Gesture Drawing Progress (seeking advice/critique)
3yr
James
Hello everyone!
Eight days ago I started the Figure Drawing Fundamentals program and started studying gesture from the videos. Every day since then, I've been doing a combination of 30-second, 1-minute, and 2-minute gesture sketches for an average of 40-50 drawings per day (over 300 total since I started!)
I feel like I've made some progress since then but I understand that I've got a long way to go and I'll have to keep doing gesture studies if I want to get better. That's why I'm looking for critique/advice on what I can do going forward. I've included some of my sketches below.
The first was done in 60 seconds and the second in 30 seconds.
Thanks in advance, I welcome your feedback!
Congrats for the daily practice!! keep it up 💪
My advice to you would be to start with 4 minutes gestures. Then decrease the time per pose progressively, when you start to feel comfortable picturing the pose in 4 minutes.
-> 3 min -> 2mion and eventually 60sec and 30 sec
I believe this was Stan's advice on the one of the draftsmen podcast episodes, or on one of his videos on gesture from his figure drawing course.
I personally took that advice, which allowed me to make quick progress and move past the frustration / plateau I had when attempting 1min gestures 😁
Also, based on your drawings, I would recommend that as you draw, you remember to :
- firstly draw the line of action
- take notice of the direction of the shoulders line and the hips line
- picture the flow of the pose: make the lines flow into each other/ somehow relate to each other to guide the eye through a flow
Hope it helps;
cheers !
First of all, those are some impressive numbers! That kind of daily practice is the most important part of getting better, so you're definitely on the right track. As for moving forward, I'm no expert, but I can tell you what helped me:
I was stuck on gesture for a long time, and it wasn't until I moved on to other topics, like pencil control, form, proportions, perspective, etc., and then came back to gesture that I saw a significant improvement. I've found that all these things actually gave me a more complete understanding of gesture, just as learning gesture gives a more complete understanding of form, composition, etc. All the disciplines are linked to one another, they cannot be learned in isolation, they must be learned together. I'm not saying gesture should not be a part of your daily practice, I still do it every day, but I would recommend moving forward with your studies, working on pencil control, learning form and perspective (highly recommend drawabox.com for these two things), then come back to gesture and see how much you can integrate. Repeat that cycle of learning and you will likely improve much more quickly in all areas than you would if you focused on each discipline in isolation.
I hope this helps! Keep up the good work :)
