Hi Karoline!, I'm also taking this course and so I am happy to answer the invitation to give feedback. So, to speak to your question about the gestural lines, here's how I think about it. The set of 16 or so lines that Michael uses give me the big picture of what the figure is expressing. Hierarchically, the gesture gives hints to what we are interested in the pose, the tilts and masses start to add form, then the connections stage ties these proto-forms together with wraps and overlaps, stretches and pinches (S and C curves, see below). The landmarks, usually joints or bits of bone protruding help maintain proportion and anchor points for later use with costuming or anatomy, while the perspective stage, we're orienting the forms in space. Here's where that got me: the cylnders aren't stand-ins for the limbs, but indications of bones. So they shouldn't be as wide as the thighs, for example, with one MAJOR caveat: THe knees, elbows, wrists all have hard bony parts that are easily seen and these cylinders, and boxes at these points should match the extend of these landmarks, more or less. We can add and subtract bits in order to make them more correct at the final stages. Gesture lines: What do these lines represent? The the lines he calls cervical, thoracic, lumbar aren't exactly those structures, but rather their motion and impact on the forms to create the asymmetry of the underlying forms of neck, rib cage and pelvis. They hint at the direction of the asymmetric forces they are imposing on the body. So think their big ideas. As for the "stretch" line, it's a reflection of a couple things: how the form of the body is turned in space and it's overall sense of motion or balance. I hope you're following. All in all yes these lines don't really represent a thing, but rhythms and forces that relate the idea you want to express or highlight: the push of a hip, the balance of the figure on one foot, or the strain in the neck as the arms carry something heavy. Something important to note about the gesture step: it doesn't represent contours of anatomy, but they can represent the extent of things, such as the pelvis or the rib cage, the ramp of the foot, or the back edge of a heel. That's why you'll see that his drawings are narrow relative to the references in places like the legs while the masses of the hips and chest: pelvis and rib cage occupy the spaces the gesture creates. That is because these are immediately obvious on the outside of the skin. For the pelvis line, this is the extent of the box that the pelvis occupies, and any roundness that may come from the glutes is generally omitted at the gesture stage. Ultimately, we're setting up the scaffolding on which we can attach anatomy or costume later as form intersections, additions, and subtractions. Line Types in gesture: The kinds of line Michael uses, C, S and Straights convey a couple things depending on context. He has stated that straights are typically used to indicate bone or a structural element of some kind. And he steers clear of using them perfectly horizontally or vertically. Even if the reference might indicate something is up and down or flat, he will exaggerate or push it away from the vertical or horizontal. Tilts and Boxes: This is where tilts come in. The tilt line is a straight but angled line that stands for the 3D orientation of the form. So yes, the axes but of the rib cage alone without the belly, and of the pelvis. Try this: when you practice boxes and spheres, add a line that would indicate the orientation of these objects in space. Boxes are easy. Pick a surface that is "up" or the top, and draw a line that is perpendicular to it, in that perspective. For spheres, you choose, but the line needs to pass through the geometric centre of the sphere. Early on, I was making my gestures too wide, at the pelvis especially. When we add the perspective boxes, we're carving away bits of the egg into the box and mine would stick out here and there. So ideally, confine the box to the interior of the ball we drew in the tilts and masses stage. If we need to go back and correct, we do that, and I highly recommend doing that. Don't wait until the whole thing is done, forcing it along the way. It slows you down and your brain gets mad at you for forcing it. Well, mine does anyway. Examine each stage and if satisfied, proceed, but go back as far as you need to in order to correct. CAVEAT: Sometimes that means starting a new sketch because it's not as instructive as redoing the whole thing with the new insight in mind so that you can compare afterwards. So, don't erase the whole thing, keep it, and start a new one next to it or immediately after it. Take these notes and compare it to your last drawing and you'll see, hopefully, what I mean. And hopefully this helps. Feel free to hit me up if you need clarifications. PS> If you haven't already, look ahead at the gesture section at the end of the course, after student critiques. He goes into more detail of the method. He also has a new course on gesture that's just into it's 3rd week, that I'm partaking of too.