How should I do gestures

by Wretchedlead, July 9th 2021 © 2021 Wretchedlead

I am a complete novice just started drawing. I have seen some tutorials on drawing stick figures and building the figure up but I have also seen some simplified figures for gesture drawing. Is there a particular method or is this a sort of choice that you choose what best works for you?

Aunt Herbert

Aahm, yes, there are methods, and yes, you chose what works best for you.

I am not sure whether I can name all the methods, but the one I know of so far:

There is the one, these site seems to hint at in its help tips, finding the line of action and the central masses of the body first. I don't know how it's exactly called, but it fits quite neatly to the tips Stan Prokopenko gives in his tutorials on proko.com.

There is the O'Reilly method, that focuses heavily on exact proportions

The Force method of Mike Matessi is quite poular, that aims at expressing natural motions.

There is the Atelier method of the 19th century french ministry of fine arts, that starts with copying Charles Bargue's plates. It's somewhat outdated in its methodology, but it aims to bring every drawing to a perfect finish, and is probably more useful for people who already know what they are doing.

Briggman has a method to construct the body from squares. He has great lineart, but unless you already know anatomy very well, he can lead you a bit astray, as he doesn't explain very well, what detail of anatomy which of his lines indicate.

There is the japanese industry method, mostly associated with manga, that often starts to work from fixed templates.

And there are probably a few more, that I haven't even heard of. They all have a bit different paedagogical approach and aim at different end results.

Be aware that I might have mischaracterized any and all of the above methods.

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Wretchedlead

THank you very much for the information. Gives me some things to look into.

Polyvios Animations

Greater job on your more detailed quick sketches of those nudes, wretchedlead, very wonderful!

Well, if I'm about to give you a greater heads up, it could be that my problem that those lines, though they're getting better with those slickness and fluidity, but you're really, really not drawing them quickly and funnily enough. Would you kindly be OK with doing just 1 hour of 1 minute quick sketches of figures in varying degrees of nudity???? (60 sketches of poses and bodies) This critique was and is influenced and inspired by this link, here.

The reasoning behind this bit of advice is because, you'd be able to get a whole lot of baddest drawings that way. Though this is gonna be a warm-up, don't worry about the drawing quality yet, but focus on the speed and quantity first and foremost. Not to mention the fact that these lines of action will become the least stiffest and the most flowing and organic ever.

Good luck and I really hope these helped.

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