advice request for gestures

Hi everyone,

So I've been drawing for just about a year now, trying to be somewhat consistent. What I'm really trying to get, is a good grasp of gesture, (rhythm lines, describing movement) but quite often my gesture lines seem very random and I struggle to describe the pose accurately. I know that practice is nacessary for improvement, but it remains a struggle, and I'm wondering if there is something i'm not getting. So here is my question, can you see an obvious flaw in my way of describing the poses, and can you give me any sort of advice that might help me improve on this front? Thank you for your time and attention!

https://imgur.com/bmFEFqt

https://imgur.com/vkQaK71

https://imgur.com/wT8s7vm

https://imgur.com/qikGMZe

• BentHorseShoe edited this post on February 3, 2021 9:08am.
• BentHorseShoe edited this post on February 3, 2021 9:08am.
• BentHorseShoe edited this post on February 3, 2021 9:09am.
• BentHorseShoe edited this post on February 3, 2021 9:10am.

Hi Brian.

You are doing good but there are a few things that I know would help you progress.

First thing is that it looks like you are drawing mostly with the point of your pencil. This makes it hard to vary the line width and pressure. There is a special way to sharpen your pencil and then the way you hold it in your hand. This way feels weird at first, but after a few hours of excersise you will start to see results. I'll post a video where Stan Proko explains this. He uses Conté - Pierre Noir pencils. Those are a bit expensive and can be hard to find so I would recommend any soft graphite pencil instead. Derwent Sketching , Stedtler Mars Lumograph, Mitsubishi Hi-Uni, Caran D'Ache, Winsor Newton, Faber-Castell... These are all good brands. Just go for the soft grades such as 4B, 6B or even the very soft 8B.

I think of gesture drawing as a "search". Meaning that you go very light with your pencil as you go over the paper and search for your line, so that the stroked is very very light, almost invisible. When you feel like you have found the right shape you can put down darker and darker strokes. This is how you work up the flow and arm movement that will help a great deal in gesture drawing, and in all other drawing to.

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• Thestripper edited this post on February 3, 2021 4:59pm.

Thank you so much Thestripper, this makes a lot of sense! I think it will help indeed. Take care!

Nice work on your series of gestures, BrainH, I must think that you're on the right track in terms of your current goal.

My advice would be to tell you that, that's OK if you're somewhat inconsistent with your gesture lines, because, accuracy is not the important concern of your recent goal. I feel that you're just doing a swell job on searching out the forces and lines of your gestural poses. If I could give you a sincere critique on your gesture sketches, then it would be to keep working out with more and even more 30 second poses. Why don't you please do 108 more minutes of them? The reason is because, it could be extremely important and pivotal with your agenda in getting your lines of action, rhythm, and drawing your long and lively gestures.

My hat's off to you, and I hope you've found this completely and totally essential, informative, and descriptive.