There are a few concepts that you could learn and apply them to boring shapes to
make them exciting.
But in this lesson, I'm gonna specifically show you how you can use
these concepts to draw dynamic shapes.
By the way, in my drawing basics course at proko.com slash drawing, I have a
bunch more premium videos on how you can improve your shapes.
In that course, I cover all the fundamentals you need to be fluent at the
visual language.
You'll get a really good foundation for drawing with good line quality, drawing
accurate and interesting shapes, constructing perspective intuitively and
of course, shading.
So, go check it out at proko.com slash drawing.
If you're a beginner and you're new to shape design, these concepts are pretty
easy to understand and they're easy to implement in your drawing and they have a
huge impact on turning your boring shapes into interesting shapes.
So, first of all, in order to understand dynamic shapes, we need to understand
gesture.
I have another lesson on gesture in my figure drawing course.
Gesture is the movement, it's the flow, but it's also the pose, the idea of what
is happening, of what this object is doing.
If we take this fish, we could show the gesture of this fish with a single line.
We could put more lines in there that will explain the gesture of the
individual parts.
But this single line does explain how this fish is moving, in what direction,
how much is it curving.
But the gesture is not the line itself.
The line just represents the gesture.
The same gesture can be represented with two lines or a big spirally line that
kind of goes around the form but still shows the big curvature.
It can also be showed with just a bunch of squiggly lines.
So, with a figure drawing, you have that action line, it's describing the big
movement through the body, but then the neck also has gesture.
The other arm has gesture.
Both of the legs have a gesture to them.
Then we can dive in deeper and as we describe the individual muscles, those
also will flow with the gesture.
So, everything has a gesture.
And a very common misconception about gesture is that gesture is always curvy
or wavy.
But that's not true.
When we use only curves to draw people and animals, we end up with noodle
people.
You know, people that are lacking structure because our bones are visible
on the surface and they indicate structure.
Those are the areas where we typically indicate those straight lines, those
corners, the elbows, the knees and that contrast between parts that are moving,
parts that are giving that structure, the stability.
The whole thing feels much more balanced.
A common question that I got in my figure drawing class is how do we show the
gesture
of somebody that's just standing up straight, not bending in any way.
They're symmetrical and they're just looking straight at us.
Where's the gesture?
Where's the movement?
This painting by Leyendecker shows a rigid pose.
The gesture or the idea is stability and strength.
So, the pose itself is not dynamic but it still looks interesting.
It still looks like this person is alive and that is because the shapes within are
dynamic.
So, let's start with a boring shape and add one concept at a time to make it more
and more interesting.
So, I'm gonna start with this kind of a pill.
So, we have a basically a cylinder.
It's a little bit bloated and I specifically bloated it because I want to
talk about these peaks of the curve.
In this shape, the peaks, not only are they right in the middle, but they're
also horizontally across from each other, which you know, creates a vertical and a
horizontal.
So now, let's see what happens when we shift these peaks.
Still basically just vertical.
in the axis, but we're starting to have a very subtle feeling of some motion, some
energy in there.
It feels like something's inside kind of pushing in this area going up and
something else is pushing this way going down.
And so now we have these peaks and they're at a diagonal and what that does
is it suddenly
takes away some of that stability because this is more curvy at the top.
It creates a sense of this direction, this flow here and the opposite
So, these shapes are almost identical if we overlay them, but that really small
subtle difference suddenly adds interest.
So, some people ask, how can you create dynamic interesting shapes when you're
trying to draw something from life and try to make it as realistic as possible?
Well, you're never really capturing it perfectly.
And oftentimes, we will push things towards being more stable, slightly more
boring, more vertical horizontal towards the center.
Our brain just naturally does that.
Usually, the best realistic drawings push shapes towards something like this,
towards being a little bit more dynamic, a little bit more interesting but you
can't really tell.
So, we're starting to play with this concept of contrast on the two sides.
Very subtle contrast but we're starting to kind of mess with that.
Another thing we can do is now push it a little bit further and instead of keeping
this vertical now, now let's have the whole thing just flow much more clearly.
So, we're gonna give this left side a curve.
And we're going to give the right side the opposite curve.
And so now, clearly, this is no longer a vertical axis.
Now, the gesture or the action line of this thing is this.
This is flowing.
We can totally sense the flow of the energy going through it this way.
And we also have much more contrast between the two sides.
But we can make this feel even more energetic if we add more tension because
this curve doesn't really imply that this is actually moving.
This could be a hard object like a macaroni or something that it's not
actually bending, that's just the shape that it is.
So now, if we take the same curve on the left,
But instead of curving this way, we're gonna keep this bloated cylinder type of
thing but we're going to give it a pinch.
Now we're building up tension right here.
Now it feels like we're actually bending it and there's a buildup of energy going
on in here.
It feels like if we let go, it's like a spring, it'll just go right back to being
vertical.
Intense the angle, the smaller the angle is here, the more tension there is.
Like if we gave something like this, like that real crazy angle, this feels like
there's even more tension in this area, right?
Like we're just completely bending that thing.
And it also kind of has a sense that this whole thing is being pushed
This way.
Imagine that this is a punching bag and someone punches it.
When this happens, it also kind of has the effect of being pushed in this
direction.
So, there's two forces at play here.
You have this kind of general flow through the axis this way but you also
have the feeling that it's being pushed this way.
So, there's a lot of implied energy here.
Now, how else can we make this even more interesting, even more dynamic?
Well, we've been breaking the symmetry left to right.
But, we still have symmetry up and down, right?
This top portion is basically a mirror of this bottom portion.
We could just flip it at this horizontal axis and it'll become this.
So, the next thing we can do is change up the size relationships of the top and
bottom.
We can also just change the shapes.
So, instead of just being very kind of bloated rectangles, we can make one of
them have a... Let's inject a straight in here.
Let's say this is a straight, right?
So, we're adding contrast in the type of line.
We're not just using C curves and S curves.
We're also now adding suddenly structure on this side, stability.
And then a slightly curved and larger shape at the bottom.
So, now we have a basically an asymmetrical shape at any axis, right?
Top and down, left and right, there's no symmetry here.
So, all these concepts, they're a balance.
You know, these are just ingredients for you to play with and put together in the
way that makes sense for whatever it is that you're drawing.
You put symmetry in the parts of your drawing that need that symmetry, that
stability and then you imply flow and energy in other parts through the other
elements around that stable structure and the drawing then becomes interesting.
So, we took away the symmetry here but there is still a little bit of symmetry,
right?
There is still this kind of opposite symmetry.
This corner, this valley
It's pretty much straight across the peak.
We could add even more variety, add even more dynamism to this whole thing if we
move this point either up or down because we're implying this motion to be
perfectly horizontal.
If we move this up, it'll feel like this force is going upward.
If we move this down, it'll feel like this is pinching it and it's pushing
downward.
Okay, so now when you compare these two shapes, this one totally feels like it's
kind of moving in this direction and this one feels like it's moving upward just by
shifting this peak a little bit.
So, the theme here so far has been contrast between the different sides.
You know, here we had the contrast between the peaks where they are.
Here there's contrast between these two because this is one long more relaxed
curve and this one's
It's much more intense and it's smaller and they're also not mirroring each
other, so there's a little bit of contrast.
Here, there's a lot more contrast with tension, right?
We built up tension versus relaxed flow.
Here, we've added contrast between straight and curve and contrast of size.
And then here, we took it up a notch by changing the levels of the peaks here.
And this brings up to the next concept which is contrast of detail.
A lot of times when you see really amazing designers design their shapes,
you'll often see areas in a shape that feel very simple and then other areas of
the shape that have the complexity to them.
So, if we take our shape, already we have more complexity on the right side than on
the left.
This is one real simple flowing curve, whereas this is
Two lines, it's got a corner, this is a straight, this is a little bit of a curve
and there's a size difference.
There's a lot more complexity going on here.
But let's take this up a notch and let's make this side even more complex.
So there's our shape so far.
And now let's exaggerate this pinch with a little bit more detail.
We already have one corner but let's add an even bigger zigzag in here to
exaggerate that tension.
So now we're starting to get a very clear point of interest.
This is our focal point.
When a viewer looks at this shape, this is gonna be the first thing they're gonna
look at.
This is the most exciting part of it.
It's got the most detail, it's got the most tension, it's like, oh, what's gonna
happen in that area?
We can add even more complexity to it by starting to build up more details in
here.
And it could be anything, right?
But let's just put another triangle in there.
Another one in here.
And now this area generally just feels much more complicated.
It's clearly the area that we're going to look at and if we start trying to balance
out this complexity and start putting stuff on this side, we're going to lose
that excitement because now we're competing for attention whereas this is
such a clear statement.
And the final concept which I kind of touched a little bit is just making
Things more angled.
So, I mentioned it here where the motion seemed like it was going horizontal and
it makes it just a little bit more dynamic, a little bit more interesting
when we push that energy upward.
But the general idea here is that
A vertical or a horizontal line or just angle of anything generally feels more
stable.
A structure, you know, a house, a building, a car, those are very stable.
They're not falling.
But as soon as you lean a house a little bit to the side, you got the leaning
tower of pizza, when you look at it, you kind of feel a little tense, right?
There's some energy there.
This thing feels like it's falling and falling is movement.
So, just changing the angle from a vertical to a diagonal
So, that alone makes something, a shape more dynamic.
So, I could just take this boring pill shape and angle it a little bit and it is
suddenly more dynamic.
I would say that this kind of feels like it's slightly diagonal but we could make
it even more so.
And you can't just apply these concepts however it makes the shape look more
dynamic because sometimes you could push something in a direction where now that
shape made the thing you're drawing lose its function.
It no longer is the thing that it is.
And that's where anatomy comes in, where we understand what the body is, what it's
doing, why it works this way.
And so, now our form, our design is there to support the function.
We have to make sure that we're designing our shapes to be dynamic and interesting
but keeping it convincing that this is still a person, this is an arm.
Because when you push something to be just an interesting shape, if it breaks
it, if it is no longer convincing, then the story you're telling becomes kind of
foggy.
So, we have this beautiful drawing.
There's a lot of shapes here, obviously.
There's a lot of detail.
But the thing that really drew me into this one was I just love the composition.
It's simple but it draws me in, it moves through the whole thing, it's balanced so
well.
So, what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna look at the big shape that Eliza's using
here.
So, on the left side, it kind of flows like this.
Then you have this big curvy shape that flows over the head and then I could
either just kind of follow in to the head here or I could actually just go with the
entire shape she's using.
I'm just gonna do that.
So, this straight in here adds a nice pinch point, creates a lot of tension in
this area and then another kind of a straight across in here.
So, she's balancing out some straight lines on the edge in here which not only
does that create kind of stability and structure because this is kind of the
ground, it's the flat part that the head is resting on, but it also implies some
perspective and it adds depth.
But let's not get carried away here, back to the shape.
We have this curve that comes in, we have this line, this angle and then in here,
we have kind of like the concept of the zigzag, we have some of these shapes
that add complexity in this area.
And there's a lot more within the inside.
There's the details of the lips, there's the eyes, there's all these little shapes
that add complexity in here.
Let's just put in a few very simple ones because I'm studying the major, the big
big composition.
So, now looking at just this simple shape that we created, we notice that she's
using a lot of the concepts that we just talked about.
Whether she's doing this intentionally or not, it just shows how masterful she is
in her shape design.
There is variety all over the place.
She has an S curve rhythm going through here, she's adding structure at the
bottom, she's got this big mass at the top.
All of that is pointing in, pinching into this area of interest right in here where
the most complexity is.
The whole thing by the way is angled at a very clear diagonal.
There's nothing stable about this even though the subject isn't actually moving.
The subject is sleeping.
At this moment, this child is inanimate.
So, by adding all of these concepts of making our shape and the composition
dynamic, it's making this very low energy activity feel very exciting.
And by the way, even the hair is here on the right side, right?
All of this activity in the hair is over here.
It's supporting the idea that we have activity over here on this side.
This is where we're looking and everything over here
This is our area of rest.
She didn't just make this side one simple line.
I mean, she did kind of add a little bit of excitement in here.
She has a little shape coming out, breaking it up.
She has, you know, all this activity and noise throughout the border and even in
here, there's areas of break where we can enter the face and areas that
I think the best way to practice designing dynamic shapes is with quick
studies.
In the last project, we focused on accurate shape
And a lot of you guys ended up spending hours on it and that's fine because in
that case, we were going for accuracy and it takes time to be careful and precise.
With this, you can spend anywhere between 1 minute and 10 minutes on a single
drawing.
Keep them simple and move on to do more.
In the next lesson, I'll give you guys the next project to practice this and
I'll show you how to approach it.