i was wondering if you might be able to create a vid about the line of action too some time in the future. I've studied it in class and read many tutorials and seen many examples, but I just can't wrap my head around the idea to clearly understand how to find this line of action in a figure.
I can understand if you can't! Just a suggestion o3o
If there is anybody here that I haven't replied to, let me know. I haven't been getting notifications for replies here, and some of the posts look like things I believe I had replied to a while back. So please don't think I'm ignoring you if I didn't reply!
And thank you for your time checking out my video.
@paulinhonery105 You would erase the lines. When I practice these, to loosen up before I do my day of drawing, I do them in marker. Normally, you would draw them very light with your pencil. I tend to draw mine with "non-photo blue" pencil, which allows me to draw on top of the scribbles, without having to erase them. When you photocopy the final drawing, the blue underdrawings will disappear. Or if you scan the image, you can remove the blue lines in photoshop, etc..
@ObscuroSknim1234 It makes your progress more obvious. Have you ever noticed how if you see someone every day, you don't notice something like then gradually loosing weight, but if you only see them once ever six months it's suddenly more obvious? It's the same idea as that.
I appreciate this vid a lot. I've been gesture drawing, but I was never sure if I was doing it "right." or what I was supposed to be doing. Just be loose, thank you!
But one more question, if you don't mind answering o3o
I've been reading Betty edward's book after you suggested it here(still reading it, very good!) and i was wondering, should you look at your paper while you gesture draw, or blindly gesture while staring intently at the figure before you?
I heard someone say it's not so much what the figure looks like, but how you're able to "see" the form(or something like that). So, pure gesture? ^^"
@ObscuroSknim1234 Your eyes should dart back and forth, though I'd focus more on the subject, if possible. Over time, I think artists who do this regularly get to where they don't really need to look at the page at all. That's my experience, anyway.
And yeah, it really is about "seeing" the form. The easiest way that I can express that right this moment, would be to suggest nearly closing your eyes and looking at a subject. Or, grabbing a piece and wax paper and trying to look
@alittleriddle No problem! And it is confusing, trying to find anything on the subject of gesture. I was fortunate enough to have had tons of great life art instructors who all had the same general consensus on how to teach gesture drawing.
From what I've seen though, it seems like it's something that's not being pushed so much at the art institutions anymore. (Actual pure drawing ability was kind of being phased out, in favor of more "commercial", i.e.. "photo ref'd" work, in
favor of using tracing projectors to create art, quickly and easily. (When I was there, they didn't even want us near computers, because they thought photoshop was a fad.)
It still amazes me how many "art students", at one of the premier art schools in the world, couldn't draw a cube for their first perspective class. There were so many 7 sided cubes...
@tallnskrony Have to agree with this. Force: Dynamic Life Drawing for Animators and Force: Character Design from Life Drawing are doing wonders for me.
@soulblazerz ...in the definition of "gesture". I believe a gesture is one type of drawing, and there are sub categories to that.
One problem I have with the idea of just using, as your example, a 3 line gesture, is that lighting then becomes a non-factor in the learning process. Essentially, you're building a stick figure, which is fine in it's own right, but learning to indicate depth and form from lighting would be lost.
Anyway, I'm going to check that artist out right now.
@soulblazerz Taking 3 seconds to draw a line is not so bad if you can capture the essence of a 10 second pose with 3 lines. This style of gesture drawing without lifting the pencil is often referred to as continuous line or blind contour drawing because it often involves looking only at the model and not at what you are drawing, and I do think it's a great technique, just not the only one. :-) Have you seen Villpu's gesture drawing? It's pretty interesting to watch though [...]
@stinky472 I'll look Villpu up. I would say though, that a blind contour drawing is an exercise that requires the slowest of movements. A single figure, in most exercises, usually takes a half an hour. Maybe I haven't seen an animator actually do "gestures". I've seen a lot of videos purporting to be gesture lessons from animators, but they dive right into detail, worrying about accessories and hair before they have, in some cases, even drawn the limbs.
@stinky472 I may have accidentally deleted a posting here. Not sure. I thought I posted onto the wrong comment, hit delete, then saw the comment at the top of the page. I don't comment much on Youtube...if you can tell.
At its essence, a gesture drawing is just a quick sketch used to capture a short pose (ex: 1 min pose). There are a variety of techniques, and the continuous line technique is just one. There are scribble techniques, techniques that focus on mass, etc. Villpu and Borenstein, for instance, do not use a continuous line and instead draw very slow but deliberate strokes and actually capture a lot more about the rhythm of the pose with a minimal number of careful strokes.
@stinky472 keeping the pencil down is the best way for you to keep drawing what you're seeing, without looking away from the model. I also believe that you learn more, as your brain must process proportion, shape, and movement, without looking at the page. Try drawing figures in ten seconds when you're lifting your pencil, and looking back and forth from the model. Then try it without lifting, and keeping your eyes on what it is you're supposed to be studying in the first place. Then judge.
@soulblazerz I don't disagree that continuous contour way of gesture drawing is a very useful exercise to train your eye. However, if we take animation as one example, you generally don't want to try to draw what you see. Instead, you want to interpret it and really exaggerate the rhythm. For that you have to analyze what you are seeing and carefully lay down your strokes - slowly but still in a very short amount of time (sometimes as short as 30 seconds). I just wanted to point out that [...]
@stinky472 I understand what you're saying, I just don't call that gesture. It's gestural, but in everything that I've studied and been taught, "careful lines" have nothing to do with gesture drawing. That animation style with the careful lines can be applied after the gesture, which should only take 10 seconds.
I believe it was davinci who said that he could draw a man falling off a balcony before his body hit the floor.
ive been doing 30 seconds poses for like 4 hours now, and i don't get what im suppose to be learning, this just seems like a waste of time. I dont understand what a bunch of squiggles on a page are suppose to help with, but ive been told i need to work on my gestures...why?
The reason artists need to do these is that they teach you how to capture motion in a figure that may not otherwise be sustainable for a long pose. If you're going to draw a person in a leaping pose, that pose will not last for you to study. Capturing that action in a few seconds and having the necessary information on the page to finish the drawing after the pose is essential. It also teaches you the importance of movement, action, and direction, which can be overlooked during a long drawing.
If you don't understand the concept of gesture drawings and why it helps then your work won't have much personality.
Also biggest tip:
You shouldn't copy what you see when you draw
You should copy what object/scene is doing.
Even if the object is still it is still "moving". Once you get the still illusion out of your head your drawings will increase greatly. Everything is light, light is always in motion.
A Line is created to show movement for the eye. If you draw a line going up your eyes will follow the line if it were going up. If it's horizontal you are showing the movement of right to left.
a cube is a cube because of the illusion that line/light travels in 12 edges going horizontal and vertical making what we call "3-D shape". A sphere is a sphere because line/light travels in a circular fashion direction, etc.
So if you wanted to draw something that has a rough texture you would make your lines sharp edge and aggressive. If you want to draw something like snow on the ground you would make your lines light and silky as you follow the "direction" of what the snow is doing. You get what I'm saying? So gesture drawings are all about making a statement (remember this word) for what an object is doing as fast as you can in the simplest form.
that's good, I'd add that, before you know how to quick draw gesture figures, you must learn proportions really really well. I practice gesture, but I save sometime to practice human proportions, so my sketches look right.
Before I knew human proportions the right way, my gesture drawing looked weird and I didn't know why...
ps - when begginers are comfortable with both, go study muscles, memorize the most important groups and see how it applies. But even at that point, go back to gesture.
In my drawing course we just recently were taught how to do these. I find them rather difficult as i tend to try to put in details by accident and end up taking more time than i am supposed to.
Fighting the urge to do details is very difficult at first. The more you allow yourself to realize that these aren't drawings to show your friends, or put in your portfolio, the easier it will be to let go of that desire to detail.
If I don't wear it, I sometimes end up with marker or ink on my hand. Not often. It's mostly for when I draw with pencil, so that I don't smear the lead, but I just put it on before I get to drawing with a pencil, mostly out of habit now. :D
The illustration by Matisse is gestural in quality, but not truly a gesture. Gestures shouldn't capture detail, as you note yourself they capture form. And yet that illustration has details. Could it be that people on Wikipedia aren't the be-all-end-all of art knowledge?
wrong! these are just contours. yes you can draw gestures using contours but it is definetally not required. people all a gesture is a quick life drawing trying to capture the motion of the figure. You can lift your pencil off the paper and lots of times gestures can be very appealing to look at! Check out 30 second gestures from mike matessi. If you dont believe a simple google search will show he is wrong. Still dont believe me? Just look at the wikipedia page it shows gestures from rembrandt.
Dude I love it! the link you sent me about gesture drawing.... dont say anything about keeping your pencil on the paper!!!! Infact the examples don't even use one line! I was wrong about contours though, I got confused cause ive seen people draw contours with one line all the time. Anyways the line that they are talking about in your little pdf is the line of action.
Well, I just sent you many links about keeping the pencil on the paper. Also, Nicolaides book DOES say not to lift the pencil. Just not in the section that I found online for you. Sorry, I'm not digging through and scanning it for you.
But I just sent you a fair amount of links from instructors who will tell you the same thing I have.
Thanks for the tips in the video description. I have never approached a gesture drawing like a continuous line drawing. I think ill test that out. Thx.
nicely done C:. all the other vids i saw was way off. I remember my art teacher teaching me this back in high school (she learn from the Betty Edward book). Im gonna help spread the news! :D
Thank you for finally showing me how this is done! I've sat down with a pencil and paper and felt so frustrated at being unable to figure out how I'm supposed to capture movement while watching people. By coincidence, I also just purchased Betty Edwards' book a couple of days ago. :)
i was wondering if you might be able to create a vid about the line of action too some time in the future. I've studied it in class and read many tutorials and seen many examples, but I just can't wrap my head around the idea to clearly understand how to find this line of action in a figure.
I can understand if you can't! Just a suggestion o3o
ObscuroSknim1234 1 week ago
If there is anybody here that I haven't replied to, let me know. I haven't been getting notifications for replies here, and some of the posts look like things I believe I had replied to a while back. So please don't think I'm ignoring you if I didn't reply!
And thank you for your time checking out my video.
soulblazerz 1 week ago
question, from that drawing what you do? you start on another paper or erase the lines?
paulinhonery105 1 week ago
@paulinhonery105 You would erase the lines. When I practice these, to loosen up before I do my day of drawing, I do them in marker. Normally, you would draw them very light with your pencil. I tend to draw mine with "non-photo blue" pencil, which allows me to draw on top of the scribbles, without having to erase them. When you photocopy the final drawing, the blue underdrawings will disappear. Or if you scan the image, you can remove the blue lines in photoshop, etc..
soulblazerz 1 week ago
I have a question though: why do I have to wait until a few months from now to check my progress again?
ObscuroSknim1234 1 month ago
@ObscuroSknim1234 It makes your progress more obvious. Have you ever noticed how if you see someone every day, you don't notice something like then gradually loosing weight, but if you only see them once ever six months it's suddenly more obvious? It's the same idea as that.
DayglowWolf 2 weeks ago
@DayglowWolf And that is better stated than my reply! (Wish I had read this before I typed mine!)
soulblazerz 1 week ago
@DayglowWolf That makes a lot of sense... thank you!
ObscuroSknim1234 1 week ago
@ObscuroSknim1234 Well, you don't have to. It's just a suggestion. If you do tons of them, you could look back through them every week or so.
soulblazerz 1 week ago
I appreciate this vid a lot. I've been gesture drawing, but I was never sure if I was doing it "right." or what I was supposed to be doing. Just be loose, thank you!
ObscuroSknim1234 1 month ago
@ObscuroSknim1234 You're welcome! And I'm sorry, I didn't see that I had been getting replies here!
Glad to be of help!
soulblazerz 1 week ago
@soulblazerz That's fine. I can understand XD
But one more question, if you don't mind answering o3o
I've been reading Betty edward's book after you suggested it here(still reading it, very good!) and i was wondering, should you look at your paper while you gesture draw, or blindly gesture while staring intently at the figure before you?
I heard someone say it's not so much what the figure looks like, but how you're able to "see" the form(or something like that). So, pure gesture? ^^"
ObscuroSknim1234 1 week ago
@ObscuroSknim1234 Your eyes should dart back and forth, though I'd focus more on the subject, if possible. Over time, I think artists who do this regularly get to where they don't really need to look at the page at all. That's my experience, anyway.
And yeah, it really is about "seeing" the form. The easiest way that I can express that right this moment, would be to suggest nearly closing your eyes and looking at a subject. Or, grabbing a piece and wax paper and trying to look
soulblazerz 4 days ago
@soulblazerz at some subject. You won't see the detail, just the forms that create the overall subject.
Try to draw that blurry, lumpy mass.
Hope that helps!
soulblazerz 4 days ago
at some subject. You won't see the detail, just the forms that create the overall subject.
Try to draw that blurry, lumpy mass.
Hope that helps!
soulblazerz 4 days ago
Thank you.
I've been quite confused on how to do gesture drawings.
alittleriddle 1 month ago
@alittleriddle No problem! And it is confusing, trying to find anything on the subject of gesture. I was fortunate enough to have had tons of great life art instructors who all had the same general consensus on how to teach gesture drawing.
From what I've seen though, it seems like it's something that's not being pushed so much at the art institutions anymore. (Actual pure drawing ability was kind of being phased out, in favor of more "commercial", i.e.. "photo ref'd" work, in
soulblazerz 4 days ago
favor of using tracing projectors to create art, quickly and easily. (When I was there, they didn't even want us near computers, because they thought photoshop was a fad.)
It still amazes me how many "art students", at one of the premier art schools in the world, couldn't draw a cube for their first perspective class. There were so many 7 sided cubes...
But I digress too much!
Good luck with your artistic endeavors!
soulblazerz 4 days ago
force drawing look it up DYNAMIC FORCE DRAWING ON SCRIBD BEST BOOK EVER
tallnskrony 9 months ago
@tallnskrony Have to agree with this. Force: Dynamic Life Drawing for Animators and Force: Character Design from Life Drawing are doing wonders for me.
Joshb81959 7 months ago
@soulblazerz ...in the definition of "gesture". I believe a gesture is one type of drawing, and there are sub categories to that.
One problem I have with the idea of just using, as your example, a 3 line gesture, is that lighting then becomes a non-factor in the learning process. Essentially, you're building a stick figure, which is fine in it's own right, but learning to indicate depth and form from lighting would be lost.
Anyway, I'm going to check that artist out right now.
soulblazerz 1 year ago
@soulblazerz [...] you are already an accomplished artist.
stinky472 1 year ago
@soulblazerz Taking 3 seconds to draw a line is not so bad if you can capture the essence of a 10 second pose with 3 lines. This style of gesture drawing without lifting the pencil is often referred to as continuous line or blind contour drawing because it often involves looking only at the model and not at what you are drawing, and I do think it's a great technique, just not the only one. :-) Have you seen Villpu's gesture drawing? It's pretty interesting to watch though [...]
stinky472 1 year ago
@stinky472 I'll look Villpu up. I would say though, that a blind contour drawing is an exercise that requires the slowest of movements. A single figure, in most exercises, usually takes a half an hour. Maybe I haven't seen an animator actually do "gestures". I've seen a lot of videos purporting to be gesture lessons from animators, but they dive right into detail, worrying about accessories and hair before they have, in some cases, even drawn the limbs.
I think the main problem that we have is..
soulblazerz 1 year ago
@stinky472 I may have accidentally deleted a posting here. Not sure. I thought I posted onto the wrong comment, hit delete, then saw the comment at the top of the page. I don't comment much on Youtube...if you can tell.
soulblazerz 1 year ago
A gesture drawing does not require using a single continuous line.
stinky472 1 year ago
At its essence, a gesture drawing is just a quick sketch used to capture a short pose (ex: 1 min pose). There are a variety of techniques, and the continuous line technique is just one. There are scribble techniques, techniques that focus on mass, etc. Villpu and Borenstein, for instance, do not use a continuous line and instead draw very slow but deliberate strokes and actually capture a lot more about the rhythm of the pose with a minimal number of careful strokes.
stinky472 1 year ago
@stinky472 keeping the pencil down is the best way for you to keep drawing what you're seeing, without looking away from the model. I also believe that you learn more, as your brain must process proportion, shape, and movement, without looking at the page. Try drawing figures in ten seconds when you're lifting your pencil, and looking back and forth from the model. Then try it without lifting, and keeping your eyes on what it is you're supposed to be studying in the first place. Then judge.
soulblazerz 1 year ago
@soulblazerz I don't disagree that continuous contour way of gesture drawing is a very useful exercise to train your eye. However, if we take animation as one example, you generally don't want to try to draw what you see. Instead, you want to interpret it and really exaggerate the rhythm. For that you have to analyze what you are seeing and carefully lay down your strokes - slowly but still in a very short amount of time (sometimes as short as 30 seconds). I just wanted to point out that [...]
stinky472 1 year ago
@soulblazerz [...] there are other legitimate types of gesture drawing.
stinky472 1 year ago
@stinky472 I understand what you're saying, I just don't call that gesture. It's gestural, but in everything that I've studied and been taught, "careful lines" have nothing to do with gesture drawing. That animation style with the careful lines can be applied after the gesture, which should only take 10 seconds.
I believe it was davinci who said that he could draw a man falling off a balcony before his body hit the floor.
soulblazerz 1 year ago
ive been doing 30 seconds poses for like 4 hours now, and i don't get what im suppose to be learning, this just seems like a waste of time. I dont understand what a bunch of squiggles on a page are suppose to help with, but ive been told i need to work on my gestures...why?
element1988 2 years ago
The reason artists need to do these is that they teach you how to capture motion in a figure that may not otherwise be sustainable for a long pose. If you're going to draw a person in a leaping pose, that pose will not last for you to study. Capturing that action in a few seconds and having the necessary information on the page to finish the drawing after the pose is essential. It also teaches you the importance of movement, action, and direction, which can be overlooked during a long drawing.
soulblazerz 2 years ago
Yea what soulblazers said.
If you don't understand the concept of gesture drawings and why it helps then your work won't have much personality.
Also biggest tip:
You shouldn't copy what you see when you draw
You should copy what object/scene is doing.
Even if the object is still it is still "moving". Once you get the still illusion out of your head your drawings will increase greatly. Everything is light, light is always in motion.
DarkGreen2000 2 years ago
A Line is created to show movement for the eye. If you draw a line going up your eyes will follow the line if it were going up. If it's horizontal you are showing the movement of right to left.
a cube is a cube because of the illusion that line/light travels in 12 edges going horizontal and vertical making what we call "3-D shape". A sphere is a sphere because line/light travels in a circular fashion direction, etc.
DarkGreen2000 2 years ago
So if you wanted to draw something that has a rough texture you would make your lines sharp edge and aggressive. If you want to draw something like snow on the ground you would make your lines light and silky as you follow the "direction" of what the snow is doing. You get what I'm saying? So gesture drawings are all about making a statement (remember this word) for what an object is doing as fast as you can in the simplest form.
Hope this helped. ;)
DarkGreen2000 2 years ago
that's good, I'd add that, before you know how to quick draw gesture figures, you must learn proportions really really well. I practice gesture, but I save sometime to practice human proportions, so my sketches look right.
Before I knew human proportions the right way, my gesture drawing looked weird and I didn't know why...
ps - when begginers are comfortable with both, go study muscles, memorize the most important groups and see how it applies. But even at that point, go back to gesture.
marcelcruzeiro 2 years ago
arent you suppose to alo note the relationships between shapes in gesture drawings
gclpunk 2 years ago
:Q~Thanks for sharing your Vids wiff me!~q^:
( ^-^)y`~peace''
Sakura13kohime 2 years ago
^_^
soulblazerz 2 years ago
In my drawing course we just recently were taught how to do these. I find them rather difficult as i tend to try to put in details by accident and end up taking more time than i am supposed to.
F0rgiven 3 years ago
Fighting the urge to do details is very difficult at first. The more you allow yourself to realize that these aren't drawings to show your friends, or put in your portfolio, the easier it will be to let go of that desire to detail.
soulblazerz 2 years ago
nice vid... but whats with the glove?
RyanSC12 3 years ago
If I don't wear it, I sometimes end up with marker or ink on my hand. Not often. It's mostly for when I draw with pencil, so that I don't smear the lead, but I just put it on before I get to drawing with a pencil, mostly out of habit now. :D
soulblazerz 3 years ago
Soulblazerz I heard that you should draw in and then out of a gesture drawing. can that work to?
christianshounen101 2 years ago
Absolutely! The most important thing is to capture the mass and movement.
soulblazerz 2 years ago
The illustration by Matisse is gestural in quality, but not truly a gesture. Gestures shouldn't capture detail, as you note yourself they capture form. And yet that illustration has details. Could it be that people on Wikipedia aren't the be-all-end-all of art knowledge?
One wonders...
soulblazerz 3 years ago
wrong! these are just contours. yes you can draw gestures using contours but it is definetally not required. people all a gesture is a quick life drawing trying to capture the motion of the figure. You can lift your pencil off the paper and lots of times gestures can be very appealing to look at! Check out 30 second gestures from mike matessi. If you dont believe a simple google search will show he is wrong. Still dont believe me? Just look at the wikipedia page it shows gestures from rembrandt.
animatedamish 3 years ago
A contour drawing follows the CONTOUR of a figure, or form. These are NOT contour drawings that I am demonstrating.
And genius, the drawings I did are quick life drawings capturing the motion of the figure.
Go read The Natural Way to Draw, by Kimon Nicolaides, or other drawings texts, even by Betty Edwards.
soulblazerz 3 years ago
Dude I love it! the link you sent me about gesture drawing.... dont say anything about keeping your pencil on the paper!!!! Infact the examples don't even use one line! I was wrong about contours though, I got confused cause ive seen people draw contours with one line all the time. Anyways the line that they are talking about in your little pdf is the line of action.
animatedamish 3 years ago
Well, I just sent you many links about keeping the pencil on the paper. Also, Nicolaides book DOES say not to lift the pencil. Just not in the section that I found online for you. Sorry, I'm not digging through and scanning it for you.
But I just sent you a fair amount of links from instructors who will tell you the same thing I have.
soulblazerz 3 years ago
I'm reading that book and watching this helps me out reinforcing what I'm learning, thanks!
vivamexico47 3 years ago 2
You're welcome, I'm glad to hear that! Best wishes on your artistic path!
soulblazerz 3 years ago
so it is basically a continuous line?
Tigressa0Swan 3 years ago
Yes. :)
soulblazerz 3 years ago
Thanks for the tips in the video description. I have never approached a gesture drawing like a continuous line drawing. I think ill test that out. Thx.
AkiraFollower 3 years ago 2
its a lesson on how to scribble the most deformed human body you can..
cryoes 3 years ago
You're almost right. Now if you only realised why you're almost right, you'd see why your joke blew back up in your face.
soulblazerz 3 years ago
nicely done C:. all the other vids i saw was way off. I remember my art teacher teaching me this back in high school (she learn from the Betty Edward book). Im gonna help spread the news! :D
doghateburger 3 years ago 2
Thank you for finally showing me how this is done! I've sat down with a pencil and paper and felt so frustrated at being unable to figure out how I'm supposed to capture movement while watching people. By coincidence, I also just purchased Betty Edwards' book a couple of days ago. :)
lizzy1e 3 years ago 3
No problem, and thank you! I just wish I had a camera with sound, so I could do more...
soulblazerz 3 years ago
I agree with you. There are videos claiming to be lessons on gesture drawing when they aren't.
elewho 3 years ago 4