As a comic book artist, I must study a lot about the human figure and its movement. It’s something I have practiced over and over, and I hope it will be a constant in my life. This piece, for example, belongs to a large series of exercises I did a few years ago with charcoal and paper. I used to do a lot of them (now time doesn’t allow me to do that as much). I love drawing with that grassy and soft medium, gliding my hand over the surface of the paper. The format I used was big enough to practice my strokes with energy.
This work is mostly done with a combination of fast strokes, aided by a photo reference. For these exercises, I don’t plan the proportions of the human body deeply, nor do I study its complete and complex architecture; it’s just me, the photo reference, my instinct, and some single strokes like a signature. Then I add shadows and light using the charcoal horizontally, again in an almost mechanical way, with no need to think too much.
I really love the improvisation of it all; it’s mostly about drawing force. You can see in the drawing that there are some parts that are not finished well, like the hands and feet—my hand gesture overlooked those parts in the process. That might be a disadvantage if we weren’t talking about exercises. Indeed, this is only an exercise, and I intend to do more of them in the future, maybe with a bit more planning, but always looking to find that distortion and fast strokes that remind us that the body is a movement machine that helps us accomplish our wills.
Then, sometime in the future, I plan to create more complex paintings, adding perspectives, buildings, color, and storytelling.