Another gesture drawing tip is to avoid erasing. Since gesture drawings are usually done very quickly, erasing mistakes will slow you down.
Illustrate a Word
You can get some idea of what it’s like to think like this type of artist by creating illustrated words. In drawing, painting, or crafting such a word, you must ask yourself, “How can I make the word look like what it says or make it appear that it is doing what it says?”
This is a good example of an illustrated word created by an artist.
Words which describe, such as adjectives, and those which show action, such as verbs, are good subjects for illustrated words. Other parts of speech that can be used include nouns, pronouns, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections. Click here to learn more about the parts of speech.
Illustrated words can be very simple. For example, to illustrate the word red, you could letter the word in red pencil, ink, or paint. To make the word sell look as if it’s selling, you could change the letter “s” into a dollar sign, like this: $ell. On the other hand, you can present illustrated words in a less simple way. For instance, if you were illustrating the word metallic, you could cut block letters from a used, foil baking sheet and attach them to a background with staples.
Using an Artist’s Language to Illustrate a Word
When someone creates the lyrics for a song or writes a poem or story, the person uses verbal language or the written word to express him or herself. Visual artists use nonverbal tools called art elements. In using these elements, artists are speaking in a language that is understood all over the world. No translation is needed!
The art elements that someone may use to create work are line, color, value, texture, shape, and form, and you can use one or more of these same elements to make an illustrated word. All you must do is ask yourself, “Which element or elements are important in illustrating this particular word? How can I use line, color, value, texture, shape, form, and/or space to make it “say” what it’s doing or describing? How can I make it look like what it says it is?”
In the brown box, on the left, are some words that you can illustrate. Of course, you’re not limited to using these. If you can think of additional words that would be interesting and fun, use them, or look through a dictionary to find some.
Line is an extension or the lengthening of a dot. How can you change the length or width of a line to illustrate your word? Will making it straight, wavy, zigzag, curved, or dotted help?
Color is a property of light, and we can use a glass prism to see that light is made of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo (dark blue) and violet. Warm colors are reds, yellows, and oranges, and cool colors are blues, greens, and purples (violets). Colors can make us feel a certain way. For example, warm colors are happy and energetic, while cool colors are relaxed and peaceful. What color is your word, or is color not important in illustrating it?
Value is how light or dark something appears. Does making your word lighter or darker have an effect on how well you communicate what your word is trying to say?
Texture is how something feels when you touch it or how it looks like it might feel. Would making your word look smooth, slick, bumpy, or rough help your word tell people what it’s saying?
Shapes result when lines are joined together. Some geometric shapes with which you are probably familiar include circles, triangles, squares, ovals, and rectangles. Irregular ones are known as organic shapes. How can you make the letters in your word take the shape of the object it represents?
Form also has depth, while shape is flat, having only length and width. Since form has depth, we say that an object that has form is three-dimensional. Some common examples of forms are spheres, cones, cylinders, cubes, and pyramids. Will giving your word form make it easier to communicate your message?
Space is the area between, around, or within something. When working on a landscape painting, artists use space to make things appear to be three-dimensional. However, space can be real, and it’s especially important in creating sculpture. This art form can be positive or take up space, or it can have negative space, as in the voids or holes that appear in work such as that created by sculptor Henry Moore. How can you use space to express your word? Can you draw it to make the word look like it takes up space, or will gluing something to the background actually take up positive space?
What is Gesture Drawing?
Gesture drawing is an illustration style that focuses on capturing the essence of a subject in its most basic form. Rather than getting caught up in minute details, you’re trying to capture your subject’s movement, action, or overall shape.
Think of it as the ‘big picture’ kind of drawing.
Let’s say you’re drawing a running person. Instead of worrying about wrinkles on the shirt or the laces on the shoes, you’d focus on the overall shape of their body, the position, the way their arms swing, and the energy of their movement.
This approach can help artists convey a sense of motion and life in their work.
It’s like taking quick notes in class. You don’t write down every single word your teacher says. Rather, you jot down the main points.
That’s what gesture drawing is – capturing the ‘main points.’
Gesture drawing is a fun and liberating way to approach art. It’s also an excellent tool for artists to have in their toolboxes.
Benefits of Gesture Drawing
By quickly sketching out the action, gesture drawing teaches you how muscles stretch & strain during different motions, how the body twists and turns, and how far the joints can naturally bend or extend.
Gesture drawing is the anatomy class of art, but instead of focusing on what’s inside the body, you’re learning about how the outside of the body moves and expresses itself.
Here are some more benefits of gesture drawing.
Improves Observational Skills
Gesture drawing helps you develop the ability to observe and draw fast.
It enhances your eye for body language & movement and your understanding of expressing gestures in your artwork.
Improves Hand-and-Eye Coordination
Gesture drawing is a great way to develop hand-eye coordination.
When practicing gesture drawing, keeping your hand moving while your eyes focus on capturing the movement of the object you are drawing is essential.
This will help you train your hand and eye to work together to capture the gesture accurately.
This leads to improving overall drawing skills.
Helps Understand the Form of the Human Body
Gesture drawing teaches you to focus on the shape and movement of the body.
This helps you to understand the human anatomy, its dynamics, and its movements. Drawing gestures will also help you better understand the body’s proportions.
Practicing gesture drawing makes you better at drawing people in various positions and poses.
Helps Understand Movement and Action
Practicing gesture drawing is a great way to understand movement and action better. It allows you to capture the beauty of the human form in motion.
With gesture drawing, you can observe how energy moves through space and is expressed through certain postures, shapes, and movements. This helps you understand the movement and action of the human body in a more detailed way.
By understanding how the body moves and acts, you will be able to capture the essence of the pose and gesture. This will help you to communicate an emotional aspect in your drawings rather than just the technical details.
Works as a Warm-up Exercise
Gesture drawings are often done as a warm-up exercise during figure and life drawing sessions.
It helps to loosen up the artist’s hand and mind before starting the main drawing. It also allows the artist to become familiar with the model’s gesture without getting bogged down in details.
Once the gesture has been captured, the artist can draw specific features or details of the human figure.
How to Practice Gesture Drawing?
Now that you have seen the benefits of gesture drawing, here are some helpful tips for getting started.
Draw the Line of Action
Gesture drawing starts with establishing the line of action. It is a gesture line that describes the gesture of your figure.
The line of action is usually curved and flows throughout the body, outlining each movement and gesture. It should be a continuous line from head to toe, capturing all the movement in between.
Draw a Line For the Waist and Shoulders
Once you’ve established the gesture line, it’s time to draw the lines for the waist and shoulders. Using your gesture line as a guide, identify where these lines will be placed on the figure.
The lines in your figure may be positioned differently depending on the posture. They can be straight, curved, or even diagonal.
Draw a Stick Figure
Using the gesture line, waist, and shoulder lines as a guide, you can draw a basic stick figure to indicate the subject’s bone structure.
Drawing stick figures is helpful for beginners as it helps them to understand and capture gestures and guides them in constructing accurate figures.
However, you can skip this step and concentrate on the form as you become more confident in gesture drawing.
Develop The Form
Now that you have the basic structure of your figure, it’s time to develop the form. Start by adding shapes, loose lines, and hints of values to create tones and textures in your figure.
Try experimenting with various line thicknesses for a variety of results. As a gesture drawing progresses, the lines can be drawn darker and more detailed until the final form is achieved.
Focus on gestures when adding details and use light lines to create the shapes. Remember that gesture drawing should be spontaneous and loose – so don’t strive for perfection.
Defining the Art: Gesture Drawing
Ask just about any animator in any field of animation and they’ll tell you just how valuable the art of gesture drawing can be. Though this is especially true for 2D hand drawn animation, it applies to every type of our art form, as getting down the essence of ideas quickly and accurately is useful for all animators. In this article we take a closer look at Gesture Drawing; what it is and how to master it.
What is a Gesture Drawing?
For starters, we need a definition for gesture drawings. Though there isn’t a specific entry in most dictionaries, here is the heart and soul of it:
A gesture drawing is usually a quick, often simple drawing that captures the essential feeling, energy, movement, action, or pose of the subject. It contains a minimum amount of information (line, tone, markings) to achieve the maximum results of the essence of the subject. It can be realistic, but is not always. It does not try to capture anything “photo-realistically” but instead alters reality down to its purest form to tell the story of the scene being drawn.
Since we work in a visual medium, the best thing to do is take a look at examples of gesture drawings:
Though the gesture drawing examples above are all figures, gesture drawing isn’t limited to just the human form. Animals, Objects, and even Scenes can be captured in the style of gesture drawing.
In the book Drawn to Life, Walt Stanchfield spends hundreds of pages explaining the importance of gesture drawing to animation and how to go about doing it properly. One line in particular is very crucial to keep in mind:
“We must be emotional about our subject whether it has to do with serious matters or with humor. We cannot back off from our emotions – if we do the result will be a mere anatomical reproduction.”
Gesture drawing is about emotion, feeling, and instant understanding. It is telling a story in a single image. That story can be as simple as “This woman is bored” or as complex as “Here is a man upset about a scratch on his car which he blames the other man for who clearly has no idea how the mark happened.”
Doing a Gesture Drawing
When you sit down to do a gesture drawing, several things are important to keep in mind:
-You are not studying anatomy. That is for another drawing session. The gesture drawing doesn’t allow for that type of study because you may have only 30-60 seconds (sometimes less) to get the marks down on paper.
-It is important not to lose your “initial impression” that popped into your mind the split second you saw the image you are going to draw. As artists we can quickly become absorbed in details (especially delightful folds in clothing and wrinkles along bending torsos). Unless the detail adds to the story of what you are drawing, it is not essential for your gesture drawing.
Once again from Drawn to Life:
–”A sure way to keep from making static, lifeless drawings is to think of drawing verbs instead of nouns.” Look at the photo below:
The first way to approach drawing this image might be to define it as “A man playing golf.” That is, in fact, what is happening. You could look at the angle of the torso, arms, legs, and club. You might try to find the spacing Spacing is the distance an element travels between two frames of an animation. By increasing and decreasing the spacings. More in relation to the forearm and the thigh. With careful observation, you could end up with a very accurate drawing of this gentleman as he appears in the photo.
There is nothing wrong with the drawing above. It is very accurate. However it is not “all it can be.”
Instead, the alternate way of analyzing the photo and pose is to consider the actions involved. The clearest and most apparent is “He has just swung a golf club.” Look deeper, though. His torso is bending and twisting as the force of the swing carries his momentum around. His left leg is planted as his hips shift to the left, and his right leg curves until the toes just kiss the ground. (That may be getting a little poetic there, but remember, this is about EMOTION, not heartless anatomy!) His fists clench around the handle of the club and, though we cannot see it in this photo, you can almost sense the tension in his face and eyes as he gazes towards to horizon to pinpoint where his precious golf ball is headed.
Now THAT is a description!
Using these verbs as a platform, we can create a gesture drawing from the reference. It’s key to remember that the photo is just that: Reference. We are not copying it. If you want a copy, take it into Photoshop, change the image mode to grayscale, and run a Sketch filter over it for good measure. Our job is to take what is in front of us and distill it into its purest form. If our drawing barely looks like the reference at all, but captures the feeling and story, we have succeeded.
Analyzing Without Over Analyzing
There is a careful line to walk when you attempt to draw gestures, between analyzing a drawing for the verbs, emotion, and essence and thinking so much about the individual aspects that you lose sight of the big picture. Remember that the big picture, the story you are telling, is the most important thing. With practice you will be able to keep that story in the back of your mind while you analyze more deeply and not lose the feeling of the drawing. That’s something that takes a lifetime to master, and now is as good of a time as any to start. So get to drawing some gestures!
