Red and Blue make Purple

jurassicapark96 teakoii

Anonymous asked:

so I am havin a lil trouble with poses, specifically different body types doing poses that aren't front facing. I just can't seem to do the curves in a way that looks organic or natural? I really love you and your art so I was hopin for some advice maybe? Love you a lot oki bye -shuffles away-

answered:

THANK YOU AND HOOOO BOIII what you’re talking about is one of the most crucial principles in order to create dynamic drawings, and it’s called ~flow~!!!! The principle is really simple, but practicing takes quite some time, because it’s something you sorta just have to get the hang of. And I know you’re probably like UUUUGH, but flow is just one of those things, and there are no short cuts!!

But basically, flow is all about curves!

(((I think it’s actually called C-curve not U-curve but MEH)))

And you get them by drawing fast and looooong lines. Literally just go swoosh over the paper. Don’t think too much about getting it perfect, just. get the line down. get the flow and ~feel the flow~!!

Why practice this? Because the human body is composed of curves! You just add mass to your curves, and then you have your posture.

Let’s take a character and analyze their posture as an example:
(this is Shiro from Voltron legendary defender, (surprise surprise))

You see S-curves in his back and legs! Sure, the curves are quite subtle, but they’re still there! He also has an “over-all” sorta curve to him:

See?

In short: You can break down an entire posture from one C- or S-curve, down to many C- and S-curves! The arms follow one S/C-curve, same goes for the back, the legs etc. They all follow a curve individually, but also follow one single curve all together!

It’s easier to see the curves from a side view like this:

This is a less relaxed pose though. To draw a more relaxed pose like Shiro’s, move the hips forward and make them lean a bit backwards, like this:

Notice how I draw the legs ALMOST straight here. If you look closely though, they are actually C-curves (at least the one on the right lol)! I usually add extra curves on top later, which makes them look like an S-curve (like in the picture above this one). It’s the “over-all” curve of the legs, sorta.

Are we done? NO! There’s one more thing to remember and that is that NO GESTURE FOLLOWS A STRAIGHT LINE!!! So that’s one major mistake to look out for, completely straight lines. Because that will surely take away the flow from your drawing. Here’s an example:

And we’re talking about gesture here. Not the structure of the bones! The bones are usually straight (in the limbs at least, to some degree), but the flow that the gesture has is never straight!