learn, there has to be an element of being able to see the pose in your head – visualising generally what you want the person to be doing. ie, person leaning against a lamp-post from a low front angle, or "A bird's eye view of Captain America punching Hitler".Originally posted by leosev View Post
So once you can see it in your head, the hard part is to get it on paper – that's where you need to be able to create form, have some idea of how a human body can bend, what the relative sizes of bits of the body are, which bit goes in front of the other bits, etc etc (I hesitate to use the word anatomy as the party line is 'you don't need to learn anatomy' – I have some problems with that, but that's for another discussion). For that, you've just got to study – life drawing, how to draw books (Loomis and Blair high on the list as Smitty mentions), looking at other artists, looking in the mirror. All the standard good stuff.Comment
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Originally posted by leosev View Post
I had gone through the same dilemma.
What helped me get out of the loop was thinking in terms of line of action, body mechanics, and understanding importance of spine. And also searching and reading a bunch, a BUNCH of Smitty's posts.
Now I don't look at photo references much. They are too boring/realistic and not suitable for dynamically pushed poses in comics anyways.
Photos are great for rendering though when trying to understand how lights/shadows work. But then comic artists don't have as much time to be perfect as illustrators. Many comic artists tend to just wing it. But that comes from understanding how lights work.
One other book that helped me was "Complete Guide to Drawing from Life " which was recommended by Smitty as well.
Good luck.
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Bridgman is good – I don't think he hits all the fundamentals as well as Loomis, but that's still a great book. I think I read that Bridgman was one of Loomis teachers, so his stuff was presumably built on by Loomis when he tackled his first book.Originally posted by humble-tomato View Post
leosev I've watched a few videos by Mike Mattesi, who has a system he calls 'Force Drawing' (or Drawing Force, can't remember exactly) which as far as I can tell is just him putting a branding on the idea that you should push and exaggerate the line of action (or direction of force) when you are doing your gestural/life sketches. As an addendum to what humble-tomato mentioned, it may be the bridge between taking not-so-dynamic found poses, and simplifying and paring them down to the point where they can be jumping off points for drawing from imagination.
That said, I didn't really enjoy his teaching style, so I haven't returned to it fwiw.Comment
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Gesture and figure drawing really helped me. Gesture drawing was rough for me at first but I remember it helped watching a video from Ctrl Alt Paint about doing the drawings using the Loomis anatomy model.Comment
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