Gesture Critique
3yr
Crystal Blue (she/her)
Any advice on how I could better capture the energy in the reference image?
The first time I drew it (sketchy one) I didn’t think I got it quite right so I redrew it (polished one) but looking back I think the first one looks better.
also not related to gesture but I had some trouble on the hairstyle and facial expression on the polished second one
Asked for help
I tried it again with everyone’s feedback! How’d I do this time?
Hey Crystal,
Your second drawing is a marked improvement, But this pose has a lot of gesture that your still missing. Your drawing has too much anatomy and details which is not the point of a gesture drawing. The point is to find long, sweeping lines in the form of "s" or "c" curves that describe the whole pose from top to bottom. I did a quick sketch to show what I mean that I hope helps :)
Nice attempt at a fun photo. I like retro-futuristic stuff. My opinion is that for the most part, you captured the energy. The biggest thing that needs work is the head - the rest of the body captures the fun "whaddya want" pose. You could always tighten everything else up though.
I've drawn heads too small and too big, and you can probably figure out your own mistakes there when it comes to what's wrong with it. And the head is in a very unusual position where it's like straight up and down, but it's also forward as if her heads moving on a flat plane back and forth, and not "rotating" around as the head typically does.
You could try working through Proko's 30 second or 2-minute gestures to get a feel for how he draws the head and neck in contorted positions (if you have those courses). Then go back and figure out how to draw the head in the right position. If you don't have the courses you might just have to use a circle or a box and play with the positioning of the head until you find a place that's just right.
If you were working digitally you could probably just lasso the head, increase the size, move it a bit "forward" in relation to the body in 3d space on your 2d paper. From there, it's just about getting those facial features and the proportions down. Or maybe you could also try tracing the head digitally if you haven't done too much head studies.
Or if you don't want to redo the whole thing, and you want to work strictly on paper, you could just practice the head a few times on a separate sheet then go back and fix it.
yea, looking back the head is defined sized weird lol (also, sorry I didn’t get back to you sooner, for some reason this didn’t show up in my notifications). I’ll try messing around with circles and boxes. Thank you for the feedback :)
Crystal
To improve energy I suggest that you look for implied lines or flow through lines. An example is a strong implied line that goes from the outside of the character's right ankle flows up and to the right, then turns at the hip and curves back to left passing behind the arm. This line is like the curved part of an uppercase D, the edge of body only deviates slightly from this smooth curve. The line kinda swoops, adds the impression of lift to the arm gestures. Hope that helps. -Ian
Hey Crystal!
I like this pose you have chosen to draw :) I agree that your original sketch looks better than your second, but only because it has a bit more fluidity
In your second attempt I think maybe you lost some of the fluidity at the cost of creating a version that is a bit closer to the reference picture.
I feel as though you are really on the right track with it, but that you could probably try to accentuate some parts of the pose - perhaps referring more to your looser gesture drawings than the original reference might help with choosing where to accentuate! You captured the movement of the gesture really well in your initial sketch!
I hope this is helpful in some way! 🥰
