Sketching week 7 silhouettes are made of these….

Imagine you are drawing a silhouette, with your finger, ok, a stickman in frontal view, not difficult, everybody will see it’s a human. Well done!

Lets up the game a bit: draw, with your finger, the silhouette of your frontal stickman eating a sandwich….. now that becomes a bit of a problem: if he’s biting into the sandwich you can’t tell, because his chest and the sandwich are one and a single spot in the silhouette!

What to do? If you want it to be clear that this is a man eating a sandwich, let’s put him in three quarters, open his mouth, teeth showing, and put a sandwich in his hand… all this in silhouette, but it should be far more readable and understandable.

You have guessed what the topic of the week is, and yes, a shape with no inside detail forces you to think more about what you want the viewer to notice.

There are lots of good texts and examples about this in animation books and articles, google for them. But for now, let’s concentrate on what Glenn want us to do: silhouette, but mainly with wash.

Of course with my luck this is the week when the heat becomes intolerable (and at levels never experienced before) in Paris where I live (100°F -nothing to a californian I’m sure, but to a parisian with no pool, no air conditioning and no fan…. I’ve never seen so many people going for a walk in the frozen food shop next door!).

I decided to forget about wash and use my usual tools – if, when you take a shower, you don’t need to dry yourself cause you are dry the moment you step out of the bathroom, it means your wash will dry the minute it touches the paper!)

Here is “the thing”

 

Glenn’s verdict was: not spontaneous enough, the bum with the rucksack and heavy coat (in this heat!!!) reminds him of WWII sketches but it’s far too elaborate to be a mere sketch. The others, done in marker, are also not spontaneous enough.

In short: Glenn reminds me that I did years of sumi painting (asian brush) and asian calligraphy and it would be interesting to see what I could to with a brush – any brush – and free wash, carefree, spontaneous.

Was the heat an excuse to avoid using wash? well….. probably a bit, I used to be quite proficient with a Chinese or Japanese brush but that was years ago and I may be afraid of seeing how much I’ve forgotten.

In any case: I must use the brush and wash! even with a water brush (brush pen with the handle containing water or ink or whatever you want).

I guess there is no escaping what scares us – Glenn sees through our work and in this case once again saw what would be beneficial for me: going back to my “roots” (I’m not asian at all – unless I’m in front of asian food :-D) meaning my years of dedicated calligraphy and brush painting. Got to make the link between now and then.

Scary? yes.

Is that good? well it’s uncomfortable, so I’d say…. yes it is!

See you next time and…

Draw draw draw!

… and have fun doing it!