Character Observation Sketches from Devon | Building Mileage for Visual Development

Over the last weekend I filled a sketchbook with character observation sketches while visiting Devon with friends.

I took the opportunity to practice gesture drawing and some character design on the spot, from life. I drew my friends playing cards and table tennis, table tennis of course being an activity that doesn't give you much time to draw a still pose. It's this skill of imprinting a pose in your head in a split second and then almost drawing what your memory has retained, even if they drawing takes 5-10 seconds.

Looking for Characters

One thing I've realised while moving from fine art towards visual development is that observation changes.

When painting portraits, I'm often trying to describe a person's exact appearance.

When sketching for character design, I'm asking slightly different questions.

• Which shapes make this person recognisable?

• What's the first thing I notice?

• How can I simplify the pose?

• What exaggeration would make them more memorable?

Those questions completely change the drawing.

Instead of copying every feature, I'm searching for the visual idea behind the person and their body language and mannerisms.

What Character Observation Sketches Teach You

Many of these sketches won't become finished illustrations but they're great to practice. I read someone once say that we all have 10,000 bad drawings in us so the quicker you can get them out, the quicker you can get to the good ones... maybe not that many, that seems a bit harsh...

My favourite drawings though will feed future projects.

I've found that character ideas become much stronger when they're grounded in real observation rather than invented entirely from imagination.

The faces, postures and gestures collected in these sketchbooks become a visual library that I can draw upon later.

Drawing Every Day

One thing I want to develop over the coming months is consistency.

Not every sketch needs to be successful but I think the important part is building mileage.

Hopefully, looking back over these sketchbooks in a year's time, I'll be able to see just how much they've influenced my character design work, but what's key is understanding where I (one) needs to improve and then practicing that 'thing' in particular. I guess that's the same for any discipline though.

Anyway thank you for reading my thoughts!

If you'd like to follow the journey, I'll continue sharing sketchbooks, visual development studies and character design explorations here on the blog, as well as on YouTube, Instagram and LinkedIn.

- James