Yoon's janky intro to gesture drawing

[yhlee]

Howdy! I'd posted this back at my DW and goss suggested I could share it here. I hope folks find it useful (or at least amusing).

I'm posting this not because I'm an expert (HA HA HA HA HA no) but because how to do a gesture drawing mystified me for years and I thought people might find a janky beginner guide of interest??

We're using this photo of a dancer from Pexels.



line of action = capturing the spirit/essence/motion of the pose

Start with stick figures, not even arms or legs! Yet body language can be conveyed.

Woody Woodman (SORRY, I misremembered his name) points out (paraphrase) that if you can't convey body language with stick figures, all the muscular rendering in the world will do you no good.

RESOURCE: Storyboarding with Woody Woodman [video course, $60 USD normally]. I learned more about storyboarding in the first ten minutes of this than from reading two books.



line of action = The one (two) lines capturing the flow of a pose. This is open to interpretation - what does the individual artist want to emphasize?

Tom Bancroft points out that mermaids are pure line of action!

RESOURCE: on Tom Bancroft and MerMay [NPR].



A little structure (anatomy/figure) will help you understand what you're drawing. (I mean, more anatomy knowledge = better but I am very n00b here.)

When drawing a gesture, this is the priority order, approximately, from most to least important:

- line of action
- ribcage
- tilt of shoulders
- tilt of pelvis
- heads / OH FINE, limbs, why can't we all be slugs
(if you couldn't tell, I suck at arms)

I've sketched a VERY BASIC mannequin showing these features.

You want to work in priority order, large to small. Pretend if Jedao shoots you mid-sketch, you want to have captured the highest-priority bits first!

(Jedao is mean.)

RESOURCE: Patrick J. Jones - I particularly recommend Anatomy of Style [ebook, $22 Australian or about ~$15 USD] and either the male figure [video, 1.5 h, $16 Australian or about ~$11 USD] or the female figure [video, 1.5 h, $16 Australian or about ~$11 USD] as starting points.

Let's work through an example!

Reference this photo of a dancer from Pexels; I've cropped it here.





Steps:
- line of action / head (why not) (here, I've chosen from the head down through the spine/torso and through the kicking leg to our left)
- ribcage (we can do this because the torso is largely front-on; perspective/foreshortening would come into play if the torso were twisted, at an angle, etc.)
- line for tilt of shoulders (notice slant)



steps:
- line for tilt of hips (notice slant) - remember, the hips are FUSED, so if one end is UP, the other end is DOWN
- UGH, limbs :)



steps:
- let's build on the previous steps to gesture at a figure! Note the jankiness around the shoulders/arms - those areas are obscured in the reference by the jacket (which is why artists practice on nude figures, I guess). I personally am still struggling with the anatomy of the shoulder and arms, so it's hard for me to extrapolate. You will note JANKY gesturing at the deltoids and pectorals.

- also notice that the torso is bent so the left side is "short"/"pinched" and the right side is "long"/"stretched."

In general, warm up with short gestures (30 seconds) because having to work fast FORCES you to prioritize, vs. losing two minutes drawing The Perfect Ear. (Ask me how I know.)

My context here is sketching people in cafés/at gaming where sometimes they move after FIVE SECONDS so I tend to be TOO fast and then after TWO MINUTES I find myself RENDERING.

Patrick J. Jones has this great acronym:

AUD (he lives in Australia)

Analyze
Understand
Draw

It's okay to pause to UNDERSTAND the angle or what the heck is going on with the foot BEFORE drawing it, even in a 30-second gesture, because you get a better gesture!

RESOURCE: Patrick J. Jones on "structural gesture" (combining gesture with structure/anatomy) [YouTube].

And for lagniappe, a janky page of 30-second gestures sketched with fountain pen:



RESOURCES: Some free websites that will help you drill gestures include

- Line of Action [you have the option for nudes or non-nudes or both]
- Quickposes [you have the options for nudes or non-nudes or both]
- Daily Life Drawing Sessions [YouTube, includes nudes]


Hope this was useful, happy to answer questions if you're willing to wait as I'm often afk for health reasons.

Comments

[nineveh_uk]

Lots to think about there - thanks for posting! I see drawing lots of figures with lines of action in my future.

[goss]

Yay! Thanks for sharing it here. :)

Your "A threatens B" is so spot on. XD It's amazing how much can be captured with a simple line.

[yhlee]

♥

Goss, how do you explain "line of action" to art n00bs? Occasionally people will ask me but I've never been able to find a good explanation for it beyond what I said here!

[goss]

I think you do a good job of explaining it here! :)

Hmm... I think of the action line as picturing an imaginary line that follows the way the spine bends when the body moves, and then extending that line outward, often continuing the motion through one of the limbs.

To me, this kind of gesture drawing is a technique that attempts to capture a *feeling* or energy, a sense of motion and bringing your art to life. It's a starting point that's more about laying down intent, which is why proportion, anatomy, working out muscular details, etc. come later on.

[yhlee]

Yes, I feel the same way about gesture with "feeling/energy" - a little like the notion of qi/chi I've encountered in Asian-origin(ish?) martial arts! But I struggle to explain it to people who want something less, er, "woo." XD

I kind of lean "woo" in art, which is why I think I love gesture, while I've seen some artists who are more structurally oriented (and very, very good!) feel that gesture drawing is a waste of time; this came up during the Anatomy of Style workshop I took with Patrick J. Jones. :D (In fairness, Patrick's philosophy is "This is what I think but YOU DO YOU, every artist is different." :D)

[goss]

Yeah, it's definitely a personal choice.

I notice that I immediately pick up a sense of movement and flow from figure drawings that begin as gesture lines, so it's a technique that I see value in - but to each his own, as you say. :)

[dianafortyseven]

Thank you for sharing this! That's super useful!

[mekare]

Thank you this was well explained!