Last fall I decently took to practicing drawing. Years of working as an illustrator and moving mostly in stylized conventions made me feel the need to refresh the basics and develop further. I added a daily morning session of gesture drawing into my schedule. By gestures, I mean quick sketches (30 seconds to 2 minutes) of poses and various body arrangements, focusing on their dynamics and expression.
Gesture drawing – who will benefit from it?
This is a nice exercise because it focuses on the essentials of the pose, which is facilitated by a very short drawing time. The key task is to capture proportion, movement ( rendering and emphasizing it by finding the lines of body action), expression, without focusing on anatomical intricacies. Therefore, I think it will be an enjoyable and very developing task for beginning cartoonists. If you can draw a “stick figure”-you’ll manage, because the most important thing is to mark key elements such as limbs, torso, pelvis, head. Using the simplest shapes to mark them makes it easier to construct the figure later. It doesn’t hurt if the proportions are distorted at first. The key in this form of exercise is the number of poses drawn. It’s remarkably how just the amount and consistency affect the development of the sense of observation and the correct representation of proportions. I guarantee that if you devote at least 30 minutes a day to gesture drawing, you will see progress after a month.
I think that also experienced illustrators will find a lot of benefit and enjoyment in this kind of skill polishing. Especially if, like me, they have an established style. It’s always a good idea to refresh yourself with the basics, unstick yourself from the usual way of working, eliminate some acquired mannerisms with routine, relieve yourself of the high expectations that usually come with working on serious paintings or illustrations for clients.
Growth, joy and simplicity
For me, this has been very refreshing, especially since taking off the pressure that comes with the form of short exercises allows for greater boldness, momentum, and the huge number of them I’ve done over the past few months (two sketchbooks full) has allowed me to paint with greater freedom, has sparked a greater willingness to experiment, and has greatly improved my ability to describe the forms I see with a limited number of lines. Interestingly, the exercises have made me manage to capture the likeness of the model more faithfully than before, even when drawing portraits.
In addition to pencil, pen and markers, I’ve incorporated watercolors, ecolines and inks into my practice. I feel that I have started a fascinating path that I want to continue in the coming months, and this thought alone makes me very enthusiastic!
For me, it’s also a return to traditional media after years of total dominance of the iPad and graphics tablet. So much successful that I reach for digital media less and less when the urge to create comes over me. I have a lot of thoughts on this, but that’s a story for another occasion 🙂
I invite you to watch my video on these exercises:
Finally, I once again encourage you to practice fast gesture drawing and leave some useful links with free learning materials:
- Line of Action – a page with reference photos and the mode of displaying them as an exercise session (the photos display at a selected time interval (from 30 seconds to a selected length, which forces you to capture the quintessence of movement within a certain time).
- Samouczek rysowania gestów z Line of Action– very worth going through it! It explains in a very simple way how to do the exercises and quickly construct a character
- Sketch Daily – another site with a free photo references and session mode
- Love Life drawing– video with tips on drawing gestures
- 3 Tips for Gesture Drawing – video with tips on drawing gestures.
