One month of gesture drawing results. (would like some critique)

Hello! I have just registered and I am happy to join the community!

So it has been a month now that I started to learn to draw. I have been drawing every day for about an hour or so, mostly gesture drawings of humans. Next to this, I was watching youtube videos and following a book called ,,drawing on the right side of the brain''. I've been slacking on the book kinda, I should really get back to it and finish it so I can start a new book on anatomy or something. Drawing humans well is sort of my goal right now, I heard somewhere that if you can draw humans, you can draw anything pretty much. :P

So yeah, I started with gestures and now I feel somewhat confident to share them and get some critique. I was afraid to show anyone my drawings so far because I was afraid I'd get a false sense of success and ditch drawing..but hopefully I continue haha, I have a good feeling I will, drawing is fun! I feel like it is an okay time to start getting critique too because I feel like it would benefit me in improving a lot.

So here is a link https://imgur.com/a/pEbXqkd to some recent gesture drawings of mine, tell me what you think!

**note: Most of these gesture drawings would take me 2 to 5 minutes, I see a lot of ppl sharing how much time they take on some of their gesture drawings. I honestly like to take more time with my gesture drawings because I still don't feel too comfortable drawing them in a short amount of time, I just feel like those 2-5 minutes are just needed for me atm. I am open for critique about that too tho. :D

• Noddson edited this post on September 18, 2018 6:46am.

Hello Noddson, welcome to Line of Action!

You've made some great progress with gestures in this one month! :) You manage to capture a lot of motion well and understand the action line, so you're on the right track for sure.

What I notice is that in your gestures, you connect the pelvis and the ribcage together through the shapes you draw. This results in some stiffness in the figures. The reason why humans bend the way we do is because there is a gap between our ribcage and pelvis that is primarily covered by muscle tissue and squishy organs with a flexable spine in between. Going forward, I suggest trying to draw the ribcage and pelvis separately with a gap between them, so that you can create more flexibility in your drawings. Check out our Gesture basics #2 article! It has some good examples and explanations on this.

I also recommend trying draw your figures with less strokes. You'll want your lines to be confident with time and practice, and the more 'scritchy scratchy' you go on your lines, the less confident they feel. It also helps you think more carefully about how to draw a line if your goal is to draw as few lines as possible.

There's no right or wrong way to do gestures. :) If 2-5 minutes is what you need to get comfortable drawing gestures, then that's absolutely fine. 30 second gestures are useful because they train your brain to make quick decisions - deconstructing a form into shapes, figuring out where joints are located, figuring out where the motion and force in a gesture is - and then translate those decisions onto paper. Starting with 2+ minute gestures is good because a lot of people struggle to figure out how to do this if they start off at 30 seconds. Some members also challenge themselves by giving themselves 5 or 15 minutes to draw a figure, but only use exactly 10 strokes/lines in the gesture total. It's a different excercise that's also super useful!

So my only suggestion on gesture timers is to switch it up and keep yourself challenged without demanding so much from you you'll burn out. You've learned a lot already, but it's only the tip of the iceberg of what figure studies have in store!

Hello Sanne!

Thank you for a warm welcome, compliments and critique!

I've thought about what you said about ribcage and pelvis and I think I understand and see what you are saying. I have also noticed this in my gesture drawings, especially in the ones of the human figure from the front or the side view. I have been kind of stubbornly sticking to my stiff bean with the pelvis and ribcage connected as you said. I think I know how I'll fix this with the article you sent me and your explenation of ribcage and pelvis.

I guess I'll start by drawing an action line, make an oval for the ribcage and then a seperated circle for the pelvis. Then I'll make more lines to show how the pelvis and ribcage interract, to show if the body is pinching, stretching, tilting. I suppose that would fix it and show more flexibility and structure in my drawings. The torso is very tricky tho right? :D I'll also have to start practicing drawing ovals for the ribcage, it is mostly the reason why I am drawing the torso the way I am, I am just bad at ovals, especially the ones at an angle haha. I've been filling up pages with circles but I guess it's time to fill them with ovals too.

Also thanks for pointing out the scratchiness on my lines. I guess it's a bad habit I started to develop, funnily enough, when I started drawing gestures, I tried my hardest to go with just one line and now I go ,,scritchy scratchy'' as you said. :P I don't know why..I'd make excuses that it helps my muscle memory to go over the line a couple of times and adjusting it but now it is just becoming a bad habit. I like the look of it for some reason too tho.. haha. I'll try to keep that in mind in the future too.

I like your explanation about about time frames for gesture drawings and I totally agree and makes me feel better. There is no need to obsess over the time frame I guess. Depends on what you are doing, what ur goal is and what u are trying to practice on with an excercise as you said. I suppose those 30 second gesture practices are great for capturing motions of ppl while sitting in a park and drawing for example. 5-15 min challenge sounds great too. :D

Thanks again for the tips and kind words!

Hello Noddson, your images are a little hard to see. I would recommend editing them a little if you can to make your lines easier to see. There is also a great phone app called camscanner that works just like a scanner for your phone. What I can see though is great! You have a lot of motion in your figures, especially the ones that are twisting. The 2-5 minute timer is very useful, because you can take your time making sure the proportions are right. However the 30-60 second timer is really great for training your brain to see shapes. Because you only have a short amount of time to draw a gesture it forces you to ignore the details and just get the shapes and basic placement right. It helps you generate poses faster. That being said I think you should also try a longer timer to start working on some details too, because your anatomy is already looking solid and I think you're ready. And don't be afraid to show your work! Everyone here is trying to improve and understands the struggle! Keep up the great work.

Hello Madamallow!

Thanks a lot for the compliments! You saying that my anatomy is already looking solid and that I'm ready to start working on some details make me feel great since I haven't started studying anatomy yet and your words give me confidence to start diving into it. :D I agree on what you said about 2-5 min gestures, that you can take ur time to make sure the proportions are right, that's my fav part about 2-5 min gestures and why I like doing them.

And yeah, I realise my images are a little hard to see, I should've put more effort into making them more visible. The camscanner app you mentioned sounds awesome and I'll definitely check it out in the future and use it if I share my drawings again. Thanks for telling me about it! :D

Cheers!

• Noddson edited this post on September 19, 2018 10:18pm.

Hi Noddson, Welcome to the wonderful, frustrating, and rewarding practice of figure drawing! Thank you for sharing your drawings. As an art teacher, I can say you have definitely come very far in a month and learned a lot, so pat yourself on the back for that!

Going forward, I definitely agree with the suggestions to try making separate shapes for the rib cage and pelvis. I have a professor at art school who used to talk about the three "moveable masses": the skull, ribcage, and pelvis. He said if you could correctly draw the locations of these three parts, you would have the essence of the pose. Don't worry about not being able to draw a "perfect" oval for now and just do it. Some anatomy studies (just look at a skeleton in different poses and draw the three moveable masses) might be helpful as well.

You may also want to try a more extended pose: 15 + minutes, where you can really study the way the torso and limbs interact.

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain is an amazing book (it was instrumental in me making huge gains in my own craft) and I highly recommend it.

Please continue to share, and keep drawing!!

Good drawings Noddson! Your work show's some understanding of the rhythmic design of the human body and a good awareness of gravity and balance. Your drawings just need some better understanding of the functionality of the body in some places so everything connects naturally like in a real figure.

@AnnaArtista

Hello AnnaArtista!

I appreciate the compliments and critique coming from an art teacher! Thank you for sharing and passing the knoweledge of the professor, the three moveable masses make a lot of sense. I took your advice and other ppl's advice here in my recent drawing sessions. Drawing those three locations really does capture the essence of the pose, when I put down those three locations, things just click and I understand the pose better, everything comes easy after that, even understanding how those three masses interact clicks, if the torso is pinching, twisting, stretching and stuff like that. Ovals don't seem so scary anymore either hehe. I do have a little trouble figuring out the proportion of the ribcage and pelvis but I am figuring it out. The anatomy study where u draw the three moveable masses from a skeleton sounds great.

Thank you for welcoming me on the journey of human figure drawing. I'll definitely continue sharing but probably not as frequently. Maybe I'll do 1 month updates. I like going back to my old drawings and see how much I have improved, especially on those rare occassions where I feel frustrated.

@Swen Thanks a lot for the compliments and critique Swen! I'll definitely work on understanding of the functionality of the body as it seems like the thing most of the people pointed out. :D