Critics for my gesture drawings
3yr
@ranma
Hello !
Here are some of my favorite pages/or different approaches of my attempts to gesture drawing, I was wondering if I could get feedback?
I often forget to draw the line of action (even if each time I realize I do that, I am like « oh lord oh no » and I spent five min focusing on the line of action, but then I forget again), and even when I don’t forget it, it feels superficial to make my figure around it. Is it very apparent in my drawings that I am not completely at ease with this line?
thank you all very much !
Hi, I think you're on the right track of gesture, and I hope my recommendations can help.
First of all, it's not entirely necessary to draw the line of action in ALL the poses you draw, you will notice that there are a lot of artists that don't do it all the time. But don't get the wrong idea, the line of action IS important, the benefit of the line of action is to unify and give direction to the whole pose, so you don't lose the gesture bay drawing each individual part of the body instead of considering the figure as a whole. If you are having troubles visualizing line of action then you definitely should draw it more often.
Regarding the different approaches, I think you got some good gestures in the last 2 pictures, I´m having a sense of dynamism especially in the big one on the 7th pic. What I'm seeing in must of the other pages is that you are working with symetrical shapes on the limbs, must of the legs are ovals and the arms are parallel straight lines (specially the 5th one). So I suggest starting with the side of the limb that shows the prominent curvature, and then draw the other one either as a curve with the same direction, a slightly straight line or as an opposite curve but with different size, remember asymetrical shapes create visual contrast and feel more dynamic.
As a general tip, don't forget to draw from your shoulder, even in digital; you hold the stylus as you usually don when you write but the motion must be done from your shoulder.
Changing your medium from traditinal pencil, paint, digital, etc; is a really good idea, so I encourage it.
Hope this can give you some direction to work on and keep moving forward.
Hey Ranma,
I think the biggest thing here is that these are not really gesture drawings. A gesture drawing is when you use one sweeping line to describe the gesture of the whole pose, top to bottom. What you're doing is trying to add anatomy, which is getting in the way of the gesture. Try doing these with your whole arm and not just your wrist. I took one of your poses and drew over it to show you what I mean, notice there is no anatomy. I hope this helps :)
Hey Steve ! Thank you very much for your answer and taking the time to draw over my pose ! I think I finally understood what’s the difference between contour drawing and a motion/gesture drawing where the contours are drawn. I’ll try to make poses with one sweeping line and no anatomy at all ! This helps, thank you !
