Suggestions to improve my Gesture

I am quite new to figure drawing and was introduced to it this semester. I am struggling quite a fair bit however feel I have improved a lot with more attempts on the subject. I still have ways to go and would love to have some suggestions on how I can approach what I may be doing incorrectly. The drawings vary from gestural 4 mins poses or 18 minutes for the long poses. Apologies, I may not have numbered the timings for each pose. They were done in Conte and China Graph and on Newsprint paper.

Thank you! I am quite packed with other school subjects however will make time to practise with the help of this website's tutorials and images! I hope I can get better soon enough, figure drawing does seem really fun

Nice activity you've got going, bryanchoo1997. (Especially on the 4 minute quick sketches) Great job on articulating the gestures and constructions of the human forms, they are something.

Well, my bit of advice would and could be that you should please vary the CSI's (not related to some LA show) (I mean those straight lines and curves), thru 150 minutes of 30 second drawing exercises [150 x 60/30, 9000/30=300 exercise warm-ups], all flipped horizontally and/or vertically, and with/without grayscale?

The reason why?? Because it should be able to stylize the tones and values in lines and shapes, which can be useful in simplification, and to help make your poses less stiff, and more dynamic, energetic, fluid, and vital. If that's gonna be your goal, then go with it.

If you wish to draw for animated cartoons, then please, I need you to check out Andreas Deja's blog,https://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/, and look up Ward Kimball on the search engine here, to help you on your cartooning and caricatures.

So, my hat's off to you, and I hope you've found these definitely and absolutely beneficial, helpful, newsy, and encouraging.

Thanks for the suggestion Polyvios Animations ! This is my first time posting here and I am glad I did. From what I'm hearing hoping I don't misunderstand. Is to practise 150mins of 30 Second gestures to help make the poses appear less stiff and help with the economy of line.

Definitely will take up your suggestion for this!

Hi Bryan. I like how far you have come with your figure drawing seemingly without practicing gesture drawing. And I like the pencils or charcoal that you are using, very beautiful. If you take what you have learned about shadows and details and put all of that aside for now and focus only on short interval gesture drawings I think you will see a big improvement in only a couple of weeks. I'm very hessitant to the 150 minutes mentioned in an earlier post, but I do agree that you should keep the interval short. Do 30 or 60 second drawings. The key is to do it every day, but you don't have to spend hours on it every day. Do 20 minutes where you stay focused and keep in mind to keep it simple enough and only capture the things that is needed to describe the pose in that short time (30 seconds is not enough to start shading, doing fingers or toes and such). Search you tube for - Proko gesture drawing. He has a very good and quick introduction on what you should focus on. And as I said, it's better to do this a little bit every day than to do it for many hours once a week. Good luck.

First things first, WOW! Dont know how much drawing youve had before this figure drawing class but this is awesomely good! I see you dont have many hands or feet drawn so I would try to focus some more practice into those. From experince there a pain... I dread every time i have to draw them and still try to hide them when I can LOL! GoodLuck!

Hello!

I think what is holding back your gesture is your dedication to shapes. The page on the middle right that has the two figures on one sheet, to me, has the best gesture of these sketches. These figures are more gestural because the shapes of the muscles and body are not clearly defined. Also, the stokes that you used in these sketches appear longer and mostly unbroken, which helps with the gesture. You might be able to capture gesture in future sketches if you focus on the large shapes first, making your strokes the same way as you did for those figures, and then work into the smaller shapes.

Hope this helps!

Thanks Thestripper for your critique! I do agree with the suggestion for the 150mins gesture, I have dedicated myself to finding time to practise it. However, this week I am only able to clock just an hour of gestural 30sec drawings. Was aiming for the goal to finish 150mins gestures within a week. It did help me get up to speed, focusing on the gesture which I agree I am neglecting in my drawings. I decided to focus on gestures first before going ahead with building the forms.

I have seen his videos for gestures, he is really a great educator, I had referenced his proportions videos before and did some of his anatomy exercises from his premium part but didn't have the time to finish it due to school. I wish I could go in depth towards gesture drawing, I focus on the main action of the pose and draw the C or S curves however the next part, I have difficulty trying to build the form about it. Is there any video or explanation that can explain how to build on from the line of action?

Hahaha BeuyukiaN you are spot on! My lecturer always say that the parts you leave out of the drawings are usually the ones you are afraid to draw or due to the lack of confidence. I will definitely get to that once I finish solidifying my gestures!

Thanks Anbelk for taking the time to critique the drawings! I do agree, I find the lack of understanding of the anatomy may lead me to search for shapes in the drawings. I will take note of longer strokes compared to shorter to create a better flow within the figure. May I ask , I have seen some demonstrations, for the long strokes, do they draw it start from the torso out to the hands or establish the hands then bridge it to the body. Would like to know if you have any idea if this is something I should look into?

I have tried to draw by bridging as I found it created a better flow. However I seen many great gestural drawings who does it the other way. AM I OVERTHINKING THIS?? HAHAHA If I am, just don't mind me

Never mind the feet and hands and facial features for now. Sure you can add them as gestures (very simplified) but focus on getting the biggest shapes in with long connecting shapes/gesture. I would suggest you download Loomis - Figure drawing for all it's worth.pdf

Yua can find it free online. Go to page ca 38 - 41 "The Mannikin Frame" and study those pages. See how the shape gets more and more detail while still keeping it very simple? This is the way. And again, don't stress about how many minutes you draw each week, but keep in mind that it's much better for progress to do many short poses than making only a few longer ones. Do it for a short while every day for a week. You will progress to a whole new level!

Thanks Thestrippper! I will look into that , I am aware Proko talks about the Loomis method however I never picked up the book. My schedule is quite hectic, I will try doing short poses each week