Five Minute Sketches Part 1

I was curious how far I could get by limiting myself to no more then 5 minutes per figure. In order to sketch them out quickly, I could only rough in the most basic of gestures before refining. On most of them, I started with the nose to get the tilt and angle of the head, moved to the left eye, then the right, put in the hair and the mouth, and then shaped out the rest of the head structure. Once that was in place I loosely drew out the body, building the clothes on top. For the most part I didn't get to the hands, and when I did, I didn't have nearly enough time to spend on them.

There were three main points I tried to emphasize in doing these:

• A likeness
• Their expression/emotion (which included getting the tilt)
• Correct Proportions from one figure to the next

These are all skills I need to refine much more. In doing these I did some ink washes, some charcoal, mostly pencil and didn't let myself get into color, as the two times I tried were a horrible disaster with the five minute time limit.

What I loved about this exercise is I ended up with roughly 80 drawings over the course of 2 and a half days, and I really could feel myself improving. Knowing that this is exactly the sort of schedule that any professional illustrator, comic artist, concept artist, or animator need to keep up on a daily basis makes me happy.