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@cloudhopper
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1mo
added comment inProject - First Steps to Mastering Gesture
Asked for help
Aloha! Love learning gesture from MH at a ripe stage where I'm just beginning this skill! I practice some, then rewatch, learn more, and repeat. Wrapping my mind around this approach gives me a new understanding of communicating through drawing and makes it more fun. It sucks to suck at drawing, but I love art so much and am coming back to it after decades of not drawing (because I didn't like what I made and lacked skills). ANYWAY, I was wondering about applying this method to other creatures. Will we talk about that at all? Or am I on my own to learn the underlying main skeletal structure and try to come up with a way? I believe a lot of other methods teach more of the style of representing the outside of the forms, right?
@gaetanam
1mo
I believe Michael mentioned in a comment that this would be human figure only, but since his approach is based on the spine it should work with any vertebrate creature! To think about drawing quadrupeds, just imagine applying this method to a human on all fours (someone posted a great master copy from Dirty Dancing as an example). An interesting exercise would be to do the proportion chart from our first assignment with a different creature. This will force you to pay attention to the proportions of the animal compared to itself, as well as what distinguishes it from humans (e.g. Michael mentioned the difference in the number of vertebrae between humans and horses). Either way, the gesture will still follow the lines of head-spine-weight bearing limbs-support limbs. It's funny, after watching these videos I wanted to draw other creatures too! I started paying attention to spines (weird, but very interesting lol) and if you want a first animal to try, I'd suggest cats! Their spines are relatively easy to see, they bend into all kinds of interesting poses, and their shape is sinuous which is great for gesture! As for other methods, which ones are you thinking of? I could be wrong, but I think most gesture methods emphasize the same thing as Michael (rhythm/idea/energy > contour)
Glenn Hughes
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1mo
Asked for help
I really struggled with this. I'm finding a conflict between lines that flow into each other, without symmetry and the desire to copy what i see and create fully formed limbs. Sometimes i think i'm just arbitrarily leaving out lines and i don't have a good sense of when i should or shouldn't. It leaves me feeling like some of the figures have less structure. In particular the placement of the spine (neck, back, pelvis) doesn't seem to fit within my design at all, and i seem to be drawing around it, rather than it playing a role in defining the body.
Idk if it's apocryphal, but there's a story of how Picasso drew a series of pictures of a bull - first fully detailed and lifelike, but then increasingly abstract until he only had a simple line drawing left. Essentially he kept removing details until there was nothing left to remove that wouldn't sacrifice the essence of the animal. Maybe pick 3 of your favorite poses and do something similar with the goal of finding the most important lines. After doing this a few times, maybe you'll have a more intuitive sense of which lines should and shouldn't (or rather can and cannot) be left out to communicate the gesture. Good luck!
Minqi He
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1mo
Asked for help
Drawing gesture from imagination is very difficult, and I often draw the gesture which I have seen before.
Don't be hard on yourself - there's a quote about writing that is also true for drawing - "you can't get out of a brain what isn't there to begin with." It would be almost impossible to draw a pose you've never seen before since our "imagination" is really just a synthesis of all we've seen and experienced up to this point. If you feel like you're always drawing the same poses, try changing up the content you're observing. Examples - if you love classic art, watch videos of modern dance. If you love superhero movies or comics, try fashion catalogues. Creativity is really just about connecting dots, so make sure you have some varied, interesting dots to connect! Good luck :)
@gaetanam
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1mo
Asked for help
This was such a fun challenge! For the 10 copies, I wanted to observe balance/ weight distribution in motion. IMO dancers are masters of balanced movement so I played around with different dance styles and dancers using themselves vs others as counterweight. Unfortunately one of my kids was sick this week so didn't have time to submit 10 from imagination. I'll be doing them this week anyway - this was really a great exercise in understanding "practical" anatomy
