Sketching dynamic illustrations

I have always tried to make my drawings as dynamic as possible. When I started at the studio Pinligt Selskab, many of the other freelance illustrators came from an animation background. I began my professional career doing color for one of them: Kim Hagen. He is a really cool Danish animator, and had a regular comic book series in a Lego magazine. Everything he drew was very, very dynamic. I remember looking at my own drawings and thinking how flat they seemed compared to his. He taught me how to push things and use foreshortening to enhance depth.

I was envious of all the artists with an animation background. They all seemed to have a foundation of character drawing skills that I lacked, and were able to sketch in a sort of effortless way. I am not trying to sell myself short here. I still feel very much a lack of drawing foundation when I sketch and I try to compensate for that in every way. I know exactly what my shortcomings are. But knowing that makes me double down hard on it, and make sure I don't fall through.

I learned drawing from copying my idols, not from going to art school. But that also gave me a constant sense of restlessness. I have been trying to change the perception of me lacking something into a strength, trying to see how it could somehow be turned into something useful. I noticed one thing specifically. Rather than constructing figures with helping lines, I tend to sketch in shapes and “blobs''. There is a huge difference between what goes on in my head, and what goes on visually on the paper. It feels more controlled in my mind, than the more randomly searching lines going down on paper.

I tend to block in shapes in the beginning in order to capture mass rather than focusing on an outline. That forces me to think in silhouette blocks and shapes rather than the initially unimportant details. Later, when I feel like the mass is right I go over the same shapes again with line and refine the “blobs” into a foreshortened leg or a branch or a headpiece or face.
This way of sketching in blobs or blocks or shapes or whatever you wanna call it, makes me focus on the dynamic anatomy and not trying to solve it right away. I just go with whatever I feel is right, sometimes even not thinking about it, in stead trying to capture an interesting language of shapes. Once I have shaped something useful, I will go in and try to solve the difficult anatomy. This dynamic shape sketching makes me explore things that my rational mind would deem too difficult or problematic.

That may sound a little too loose and hippie like, and perhaps it's not the whole truth. After all I do usually have a pretty clear image in my head of what I want to do before I even start sketching. I always take some time to flesh out the idea in my mind, including the story line and the angle of what I want to sketch out, before putting pencil to paper. But when it comes to nailing it down, I do want to allow myself some space to explore and let inspiration do it's magic too. So usually I end up using the 4th or 5th sketch I make. The ones that come after I have tried the obvious “first takes”.

What it all boils down to, is that sketching is the phase of illustration where you should be as open, and as least constrained, as possible. Loosen up, let the mind wander and see what it comes up with.