30 & 60s gesture critique

Hi all,

I'm still a beginner, but I've been practicing for the past few months and I finally feel confident enough to share!

Here are some 30s and 60s gesture drawing practices:

https://imgur.com/a/8vyX3M4

Would love any advice you have to offer. I know that my grasp of proportions in particular isn't great, so if anybody has any advice on how to improve that, that would be fantastic.

My number one advice would be: Take a breath and slow down.

I remember getting used to timed drawing, and feeling under time pressure and trying to get as much of the figure nailed down in as short a time frame as possible... and I actually got better at it, but I never managed to overcome that all my drawings looked a bit... scrappy? I was mostly content with what I did, until I saw someone post a pic with really nice and confident lines, and being able to draw like that felt like a sci-fi story to me. Something that might happen in a far far future..

I had left the drawing tips enabled, mostly, so I would know in advance when the timer changed. And when I read them, I always felt a bit puzzled or not adressed at all: "Remember, that the assignment is complete even if you just draw that one line of action..." In 30 seconds? That was clearly baby talk, not relevant for me.

The main reason for me to leave the tips on anyways, was to avoid starting a 5 minute drawing, while still believing that I was working at a 60 sec drawing. Because, then I basically had to scrap everything and start fresh after 1 minute in, as developing THAT hasty sketch further just led me to being annoyed about all my bad measurements and my inconsistent line quality.

It took me quite a while to realize my mistake. Nope, the goal of those short warm-up sketches isn't to get used to drawing as much as possible in as short a time span as possible. It's actually OK, if there are only 3 or 4 lines on the paper after 30 seconds. But those lines should be good enough to start a 5 minute or 10 minute or 25 minute or full hour drawing. First lines are quite decisive for the quality of the final piece, so it makes sense to practice them a lot, but the practice isn't helpful if I draw at a completely different pace, just because there is a clock ticking.

So, when I look at your sketches, I am not telling you, that they are bad or something. Yepp, you can be confident about being able to do that, and that general grasp of gesture and proportion you developed so far will actually be helpful for developing further, just, .... If you aim at finishing the figure in 60 seconds, what are you going to do with the rest of the time in a longer piece?

I am currently at a pace, where I start to think about where to add shading, because I fell that the figure is done, after about 4 minutes. I remember when I used to get to that point after about 2 minutes. When I compare the difference in results that makes in a 10 minute or even 25 minute drawing, I know that my personal goal has to be, to step even more on the brake, observe more, think more, measure more, plan my lines better, because I am still way too fast.

Thanks, this is really useful! I think I understand now - 30s gesture drawings aren't about doing a full gesture drawing in 30s, they're about doing 30s worth of groundwork for a piece of any length.