December and January Yoga Studies
I find gesture studies of people doing yoga to be HUGELY beneficial as it breaks me away from rigid poses and forces me to think in shapes, not just anatomy.
When doing gesture sketches, I try to find a basic overall shape and work within that. I've found that with yoga, the majority of gestures are triangular- perhaps because this is one of the sturdiest shapes.
These gestures were sketched in my Blick Studio notebook with Prismacolor pencil colors, one of my favorite tools for quick sketches.
Warmups like these help reinforce a variety of important skills. By practicing anatomy daily, I can easily whip out poses at conventions or on the go, times when I might not have easy access to reference material. By continuously practicing from reference, I am training my eyes and brain to recognize what is 'right'. By producing studies daily, I am training my hands to draw, so even when I'm not feeling well, I can still produce consistent work. Daily study is an investment in my career as an artist, and I highly recommend it if you are serious about pursuing this line of work.
During this line of study, it's perfectly acceptable to make mistakes- make lots of them. Get as many mistakes out of the way as possible. One of the reasons I enjoy working in color pencil is it's relative permanence- I cannot easily erase, so I'm forced to either continue or abandon. This is freeing for me- it's more difficult to waste time on a piece that's failing, I am allowed to be more decisive about what works and what doesn't.
You don't have to enjoy yoga to enjoy using yoga as inspiration and reference for your warmups, although I'm sure it would help. There are plenty of resources and charts available online to use as reference, simply Google 'yoga poses' and away you go!
When doing gesture sketches, I try to find a basic overall shape and work within that. I've found that with yoga, the majority of gestures are triangular- perhaps because this is one of the sturdiest shapes.
These gestures were sketched in my Blick Studio notebook with Prismacolor pencil colors, one of my favorite tools for quick sketches.
Warmups like these help reinforce a variety of important skills. By practicing anatomy daily, I can easily whip out poses at conventions or on the go, times when I might not have easy access to reference material. By continuously practicing from reference, I am training my eyes and brain to recognize what is 'right'. By producing studies daily, I am training my hands to draw, so even when I'm not feeling well, I can still produce consistent work. Daily study is an investment in my career as an artist, and I highly recommend it if you are serious about pursuing this line of work.
During this line of study, it's perfectly acceptable to make mistakes- make lots of them. Get as many mistakes out of the way as possible. One of the reasons I enjoy working in color pencil is it's relative permanence- I cannot easily erase, so I'm forced to either continue or abandon. This is freeing for me- it's more difficult to waste time on a piece that's failing, I am allowed to be more decisive about what works and what doesn't.
You don't have to enjoy yoga to enjoy using yoga as inspiration and reference for your warmups, although I'm sure it would help. There are plenty of resources and charts available online to use as reference, simply Google 'yoga poses' and away you go!
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