The Sketch Loose Method for People and Figures

This is a space for your own reflection - so you can look back at your answers when you have finished and see just how far you have come.

I'll share with you my progress, and I'd love to hear from you what you'd like to achieve in this course.

In these first two videos we're going to set our 'people sketching' baseline - there are two 10 minute challenges to complete. If you need longer though, please do take longer...

However...

Please keep within the spirit of the challenge - the aim isn't to spend hours, it is to be quick, learn where we make mistakes and learn where we create magic. And most of all, to loosen up and throw off the mental shackles a little bit.

Firstly we're going to focus on adding people to scenes. A key idea here is going to be avoiding 'over-valuing' our people and understanding the simplicity and abstraction that we can use to still effectively capture the people we wish.

There are two challenges at the end of this section, but before that a series of 'concept lessons' - these are quite fast paced, with lots of ideas your could try out (if you wish) within them.

Don't forget the handout has all this information presented in a different way.

In these two challenges we're going to put those concept lessons into action.

It's amazing how much of a story simple shapes and abstract colours can tell - this time we're taking longer than ten minutes (wahoo!), but that's not an excuse to start overworking and overvaluing.

Less in more, as is often said.

In this section we'll examine the 'rules' that you might often hear about.

From perspective, to proportions - these are the things that people find absolutely key to know, and often a lack of knowledge in these areas is cited as the reason why a sketch or drawing hasn't worked.

I'm also going to tell you the limitations of all these rules, because actually, as we'll discover rules are great, until humans become unique and interesting individuals! Which, fortunately, they always are.

In this penultimate few challenges we are facing our most challenging scenes yet. But we can now incorporate all the ideas we've look at, all the concepts, all the mistakes and bits of magic.

Our first challenge will be aiming towards realism, our second will be back towards adding people into the scene but with a little more thought and refinement.

I'm looking forward to seeing just how well you do!

In all these lessons so far, we have covered a lot of rules, tried to be accurate, and whilst we have loosened up in places we haven't explicitly talked about 'how' to loosen up, or focus on enjoyment of our art.

In reality, our art should (for most of us) be done as a mental break, enjoyment, relaxation or otherwise be a positive contributor to our life.

In this final section, we'll talk about how that might be achieved.

Well done, you've made it through.

Thank you so much for making it through with me - in this section we'll look at how far you've come, and the next steps you might want to take on your sketching journey.