BEHIND-THE-SCENES: Gestures

If you’ve been looking into how to get better at drawing, you've probably come across the advice, “Do your gestures and studies!” Admittedly, that’s something that’s fallen by the wayside for me in the last couple of months *cough* since maybe last October. And I’ve probably paid for that--in terms of how much I've struggled more than I should when it came to drawing!

Regardless of style or approach, I think these sorts of exercises can definitely (1) increase drawing speed and (2) give you a better intuition on flow and brush economy. So for this month, I’ve decided to resume my exercises and try maybe 10 or 30 minutes daily. The first few were really garbage because I've lost my muscle memory! But after the 10th day in a row, things started to feel smoother.

Here are a few examples. Which btw, I don’t think there’s a right or wrong way to do your gestures. This is just how I learned recently from a super helpful anatomy class at Brainstorm School (https://www.brainstormschool.com/fig). Proko’s website offers a different approach, which you can check out for free. For nude models, I like line-of-action.com -- you can set a timer or pause, but my favorite part is that it cycles through random images and you don’t have to waste time searching on various art websites. I also like to use the book, Figure Drawing for Concept Artists by Kan Muftic, as it provides a lot of great references in the back (and their online resources), and the posing/photography is very professional--it’s very easy to pick out the line of action from their model’s poses.

The last two images show an exercise where I block out the ribcage and pelvis in 3D, and cylinders for the limbs. It’s a way to help better understand how the figure is placed in perspective and getting the right foreshortening.

So after doing a hundred a these or so (consistently over the course of a few days), I’m starting to get back into the rhythm. This isn’t necessarily the glamorous part of art, but it’s like the random little exercises you do to train for a sports match (like pushups or something idk), and I do think it’ll help speed up my work!