the figure drawing series. And it's probably one of the most important. In this lesson

I'll be covering "gesture"

What the butt-munch is gesture anyway? Gesture, rhythm, motion, action, flow - these are all

words that are used interchangeably and they basically mean the same thing.

They all refer to the movement between things. It's not the contour, or the form, or the

tone. It's the movement that connects the contours, the forms and the tones. For example

if you have 3 balls, the gesture here would be a c curve that describes the relationship

of these balls. This would be the contour, but this is the gesture. It's simple to understand,

but difficult to put into practice when you're actually drawing a human figure. We're so

tempted to draw the details of the anatomy and all the little bumps of the contour because

we think that detail will make our drawing look better. But the reality is, the detail

is nothing without the gesture. You might accidentally find some gesture while you're

copying the contours, but I don't like to rely on accidents.

A better approach would be to practice finding the gesture of the figure so many times that

it becomes second nature. Quicksketch is a common exercise in art school that involves

drawing the model from life within a few minutes. A typical quicksketch session lasts 2-3 hours

with poses ranging from 30 seconds to 10 minutes per pose. Gesture is the primary concern.

Doing this exercise will train you to see the gesture immediately. You can feel it.

Then you will be able to design the details to complement the gesture instead of copying

details randomly.

Your journey of mastering quicksketch will be a long but exciting one. There's a lot

to learn and every time you learn something new your sketches will show improvement. During

a normal session you'll finish anywhere from 25 to 100 drawings. Think about that... You're

drawing the human figure up to 100 times within a few hours. If you do this on a regular basis,

you're going to get better.. The best thing about it, is it's actually fun, if you don't

stress over it... In this video I'll go over all concepts you need to know for a successful

quicketch drawing that focuses completely on gesture. In future videos I'll build on

to that and introduce additional concepts all of which come together. And in the end,

with enough practice you can use all these concepts to produce a completed quicksketch

drawing in 5-10 minutes.

So basically gesture is in everything around us. It's an approach to drawing that you can

use to draw anything.

Use gesture to tell a story by capturing the body language. We use our whole body, not

just words to communicate ideas and emotions. This is what the gesture should capture. What

is the person doing? What is he feeling? What did he just do? Or what is he going to do?

This can be told through just a few lines, which the viewer will recognize as the body

and can identify the emotions that person is feeling just like we can intuitively identify

emotions of the people around us. It's a good idea to exaggerate the pose to tell a better.

As you become more skilled in exaggerating, you will also improve in capturing the subtleties.

You're probably thinking, stan, is this another April fools joke? Are you drawing another

stick figure? no.. Don't think of it as a stick figure. Because that could make your

drawing stiff.. They're not sticks. They're not straight lines. They're action lines.

Observe the pose and analyze the movement. It's more about how it feels, rather than

how it looks.

Later, we will add more structure to these drawings to make the figures feel more solid

and real. So, for those of you who don't find this inspiring and are thinking "I don't want

my people to look like spaghetti" remember that this is not meant to be a finished drawing.

It's a exercise to practice a concept. You're training your mind to see rhythm in everything

you draw. You're training your mind to consider more than just the contours when you're drawing

shapes. It's an important concept that needs to be intuitive. In all these drawings that

you're seeing now the element of gesture was applied to the anatomy to make the figure

dynamic.

Let's go over some important concepts to remember while practicing your gesture drawings.

Longest axis

When you look at a form and try to find the gesture, look at its longest axis. Going down

the length of the torso, down the length of the leg, down the length of the arm.. It's

in the longest axis of each form where you'll find the fluid motion from one form to the

next.

CSI

To eliminate the unnecessary information in the contours and to capture that gesture the

lines you use should be simple. Don't use anything more complicated than a c curve,

s curve, or straight.

You can use combinations of these curves as you move down the figure, but attempt to do

it in as few lines as possible using the simplest lines, C S or I.

Line of Action

The gesture should be drawn with as few lines as possible necessary to capture the idea.

Start by finding the longest action line of the body. Try to find a curve that could connect

the head to the toes. Not all poses can be efficiently described with one long line that

connect the head to the toes, but there is always one main line that shows the directional

flow of the pose. This is called the "Line of Action". In this pose the line of action

would be a c curve showing the major flow from the torso to the legs. But this doesnt

tell the whole story, so this pose would need to be broken up into more parts. I think this

sharp turn in the hips is important, so describing it with a soft curve isn't right. In this

case, I would use a combination of a c curve for the torso, and s curves for the legs.

Relaxed and tense curves

The "bendiness" of the curve you use changes how the gesture feels. A longer, fluid curve

feels relaxed and moves the eye quickly through that flow. As you start to bend the curve

more, you show more energy and more tension in the gesture. Eventually, when it's bent

far enough you can use a zig zag. A zig zag indicates tension, sharp corners, very sudden

changes in the movement.

Nature presents this very well with water. When the water is calm the waves flow in an

S curve rhythm. During a storm, when there's more energy in the water, the waves flow in

a zig zag pattern.

So, when you want to create tension, think zig zag. When you want to show something is

relaxed, use a flowing curve.

Asymmetry of the body

Consider the asymmetrical aspect of the body from the side. The forms alternate in angle

from head, ribcage, pelvis, upper leg and lower leg.

This causes alternating c curves that lead the eye through the body. Like a river flowing

through a stream...

The tendency for us is to make things symmertrical, but this stiffens the gesture and makes the figure

look like a snowman

Next week I'll show some examples of gesture quick sketches and guide you step by step

through the process. But, I suggest you attempt to practice these concepts on your own before

watching the step by step video next week. You'll have an idea of what it's like and

will be able to pull more information from it because you know what to look for. You'll

have questions you can focus on, and you can compare what you did with what I do. If you

need reference photos, I have some posefile sets you can get at proko.com/poses.

If you want to see a more detailed explanation and plenty of examples.. oh cmon! Really?!

if you want to see a more detailed explanation, plenty of examples and more additional videos

check out proko.com/figure. For every free video that I post during this figure series,

I'm posting additional premium content on proko.com. This week I have...

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Ahem.. Squeaky squeaky