@booster
Sweden
Aspiring fine artist mastering oil painting and concept artist focus prop design for a living.
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@booster
•
3yr
added comment inHow to Draw Gesture
Asked for help
What is your biggest challenge when it comes to gesture?
After one more month of practice I feel more confident in line strokes and are very pleased with those following 2 min sketches. However, feel most of the times lacking of the gesture itself. Any suggestion on how to improve it?
•
3yr
Hej @booster, riktigt najs!
Hi @booster, nice work!
Sorry for not seeing your previous posts; they weren't marked as help requests, making it harder to find them in the feed. Make sure you post your work under the Assignments tab, which, I think, will automatically mark your posts as a help requests.
Great to hear that you've been practicing 1h a day. I picked up the same routine 4&1/2 years ago, and I've improved a lot. Last year I started adding more hours.
Feedback is also crucial, so it's great to see you posting. I recommend posting for every assignment in the course.
I'll do my best to help you further:
- The linework is really nice! And the overall gesture is pretty good too. I think the reason you feel like you're lacking the gesture itself most of the time, is because you're including detail and emphasizing bumps that don't support the gesture. You want the contour lines you put down to support the flow. Put simply, if the gesture is a c-curve, bend the contours in a c-curve arc. You could also think of the gesture as a stream of water that the contours should push side to side to keep it flowing; one curve is followed by another curve.
An exercise that I strongly recommend is to do 30 sec quick sketches, using only 5 or fewer lines (CSI) + head. It´s a challange, but using only 5 lines will force you to find the core gesture, the flow going through the body, and not feel so attached to the silhouette. I attached a paintover that you can use as inspiration. Note that I´m not drawing stick figures and I'm also not just drawing lines that mimick the bumps in the contour (this happened in the arms and right leg in the bottom left drawing in the first image); I'm drawing the flow passing through the forms, "the stream of water" running through it.
Once you can find the main flow, showing it by drawing contours that support it, pushing it back n' forth, becomes easier
- Also remember to draw through the forms Top 5 Drawing Mistakes
Hope this helps :) Keep up the good work!
PS
I attached an image with some practice tips that helped me a lot when I took the course. With those tips in mind I think you'll be able to improve fast and find the answers to many of your questions on your own
•
3yr
Hi @booster, nice job!
- In the beetle on the first page, the boxes aren't converging properly. Parallell lines should appear to converge to a common point, when put into perspective. Practicing spinning boxes around, might be a helpful exercise.
Hope this helps :) Keep up the good work!
@booster
•
3yr
Here are some recent work on gestures; first two pictures during 2 minutes and the last one 30 sec.
Would really appreciate some feed back to make sure I'm going on the right track!
Same story again, please feel free to comment.
Now with some further practice I can see that the proportion and structural part falling into place but with a lack of the essens- gesture. Any suggestion how to improve?
Here comes my first submission on the bean. If you ever wondering why I'm using fine liner it is because I'm practicing the philosophy of drawabox.com to not hide your mistakes.
So, please feel free to critique! Wish I knew for instance how to make those look more "design" according to Stan's comment in the latest bean video.
I like how many different combos of lean/twist/tilt you got in your examples! I'm new to the whole bean concept but I think you and I might be having a similar issue with our lines of action. Some don't quite fit the flow of the bean, if that makes sense? Like the poses where the figure is really curled forward. Its tricky!
Hi, this is my first attempt at the bean exercise.
These were made on random images from the Proko pose sets after first practicing 'befores and afters' using the assignment example videos. I've learnt a lot from the videos. What I found the most difficult, is that for some tilt and lean poses it's very subtle to see whether the hip oval should be in front or after the rib oval.
I also tried to include some line weight variation into it as well to make the forms speak a bit more.
I included image numbers from the Proko Pose Sets I used to draw from (Aaron, Chanon, Mallory, Marcia, Veronica & Yoni).
Thanks for taking the time to look at these and post your critques!
Are these for real? xP the design look really "beany". As a novice it's hard for me to see any improvement other than maybe you could try doing it with graphite instead.
So I've been trying these for a few weeks now, I'd like to go on to the bean but hopefully I can have some feedback before. These are just some but i've done a bunch already, tried 2 min, 30 sec, 5 lines + head, and 2 min using charcoal as sugested buy proko (you can see the darker lines) these have been particularly difficult, trying the overhand grip while drawing either on my lap or on a desk, plus trying to get the gesture right has been very challenging, and the charcoal pencil on its own is kinda hard to use, but I guess I'll get accustomed to it.
Any comments, critique or feedback would be greatly appreciated!!
Indeed nice work! think you specially nailed figure 1,3 and 6 in picture 8 and fig 8 in pic 9.
@booster
•
3yr
Aight fellow artists, glad that I took the leap for this course! Think I’m now ready for some first useful advice on how to improve the gesture drawings.
These are the latest attempts among my two weeks practicing 1 hour per day that I aim to be a new habit of mine. Found a flow with the strokes with fewer lines, somehow a sense with the proportion but are struggling how to do the S and C shapes for arms and legs, especially in straight position.
Accordingly to Stan and Marshalls reaction in the critiq video I understand that Lyrainas sketches is the pro level with extra details. I am therefore wondering if there is any “good enough” drawings available so you know when to move forward with the bean, or for that part any of the other steps?
P.S.
Being able to land an education in art fundamentals is my current so to say long term goal (, thereafter concept/fine art). This is simply the first step to uncover the basics from professionals. So, beside Stan’s anatomy and portrait courses what else is there you should learn about and which online resources is the best?
See you in further posts :)
