Let's do How to Draw Gesture together (nudity)
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@Susan-Marks said in Let's do How to Draw Gesture together (nudity):
@Coley @SketchyArtish thanks for the feedback and encouragement.
So exactly what is a flowing line? One with a curve? Should I “always” start with a curve? I ask with humility.
Usually. Look for the main line of action, which will depend on the view. On the back it's the spine. On the front it kind of goes through the sternum and belly button, to the crotch. Sometimes in a profile you have to just pick one of those two. The main line sometimes continues through the legs or arms. If it's not a completely stiff pose, it should have some curvature and flow. If it doesn't it's probably not a good pose to be studying for gesture, because we want movement. You were actually seeing the lines pretty well, it just looked like you lost confidence after those first couple. Drawing the nice smooth lines means you're "feeling it".
I'm certainly no expert, but LOA and figure drawing are something I've dedicated some time to. As Stan says in the video: there's no one right way to do these. Sometimes your line of action may differ from mine. Just keep practicing and try not to overthink. Those lines will come naturally with time.
I was just about to upload my session for today when I saw this. I'll take a moment to highlight the line of action from each pose before I put it up. Note that the arms, legs, and other twists and turns may have their own, separate, line of action too. I'm just noting the primary one in these drawings.
Here's a good article from the LOA site on finding the lines.
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Here's my session from today. I did two 20 minute sessions. Some of the poses today were super hard and I felt like it was a terrible session. Looking now it wasn't quite as bad as I thought. Not the best, but I've had worse too.
To help @Susan-Marks, and anyone else who's curious, I've highlighted my main line of action in blue and used red if there was a secondary one that felt really strong. With a shorter time limit these would be my main targets to draw. It's worth mentioning that these are all either C, S, or I lines, like Stan mentions in the videos. Hope that helps!
The red line on the first set is a correction. That should be sharp, not flowing curves. I used the bright red teacher ink to mark myself off for that one.
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@SketchyArtish oooh good idea
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Watched the next section of the video, got into 2 minute drawings. I think I'm worse at 2 min. than 30-second! I need to practice the longer drawings more before I dare show any pictures. My proportions end up all wrong somehow.
I'm going away for a 3 day weekend, so I won't post anything other than this until later next week, but I hope to see all the progress the rest of you are making!
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Hi all, sorry I wasn't able to join as planned. It's been a tough week and my productivity has been greatly affected. I hope to get back on track soon. All the best.
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I have been bad at posting pics but reasonable good at making time to practice
that's the main thing!
Last night I did something different and tried charcoal instead of pencil. And i also sketched from some of my previous gesture drawings instead of photos. That made me really think about the drawing and the flow. I think it was a good thing to do. Will go back and forth between using my own drawings as reference and photos. I felt like I forgot about the detail of what I was drawing and got more into the gestures, the linework, the drawing which was awesome. I haven't watched the third video yet and have a busy weekend shaping up but hopefully I can watch at least part of the next video and keep up some practice. I did knock the practice back to about 20 minutes though as I was doing an hour and my house and life are falling apart lol, not to mention I wasn't sketching in my sketchbook so much. It's such a balance isn;t it?! -
@SketchyArtish your words and poses with the LOA marked out are so helpful. I suspect that in most of those I would not have seen that line. I’m definitely getting lost in the details. I like the style of you figures in that the very big muscle shape is seen, but not in any anatomical detail. Which I do intellectually know is exactly the point.
I was watching the last set of poses in the class before the critique and I felt like my 2 minute poses are even more off. I think I might focus on shorter poses.
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@Coley sometimes I feel like the balance that real life demands requires some of the poses were drawing!
I think your idea of drawing again from your previous drawings sounds brilliant. I’m going to give it a try. I may even try drawing from @SketchyArtish’s drawings. -
I was scrolling through my phone for something else and spotted some older drawings from about 6 months ago. Figured I'd toss these up for comparison. The improvements are from about 30-60 minutes of short gestures a week tops. The flow and proportions are really coming more "naturally" for me now. It's nice to be able to actually see the difference limited practice has made.
I'm finishing up the final video now. This was a good idea to run through the class together @Susan-Marks !
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@SketchyArtish I agree your gestures are improving! More flowing now. I am also watching the last video. It's actually really good and could be watched earlier!
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@Coley @SketchyArtish --I've finished up the last video and I really enjoyed it. I can see that gesture is an interpretation-and 2 teachers see things a bit differently-which was helpful.
I did some copy over of SketchyArtish's previous set of drawings. That helped me loosen up and feel with my fingers how the shapes could be much smoother. Then I tried some of my own.
I really felt seen when Marshall Vandruff spoke about the "itchy/sketchy" lines. In this set I helped myself out with a brush with some streamline. These are 60 second poses, and I used the first 10-15 to "look."@SketchyArtish'-I was so pleased to see your earlier drawings and how progress can be made. For this 6 months, really doesn't seem long. Like they say, regular practice...
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@Susan-Marks
Are any of you finding direct ways to take what you're learning in this course and applying it to your work?I looked back at my original thoughts-and its now clear to me that my stories don't have a lot of big gestures in them. They have expressions-and I may tackle that next. I know some of the figure pose sites we've been using also have sections on expression.
I've really enjoyed learning with you!
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@Susan-Marks You're really starting to see those long flowing lines in the poses. Nice ones! The proportions are just a matter of time and practice (Marshal talks about that in the video).
As for the work, Proko's videos have improved my ability to draw poses a lot. It's allowed me to add action to characters (even those quick warm up ones from the Virtual Studio thread), which really helps bring a character to life IMO. One of these days I will buy that full course, but there's a ton of great info for free on his website. I can't recommend the "bean" and "mannequin" videos enough for anyone looking to build poses from imagination.
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I was able to get back at it this morning before work, but didn't take pictures of what I did. One thing I noticed is that I'm drawing the legs on every single gesture drawing waaay too short. Def need to keep this in mind from the beginning of a drawing - make the line of action long enough to actually have legs in proportion to the rest of the body!
I've still got the critique video to watch, and a ton more practice to do. Good to go through this class with others as it's helped with accountability a great deal!
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@Kat I'm still working my way through. I didn't do much for a couple days then a fair amount today. The bloopers at the end of the critique video are worth watching lol!
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@Susan-Marks and everyone else
i haven't done much for three days or so but a lot today. One thing I'm finding is that my lines are getting longer and looser but proportions are going to ...ahem ...well, not a good place lol! I am determined to get those longer lines so I am putting up with the proportion issues . It will take a lot more practice to be able to do those long lines in a way where I am "in control" of them.
I am not sure I can use this in my other drawings too much yet, tho I think it is influencing things already. It is making me look at the rigidity of some of my drawings and the poses, and I really want to figure out how to do better linework now! So I think it will REALLY help to keep this up.
One funny thing is that the one thing I drew from memory, over and over, were horses, when I was a lot younger. I tried gesturing out a few horses and they were pretty good! I probably have some practice and drawing memory built up there! It was how I used to spend my days at school when I was a kid........but I'm almost 50 now!
anyhow, thanks a bunch, it was fun to have some motivation to keep going! I am still working on things and still have the third video I am watching in bits and spurts so I expect to post a little more here in this thread. -
@SketchyArtish Thanks for the kind words of encouragement! And thanks for the recommendations of the other free courses on Proko's site (and I'm happy that they are different content and not competition for the great courses here at SVS).
I too want to take the full figure drawing class-but I think I'm going to keep up with the gesture practice and I've also been checking out the expressions on Line of Action. I think there's probably a bit of carryover-in expressions don't work as well, either, when I overthink them and "itchy-sketchy" draw them. So much to learn. I'm actually grateful for that!
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@Coley I think I was the only girl who didn't draw horses growing up!
I found that one of the things that helped me get an idea about what a flowing line looks like and "feels" like was when I drew over @SketchyArtish's posts. It opened up some closed door in my mind and they pretty suddenly felt more possible. I've learned lots from the few master copies I've done-so maybe I've hit upon something that helps my learning. And I've stuck to it more due to the accountability we shared working on this course. -
Hi, I’m doing the draw gesture class too, may I join in?
Here is my attempt to the 30 sec and 2 min poses. I decided to go old fashion with pencil/paper combo, since these two buddies were waiting reallyyyyyy long time for me to use them.
it was quite fun, I can’t wait for my next morning drawing session.
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@mag Welcome to the fun-and I really like your sketches. I'm struck with how adding the angle of the chin really provides direction or gesture to the head in your images.
