Drawing/Sketching With Kimmy Nguyen: Session 4: Silhouettes!

Hey! Welcome to Session 4 of Drawing/Sketching with me! This time, we're going to focus on silhouettes.

Let's start off with an explanation. Silhouettes in art is basically a flat color figure of your drawing. So, let's say I drew a person skipping. I would color in everything, from the edge lines to the inner with a single color without the line art. All you would see then, essentially, is a shadow of the action.

Silhouettes are essential for animation and character design - if you can tell who that character is just by their shadow alone, then the creators were successful in creating an interesting and strong character, just enough so that you are able to remember them (3dtotal Publishing 70). This is essential to me, especially since I need to make impactful characters for a future comic I'm planning to make.

My main goal here is for you guys, the viewers, to be able to determine what the person I drew is doing. One of the co-creators of this book said that, "Viewers should be able to immediately understand what the character is doing at any given time" (3dtotal Publishing 70). What I'm basically trying to do here is to rid of the static poses that I usually draw and get used to drawing more dynamic poses.

My first test is to see if you guys can tell who this is (the following image is drawn by me on the computer). Hint: It's a superhero.

 If you guessed Spiderman, then you're right! While it is somewhat sloppy, the pose should get the point across.

My next test is to see if you can tell what the person in the drawing is doing.

When I look at this and forget the fact that I know what I drew them doing, then I can't really tell what this pose is. I guess it's a pretty big hint to myself that I need to get the pose more dynamic if I can't tell what the person is doing...

I sketched a few more, but I don't want to bother you guys with extra drawings that you all don't really need to see. But, that's it! The end of session 4!

My next question is my second to last... huh... Anyway, what aspect/feature about a character makes a large impact to you?
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3DTotal Publishing. Beginner's Guide to Sketching: Characters, Creatures & Concepts. Worcestershire: 3DTotal, 2015. Print.