Art & Story Blog

These are drawings I did in a day-long drawing seminar with Karl Gnass, titled Using the Force: Dynamics of the Figure. The dynamics we concentrated on were, as Karl explained, not the dynamics of Burne Hogarth, which are more about dynamic action poses and drawing the figure with lots of really well-developed muscles all working simultaneously. Perhaps if you’re drawing a superhero lifting a car or a locomotive, it might be appropriate for every muscle to be engaged, but for anyone else you might draw who isn’t a superhero, it’s an unnatural and, in several respects, non-dynamic way of portraying the figure.

Karl defines dynamics as opposing forces working together. So, for example, if you are reaching up with your right arm, your left arm is hanging down and your feet are pushing into the floor. Some muscles are stretching and pulling and others are dropped or relaxed. There is a push and pull, a give and take in the body. The dynamics reveal themselves in the anatomical elements, or stage 3 as described previously — in the muscles, bones, and joints — and so we concentrated a bit more on those elements in this seminar. Attention was still given to the first two stages — gesture (which gives you vitality) and conceptual forms (building a 3-D model of the action, not a stiff) — and their importance in describing the dynamics of the figure, as well.