Gesture critque

I've been practicing for a few weeks now and I hope I could get some critquing and advice to see where I should focus on improvement. Here's today's session of 30 second and 2 minute gestures: https://imgur.com/a/281HGSw

I know I struggle with muscular men. I seem to get lost in the contours of the body instead of finding the gesture. I think my lines could use more confidence as well.

Nice work, eadriver45,

I feel that your quick poses for your muscular men are on the right track, and I feel that I could give you an honest critique. You know, when it comes to your muscle men, you worry too much about the contours. Why don't you please do 89 minutes of 60 second male pose, and/or any pose warm-ups?

The reason why you could do this suggestion is because, if you're looking for that confident and bold line your talking about, then I say, 'go for it.' It's OK if those 1 minute poses don't look like nothing, because, they'll be here to completely loosen you up and lighten up your line quality. Keep up the good work, and I hope you've found this helpful, informative, and encouraging.

I think your first gesture studies are great! They do capture and give an idea of what the image you referenced looked like. As for your contours problem, I do have a similar issue. I think what's working for me to improve might help. Instead of doing quick studies when trying to put down muscular and countoured forms, give yourself time to really study the body instead. That way when you do quicker drawings, you'll feel more confident in what you are putting down and spend more time on the actual gesture.

Hope this helps, and best of luck!

Hi. You have got some very nice ones in there. It looks like you really found the gesture from the get go in sketch 13 and 16, very good flow.

My advice is a bit counter intuitive because in gesture drawing it's usually all about finding the big movement as the gesture. Now, it's true that some poses has clearer gesture and direction than others. Let's look at pose 5 as an example. In this pose there's no long sweeping through line like you see in a stretched out ballerina pose for example. But there is gesture to be found in this pose. A swoop along the arm goes over in a swoop on the oposite leg, the other upper arm can flow in the same gesture as the oposite lower leg and so forth. I think that in this case it's a matter of stepping down the scale of the gesture you are looking to find. Instead of finding one or two long sweeps you can find many, shorter and quicker gestures. Hope I'm making sense. I think I know the picture this pose comes from. If I find it I'll give it a go. Good idea to number the poses. Makes it so much easier to be specific when talking about. I might steal that idea for next post.

• Thestripper edited this post on January 31, 2021 10:49pm.