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@raeterrific
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3yr
added comment inHow to Draw Gesture – Step by Step
I am absolutely baffled by how everybody here is going from pictures of real people to these stylized bendy cartoon versions. He just draws lines like they're obvious but... I can't figure out how they connect to the person he's supposedly looking at. Often the finished product looks cool but at best like a vague approximation of the original. And the photos he's referencing are all very slim and in very unrealistic positions, which seems like the best possible starting point. He's got the message up about "motion not contour" and I'm just continuing to stare at this going, you're drawing a person in a single position from a still photograph, nothing is moving! There is no motion! Or talking about using a C curve instead of a straight line to draw something that clearly isn't the spine to make it look "relaxed" when the woman in the photo is laying in what is clearly a very uncomfortable position and not at all visibly relaxed.
It feels like there's a missing "and draw the rest of the owl" part of this explanation for me, but apparently other people are getting it? Is my brain broken or something? Has anybody had this kind of problem and found other explanations that make it click?
Felicia N
3yr
Try to do the pose yourself. It will feel a certain way, pay attention to how different parts of your body feel - maybe in some areas you feel your muscles stretching, or that some part is supporting a lot of weight, or some joint is locked, muscles flexed or relaxed, some part maybe is bent in an awkward way. Grab a mental image of what impression you have of the pose - the important parts that stand out. Now you want to come across to the viewer that impression in a few lines - you won't represent everything. You pick only the highlights, just the bits that tell what you want to come across. With that will come some exaggeration in some parts and omissions in others - you might prefer to use a curve instead of a straight line or a sharp angle instead of a curve if that says more about the overall pose.
I suspect part of your confusion is because this is not an easy exercise, it's hard to be deliberate while not fully in control of the tool. But just like while learning to speak a foreign language, the mere exercise of it will help to get better at saying precisely what you want to say even if at the beginning you might grab whatever words you remember to get your point across.
I hope this somehow helps, but if confuses you more please throw it in the bin ;)
E C
3yr
Gesture isn't supposed to be "accurate" to the model; nor is it something that can be learnt overnight like anatomy - I suggest you take some time to observe how humans move, especially if you're having trouble seeing the motion in a still figure. It helps to think about where the tension & force in the figure is - unless the model is standing in a default position there are always areas of tension & relaxation to be found in the body, and your job is to communicate that through gesture. I found that watching animations (cartoons, anime) or reading comics can help, as heavy stylised artstyles rely heavily on these curves to communicate what's happening on the human figure. Something else that helped me was to pose as the model is posing, so you can firsthand experience what's happening. In the end gesture can be quite subjective, so it's natural to be confused by it. Hope that helps & good luck :)
