You can do quick sketches of seconds with a goal of quickly capturing the mood. Or you can work much longer with an eye for realism. Quick sketches are loose with very few lines. Your goal is to just get something down on the page. Ultimately the goal of all gesture is to study the figure and see how it moves. The human body is very complex and gesture attempts to simplify the body as much as possible. Everyone has their own methods for gesture drawing which makes it a very unique practice.
The most wrong way to do gesture is to not do it at all. Depending on your goals there are some other rules to abide by. Gesture has a lot to do with feelings and emotions. You want to conceptualize how the body is contorted to understand how it can be exaggerated.
Where is the torso leaning? Which leg takes most of the weight? Ask yourself questions as you analyze each pose and draw based on your conclusions. But then, back to work! Try not to limit yourself to what you see. The model is meant to be a reference that helps you portray what you have in your imagination. You can inject personality, style, fashion of your own liking to take what you see and make it your own. Always start your gesture drawing with an action line — a line that goes from the top of the head down to the feet.
Action line will help you get a more dynamic pose and overall flow of the figure. It also provides you with a roadmap to use while placing in body parts. A very simple tip that will save you from figures that look stiff and unnatural.
Remember, our body is asymmetrical. So, if your arms and shoulders angle tilts up on the right side, then your torso and legs will tilt down at the right side. Look for negative shapes in your model! But, by looking at negative shapes, our brain works differently and actually sees the right shapes that then become landmarks for the placement of body parts.
When working on gesture, keep drawing. You should spend a lot of time working on them. Drawing real people, drawing everyday people around you. For beginners gesture drawing can be frustrating, but just keep doing it till you get better. Never focus at drawing clean lines, just draw without a care in the world. Do you have a video of you drawing these please, or step-by-step pics of one?
Is the order after Line of Action—blocking in the main volumes, joint articulations, and limb lines, then working on the outline?
I love how you create such attractive contours with such a short time while still capturing all the energy of the pose! Thank you so much! So be careful what you listen to. The real art of being an artist is learning to be patient with yourself, try things, and to not quit.
I would say that most of what I learnt about gesture drawing, was through actually physically being there and drawing. The more you do it, the more the neurons in your brain will start making connections. So you can listen to all the advice out there that you want.
You have to practice. Learning basic anatomy is something you should study though. As you draw, you start to form your own habits.
Just make sure they are good habits. For example, I often hear the advice that you should always start with the head. Well, I usually start with the head.
In fact, a lot of the time I end up drawing the head last. These are just tips. Not rules set in plaster above the doorway of the hallowed academy. Some tips that have personally helped me are the following:. But it also has a nice soft texture, and the charcoal shows up nicely on it. And it frees you up to not feel so precious of your life drawings. It is unfortunately not archival or acid free, so your pages will probably yellow in a few years. Cartridge paper is also plentiful and cheap.
It gets its name from its use in making firearm cartridges for musket rifles. The range of different weights makes a big difference to how the paper reacts. The lighter the grammage, the more it wrinkles and the less abuse it can take. Cartridge paper will also yellow anyway, as only the expensive papers are archival. It means the acid has been temporarily neutralised by the process of bleaching the paper and buffered by adding alkaline.
Most papers are made from wood pulp, thus containing lignin. Lignin produces acid as it breaks down. Real acid free papers are made from rag paper which comes from cotton. And the higher the cotton content, the more expensive the paper.
Totally unnecessary for gesture studies. Thick cartridge paper over g can be used for quick ink and brush gesture sketches. Watercolour paper would be an unnecessary expense in this case. And to get more of a gradual angle for overhand drawing.
Using a pencil sharpener never works. Basically you get soft, medium, hard. I prefer using the hard because after furiously scribbling a whole lot of gesture poses, it retains its point for much longer. The soft charcoal is nice and really dark, but better for deepening lines and shadows in the long poses.
I use a bit of Prestik instead of a putty rubber to rub out in life drawing class sometimes. Because it does pretty much the same thing at a fraction of the cost. And mistakes are just part of the drawing.
Charcoal can also be used with a brush dipped in water as a wet medium. But that technique is more for longer poses. This creates a beautiful watercolour-like effect, producing tonal washes. It lends itself to a more expressive application. Hence you may need to work bigger because your line width will usually be a lot fatter. It can be pretty messy if that sort of thing bothers you.
Chalk and soft pastels are nice for gesture too, as you have more colours to choose from. Just like charcoal, you get different ranges of hardness. Usually for gesture drawing, I use soft pencils. The sharp point of a pencil can be a little harsh for newsprint paper. In that case, I prefer a more glossy paper like cheap cartridge paper. I prefer pencil for the longer poses because the medium lends itself to drawing much finer detail.
You can also get woodless graphite pencils, including thick stumpy ones,which I think are quite nice. But I still personally prefer graphite pencils for long life drawing poses. Pen is a lovely medium for gesture drawing. It lends itself to very quick drawing. Archival micron pens come in many different nib sizes and are great for line art. Then there are brush pens, fountain pens, markers etc.
There are so many types and brands of pens available. It might take a while to figure out what style of pen you like best. And what paper produces the desired effect with that particular pen. Some people in my life drawing class enjoy drawing the figure with ink and brush. This is also a very special medium and quite tricky to master.
Dipping the brush in a pot of ink reminds me of those old Chinese calligraphy master brush drawings. I love the deep broad tones rapidly achieved with the brush. And you can vary the tonal depth by diluting the ink with water. The splatters of ink on the paper add a charming character to the drawing.
Brush drawings take a lot of confidence and patience to master. They produce especially vital and dynamic gesture poses. I particularly like the more traditional black Indian ink, sepia and nut inks. Watercolour is another expressive medium which can be used on its own, or in conjunction with inks, pens, graphite and charcoals.
When executing a portrait or any drawing of the figure, the quick gesture, in my opinion is often the best way to start. It maps out the high and low spots, the shadows and highlights, and yes captures the essence of the pose.
That phrase does sound like a lot of mumbo-jumbo, but it in this case, when drawing people, think of it as referring to the spine. If you cant capture the curve or angle of the spine, then everything is going to be off in comparison. They are meant to be a jumping off point, not an end result in most cases. Gesture drawing gets you familiar with something quickly. Short thirty second drawings are how you can acquaint yourself with your subject. Breaking up the time you spend on a drawing ultimately helps in the long run.
They are meant to be studies. Most people when they start out just want to jump in and are surprised at how hard it can be, doing exercises like gesture, contour, blind contour ultimately teaches you how to see something and translate that into a 2D image.
Starting with a gesture can help you find the composition of your final drawing, instead of jumping right in and doing it one way to find out later that its not working, gestures let you experiment a bit.
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