5. People, Faces, and Actions

Sometimes when we ask others to draw, we get asked “Are stick people ok? I can’t draw…” but sketching a stick person IS perfectly acceptable and can be a great precursor to sketching other types of people. If you add legs, arms, and a head, what you have created will be seen as a person, regardless if it is a blob. Children’s sketches are wonderful measures of how shape and line can create the appearance of a person. Drawing people is often the hardest thing to convince people to sketch in a class, the fear of ‘getting it wrong’ can produce a creative block. But getting it ‘wrong’ can actually be quite fun! Sketching for human-computer interaction necessitates the inclusion of images of people, whether they are simply icons, interacting with computers, the world, or reacting to something. People express emotions, get frustrated, are happy, relieved, tired, etc. The good news is that photorealistic portraits are NOT needed for sketching people in HCI. What is needed is a simple approach to adding figures and expressions into your work, and this is what you will learn in this chapter. And hands. We will also get you to sketch hands.