First time gesture drawing

Hello, this is my first time doing the basic excersises of gesture drawing. I first did the main action line, then the second one for the shoulders, and then I proceeded to add the 3 masses for the head, ribcage, and hips. I then also proceeded to add the lines for the arms and legs, and placed the pivots where the articulations bend, such as the elbows and knees.

I did this during 15 minutes in total today, working on each pose for one minute. How is this for a first timer? By the way, I have been drawing for over a year at this point, but nothing serious. This is the first time I actually sit down and work on gesture. I would appreciate some feedback and advice, I feel kinda lost on what I should work on. I mostly want to do character illustrations, that is my long-term goal.

https://imgur.com/a/PbdvlfQ

• Anschi24 edited this post on May 29, 2023 9:46pm.

Hello, Anschi24, and welcome aboard. Say, a really far great job on your first ever attempt of the fundamentals of gestures in your first ever gesture drawing interactive drawing tutorial. But still, these quick sketches and long studies all don't seem too fluid, flowing, and energized yet. How would you like to retake the online interactive drawing tutorial here?

The reason why you could and should redo this online drawing tutorial is because, not only it can and will give you your tutorial achievement, you can, shall, and will be able to make your understanding of basic gestural rendering less rigid and more dynamic, vital, and furthermore, electrifying to do and look at.

Extra Tip:

If you are stuck for model practice, I would like to recommend you do some gesture sketches of really simple and really cartoony drawings in any style, so that you can better understand sketching out the forces, shapes, and forms. For even more tips and hints, I suggest you please look at this video.

Please take these things and more with a tiny, small, little grain of salt. Good luck and hat's off to you.

Hello Anschi24,

Considering the timer, your gesture drawings are fluid. I can tell what the bodies are doing for each drawing. However, while focusing on the frame of the form, I think you should also consider the body's contour and continue breaking the body down into pieces. You are on the right path. Continue to practice gesture drawing. I found this youtube video to be helpful

. You are going to make it to your goal! Good luck!

SOmething to remember is that gesture drawings are actually pretty difficult. They are fantastic beginner exercises because they force you to draw over and over again quickly, getting over that feeling of needing to be perfect everytime. They also help you get an idea of how to reduce of figure to its barest essentials, helpin you draw what you see instead of what you THINK you see.

I think your rectangle torso is messing with your ability to draw your poses. I think you should practice either one of two ways.

1. Draw the gestures without the torso and really focus on expressive posing without the torso. Make really fancy stick figures essentially. Instead of the box and circle, have a line to indicat where across the body where the shoulders are, a line representing the spine, and a line where the pelvis. They will be quicker to draw, making it easier to focus on capturing the essence of the pose. I personally don't like drawing the circles to indicate where the lines bend, since they interupt the flow of the lines when gesture drawing. Draw those when you are going to develope a piece further, where accuracy is a little more important.

Keep up the good work dude! Critique is rough sometimes, but it helps you get better so much faster!

2. The other way to practice is one of my favorites, called the BEAN.

Your flexibility with the torso really holding you back. The bean exercise is a fantastic way to understand the torso as a moving bending body part. One of my favorite beginner exercises was to draw figures torsos as just the bean for a little while. Keep the time short, just enough time to draw the bean torso.

You've got the right idea, working from big to small and getting the whole pose in place. When you're brand new to this, the only thing to do is keep a steady pace and watch the pile of drawings grow. Eventually you'll have quite a lot of them and you can evaluate your current work vs. the old stuff.

A good habit to build is making one deliberate line and leaving it alone. In a school setting, this is part of why vine charcoal is used. But the broad side of a pencil can be used to the same effect, or markers if you're feeling up to it. The idea is that quick drawings like this aren't really about drawing fast so much as making efficient decisions. The extra time thinking before making your mark is made up for by never having to scribble or draw back over.

While the most important part is the actual hours spent drawing, you'll also want to be studying anatomy and figure drawing from one resource or another. This gets to be a contentious topic with people having strong feelings about their favorite artists and authors, so take your time looking around. Andrew Loomis wrote a series of books during the golden age of illustration that are probably the most popular. Personally I'm a fan of Gottfried Bammes for his geometric simplifications of the human body (some people find it too "stiff"). And for the classical, 19th century approach, there's Paul Richer's Artistic Anatomy, which every book since owes some debt to.

Keep it up and don't forget to have fun.