More on shapes

Sometimes I like to forget about gesture and form and go right in for the shapes. This won't work if you don't have a strong understanding of form and gesture and it can sort of become a cheat for actually knowing how to draw. I fell into this trap for a while. Basically, you won't be able to move the character around. You just learn shapes that work for certain poses and angles. On the opposite end of the spectrum, you can't really design nice shapes if you only think about gesture and form. I sometimes take my sketchbook and sketch people at a coffee shop, or from the car at a red light. This is my approach. It's very fast and you can learn to get nice natural poses instead of those "posed" life drawing poses.