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Taylor Bankson
•
3yr
added comment inFigure Drawing Critiques - Gesture
OK. I have had a very hard time with gesture. My gut feeling is these are better than my last post. I know they are not finished and I would appreciate some pointers.
This exercise has really done a number on my self esteem and desire to draw. I'd like to move on to something else and come back to this later, if I'm reasonably ready to do so.
cathy hayes
3yr
I get it. I would suggest practise some gestures just to warm up, no pressure. Then move on to what you want to,try next because it’s so important to keep,drawing. The gestures will improve- don’t give up. Do 5-10 to start your drawing session and later go over them and see if there is a common problem you can work on.
@nothanks
3yr
I think it's fine to move on to something else when you feel frustrated, and maybe you can try it again in a week or two. That's what we do in my welding class if we're stuck on a particular angle or joint.
I probably red-did the lessons on gesture 4 or 5 times before I understood it enough to even figure out what a gesture line is, haha! I've also done art lessons and studies from other sources (drawabox.com and ctrl+paint come to mind). I need a break from human anatomy from time to time too, so I might work on animals, or digital painting, etc. It's totally okay to skip around!
After a break, you might find when you come back to it, something you were missing before just 'clicks.' Don't know why, but this can often be the case. You may also find that as you move on, new information you learn will help you improve your gestures. For example, learning human anatomy makes it easier for me to understand the figure and find the gesture lines faster than before.
Juan Manuel Duarte Pallavicini
3yr
You are concentrating too much on delimiting the figure and drawing the contour rather than catching the sens of movement and fluidity with big, long and loose lines. If you are not at the level to use some few lines to portrait gesture, try drawing gesture on a more loose, messy way, at the end of the day you should grasp the movement and overall flow of the figure, not make a pretty drawing.
Take Glenn Vilppu as an example and pay close attention to how he describes his own process wile executing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOtVUHgJqQk
Messy, and numerous lines, that go ACROSS and ALONG the form on a flow-like SMOOTH sens. Later, as you acquire more skill with the pencil you can try to use fewer and fewer lines, and do the gesture quicker and quicker each time.
Also as a bonus. Something that helped me understand the feel of flow in the figure and personally helped me improve my design and gesture, here's a video of John Asaro where he tackles the common issue of the sens of stiffness on figure drawings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYmyvgwY10U
I hope all this information is of use to you and please let me know if said information helped you improve. Good luck!
Asked for help
Here's an attempt halfway between gesture and mannequinization. :) Do you think these are effective?
The motion is really clear in most of these. For the most part I like them. The one in the top right looks a little indistinct to me- It's far less obvious what the arm is doing relative to your other drawings.
Thank you for sharing!
Taylor Bankson
•
3yr
Asked for help
Hey y'all. Struggling significantly with gestures.
These were 45 second gestures from this movement: https://www.bodiesinmotion.photo/motions/1813/fullscreen?index=0
Some I ran out of time, one I took a second stab at
I would deeply appreciate some guidance on what I'm not seeing or doing. It feels like as soon as I start drawing with the timer, I have no idea what I'm doing again
If you're having trouble with the timer you should lengthen or remove it until you feel more comfortable condensing form and movement down. I forget which video but I *believe* Stan makes that suggestion.
Once you get your legs underneath you you can apply it again.
For what it's worth I think you have some great C and S curves here, your lines are confident and you are demonstrating movement. Keep at it!!
For me, I did better when I didn’t time it initially because it made me anxious and messy. I think you might be happier with the outcome if you can find one long action line in the pose. I also find it helpful to do a line to indicate the angle of the shoulders and the hips. And also try to show the stretch and the pinch in the torso more clearly. These are just ideas that occurred to me when I looked at your work.
I know somebody else said to turn the timer off until you get comfortable but I believe that flying through drawings is what helps you discover what’s working and what isn’t.
the most noticeable thing right now is the lack of coherent energy moving through them. Everything looks like it’s trying to split apart from one another. I know it probably isn’t what you want to hear especially since you’re already consuming one form of material to learn figure drawing but, I think if you read and worked along side some of the FORCE figure drawing books it would really help you understand the rhythms the body goes through. As a general rule of thumb relating to this, when doing figure drawing or gesture studies, try to avoid symmetry in the parts you’re drawing. If the pelvis feels like it really is just shifting to the left, feel free to let it do so and draw it with two lines moving left as opposed to having to maintain its egg shape.
I know it’s confusing but I promise with some more drawing and studying, itll become much easier and enjoyable.
The gestures look pretty fluid to me, and you're doing great keeping the number of lines down. I think you should spend a little more time working on proportions. There's some of these that are way off - a lot of waistlines look too wide and legs too short. Heads are a circle directly connected to the body with no indication of the neck, and the few necks I do see are thick and kind of weird looking.
My advice: turn off the timer until you get a hang of it. I could never do gesture until I turned off the timer (or turned it way up), even these simple stick figures, I got too anxious and did not take the time I needed for my eye to actually SEE the gesture, so I'd just end up with ugly scribbles all over my page and feeling frustrated.
I do stick figures at 60-90 seconds now, and regular gesture drawings around 5 minutes (I used to spend 2 minutes on the simple figures, so you will be able to go faster as you practice).
