Nsio Explains: Advanced Dynamism

EDIT: The date is wrong, it should read 4.1.2015 ^^'
12th installment in "Nsio Explains" tutorial series delves deeper into the world of dynamism. Although I already have done a tutorial about dynamism, I felt it was necessary to explain dynamism in greater detail. 

Magic of Dynamism
You may already have heard about dynamism and line of action, but how much do you really understand what they are and how they work? For long I haven't been able to explain them very well for myself either. I just knew that some lines, poses and compositions just look dynamic and other don't. Maybe you will find this useful as well.

The main job of dynamism is to make your drawings look natural. However, dynamism isn't synonym for natural. It just makes the drawing feel natural, because it helps to justify your artistic actions. The reason for this is that humans just find dynamic flow very captivating. Composition is just about guiding the beholders eyes across the canvas and also persuades him/her to keep looking at the art. That said, your drawings don't have to be entirely realistic, or even possible if you just can justify your actions.

Although dynamism itself is basically just one phenomenon or concept, it can be broken down into several sub-types. These include, but aren't limited to, dynamism of line, perception, depth, repetition, gesture, action and view. I'll try to explain the ones I mentioned briefly.

Dynamism of Line
I have already explained this mostly in Line Dynamics tutorial. However, this is important to know, because every form of dynamism can be thought as a flowing line. It's also very concrete and easy to understand, which makes it that much easier to understand the concepts of dynamism better.

Dynamism of Perception
Now that you know that dynamism can be thought as a flowing, it's time to move on conceptual thinking. Most of the time, dynamism isn't blatantly visible, but is hidden behind visual cues the artist has carefully planned and laid on the canvas. These visual cues causes us to perceive hidden lines or paths if the artist has been successful. 

In fact, you could say that dynamism is just something you want to see when looking at art. Good artists just know how human perception generally works and offers visual cues to manipulate the viewer to see things like depth that doesn't really exist, on canvas that is. Although you may not be aware of it, you already know how things should look. That's why artists need to be careful not to make visual cues that confuse the viewer, because this will break the illusion. The more realistic look you aim for, the more unforgiving art is.

The reason many sketches look more interesting than finished pieces is the fact that the artist has left so much up to the viewer to imagine. Sketches offer just the crucial visual cues needed to understand the piece. For example, I believe that you likely see that arm I drew bending. Fully rendered drawings, especially with very photo-realistic execution, leave no room for imagination. That makes the viewer think there is nothing more in the drawing. Sketches, however, engage the viewer so much that they come up with the content on their own. To continue with the arm example, you may even imagine a foxy lady sitting on cozy chair.

Dynamism of Depth
While perspective is a concept for simulating depth, dynamism of depth is an idea which guides the beholder deep into the canvas, greatly emphasizing visual depth perceptions (I have few examples of this later). Although depth perception can be induced fairly easily with things like overlapping and size difference (distance scaling), dynamism of depth needs a path, preferably a dynamic one, from point A to B to make the feel of depth obvious.

If I should explain dynamism of depth with a concrete example, I would draw two arcs, one with fixed and the other with varying line weight. The one with fixed line weight would look as if it was literally on the canvas (dynamism of plane). The other one, however, would look like the other end of the line was farther away. For another example, I would draw several circles, starting with a large one and then gradually drawing smaller ones. Although I have clearly drawn different sized circles, you are more likely to perceive as if the circles were equal in size and forming a path in to the depths of the canvas.

Dynamism of plane isn't all that bad though, it just has its own uses.

Dynamism of Repetition
I found this quite interesting form of dynamism.

Drawings often have elements or patterns that repeat. However, the question is what kind of repetition is appropriate: absolute, varying or full random? In order to choose the right method, you need to understand the nature of the elements and repetition taking place because their execution affects overall dynamism of your drawing.

Absolute repetition often has to do with artificial things, such as mechanical stuff, decals, structures, tiling etc. Absolute repetition may not have any real dynamism in itself, so dynamism needs to be achieved by other means. For example, by drawing repetition in perspective it's possible to distort the strict order into more flowing form and still fool beholder's perception. The problem occurs when you fail to convey the feel of absolute repetition by offering visual cues that makes it look varying or full random.

Varying repetition has very loose definition, but I find it's important to make clear difference between absolute and full random. I explain this as having specific rules for the repetition, although the repeating elements don't have to look exactly the same. These kind of things could include draping of clothing and hair for instance. The important thing is just to avoid clear, repetitive patterns (funny when it's repetition we are talking!).

Full random is, at least for me, quite hard to achieve. I have noticed this when drawing starry sky: those little dots always seem to form clear patterns. I think full random is just about disguising varying repetition. I put things like grass, natural textures and other seemingly random occurrences in this category. Just like with varying repetition, clear patterns means game over.

Dynamism of Gesture
This is dynamism of living things. To draw dynamic characters (or animals, creatures, etc), you just need understanding about the characteristics that make them feel living beings. If we are talking about humans, that means understanding things like human physiology, psychology and body language. I generally think dynamism of gesture as "twist". We aren't static beings, we can take numerous poses, including all subtle variances (by twist I usually mean how torso seem to "twist"). Gesture drawing is a good way of grasping the general dynamism of gesture. If the posture should be simplified into one line, this is the primary line of action behind the pose (have a look at my original Dynamism tutorial). Poses aren't by no means limited into one action line, ideally whole body is engaged with multiple line of actions.

The more you apply dynamism in your drawing, the more you will understand how it works. The more you understand, the better you will be at determining what's causing problems in your art and take proper actions. Once you get general look in place, you will notice how much easier it is to add more realistic details on your drawings. Dynamism just sort of guides you.

Dynamism of Action
Dynamism of action literally explains the action that's taking place in your drawings. Things like who/what induces the action, in which the action is directed, what the action causes on the target etc. Although anything can happen in art, bounding the action on dynamic path will greatly intensify the action. Your goal as an artist is to probed such visual experience so that the viewer can feel the action.

Choosing just the right timing is also a crucial decision: do you choose the moment prior the action, the moment action is taking place, it's immediate results or the aftermath? In my example, I used my original character Sayaka. She was running on slippery surface and thus slipped. Check Nsio Pose Practice 7: Travelling Sayaka Tsuchimiya for original picture.

Dynamism of View
The chosen viewing angle can greatly add sense of dynamism in your drawing, even if it doesn't have real dynamism in itself (this just allows other forms of dynamism). One thing I have come to realize is the usage of viewing angles that slightly deviate from common angles. That said, front views aren't quite from the front for example. This is of course not always necessary. Choosing fitting viewing angle depends a lot on the situation. However, avoiding viewing angles that require absolute symmetry can make some situations much easier. Front views are really hard to draw very dynamic, but even slight deviation from that can do the trick.

Dynamism of view is a great tool at achieving the feel of immersion. Since I'm an architect, I find that drawings should offer strong spatial experience for the viewers. It's important that they feel as if they were part of the art, looking around a space instead of a canvas. I'm doing this by thinking how I would see the environment around me and distort the perspective accordingly. I used my ink drawing as an example here. I drew it while I was travelling in Alaska. You can find the original drawing here

This is all I got this time around, quite a lot of stuff! Anyway, hopefully you will find some use for this