My first attempt at traditional timed figure and gesture drawing

Lee White · 9 Feb 2016, 16:32

there ya go buddy! Making quick progress here!

Steff · 9 Feb 2016, 17:11

@Rich-Green This is great stuff. I've been wanting to learn to do gestural figure drawing like this, so this thread is motivating and helpful!

Bobby Aquitania · 9 Feb 2016, 18:11

@Rich

I think it's important that after you've done the quick gestural, to also try to develop some " muscle memory " and by that I mean, lines that become second nature in drawing figures or anything after drawing them several times. I've tried to do that here by doing a smaller study AFTER drawing a 3 minute gestural.

The reason for doing this is, you're breaking down the lines into more data by drawing them over and over, by studying the figure, and making a close up. When you go back to drawing figures in this same pose, you'll remember both. The gestural drawings you made to capture that kind of pose AND the study you did to give your brain an in depth idea of what lines would make up a larger drawing.

Combine that and see how you draw this figure over... you will be able to over simplify, because you know the lines to cover, and your drawing will have more uniformity, because you've blocked out composition on a larger scale.

I only drew what I considered to be the hardest part of this piece, that weird arm, I could have faked it with my own knowledge of anatomy, but I wanted to try it only from your image, which I blew up even though it was incredibly blurry. And since it was, I only had the most rudimentary of details to pull from.

Try this out and see if it helps,

draw your normal gestural for 1 minute, then 2 then 3 minutes from a source pic.
draw a study of the area you found hardest to compensate for, with an enlarged pic, concentrating on the building block lines, and the
shadow areas to give it form.
Now redraw the figure again at normal size, with the memory of both the gesture and the study in your head.

And if you can find a new pic with the same pose, draw that instead. I think you'll find your final piece to be more successful. Good luck!

Bobby Aquitania · 9 Feb 2016, 18:17

Edit: Sorry I wanted to add, don't get hung up on the study, and don't spend more than 3 minutes on it. The idea is to give yourself a larger work space, without having to do a complete drawing, and you're only working on ironing out the area you originally found hard to understand in the full gesture drawing.

If you found this was helpful, do studies on the other areas, then piece then together in your brain and do a full figure but again only 3 minutes. Because what you're trying to develop is the thought process you did to do both exercises as one exercise. What is a full figure but a series of connected studies, others simply work faster, more simpler than we do... I hope that helps.

Rich Green · 9 Feb 2016, 19:29

@Bobby-Aquitania Thanks so much for the nice and detailed write up - as well as the sample drawings Bobby. I will definitely work through some practice studies using this method you outlined and I also like the part about going back and doing a focus on the area I found the most challenging in the original attempt. I will be sure and post what I come up with!

Naroth Kean · 9 Feb 2016, 23:27

nice studies and progress

Rich Green · 10 Feb 2016, 00:14

@Naroth-Kean Thank you!

@Steff Thanks! You should definitely give it a try it's fun and is really helping me!

@Dulcie Thank you - I really appreciate the support!

Ace Connell · 10 Feb 2016, 16:46

I find that a lot of the time, instead of pushing a pose to add drama/force, people tend to not even push it to the point of even the real figure/photo and it ends up a little lifeless.

Ace

Rich Green · 10 Feb 2016, 17:19

@Ace-Connell - yes I know I am guilty of doing that and I have seen that in other work all over social media - the more I am becoming aware of what to look for and pick up on. One of the biggest things I have taken from the SVS courses and these forums - its to really be an observer of life, your surroundings, environment, objects, colors, lights etc, etc etc. I catch myself picking up on things I never would have paid attention to before - and more now than ever snapping a quick photo with my phone to capture a composition I find interesting in the real world, or a color of the way the sun hits a tree and snow around it, or a texture I think I may be able to use in the future and so on.

Ace Connell · 11 Feb 2016, 21:20

@Rich-Green I love that! That's awesome!

Bobby Aquitania · 12 Feb 2016, 08:34

@Rich-Green said:
I catch myself picking up on things I never would have paid attention to before - and more now than ever snapping a quick photo with my phone to capture a composition I find interesting in the real world, or a color of the way the sun hits a tree and snow around it, or a texture I think I may be able to use in the future and so on.

Congrats Rich, you have officially been hit by the art bug! When I finally made a break through in digital art, all I could see in people's faces were how I would draw them given the chance. And I couldn't turn it off no matter how I tried. I just kept noticing color palettes and highlights, and it was everywhere just like you describe it above.

I hope you always feel that way!

Rich Green · 20 Feb 2016, 15:33

Worked on another gesture practice. I can really tell I am still very stiff with those starting flowing straight lines and once that happens the entire image suffers from looking stiff.

But that is what is so great about this kind of practice is that I can now see this happening and the impact it is having and I have something I know I can work on.

For the 1.5 minute anatomy markers I also pulled in a bit of the volume markers per the other video classes from Will and Jake because I am also working on perspective practice a lot here as well.

After I was done I pulled this all into Photoshop so I could post here and in doing so I decided to trace the original photo's actual flowing lines and then I copied that over my various phases. My analytical brain loved this because I can see even more clearly where the lines should flow in comparison to what I had drawn. I found that quite helpful and it highlighted more bends and angles I do not think I picked up on in her torso. Really interesting to me.

MOO · 21 Feb 2016, 06:40

Thanks for sharing this! I think I'll go try it too