YouTube Tutorial of accentuated perspective
This is my follow up to an article I wrote about the perspective tutorial I did with Irena Spector, called Sketching People with distorted Proportions and Perspectives.
Today’s article delves into my sketches and learnings from doing Koosje Koene’s “How to Draw Distorted Perspectives” tutorial.
Koosje Koene’s Distorted Perspective YouTube Tutorial
When I was searching for ideas and inspiration about how to refine my approach to making body parts or clothing more expressive and less realistic, I came across Koosje Koene’s video about how to draw distorted perspectives, which is part of her Draw Tip Tuesday series.
I did this tutorial about three years ago – I vividly remember those socks! I can’t find the sketch, but I remember at the time that I wasn’t sure I’d ever want to sketch people with warped or distorted perspectives. But here I am, all these years later, researching how to distort my perspectives.
The more I practice sketching the more I realise what a journey it is. Along the way you encounter style idea and inspiration that you don’t think are relevant or of interest, but it’s simply that it wasn’t the right time for them to be presented to me. Back when I first did this tutorial, I was still struggling with the people sketching basics, and I just wanted to sketch a person with believable proportions. I wasn’t worried about fancy bells and whistles like distorted perspectives or warped proportions.
I love sketching my lines first and then adding watercolour, but after doing Irena’s tutorial last night I decided to do a side-by-side review of her watercolour first approach, and my ink first approach (ink is also how Koosje approached this sketch).
Watercolour Shapes First
When Irena did her sketches she painted the key focal point she wanted to exaggerate in watercolour, and then added ink lines. For example, in the sketch below, she would have painted the shape of the jeans and then continued the sketch in ink lines, and then filled in more watercolour. But I deviated from that approach, and just painted all the shapes I saw in watercolour in this first stage.
This paint-shapes-only approach is actually a good way to capture a quick figure with no detail, and would work as a thumbnail sketch for a more detailed sketch. Especially in cases where I wasn’t sure what I wanted to accentuate, and I could thumbnail different versions before committing to a final ink line sketch.
Ink Lines First
Much as I love the simplicity and effectiveness of painting figures by capturing the shapes, – I love ink lines more, especially continuous line and contour lines. In this ink lines version, I was able to create additional distorted proportions on the hands. I maybe should have only done the hand on the knee bigger, and the other one smaller because it’s further away. But I just liked the idea of a set of distorted proportions for both the hands and feet. I guess something like this is just a style choice decision.
I added ink lines to the paint-first version, but I actually prefer it before I added the lines. Another way to approach this would have been to only add into lines to the areas of distorted proportions (the legs and feet), I think this would have had more impact.
I added watercolour to the ink-first version, and I’m happy with the final result. I could have spent more time on shadows and refining the face with more colour and shadow. But because I wanted I didn’t want to draw attention to the face, I wanted to dial down the detail to make sure the focal point was on the hands, legs, and feet.
Here’s a couple of useful links to connect with Koosje, and get inspired by her approach to sketching.
She has Tuesday 10 minute sketching tutorials which are so inspiring.