GESTURE DRAWING EXERCISES & LESSONS : Gesture Drawing Tutorials

Exercise 3 - Gesture Drawing

Gesture drawing can exist on two levels - action drawing, and gesture drawing. Both involve the principle of movement. However, action drawing deals with physical movement; and gesture drawing involves not only physical movement, but a deeper concept of essential identity, as well. You are not capturing what the figure or object looks like, but what it is doing.

Gesture Drawing

The marks are quick and deliberate. You look at the subject and try to sum it up with a few marks, as you might describe it in a few words. Because you don't have much time, each word - each mark - in a gesture drawing must say something significant about the subject.

Gesture Drawing Exercises

Gesture drawing is a great exercise for anyone who wants to try daily art but hasn't usually got time. A gesture drawing is done and complete within a set time, one to five minutes. Often professional models warm up with "gestures" -- one to five minute quick poses the artists race to capture before they move.

Thoughts on Gesture Drawing

A sense of purpose and direction is important in everything in life, and it's no different when it comes to gesture drawing. I got to monitor the gesture class today for 15 quick minutes, and walking around helping others draw really made it clear how important it is to be committed to a direction - to have each of your drawings make a statement.

The Gesture Drawing Dance : The Opposite Style, but still Observation - Unlike contour drawing, gesture drawing does not start with an outline. It starts from the center (the core) and moves out to all the joints, the extremities, emphasizing movement and action as it rapidly colors in the figure. Gesture drawing is the opposite of slow and careful contour drawing. Gesture drawing is from observation, but it is done very fast--not slow and deliberate as contour drawing needs to be.

How to Practice Gesture Drawing - The speed and style of gesture drawing allow the artist to effectively capture motion and to sketch out the general character of something in motion, indispensable qualities if you want to draw an animal in your nature journal or if you want to make a quick sketch of a runner. More than anything, gesture drawing requires practice, but a few tips can't hurt either.

HOW TO DRAW HUMAN FIGURE'S GESTURES

Drawing Lesson 1: Gesture

The action of a figure is usually expressed as "gesture." It means the movement and attitude of the figure. It is body language and all of those subtle differences that characterize individuals, whether they are human or animal. In this regard, when I refer to the model, I mean not only a model posing for short poses of thirty seconds to three minutes, but also people who are not posing and are in real life situations. We use essentially the same learning procedure in what is referred to as the "quick sketch." It will be assumed that for the sake of learning, at this point, they are the same. Other terms used for what we call gesture are "attitude" and "body language."

Gesture -- The Foundation of Figurative Art

This is a 5 page guide to drawing gestures to the human figure.