Sketchbook: Lines of action

Been having a little look into the basics of posing in the hopes of helping my stiff clean up situation. The crux of strong, energetic posing is all about weight and balance so I'm revising 'lines of action' —an initial line drawn to express the momentum of a pose and "describe the force moving through the body."  

I tried copying some of the illustrations on the examples to see if I could try to understand how the line placement corresponded to the body but I don't think it really got me very far. Copying somebody else's lines doesn't really help you to understand the subject. I wasn't feeling the weight of what I was drawing at all. I tried a few experiments of my own, using poses from www.posemaniacs.com (Great drawing tool if you're not already familiar with it!)

Posemaniacs is a great resource but unfortunately it's not the same as drawing from life. It's helpful to understand the body and anatomy a little better but a lot of the poses are quite stiff. Still, I think it would be a useful experiment to try and exaggerate some of the poses!

I think that a large part of my problem lies in relying on sketchy lines to help a pose feel powerful, rather than keeping the actual feel of the overall drawing energetic. Because my initial posing and lines are a bit weak, my clean ups tend to look static and uninteresting. A good pose should be identifiable "feel" the same, even when reduced to a silhouette. If I can begin to fully understand weight and balance and figure out how to better express that in my drawings I think I'll be on the right track.

Similar to what we did in life drawing I think I need to start committing myself to drawing using less lines. I need to be able to capture the feeling and weight of a pose in as few lines as possible, which should hopefully serve to give my initial drawings more strength.