Learning to Walk

At Green Lake the other day, the first truly spring-like day of the year, I sat on a bench with the intention of sketching people enjoying the day on the walking path. This was one result.

Sketched on 3/24/12, Sakura Koi watercolors, Copic Multiliner SP pen

I wasn’t happy with the “keep-on-truckin’” look of the walkers’ legs, so I decided to forget about sketching people. Instead, I spent a couple of hours filling three spreads in my sketchbook with a series of gestural sketches, attempting to capture nothing more than the motion of walkers and runners (both the two-legged and four-legged kind). It occurred to me that it was the first time I had thoroughly observed the mechanism of humans walking: The front leg is nearly straight, while the back leg is just starting to become straight after flexing. Runners’ legs, by contrast, both appear to be bent simultaneously at a sharper angle than walkers’, and their torsos lean forward slightly. Their arms are usually bent at a sharper angle, too.

At the end of the two hours, I had summarized what I had learned into these two gestural sketches. Not the Green Lake scene I went for, but a good drawing lesson, just the same.