What’s in Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics for gesture drawing?

Hey, all!

Good morning, everybody, I was just wondering if Scott McCloud's aforementioned book has any benefits for people practicing figure drawing for gestural purposes for me, but I want to know what's your answers on this question.

Thanks, and have lots of fun practicing.

Please click here, but thanks.

• Polyvios Animations edited this post on November 2, 2023 6:51am. Reason: Link and reclarification

I'm not sure that it does; I've read it before but it was a long time ago and can't remember the exact details, but it's not quite a drawing textbook, and is very much about understanding comics (though the information in there is good if you do want to draw comics; there's a lot of discussion of things like paneling and storytelling if I'm remembering correctly). It has good insights and may be useful for other work (and is just an interesting read), though!

If you haven't already read them, these might be more helpful to you:
Dynamic Figure Drawing by Burne Hogarth
Force: Dynamic Life Drawing by Michael D. Mattesi
Figure Drawing: Design and Invention by Michael Hampton

• Icouldntthinkofaname edited this post on November 2, 2023 5:17pm.

Oh, Icouldntthinkofaname, even though I've never actually owned and read a copy of Understanding Comics, I will buy myself a copy of that someday, but as for your suggestions, they could and should be worth a try.

Thanks for the hints!

Hi Polyvios Animations. I have the book here 'Understanding Comics. The invisible art' by Scott McCloud. It's not really for gesture drawing. You could probably use the pictures in there as a reference. The book is a guideline on how to draw comics. It is written as a comic and it's a fun and intersting read. There are 9 chapters and these are the titles:

1. Setting the record straight (what is the definition of a comic and a bit of history)

2. The vocabulary of comics

3. Blood in the gutter ("nothing is seen between two panels, but experience tells you something must be there")

4. Time frames

5. Living in line

6. Show and tell

7. The six steps

8. A word about color

9. Putting it all together

Oh, Creativewitheliza, thank you.