Irena Spector Tutorial
This article contains my sketches and learnings from doing the following distorted perspective tutorial:
- Irena Spector’s Making Sketches Expressive through Proportions
Just recently I’ve been playing around with exaggerated and distorted perspectives in my people sketches. I’ve been looking for opportunities to purposely sketch certain elements out of proportion. To move away from capturing realism. And move towards capturing my own interpretation of reality.
Sketching People with Warped Perspectives
Here’s some recent examples of urban sketches and studio sketches where I’ve pushed perspectives or proportions beyond the realms of reality, in order to create a more expressive or emotive sketch:
When you alter proportions, it lets you draw attention to your subject’s character or mindset, and it also a way of adding a dash of humour to a sketch. This sketching style choice can alter the mood of a sketch, and I think it works well in conjunction with my love of bright colours.
It seems like pushing my colour choices from reality to impressionistic was my first step of moving away from capturing exactly what I’m seeing, towards sketching expressive interpretations of reality. The next step is messing with proportions.
It’s all part of this wonderful journey of finding my sketching style.
Regina Spector’s Making Sketches Expressive through Proportions Tutorial (on Patreon)
Although I’ve been doing some self-directed experimentation with perspectives and proportions, I was enticed to join an expressive proportions tutorial by Irena Spector. Even thought Irena’s sketching style is very different from my own, I thought I’d give this tutorial was worth a look. I think it’s always good to get out of your comfort zone and explore different sketching styles. It’s a good way to see what’s relevant and inspirational, and what you can cross off your list.
After sketching a person with continuous line holding a big balloon to capture accurate proportions, we sketched another person in the scene using distorted proportions (small head and big coat, then, small head and long legs).
Irena’s approach to sketching these figures is to first paint the biggest shape in watercolour to capture the gesture, and then add ink lines to the figure, and then more watercolour. In the sketch of the lady with the shopping trolley, my favourite part of the sketch is the line-only sketch of the face of the figure on the left. This simple face works really well in contrast with the busyness of the rest of the sketch. I almost always add colour to my faces, but I think I’m going to try to do this less-is-more approach in future sketches, when the focal point is on the clothing or an object, rather than the face.
Legs are a good subject to distort or render oversized, especially on seated figures where the legs are thrusted forward and away from the body, and the key is to make sure the body and head have reduced proportions to accentuate that distortion of the legs. Irena had another go at sketching this seated person but switching the focus to a bigger body and shorter legs, but this didn’t appeal to me. So I focused on create an oversized hands grasping an oversized bag, because this seemed like a more interesting story to tell. I didn’t sketch it very well because we were running out of time, but I like this concept of distorting an object, not just a body part. I did this approach a couple of weeks ago with an old guy wrapped around a huge bag of crips. No matter whether people are gripping a phone, resting their hands on a lap or table, or grabbing an object or another person – I love sketching oversized hands.
Although the style of sketching in this tutorial wasn’t one I want to adopt, it was fun to try, and maybe in the future I’ll be urban sketching, and I’ll sketch a person in this big-gestural-shape first approach, or connect a simple line drawing of a face, with a complex or colourful sketch of a person.
Here’s a couple of useful links to connect with Koosje, and get inspired by her approach to sketching.
Other Artists Who Sketch Warped Proportions
Artist Lapin sketches people with oversized heads, and Emma Pettit likes to distort legs, feet, and hands, and that’s a core part of their sketching style.
Here’s a recent sketch I did where the posture in the photo lent itself beautifully to having a slightly distorted perspective. I think the sketch would have worked better if I’d made the proportions of the head smaller, which would have accentuate an elongated body, but it still works with just the lower legs and feet being being slightly out of proportion.
I like the idea of exaggerating specific parts of a the anatomy to accentuate a posture, I think it’s a style I’d employ occasionally, not something that I want to do all the time. I want the distortion to be an organic part of the scene I’m sketching. When it’s relevant. Not something that’s forced onto every situation.
After doing this Irena Spector tutorial I explored the topic further by doing a Koosje Koene’s Distorted Perspective YouTube Tutorial.
