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Hello! I'm a beginner too!
Have you tried Line of Actions tutorial yet? It was a great help to me, and still is. Found here: Learn how to draw - Using reference tools | Line of Action (line-of-action.com)
The article goes into the very basics of gesture drawing, and it's a great place to start when you don't know what you're doing. The tutorial itself is 15mins. I think going through the tutorial a few times is good, just to get a hang of what it is you're trying to accomplish with gesture drawing. And then trying to do gestures on your own, taking as much or as little time as you need. Make sure you take the time to observe the figure/pose first before identifying the line of action. Think about the time you have to draw. For example, if you have 30secs on each pose, take 15secs to observe the pose, and then 15secs to draw your lines of action. If you have more time, you can take more time to observe, and use the extra time to add more detail, like drawing the main masses, drawing the joints, drawing the gestures in the other limbs and in the hands and feet.
Ideally, gestures should be quick, and capture the essence of a pose. A "glorified stick figure" is a term I've heard a lot. What I like to think of as the "motion" of a dynamic pose, or the "weight" of a stationary pose. (It helps me to think about how the body is moving in a dynamic pose, and where the weight/balance/or center of gravity is in stationary pose, to figure out what the line of action is.)
There's a lot that goes into drawing anatomy, form, proportions, perspective, and gesture... and more! There's a lot of drawing tutorials online about drawing anatomy. I like this one from Marc Brunet: 🦵 HOW TO PRACTICE DRAWING ANATOMY (beginner to pro | tutorial) - YouTube . It's a fun and comprehensive video, that goes through the different steps, the purpose and the end goal of drawing anatomy. There's a lot of drawing tutorials out there if you look, many going into a lot more detail than Marc Brunet does. You'll also see different and sometimes conflicting ideas about what is more important in figure drawing, gesture or construction. More advanced artists often will draw both gesture and construction at the same time. Lurking on the forums and seeing what other people's practice looks like also helps.
Watching other people's tutorials, or looking at other people's gestures can give you a good idea of what you're trying to achieve. But just remember: your gesture drawings do not need to look like anyone else's gesture drawings, and it does not need to look like the drawings in the tutorial. The point is that you draw the gesture so you best understand the pose. (And there can be a lot hidden in a pose; force, motion, intentions, emotions, expression, etc.) As you continue practicing gesture drawings, and if you take the time to observe a pose, it will become easier to identify what is really important in a pose, how to draw it, and details that you can include in your gesture drawing, and other details that you leave for another step in drawing anatomy (construction or perspective or muscles or skin or line art etc. etc.)
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Sugar Llama
edited this post on September 4, 2022 1:40am.
Reason: HYPERLINKS
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