For those who have been sketching in the field for a while, what’s your process for capturing things? Every time I try I can’t get anything reasonable because while I’m busy trying to get proportions or poses right the subjects move and I’m lost.
I think I get too worried about accuracy and I struggle to memorise the details when out in nature…
When animals move, make a new drawing for the new posture, if they come back to some usual posture, go back to it on your drawings, in the end the most detailed drawing will be the most typical posture.
That’s a great tip!
The trick is to train your visual memory to capture the gesture first, then the proportions, then a little detail.
Try sketching people on TV to build up your visual memory and speed. Start with newscasters that keep extended poses - then work up to more active characters. Remember, gesture (what the body is doing in simple, movement lines), then proportion (head to body, body to legs, etc.), then add just a little detail. From there draw your pet if you have one! Also - by drawing from photos and getting the feel for the shapes and proportions of the animals you want to draw in life, you’re putting that into your visual memory for future use.
Note about the “outline” of an object: We get too worried about making the outside edge of our drawing be “perfect” and somehow it never is… a few light sketchy marks hinting at the outer edge feels more alive and accurate. So when you’re fussing and erasing and redrawing the outline and it gets smudgy and thick and dark… you know you’re overworking it.
Hope this helps…
I can’t speak for everyone, but I think that was a terrific little tutorial! Thanks so much for posting it.
(And congrats on your first post - although by now, you’ve likely done more, I’m a little late in seeing the post!)
I don’t do mine in the field but I do draw nature (mostly birds). A while back I did this project were I drew every heron species in Florida here are my best from that plus a new drawing for birds of prey lol!!
here’s a moth i drew in ms paint!
Nice watercolor effect.