Finding flow in a rigid pose?
1yr
Kishan Patel
Hi, I was hoping someone could give an insight onto how they draw the gesture for a model who might be posing in a rigid manner. I cannot quite see how I would create flow in this as the legs are very straight and you can see the model is tensing at the time so how can we work flow into this?
A rhythm, flow, or a gesture is a line that connects objects in a drawing. We can use S curves, C curves, or Straight lines as rhythms.
Finding the flow in a pose can be hard because it's an abstract concept that we cant see. But it is the most fundamental aspect in figure drawing. Flow exists in EVERYTHING. In trees, buildings, water, etc. It is our job as artists to find these rhythms and design them to be visually appealing and truthful to nature.
In figure drawing, all aspects should be connected in a unified whole. In my drawing, you can flow from any part of the body to another. For example, you can go down the neck, around the arm, and into the wrist. Or you can start from the wrist , flow up the arm, go down the rib cage and flow all the way down to the toes.
HOW TO PRACTICE
1) Watch a tutorial on it. [Aside from proko: Tim Gula is amazing (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvB3bnj63oc), Mike Mattesi (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAfTHWEKx2A)]. Absorb the information as much as possible. Watch it as many times as you need to. And most importantly follow along. Don't just passively listen, but try to analyze the figure.
2) Draw the figure on your own and try to find and analyze the rhythms. This is the hardest but most important part, this is where majority of the learning happens. You can also draw the figure multiple times to experiment which type of rhythm to use C, S, or I.
3) Get feedback from an outside source. Or you can analyze it yourself by comparing your drawings with those mentioned above and see where the differences lie, where you can improve etc.
4) Take a mental note of the critique you receive and keep it in the back of your head during your next session so that you don't repeat it.
5) Repeat from step 1 until you master it.
I think, in this case, that it's okay to make the gesture not that flowy if the pose itself is not that flowy. To quote Stan himself (on drawing fists) "Don't think that everything has to be dynamic. Some things should feel blocky and heavy. A fist shouldn't feel like Jell-O." I think the best approach would be to draw them as straights or C-curves.
Understood yeah that does make sense think I've gotten into the habit of trying to exaggerate everything to flow. Thanks for the response!
Look for curves that connect parts, Proko's demos on gesture are a good example.
