I've drawn 1000+ gestures in 10 days - here's what I've learnt
4yr
Asia
Sorry for the structure of this post, I haven't written it down in one run (I was taking notes after hitting particular milestones) so it may be a bit chaotic. Also, some of these may not work for you or be completely wrong. I'm just describing my own journey.
What I've learnt after drawing 200 gestures:
- gestures look waaay more dynamic when you move your arm instead of just wrist (I'm saying it as sb who always draws from the wrist rip)
- it's better to start with the chest instead of the head (easier to get the proportions right)
- it's good to bear in mind that you shouldn't draw exactly what you see but rather try to convey the feel of the pose (I've learnt that from "Figure drawing for what it's worth" and "Drawing lessons from the great masters", I also remember there being a chapter in Proko's course on exagerrating the pose so there must be something to it)
- Posemaniacs was shut down:(
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What I've noticed after 500 gestures:
- it feels faster, which was expected
- but it also feels more loose and I need less lines to convey the expression, so the lines are less 'hairy'
- it's more 'subconscious', I don't have to focus so much, my thoughts drift away and the gestures still look just as good or even better than before
- also, I don't know how to put it but weird things started happening somewhere around the 450th, e.g. some lines look cheerful and other look sad, don't know how to explain that :D There's more energy/expression to them
- I've started to notice very subtle changes and how they can affect the perceived emotion of the pose, e.g. the angle of a leg or the position of the shoulders
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Final notes (after 1038 gestures):
- try different ways of simplifying the structure (there's Loomis, Proko, Bridgman and they all use different shapes)
- first look at the figure and decide what's their most important feature or line, then try to exaggerate it (only started to do it in the very end so I'll probably do some more gestures just to get better at this part)
- in the end I felt that I was drawing slower but it was much faster in fact, I was doing the 30sec poses in 15 seconds. I think it has something to do with the fact that my hand was more relaxed, idk
- you don't have to draw only nude models, there's not much difference
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The sites I was using:
- http://reference.sketchdaily.net/en (I like the fading, lets you know the time is up and allows to add the last important line)
- https://www.bodiesinmotion.photo/motions?page=1&per_page=15&type=motion&isFree=true (very expressive and sometimes unusual poses)
- http://www.senshistock.com/sketch/# (clothed figures only, but great variety)
- https://line-of-action.com/practice-tools/figure-drawing (has adults, babies, children and teenagers, but I feel like 60% of the time I was drawing the same 2 female models)
- https://quickposes.com/en/gestures/timed (good, but crashed quite often)
This is amazing effort, and the really cool thing is you took the time to stop and work out what it was that you were learning which is almost as important as the learning itself - I was in a meeting once at work years ago, when my boss asked me to listen to the conversation and "capture the learning" - I hadn't got a clue what he meant, but I just wrote everything down and then tried to analyse it afterwards, and then it all made sense - now I almost do it without thinking about it - it really helps you understand your progress because with art it is sometimes quite hard to see what you are learning behind all the sketches on scraps of paper lying around when there is no masterpiece in sight...
Wow thanks for sharing!! And... that's a lot of practices. I have a few questions though...
1) It does matter to me how big I was drawing to choose whether to draw from wrist or from arm. I consciously tell my self to do that at the moment, but some smaller things aren't easy to draw from arm. The flow does work well on bigger shapes. When you are on a tablet or ipad thing, the screen is just that size, so I'm not quite used to drawing with "arm" unless I'm making a very long stroke.
2) Do you take some of your poses and expand/continue to draw the full figure? Because I tend to find "existing" gesture lines guides my later lines (which is the purpose), but stuff has thickness and volume, It's not very easy (and sometimes it's in the way) to actually make the structure/form accurately, because you tend to follow the gesture lines. How do you deal with that?
I think this is a great idea and when I have some time off work I would like to try something similar...
