Learning to capture Gesture in your drawings

So I’m assuming you have read my “learning to learn how to draw” article, if not I suggest you jump on to that first because it basically gives you more of the basics of learning to draw. This article will hopefully give you an idea of how to practise gesture drawing, where to start and where you want get to.

There are more than a few different translations for gesture drawing but basically you want to as quickly as possible get an accurate little drawing that tells the story that you need it to, I am mostly going to focus on drawing people, because when you draw people your entire drawing ability increases substantially. So the story of something is basically what the subject doing, feeling or expressing. There are a lot of people around the world and although we don’t all speak the same language body language is almost entirely universal. You want to be able to express whatever you want in your drawings and tell your subjects story as accurately as possible.

So different types of gesture drawings, there are 3 that I have come across and I have played with them all and are all excellent practise for any aspiring artist (that’s you =)). The first one I recommend you should play with is Walt Stanchfields and can be found in his book “Gesture Drawing for Animation”. Definitely print it out and make it your bedside buddy. This will get you off to a good start with gesture drawing and you should practise everyday. When you watch TV sketch a bit, if you are on your brake at work and have spare time sketch a bit.

Try to capture the gesture of your drawings, only spend about a min on each, try action poses, sitting poses standing, climbing, biking, jumping.etc if you work or live in the city, it is a great place to find a lot of people just doing things. Just draw them, when you are on the bus just draw the people. I drew when I was riding the bus for about 2 hours a day for six months and when I got home I drew a little from TV. When I got to my course before it started I would draw, rawing is the secret to learning how to draw =)

They will look really odd at first and you won’t have any sense of proportion but that’s fine just keep at it and keep reading “Gesture Drawing for Animation” by Walt Stanchfield, its free to download, and cost you barley anything to print and is priceless.

This is the very first page from my very first sketch book, I have drawn before but this was my first sketchbook experience and my first attempt at drawing things =).

As you can see the proportions are wrong, the story isn’t getting told correctly, there is no sense of weight, the figure is oddly shaped, there are more than a dozen things wrong with these pictures but that alright I learnt a lot from them, and your sketch book isn’t a book of pretty pictures, it’s a book full of drawing experiences you’ve had and learnt from.

A basic gesture drawing, a 1 2 or at max 3 min drawing of your subject trying to capture their “essence”, the truth as Walt Stanchfield would put it =)

This here is what you want to be aiming for, remember before you draw anything you will always draw a quick gesture drawing.

Links worth visiting
MUST GET
Pdf of “Gesture Drawing for Animation” by Walt Stanchfield (Defnitly print this)

Glenn vilppu has a course that teaches a very good way of capturing the "flow", bit costly tho.
Sheldons Art Academy on youtube uses Glenn Vilppu's techniques if you want to have a looksee.

Another gesture tutorial from Nancy doyle Fine Art who uses “The natural way to draw” by Kimon Nicolaides as a refrancnce, which i will cover in another article on another day.

Enjoy and have fun

Learning to capture Gesture in your drawings by Willem Wynand Van Aswegen

Learning to learn how to draw

Learning to learn how to draw by Willem Van Aswegen

If you have any interest in drawing you probably would have google’d how to draw, or how to draw certain characters from you favourite cartoons. And wondered why some people have this amazing ability to just draw, and you narrowed it down to just talent, but there’s a lot more to it than that. Talent helps but even talented people have to learn how to learn to draw. It basically comes down to motivation, if you really want to learn how to draw there is no certain way, or technique to teach you how to draw, drawing is more of a journey which you embark on by your lonesome, repeated for several hours daily for the rest of your life, filling up sketch book after sketchbook. Slowly getting better. Now you might ask yourself what the hell has this amateur wanabee artist have to teach anyone. Well although my drawings aren’t anywhere near as good as I want them to be I have stumbled across the way to learn to draw. Now there is no technique or rules but there are a lot of helpful things IV picked up along the way and would like to share with anyone who would like to embark on this journey.

First Steps

The very first step for anyone wanting to learn how to draw is buy a sketchbook, it is the most important thing, buy a small a4 sized one first, to get you started and if you want move onto bigger sizes later. But start out by drawing everyday, it doesn’t matter what you draw, if you are in your room, draw your clothes hanging from hangers, if you are watching TV draw the characters if you are on a bus draw the people on the bus way. Learning how to draw has a lot to do with drawing, go figure huh, but the more you draw the more of a benefit you’ll get at the end of the day. Make sure you date most of your drawings so oneday you can look back on it and see how much you have improved. It doesn’t matter if your pictures don’t look to good, just draw, and after the day is done, go show someone what you have drawn and ask them what you can do better, because since you stare at the picture the entire time you might not notice that the legs proportions don’t look quite right, someone else seeing it as a new will be able to point it out to you. But do not erase it, don’t use a rubber and fix your mistakes, just draw it again, that’s how you learn and your not making a sketch book of pretty pictures, your sketch book is kind of a log of all the mistakes you made and learnt from. Take your sketch book everywhere, doesn’t matter where you go, you can draw on busses, trains, in cars, in a park, on rooftops at the beach, and anywhere, just draw. Don’t try to draw in a popular cartoon style like manga, just draw how you see your subject.

The essence

Otherwise more widely known as the gesture of something or of a person, gesture is the single most important thing in your drawing process. If you cannot capture the mood of your subject before you start adding more detail you’ll end up with a picture with nice detail and a lot of work put into it, but it won’t tell the story you need it to. In the animation industry every single drawing should be enriched with essence so the viewer sees life and can follow the story a lot easier. Capturing the essence? Right will what the hell are you talking about and how do I do that you might ask. Well save this copy of “Gesture Drawing for Animation” by Walt Stanchfield and have a read. A gesture drawing is a quick sketch without detail to draw an essence of story and truth, you will need to practice getting down the essence before you can learn how to draw or go on experimenting with other things. A lot of people use stick figures for the essence, drawn really roughly and quickly. A bus trip is perfect gesture practise, since you only get a few seconds to examine your subject and then attempt to put it down on paper and to tell their story, by story I mean are they sad are they happy, are they frustrated that their bus is late, are they tired are they relaxed, talking, reading a book intensely, giving directions, there are countless stories to be told with gesture drawings, so get cracking.

Baby steps

After you can draw the essence you can start by adding detail to it, whenever you draw anything you will always draw a quick essence first to help you visualize what you are trying to draw. I started out drawing by using shapes, so I would get the essence and then use circles everywhere and overlap them to get the shape right. I learnt this from Glenn Vilppu who sells a set of I think 12 videos for about $500, its expensive but iv seen the first 2 and if I had $500 to spend id purchase it, but I don’t, but that’s ok all is not lost, as sheldonsartacademy on youtube puts it, the secret to learning how to draw is practice. But there are a lot of ways to speed up the process and become a better artist. I recommend you purchase the book, “The natural way to draw” by Kimon Nicolaides, no matter what if you have this book in your arsenal your set. It’ll get you from A to Z 3 times through. Although the book is asking you to go through vigorous training with models and so which isn’t really possible for anyone unless you have a whole class who would like to do the book with you or a your a millionaire, its hard to follow his teachings exactly. But it is actually one of the best books for anyone on a learning how to draw journey. It teaches you all the different ways to improve your drawings, Kimon Nicolaides’s way of gesture drawings might be different from Walt Stanchfield’s gesture drawings but they are both excellent practice. I find Walt Stanchfields book Gesture Drawing for Animation a lot more comprehensive than Kimon Nicolaides’s, but only the gesture drawing part, and even though your not an aspiring animator the book will help improve your gesture drawings 10fold, plus Walt Stanchfield also has a special message he portrays in his writings and I recommend you read that before you jump on to “The natural way to draw” by Kimon Nicolaides.

So what’s next?

So after reading Gesture Drawing for Animation by Walt Stanchfield and your kind of getting the hang of the whole gesture drawing thing your ready to move onto “The natural way to draw” by Kimon Nicolaides. Which is all about drawing from a model which is an excellent notion, the more life drawing classes you attend the better you’ll get. Use nicolades’s book as a bag full of tricks and try them all. Don’t see a contour drawing as a waste of model time, everything you draw is an experience and builds on your skills as an artist. Don’t attempt to master one way of drawing stay experimental and draw in all the different ways. Because as soon as you think you’ve mastered one way of drawing your stuck at a point and all your doing is drawing but not learning enough from it, having les and less experiences, so the way of drawing has actually mastered you.

Right so

I just summed up my journey over the past year in 2 pages, I have drawn almost everyday and filled up 6 sketchbooks. Read Gesture Drawing for Animation by Walt Stanchfield and currently halfway through the natural way to draw by nicolades, iv also picked up other how to draw books, but those 2 there will get you to a great start, and hopefully you can reach where I am in 6 months since you don’t have to go hunting these 2 great books. But it takes time and patience, but you’ll get better, as long as you enjoy yourself its all good.

So yeah that’s it, its easy peasy buy “Gesture Drawing for Animation” by Walt Stanchfield and practise drawing everyday in your sketchbook, buy a whole set of 2b pencils, they run out a lot quicker than you think, after you have mastered the gesture hunt down a copy of “The natural way to draw” by Kimon Nicolaides and read about the different ways to draw and draw using them, find yourself a few life drawing classes you can attend weekly and just draw a lot. Enjoy hope this helped, if it did please feel free to link to this article or even email me =) thanx for reading and goodluck to ye.