Practice. What a difference practice makes! Right through yesterday’s guest session on character design, I marvelled at how swiftly Priyankar Gupta created his characters. Talking all the time, explaining what he was doing, he was able to draw not one, but six full forms in fifteen minutes!
Characters, both human and non-human, are led by three parts of the body – the chest, the nose and the pelvis.
An inquisitive person tends to hunch. The whole body structure is led by the nose.
A confident person is led by the chest. This is why people in the army, or even dancers, tend to have accentuated chests.
All of us also have an aspect of us that is lazy, one that likes to sit and watch the world go by. This sort of character is led by the pelvis.
Once Priyankar had shared a few sample drawings, he asked us to draw characters of our own. Soon, the children shared sketches of chickens and grandmothers, pencils and teachers. And as the participants shared their work, we discussed the breaking of archetypes in subtle and not so subtle ways.
Priyankar ended the session with a quote from Neil Gaiman – make good art. No matter how you feel, draw. If you’re happy, angry, bored, annoyed … draw. For someone who’s barely drawn anything for years, it was an important reminder.
Draw. That’s it.
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