How Gesture Drawing Can Prove Your Figure Drawing Skills
A good deal of artist can benefit a lot from gesture drawing. A typical problem that we artists have is over thinking a sketch. Maybe you know what I’m talking about.
You stare at a picture forever being unsure of where to start and when you do finally start drawing, you agonize over each and every stroke and curve. You agonize over every stroke and the whole process very frustrating and simply not fun.
Here is the artistic writer’s block and the reason you (and so many other artists) is straightforward: you’re trying to draw AND edit yourself concurrently.
Here’s why this can be a very bad idea: for you to draw you have to engage the creative side brain edit and critic yourself, you are engaging the analytical side of your brain. Each cannot both function simultaneously.
It’s like trying to walk forward and backward at the same time. You end up not going anywhere.
Just how can you solve this frustrating problem? One easy, yet devastatingly effective exercise is the “60-second sketch”. It is a gesture drawing exercise. The way it work is you pick out a picture of a figure that you want to draw and then draw it in 60 seconds. After 60 seconds, stop.
Now obviously you aren’t going to be able to draw a very complete figure in 60 seconds, the point. This exercise pushes you to let go of any self-editing tendency your creativity and energy to flow through.
By doing this, to view the picture as a whole and stop worrying about the little details. This, by the way, is the key to adding life and emotion to your drawings.
Listed below are some important points to remember when doing this exercise:
-Continue to keep your hands moving. If you slow down, you are only giving yourself a time to slip back into an analytical state of mind. (I prefer to act like I just drank a gallon of Red Bull and that my hand is possessed by some artistic demon)
-Make long broad strokes. This means you should be gesture drawing not with just your wrist, but also your arm. It could help to use a larger .
-Warm up by doodling or drawing long vertical and horizontal lines across a sheet of scratch paper. Just the act of drawing will get make this exercise a lot easier.
Just practice this exercise one or more times each day and you’ll see good results.
Now that you know how to sketch, try it out with figure drawing. Here’s a good article to get you started:
