Gesture / An Introduction to the Art of Figure Drawing

1. Gesture Trailer: Have you ever wanted to draw the figure? The human figure is the most exciting, challenging, and rewarding subject you can draw. The hardest part is knowing where to begin. The answer is gesture drawing. Gesture drawing is a powerful form of figure drawing that focuses on movement, dynamism, and action. Gesture drawings can stand alone as beautiful works of art, but they also play an essential role in laying the foundation for more finished figure drawings. In this beginning figure drawing course, you'll learn numerous essential figure drawing skills. First, you'll learn how to simplify the figure and to capture the dynamic movements of any pose. Next, you'll learn how to flesh out the figure by first addressing each part of the body on its own before learning how to pull everything together to draw the figure as a dynamic whole. Finally, you'll learn powerful shading techniques that will allow you to bring a greater sense of drama to your figure drawings. This course is designed to give you a real figure drawing experience, just as if you were in a true figure drawing studio. This means that you'll learn and draw from a fully nude model as well as learned from anatomical diagrams and numerous drawing demonstrations. Gesture drawing is the key to drawing vibrant figures that seem to come alive on the page. In this course, each day you'll watch a lesson that focuses on an essential figure drawing technique and then you'll do the practice. This course contains 12 lessons each with multiple drawing demonstrations and each lesson includes time to practice reals with poses specifically selected to make sure you get the most out of the lessons they accompany. Together, this course has over 11 hours of video content. My name is Brent Eviston. I've been teaching drawing for more than 20 years. I've taught literally thousands of students how to draw. In this course, we're not just going to learn tricks, you're going to learn the true craft of figure drawing. The tools and techniques you'll learn in this course are essential skills whether you're an aspiring fine artists or an aspiring digital artists looking for a creative career. One of the most common misconceptions about figure drawing is that more detail equals a better drawing. But what every master knows is that anatomical details only matter when they're in relationship to a dynamic gesture drawing. If you've ever wanted to draw the figure, even if you've never done figure drawing before, this course is for you. Enroll now and experience the award-winning instruction that's made my other drawing courses best sellers. I look forward to seeing you in the course. 2. Orientation: Welcome to the Art and Science of Figure Drawing. I'll be your instructor, Brent Eviston. In this course, you're going to learn about one of the most important skills you can learn in figure drawing, it's called gesture drawing. Gesture drawing is at the heart of the figure drawing process. At the core of every more finished and render figure drawing is a dynamic gesture drawing. Now, as essential as gesture drawing is, it's actually one of the least understood parts of the figure drawing process. Let me try and explain what gesture drawing actually is. Gesture drawing is a dynamic form of figure drawing that focuses on action, dynamism, and movement. A good gesture drawing distills a pose down to its most essential components. Now gesture drawings are usually done from shorter pause times. The longest pause you're going to be working from in this course is 15 minutes, and the shortest pause time is actually only 30 seconds. Now I know that doesn't seem like a lot of time, but this gives you an opportunity to draw expressively. Good gesture drawings have a sense of dynamism and vitality that only comes from moving the pencil quickly, keeping it moving, and by focusing on the big picture instead of getting stuck drawing tiny details. In this course, as with any drawing course, practice is essential. Watching these lessons is not enough. You really have to be willing to put in the time and do the practice. Here's how this course works. This course contains 12 lessons, and each lesson focuses on an essential figure drawing skill. Each lesson also comes with at least one practice rail, and each practice rail has timed pauses that have been specifically selected so that you can get the most out of the lesson the practice rail accompanies. Now, as I've mentioned before, the pause times are pretty short. This is to keep your pencil moving and to make sure that you're distilling the figure down into it's more essential components. Now many of you will find these shorter pause times challenging, but I want to remind you that this is an opportunity to draw expressively. But if the shorter pause times really are just too short for you, you are welcome to pause the practice rail. That being said, being able to draw quickly and efficiently is one of the best things that gesture drawing will teach you and it will prepare you to draw in front of a live model. Hopefully at some point you get the experience of actually drawing from a live model. But it's important to remember that live models can't hold pauses for long times. So if you can draw quickly, something that gesture drawing will teach you how to do, a 10-20 minute pause, we'll see much longer, you'll going to have much more time to capture what you want than if you draw really slowly. Now it's important for you to understand that these lessons provide a wealth of information and oftentimes, watching them just once will not be enough. I would encourage you to watch these lessons multiple times. I'd also like to remind you that I'm giving you the minimum amount of practice. If you really want to streamline your figure drawing experience, I would recommend doubling, tripling, or even quadrupling the amount of practice you're doing. Go through the practice rails multiple times. I would also recommend that you're all setup to draw before starting the practice rail. On that note, let's talk about materials and how to set up your drawing space. In this course, I would recommend using 18 by 24" paper. If you're on a budget, newsprint is just fine. I'll be drawing on 18 by 24″ white drawing paper. One of the things I love about drawing is that a wide range of materials will work for this course. You'll see me drawing with an assortment of oil-based colored pencils that have just been sharpened with an electric pencil sharpener. But most pencils will work. If all you have is access to graphite pencils, that's totally fine. I would recommend using something in the low B range like: a 2B, 3B or 4B. Even if all you have is a simple yellow Number 2 pencil, that's totally fine. You can even do your drawings on a tablet. I often encourage my students just to go to the art store and try things out. See what feels good, see what you like, be willing to experiment. The only kinds of materials I wouldn't recommend for this course would be charcoal, because it smears a lot and it's difficult to control, or mechanical pencils because they simply don't have the expressive range of other kinds of more traditional pencils. But again, the materials are really up to you. Another material that I would highly recommend is a drawing board. If you take a look behind me, you can see that I've got my paper on top of a drawing board. It provides a good amount of stability. I'm using a hollow wooden drawing board with separate clips. You can also use a basic Masonite drawing board that comes with metal clips attached. While you're watching these lessons and drawing from the practice rails, I would highly recommend watching it on a bigger screen. Although you can take this course on your phone, the drawings and diagrams are pretty detailed and you'll get the best experience and see the most by watching them on a bigger screen. Let me show you a couple of different ways that you can set up to practice from the practice rails. This is how I set up and draw. I have a tablet on the left side of my drawing board because I'm right-handed, so the paper is on my right-hand side. Another way that I often draw is just by pulling a chair up to my computer desk and placing the drawing board on my knees and letting the drawing board just rest on the edge of the desk. But as with anything else in the drawing process, feel free to experiment to see what drawing setup works best for you. In this course, we're going to be working with a female model. But the tools and techniques you're going to learn in this course, with a few obvious exceptions, will work for both male and female models. So realize that even though we'll be drawing from a female model, that nearly everything you're learning in this course will be just as valuable when you're drawing from a male model. Now this is very important for you to understand. In this course, I'm trying to give you a true figure drawing experience. I'm trying to replicate the experience of being in a real figure drawing studio. That means we're going to be working from photographs of a fully nude model. So it's important that you're mature enough to go through this course, to work from a fully nude model, and to behave appropriately if you decide to ask questions or make comments. If you're not sure whether a comment is inappropriate, it's probably best not to make it. It's also important that you're using the anatomical terms for body parts that I'm teaching you in this course. Try not to use any slang. Now let's talk a little bit about anatomy. In this course, you're going to be introduced to dozens of anatomical landmarks. Now for those of you that are new to figure drawing, this may seem like a lot of anatomy but really it's just scratching the surface. I'm introducing you to enough anatomy just to give you a sense of the kinds of things you'll need to know to draw the figure. When I'm talking about anatomy, I'll actually be using the traditional Latin terms. The reason is that if you decide to learn more about anatomy, those are the terms you're going to be exposed to. Those are the terms that instructors are going to use. It also gives us a common language. That being said, if you don't remember every single Latin term that I'm throwing out in this course, that's okay. It's much more important that you understand the concepts. Now this is also critical for you to understand. Although this is a beginning figure drawing course, it is not a beginning drawing course. Figure drawing is a pretty advanced subject. So you should already have some fundamental drawing skills before starting this course. You should already be comfortable drawing basic shapes and volumes using basic measuring techniques and using contour lines to describe form. That means both inner and outer contours as well as overlaps. You should also have a basic understanding of the shading process. Now if any of these concepts or ideas seem unfamiliar to you, I would highly recommend going back and taking the courses in the original Art and Science of Drawing Series. If you're a true beginner, I would recommend starting with the basic skills course in the Art and Science of Drawing, going through the series and then coming back to this course to study figure drawing. Now if you already have some drawing experience, but you just want to refresh on these ideas, there are some courses in the original Art and Science of Drawing Series that I would highly recommend revisiting. That would be the Form and Space course, the Measuring and Proportion course, the Contours course, and the Shading courses. If you're not sure, you can always start going through this course, and if you feel there's anything you need to revisit, you can always go back and take more fundamental courses then. I'll be giving you reminders throughout the course about the basic skills required and where to develop them if you don't already have them. There's one more thing I want to talk about before you start the course. If possible, I would encourage you to find and join a local figure drawing group in your area. They are more common than you think. Drawing regularly from a real live model is an excellent experience and a great way to put into practice the skills that you're learning in this course. Now before you start the actual lessons, I'm going to ask you to watch a video called, What is Gesture Drawing? They'll really explore the history and what gesture drawing is all about and give you some key concepts that you need to understand before you start the course. Then when you're ready, I will see you in the lessons. Well, I'm thrilled that you've joined this course. Welcome to the gesture section of the Art and Science of Figure Drawing. Good luck, have fun, practice, and I look forward to seeing you in the course. 3. What is Gesture Drawing?: Most people are familiar with the dramatic figurative works of old masters, like Rubens and Rembrandt. What many people don't realize is that before these masterpieces were painted, these artists often relied on quick, expressive sketches that simplified the poses of their figures and distill them down into their most essential attributes. It was through these seemingly simple sketches that these master artists were able to understand exactly what made a post dramatic, expressive and beautiful. These kinds of drawings are known as gestures. To get a better sense of what gesture drawing is and how it works. Let's take a look at some lithic graphs by Daumier, a French caricaturist from the 1800s, and a master of expressive figure drawing. The people in Daumier's drawings seemed to come alive. The dramatic poses combined with the expressive line of work create the illusion of motion and life. His drawings don't lie flat and lifeless on the page. They seem to vibrate with energy. One of the things Daumier did to prepare for his more finished pieces of art, was to make quick gestural and composition studies of the figures in his drawings. These quick gestural studies, distill these dynamic figures down to their most essential components. These deceptively simple drawings are a testament to how much dynamism and energy can be communicated using very few line and marks. Daumier truly understood how to draw the figure with drama and dynamism, which are at the core of gesture drawing, and what you're going to learn to do in this course. Now, let's take a look at a more contemporary approach to gesture drawing by viewing some of my own drawings. I've tried to synthesize traditional methods of gesture drawing with more contemporary practices. This combination of tradition with cutting edge tools and techniques will be useful to all kinds of artists, including animators, digital artists, as well as fine artists. Gesture drawing is one of the most important, but least understood parts of the figure drawing process. Simply put, a gesture drawing captures the action and dynamism of a pose. There is no one right way to do a gesture drawing. Almost every artist approaches them differently, but there are some things that most master gesture drawings have in common. Most gesture drawings are done quickly from poses that are often under five minutes, and occasionally are as short as 10 seconds. When doing a gesture drawing, the artist tries to simplify both the action of the pose and the forms of the body. Instead of focusing on details, gesture drawings focus on the directions the forms of the body are traveling, and the relationships between them. Because a gesture drawing is an attempt to capture the movement or action of a pose, they are often exaggerated for dramatic effect. A successful gesture drawing should be expressive and dynamic, but also simple, with a focus on what essential components make the pose, what it is. Good gesture drawings finds a sense of rhythm or a flow created in the relationships between the different parts of the body. Some gesture drawings do include detailed anatomy and appear almost as finished works of art. While others distill the essence of the pose, by using as few strokes as possible. While many gesture drawing stand alone as beautiful works of art in and of themselves. Gesture drawing also plays a critical role in laying a foundation for more finished and render drawings. By the end of this course, you'll have the knowledge and skills necessary to produce a beautiful and expressive gesture drawings that stand alone as works of art, as well as use gesture drawing in more finished works to make sure they have a sense of vitality and energy. Before you start your lessons and get to drawing, there are a few key concepts you need to understand. In this series, you'll see me using a reddish colored pencil that has simply been sharpened with an electric pencil sharpener. Much of the gesture drawing you'll see me do, particularly at the beginning of the gesture process, will be done using the broad side of the pencil lead. In order to engage the side of the pencil lead, you'll see me using the overhand grip to hold the pencil. Although I'm not requiring you to use any particular pencil grip, I would highly recommend that you use the overhand grip shown here, because it allows you to easily engage the side of the pencil lead and to make soft, hazy marks like this. You'll also see me draw using long fluid marks. To make these fluid lines, I'm moving my entire arm when I draw, as opposed to my wrist or fingers. At the beginning of the figure drawing process, you'll want to avoid using dark, hard edge to marks like the ones shown here. These dark marks should be saved until the end of the figure drawing process, or at least until much later. Until I tell you otherwise, you'll want to primarily use soft fluid mark making. Now, on the right side of the page, you'll see me draw simplified shape that I might use for a torso, using light, fluid, soft lines. If you're here learning figure drawing, you should already know that drawing is a process and that the first marks we put down, despite our best attempts, are almost certainly going to be inaccurate and require revising. You'll want to get in the habit of making your first lines in a figure drawing as soft and as light as possible. As you move through the drawing process, make distinctions and begin to revise your initial marks. You can slowly began to darken and harden your marks with each new attempt. This way, you'll always be able to tell which marks where your earlier and less accurate attempts and which marks are later and more accurate refinements. For example, take a look at the mark making here. You can tell just by looking that this softer, lighter mark on the left is an earlier and therefore less accurate attempt, while the slightly darker and harder line towards the right is a more accurate refinement. Keeping this system of mark making in mind as you progress through the figure drawing process, will remove the burden of you having to remember which attempts where your earlier inaccurate ones and which were more correct refinements. Now let's talk about the level of simplification you'll want to start with. You'll notice that the lines I used to draw this simplified torso shape are not detailed contours. They're simply might first attempts to establish the basic: size, shape, and proportions of the torso with a particular focus on the direction each line is traveling; how long it is, where it is placed, and whether it is straight or curved. It's only when I'm confident that the simple lines are working, that I would go over them to draw a darker and more detailed contour. The lighter and softer lines are never intended to be seen by a viewer. They can be easily moved and refined until you arrive at the basic size, shape, and proportions of the figure. Once you're confident that your light, simple lines are accurate, you can then draw nuanced and articulate contour lines right over them; confident that you won't lose sight of the big picture as you focus on this smaller details. But again, I'd like to reiterate that for now, you should only be drawing with soft, light fluid lines; you won't be drawing with dark lines until much later in the course. To help you better understand the next few key concepts, let's take a look at some more finished gesture drawings. One of the most foundational ideas and gesture drawing is that you're not starting off by drawing the figure itself. Instead, you're trying to capture the movement or action of the pose; phrases like that, although true, can seem esoteric and confusing, particularly to new students. To help you understand what this means, let's focus on the leg of the figure on the left. Here you'll see me outline the basic shape of the leg. One of the first and most important things you should learn about the figure is that almost every part of the body is slightly curved and often extremely curved. For example, in order to draw a line down the center of the long axis of this leg, the line must curve. Now let's take a look at the lower portion of the leg on are far left. Once again, I'll outline the basic shape of the lower portion of the leg and once again, if we draw a line down the long axis of this part of the leg, we can see that it curves. In order to capture the movement of a pose in a drawing, instead of starting off by trying to draw the leg itself, you'll instead try and draw how the leg is moving through space. In gesture drawing, you'll often simplify complex forms of the body into these basic directional lines. Even though these curving directional lines are simple, they actually tell us quite a bit about the length, angle, curvature, and placement of the different parts of the body. These curvatures can be found on nearly every part of the human body. They are often referred to as interior curves. Let's take a look at a few more. We can think of the torso as a two-chambered shape, with the upper chamber containing the rib cage and the lower chamber containing the pelvis. Hopefully, you can already see that this two chambered shape also appears to be curving. At the very beginning of a gesture drawing, it's incredibly useful to be able to simplify multiple parts of the body into a single line. Here, you can see that the upper and lower portions of the arm simplify into a long curve. One of the biggest mistakes that beginning figure-drawing students make, is straightening out in stiffening up these beautiful curves of the figure. In fact, figure drawings work best when the subtle curvatures are exaggerated. Later in your practice, feel free to accentuate and even exaggerate these curvatures of the body. Next, let's take a look at the raised arm of this figure. You can see that it's only been drawn using slightly curving directional lines, but I want you to notice that these seemingly simple lines give us quite a bit of information about: the size, placement, and position of the arm. Again, these lines are not depicting the arm itself, they are depicting what the arm is doing. The arm is implied rather than stated. It is precisely these lines and marks that you'll use at the very beginning of the figure drawing process; lines that tell us what direction the forms of the body are going in the most simple terms possible. If it helps, you can imagine arrows at the end of these lines to remind you that you are not drawing the arm itself at the beginning of a gesture drawing, you're simply drawing the direction the arm is going or how it is moving, and this can be done for all parts of the body. You want to train your brain, at first to see the figure as a series of curving directional lines. Now it's critical here to note, that these directional lines are not directly observable on the body, but with some practice, you'll be able to observe and draw these beautiful and dynamic curves, that give a sense of action and movement to the figure. Once you can see the curvature of the individual parts of the body, you can begin to find pathways that connect and unify the various curving parts of the body. Once again, you can see me break the body down into a series of individual shapes. A successful gesture line will seem to flow through multiple shapes at once, snaking its way through the body and capturing the curves of the individual shapes. This is called a primary action line, and it's what you'll learn to observe and draw in your first lesson. Once the primary action line has been established, other direction lines can be added to better describe the rest of the pose. Another way you can think of directional gesture lines is if the body is comprised of multiple shapes. A gesture line operates almost like a string that beads them all together. I know I've given you a lot of information, so let me briefly summarize the key concepts that you need to know before you begin your lessons. Start your drawing using light, soft lines. Light and soft lines are easy to change and draw right over as you're drawing progresses, your lines and marks can get darker. Look for the inner or implied curves of the body; accentuating these curves will add a sense of drama and movement to your gesture drawings. Instead of trying to draw the figure itself, start by drawing what the figure is doing. Try and capture the direction the forms of the body are traveling. Finally, try and unify the various parts of the body using simplified curvaceous lines; the fewer the better. With these key concepts in mind, you're now ready to begin the figure drawing lessons. 4. The Primary Action Line: Welcome to the first lesson in the art and science of figure drawing. Today we're going to focus on what is called the primary action line. What a primary action line is intended to do is simplify a pose into one single line. So the question is, why start a figure drawing with a primary action line? The answer is that most beginning students tend to immediately focus on the details of the figure without understanding the pose as a whole. The primary action line is one of the best ways that you can understand the pose as a whole before rushing into details. It's critical that you remember that figure drawing is a process. We know that most of the initial marks that we're going to make,need to be refined before they can be used, before they become accurate. For those of you who have taken other drawing courses with me, you've heard me say many times that when you do a drawing, we go from big to small, from general to specific, and from simple to complex. That means at the beginning of a figure drawing, we want to understand the figure in the most simple and general way we can. One of the ways to do this is by focusing on the biggest shapes in relationships. The details of the figure drawing can come later, but at first, we need a simple dynamic line that distills the pose down to its essence. Is this initial dynamic line that we're going to build more and more complex forms of the figure on top of, until we arrive at a finished figure drawing. The other reason we start with the primary action line is because this is a beginning figure drawing class. It's so common for beginning students to come into a figure drawing studio and be overwhelmed with the complexity of both the anatomy of the body as well as the figure drawing process. It's important to me that you're understanding exactly what we're doing at every step of the way. So to help you understand what a primary action line is, how it works, and how you can draw it. Let's take a look at the model. Let's begin by looking at a simple upright standing pose. If you had to represent this pose using a single line, what might that look like? The first thing you might notice is that the head and the torso are aligned in a perfectly vertical manner. Neither of them are tilting or bending. You might also notice that the shoulders are in a perfect horizontal alignment, as are the hips, knees, feet, and hands. Everything about this pose is balanced. If there's one dominant direction that this pose communicates, it's verticality. So if we had to represent this pose using a single line, a perfectly vertical line would sum up the primary action of this upright standing figure. You'll immediately notice that this single primary action line leaves out the two arms and simplifies both legs into one single line. In fact, this primary action line has no differentiations between any of the different parts of the body. But that's the point of the primary action line. It records what the figure is doing, in this case, standing perfectly upright in vertical. It's a brief summary of the pose just to get you started and it unifies as many parts of the body as it can. The primary action line is not an attempt to indicate all of the different forms of the body. Now it's rare in a figure drawing class or studio to encounter a simple standing pose like this. Most of the time, your model will take much more interesting poses. Now let's take a look at a classic figure drawing pose where the model shifts her weight to one leg. This kind of pose is called contrapposto. This Italian word refers to the fact that when a person shifts his or her weight to one leg, it puts the axis of the shoulders and the pelvis in counter position. The shoulder on the right is now higher that the shoulder on the left and conversely, the left side of the pelvis is higher than the right side. Let's quickly go back to our vertical standing pose. I want you to imagine the vertical primary action line associated with this pose. Now watch as the model shifts into contraposition. Hopefully, you can start to get a sense that a vertical line is no longer adequate to describe this pose because the primary action of this pose is no longer simply standing upright. For example, take a look at the torso. It's no longer going straight up and down. It is now bending. As I pointed out earlier, the axis of the shoulders is now at a dramatic angle with a shoulder on the right are much higher than the shoulder on the left. Now let's look at the axis line or angle between the two sides of the pelvis. Again, it is dramatically tilted. Even the head is beginning to tilt slightly to our right. So if we had to draw a single primary action line just for the torso, that would account for the tilt of the head and the bend in the torso, it might look something like this. This is a great example of a line that describes what the head and torso are doing. Lines like this describe the body in verbs instead of nouns. What I mean by that is instead of drawing the head, we're drawing the tilt of the head. Instead of drawing a torso, we're drawing the bend of the torso. Again, I know this seems like a strange way to begin to figure your drawing. But after 20 years of teaching, I can attest that this is one of the most important ways you can initially see any pose. So hopefully, it's beginning to make sense why we would simplify the torso into this kind of primary action line. But we're only halfway down the body. Now we need to get from the pelvis to the feet. In today's lesson, we're only working with a single primary action line. Because both legs are doing something different, we need to decide which leg is engaging in the primary action. So let's consider the weight-bearing leg on the left as the primary focus of our action line. So in addition to bearing weight, what is this leg doing? The top of the leg where it meets the pelvis is raised up in pushing out to the left. From there, it begins to travel downward and inward toward the knee. So the line we might draw to represent all of these elements might look something like this. You'll notice that this line tends to run along the outer contour of the leg. These kinds of primary action lines can be drawn wherever they are most useful to you. Because we are drawing the action of the leg and not the leg itself. We can run our primary action line straight through the middle or along either side, whichever seems to make the most sense for the pose. But it's important to remember that this is not yet a concrete contour line that attempts to describe the leg in any detail, that will come much later. I chose to place that gesture line of this leg at the contour edge on the left because I thought it was important to communicate how far the hip is pushed out toward the left. Now to get down from the knee to the foot, we need a line that describes the direction the lower part of the leg is going, as well as implies the subtle inner curve. It might look something like this. So for this pose, we have a line that describes the tilt of the head and the bend of the torso. We have another line that describes the way the hip pushes out towards the left and travels down toward the foot. If our goal is to describe this pose using a single primary action line, how might we connect these two lines? It's always important to remember that there aren't single right answers to questions like these while doing gesture drawing, there's always room for interpretation. But what strikes me is that although we've communicated the hip is pushing out to the left, we haven't communicated that the left side of the hip is also raised much higher on the left. So we'll connect these two lines by drawing a line that moves upward and toward the left to connect to the pelvis with the leg. So the solution we've come up with as the primary action line for this pose looks like this. It begins by describing the tilt of the head, followed by the bend of the torso, and then moves upward and to the left to push the hip out before descending down toward the feet while capturing the inner curves of both the upper and lower portions of the leg. Hopefully you can see how well this primary action line describes what the body is doing. But I've also mentioned that this is just one possible solution to a subjective problem. Different artists may have completely different reactions to the same pose and that's fine. For example, let's say that when you looked at this pose, you thought that the primary action was the raised shoulder on the right instead of the tilt of the head and the bending of the torso. This is a perfectly valid interpretation of the pose. Remember, there's no single right answer. It's up to you to determine what the primary action of a pose is. So if you interpret the raised shoulder on the right as a primary action, your primary action line might look something like this. Both of these solutions are perfectly acceptable and useful. Now let's take a look at another pose. What strikes you as the primary action line? Remember, there are multiple good interpretations. What strikes me is the beautiful S-shaped curve that we can follow all the way from the top of the raised elbow down to the foot. I like the way this action line finds a relationship between the highest part of the pose and the lowest, as well as captures the inner curves of the leg. Here's another critical idea you'll need to pay attention to when drawing your primary action lines. Let's take a look at the two ends of this line. Even though the primary action line focuses on the curves of the different parts of the body, we need to remember that there's a very specific diagonal that connects these two points. We won't be doing much technical measuring while drawing gestures, but it's very important to notice the relationship between the starting and stopping points of your primary action line. You can do this by asking yourself questions like, is the top of the primary action line directly above the bottom or is it off to one side? If it is off to one side, as is the case with this pose, how far is it to the left or the right? In gesture drawing, we're prioritizing dynamism over accuracy, so arriving at the exact angle between these two points is not critical. You can even exaggerate the angle for drama. What you don't want to do is make it less dramatic. With these ideas in mind, let's take a look at a demonstration. Today, you'll be drawing from 30 second poses. The primary action line should only take you about 10 seconds to draw. This will allow you to spend the first 20 seconds of each pose observing and analyzing to figure out what the primary action line might be. We'll start with the pose we just analyzed. I'm using the side of my pencil to make soft, light fluid lines. You'll notice that I'm not drawing the line from top to bottom in a single stroke. Instead, you'll see me feel my way through the pose, trying to be sensitive to all of the interior curves of the different parts of the body. Because I've drawn the primary action line using such light soft lines, I can easily make any adjustments necessary. Even though I think this line is working, you'll see me add a directional line for the forearm. Take a moment to compare the photograph of this pose to the primary action line I've just drawn. Hopefully you can see why I've chosen this line as the primary action line and how it describes the pose. Now, obviously, there's a lot of information that this primary action line has left out, but remember, we're starting or drawings off as simply as possible. It's important to get these simple relationships right before building on top of them. Now let's go to the next pose. Once again, you'll see me start at the raised elbow, which is the highest point of the pose. My gesture line will run down the arm and then cut through the torso, traveling to the leg on our left. As the line travels down, I've tried to capture the inner curve of the lower portion of the leg. The gesture concludes with a subtle indication of which direction the big toe is pointing. Even though the leg on our right was bearing more weight, I thought the leg on the left would make for a more beautiful and dynamic primary action line. Both interpretations are valid and both would create a useful primary action line. In this next pose, I'm struck by the long graceful curve that begins with a raised hand and ends at the pointed foot. I'm keeping in mind the fact that the hand is near the left edge of the image and the foot is nearer to the right edge. This allows me not only to capture the beautiful curve, but to make sure that it's properly tilted. I'd like you to notice that I've also tried to subtly indicate the direction of the hand at the top of the primary action line, as well as the direction of the foot at the bottom. I'll demonstrate with one more pose before giving you a chance to draw. In this final pose, I'll begin with a hand and draw a line that moves toward the elbow before abruptly changing directions and heading toward the shoulder. From here, the line changes direction again and then indicates the curve of the torso. Finally, the line moves down the leg in an S curve and ends with an indication of the direction of the foot. Once again, I'd like you to compare the primary action line that I just drew with a reference image of the pose. Despite the fact that there is not a single correct solution to this pose, hopefully you can understand why I chose the primary action line that I did. Now, with all this in mind, let me introduce today's practice. Now that you've seen me demonstrate primary action lines a number of times, it's your turn to try and draw them. Each lesson in this series comes with a practice reel with poses that I've selected specifically for the lesson it accompanies. Let me take you through how the practice reel works and how to use it. You'll want to get set up to draw before starting the practice real. At the beginning of each practice real, you'll be told how many poses are on the practice reel and how long each pose is. Once you're set up to draw, go ahead and press play on the practice real. After the introductory screen, which will tell you how many poses are on the real and how long each pose is, you'll be notified that the first pose is about to begin. Each pose is numbered for easy reference, and I'll notify you when there are 10 seconds left in the pose. You'll also have a few seconds between each pose, so you can pause the video if you need to get a new sheet of paper, sharpen your pencil or anything else. Here's your project today, you are going to draw 30 primary action lines from the 30 poses that are on your practice reel today. Remember, the goal of a primary action line is to distill the pose down to one dynamic line that summarizes the pose, that distills it down to its essence. When you're drawing today, I would recommend spending the first 20 seconds of each pose just observing and analyzing in order to figure out what the primary action line might be, then spend the final 10 seconds drawing, but remember this isn't a strict rule. Feel free to use the 30 seconds however you need. When you're drawing today, you'll want to use light, soft and fluid lines. You'll want to pay attention to the inner curves of each of the forms of the body, and you'll also want to pay attention to the beginning and end of the primary action line and the relationship or angle between them. Your primary action line can run through the body in whatever way you deem necessary. It can run right through the middle of a form or it could run along either edge. Remember, this is a subjective part of figure drawing. There's no single correct solution, and feel free to exaggerate. Remember, the goal of the primary action line is dynamism. You want to capture the movement and energy of a pose. Use your instincts, feel it out. What strikes you as most interesting about the pose? If you want to speed up your learning process and get better at figure drawing quicker, here's what I would recommend. After you finish with the practice reel, start it over. Go through all of the poses again and see if you can come up with different solutions for the same poses. This is a great way to explore, to experiment, and to get more experienced drawing from the figure. Have fun with your practice today, I will see you back here for the second lesson in the art and science of figure drawing, when you're going to learn how to build upon this primary action line and create a gesture that captures the entire pose. 5. The Primary Action Line - Practice Reel: Ten more seconds. Ten more seconds. Ten more seconds. Ten more seconds. Ten more seconds. Ten more seconds. Ten more seconds. Ten more seconds. Ten more seconds. Ten more seconds. Ten more seconds. Ten more seconds. Ten more seconds. Ten more seconds. Ten more seconds. Ten more seconds. Ten more seconds. Ten more seconds. Ten more seconds. Ten more seconds. Ten more seconds. Ten more seconds. Ten more seconds. Ten more seconds. Ten more seconds. Ten more seconds. Ten more seconds. Ten more seconds. 6. The Figure in Action: Welcome back. You've made it to lesson two. Today, What you're going to learn is how to build off the primary action line in order to address the entire pose of the figure. Just like in the previous lesson, you are going to begin each drawing with a primary action line, but then you're going to assign each different visible part of the body its own action line, all of these actions are going to come together to describe the entire pose. By the end of this lesson, you'll understand how to draw simple linear gestures that describe the movement in action of the entire pose. Now it's critical for you to remember that we are not yet drawing the figure itself; that means, you're not drawing any anatomy, you're not drawing any contours, we're still drawing what the figure is doing. Even though you're doing a gesture drawing that addresses all of the individual parts of the figure, remember you're translating them into action lines, and action lines deal with the distance and direction of each individual part of the body, as well as where it's placed in relationship to all of the rest of the parts of the body. Remember, these are our simple first attempts that we will build off of later on. Now, before we get to today's demonstrations, there are a few key concepts I'd like to remind you about and I'd like to address one of the most common issues that students face when they're learning how to do this gesture drawing. Now, just like you did when you were drawing your primary action lines, there are a few key concepts you need to keep in mind while drawing the rest of the action lines of the pose. You'll want to pay close attention to what direction the line is actually traveling so you don't just want to do an approximation, you really want to do your best to capture the actual angle of any individual part of the body. We're not employing any specific measuring techniques yet, but I want you to do your best to evaluate the direction each part of the body is going with your eyes and try and get that on the page. You also want to pay attention to the length of each line, even though we're not addressing proportion specifically, you'll still be able to tell if an arm or a leg is too long or too short. Again, a gesture drawing is prioritizing movement in action, but you still want to keep some sense of proportion in mind. You also want to pay attention to the inner curves or the implied curves of each form of the body. Remember, no part of the body is truly straight and you'll want your gesture drawing to reflect that, I want you to look for opportunities to unify different parts of the body using as few lines as possible. If an arm seems to flow right into a tour, so go ahead and follow it and use a single line to describe both of those actions and you'll see me demonstrate this today. Now that you'll be drawing using multiple lines, you'll want to pay attention to how and where you're placing them. Again, we're not prioritizing accuracy yet, but I want you to use your eyes, your mind, and your intuition to get your drawing to as close to proper proportions as you can. The final thing I'd like to address before we get to today's demonstrations is one of the most common missteps I see beginning students make at this stage of the gesture process. Hopefully by understanding it, you'll be able to recognize it and avoid it. To help you understand what this misstep is, let's take a look at some diagrams. Generally speaking, humans respond positively to vertical lines, they seem powerful and assertive, they tend to give us a sense of stability. We humans also like horizontal lines, horizontal lines remind us of reclining, they tend to make us feel calm and relaxed. When combined, vertical and horizontal lines give us a sense of stability, orderliness, and structure. They tend to make us feel safe, secure, and stable. Diagonals on the other hand appear unstable they appear as if they can fall over at any moment. When diagonals are combined, they tend to seem chaotic, unpredictable, and unbalanced. Some people find this tension to be exciting and dynamic, while others find it unsettling. When many, if not most beginning students draw, they tend to want to stabilize dynamic diagonal lines. When presented with a dynamic pose that contains multiple diagonals, most students tend to stiffen it up. It's as if they have an unconscious desire to make the pose more stable and balanced than it actually is. Here you can see me give an example of a pose that is drawn too stiffly. You can see my drawing communicates what the pose is doing; the shoulder on our left appears raised, the leg on our right appears straight, and the leg on our left appears bent. But a closer inspection will reveal that every line in my drawing should be at a more dynamic diagonal. For an incredibly common example, let's take a look at the shoulder. Even though I've drawn the left shoulder higher than the shoulder on our right, in actuality, the angle should be much more dramatic. Compare what my pencil is doing now to the reference photo on the left. Hopefully you can see that the correct angle is much more dramatic, the same issue is occurring at the pelvis. When the body is at rest, both the shoulders and the pelvis are in a horizontal axis, and beginning students tend to bring this assumption into their drawings, or at least they try and bring the dramatic angle they observe closer to a horizontal. Now watch as I draw a more dynamic gesture for this pose. Hopefully you can see that this gesture does a much better job communicating that dynamism and action of this pose. Let's take a look at one more. First, I'll demonstrate what not to do by drawing a gesture that communicates what the pose is doing but is way too stiff and not nearly dynamic enough. Before I draw a more dynamic and accurate gesture on top of this, compare this drawing to the reference photo to see if you can tell which diagonals should be more extreme. Now watch as I draw a more dynamic gesture right over it. One of the reasons I tell students to exaggerate the dynamism of poses when they draw, is because they're actually more likely to capture the dynamic forces of the pose by attempting to exaggerate. It seems to me that often, the attempt to exaggerate the dynamic diagonals can counteract the desire to stabilize them, which yields a more accurate gesture drawing that accurately captures the dynamism of the actual pose. Hopefully, you can clearly see how much more interesting and exciting this dynamic gesture is, then it's stiffer counterpart. With these ideas in mind, let's now learn to go beyond the primary action line to create a gesture drawing that captures the action of the entire pose. Today we're going to be drawing from one minute poses. Just like in the previous lesson, we're going to start out by drawing the primary action line. Although there isn't a single correct solution, what strikes me about this pose, is the way the tilt of the head flows right into the bending spine. It also strikes me that the pelvis is pushed up into the right, creating a dramatic tilt. You can see that I've sent the primary action line down the center of the torso before moving it over to the outer edge of the pelvis. Remember, your primary action line can cut through the figure however it needs to. It can run through the middle of a form along either edge or anywhere in between. The primary action line concludes by following down the right side of the leg, capturing the inner curves of both the upper and lower portions of the leg, before to sending all the way down to the foot. Even the line for the foot is given a specific direction. Now that I have a primary action line, it's time to address the rest of the visible body because we can't see the arms. This leaves the leg on our left. I'm sending this secondary action line down the top outer edge of this leg and attempting to capture the various curves of the leg as it travels toward the foot. I'm trying to make my gesture drawing appear as dynamic or even more dynamic than the actual pose. It's important to remember that at this stage of gesture drawing or prioritizing action and movement over accuracy. So you'll want to do your best to keep your gesture drawings in proportion. But keep in mind that these initial gesture drawings are designed to be refined as the drawing process continues, because the arms aren't visible to us. For this pose, we really only needed two action lines, but this next pose will require more. In this pose, I see an opportunity to unify the raised arm on our right with the right side of our torso. Next, my primary action line will curve up into the left side of the body in order to push the hip up into our left. Finally, it will descend down toward the feet, capturing the inner curves, both sections of the leg, on its way down. With the primary action line in place, I'll now draw a secondary action line that follows the top outer edge of the leg on our right. You'll notice that the foot on our right is placed lower than the foot on our left. As it is, this gesture seems to capture the primary and secondary actions of the pose. But we're not done yet, we still need to address the rest of the arm on our right as well as the arm on our left. I'm trying to be mindful of how these lines relate to each other in terms of proportion, direction, and placement. But again, this stage of gesture drawing is designed to be refined as the drawing process continues. Lastly, I'll add a line that indicates the tilt of the head and flows down the center of the torso. Hopefully you can see how this simple gesture communicates the action of the pose. It is a diagram of what the figure is doing. Let's take a look at just one more pose. Once again, I'll begin with a primary action line that unifies the arm on our left with the left side of the torso. From there, I'll push the hip up into our right before following the direction of the leg inward into our left, and finally, capturing the inner curve of the lower portion of the leg and adding the direction of the foot. Next, I'll draw an action line for the leg on our left. Notice that it's placed much lower than the line for the hip on our right. This helps give the appearance of the dramatic tilt of the pelvis. Next, I'll address the remaining sections of the arms. I'm paying particular attention to how long each section is and where it changes direction. Finally, I'll indicate the tilt of the head. Before you do your practice today, there are just a couple more ideas that I'd like to talk about. The first, is that during this demonstration drawings, I'm actually drawing much darker than I would if I were just drawing alone in my studio. The reason, of course, is that so you the student, can clearly see what I'm drawing. Watch closely as I adjust the contrast to reflect how lightly I would draw this gesture if I were just drawing for myself and not for students. I would like you to practice drawing these gestures as lightly as you possibly can. You want to make sure that you can clearly see them while you're drawing, but that they become almost invisible from 10-15 feet away. Drawing these kinds of gestures lightly is critical, because this is just the first step in a much longer figure drawing process. Not even the best drawers get it right the first time. These initial gesture drawings will act as an armature that we can continue to move and refine before building more concrete and volumetric forms on top of them. In fact, every demonstration I've done has had numerous proportion issues, but every drawing has to start somewhere. The lighter we draw at the beginning, the more opportunities we'll have to sculpt and refine the drawing along the way. If this conception of the drawing process is new to you, I would highly recommend revisiting the Basic Skills section of the Art and Science of Drawing series. But assuming you're ready, let's get you to your practice. Today you'll be drawing from 16 one minute poses. So that's twice as long as the poses from the previous lesson. Now, just like the previous lesson, you're going to begin each drawing with a primary action line. Next, you're going to be drawing action lines for the remaining parts of the body. Each part of the body can be assigned its own action line or if you find opportunities to combine them, you're free to do that as well. Remember, one of the goals with this kind of gesture drawing is simplicity. We want to try and understand the figure and the pose in the most simple terms possible. Now in the practice for the previous lesson, when you were working with 30 second poses, I recommended that you take the first 20 seconds to just observe and analyze and then use the last 10 seconds to actually draw. Now again, this wasn't a strict rule, just a guideline to get you started. But for today, I'm going to ask you to try and keep your observation and analysis a little shorter. Perhaps you can figure out the primary action line in 10 seconds and then start to draw. Now I know one minute poses may seem fast, particularly when you're trying to address all of the parts of the figure, but remember, some of the skills that you're learning here are how to think quickly and draw efficiently, and drawing from one minute poses is a great way to do that. I promise, even though it might seem quick at first, one minute is plenty of time to come up with a simple linear gesture drawing. If it's taking you much longer than that, you're probably not following the instructions that I'm giving. The short pause times will help keep your mind and hand moving efficiently, and hopefully the sense of urgency will add a real vitality to your drawings. I'd like to remind you one more time today, that you shouldn't be concerned with accurate proportions. Those can come later. You'll of course want to do your best and be aware if you've made a leg or an arm that clearly looks way too long, but for today, I would much prefer you have a dynamic gesture that's a little out of proportion, than a drawing that is in proportion but lacks dynamism. I'd also like to remind you about the materials that I'm recommending. I'm drawing on 18 by 24 inch paper using a drawing board, and I have my pad flipped horizontally, so, I can usually fit 2-3 gestures across. I'm attempting to have the gesture drawing of each pose start about an inch from the top and end about an inch from the bottom. So you want to draw it roughly the same size. But again, if your materials are different, that's okay too. I want you to have the best experience you can with the materials that are available to you. So with all that being said, let's get you to your practice. 7. The Figure in Action - Practice Reel: Ten more seconds. Ten more seconds. Ten more seconds. Ten more seconds. Ten more seconds. Ten more seconds. Ten more seconds. Ten more seconds. Ten more seconds. Ten more seconds. Ten more seconds. 8. Axis Lines: Take a look at this drawing. I see a lot of drawings done like this by beginning art students. Drawings that capture what the model is doing, but fail to capture the true dynamism of the pose. Yes, the arm is raised and the torso is leaning over. Yes both legs are bent but compare it to this drawing of the same pose. Hopefully, you can see how stiff the drawing on the left now appears and how much more dynamic and energetic the drawing on the right appears. In the drawing on the right, I paid a lot of attention to the direction that the forms of the body were actually traveling. I was very careful not to stiffen the pose. Again, I cannot overstate how common it is for beginning figure drawing students to stiffen up poses and to draw them less dynamically than they actually are. As we talked about yesterday, my best guess is that there's a subconscious desire to stabilize poses that appear unstable or difficult to hold. Now let's take a look at an overlay of the basic directions that the parts of the body are going in the drawing on the left. Now let's compare it to the same kind of diagram placed over the more dynamic drawing on the right. Can you see the dramatic difference between how these two diagrams deal with the direction of the forms of the body. Let's take a look at the more stiff gestural diagram on its own. Now watch carefully as we shift to the more dynamic diagram derived from the more dynamic drawing. You can see that in this diagram, everything seems more extreme and dynamic. The diagonals are bolder and the angles are more acute. To sum up this point, a dynamic drawing begins with a dynamic gesture that accurately captures the true direction the forms of the body are going. It is all too common for beginning students to stiffen up their drawings. But by creating a light linear, dynamic gesture drawing to figure out the true direction the forms of the body are traveling, we will ensure that when we build our drawing on top of it, it will carry the same dynamism with it through the end of the drawing. The final elements you need to understand in order to draw completed and truly dynamic gesture drawings are axis lines. To understand what axis lines are, let's take a look at a simple cylinder. There are actually two different kinds of axis lines that we use in figure drawing. The first kind of axis line runs through the center of a volume. It's a line around which the volume can rotate. The second kind of axis line, and the one we'll be using today is called a transverse axis line. For our purposes in figure drawing, a transverse axis is a line that go side to side between two points on either side of a volume. So in order to find and draw a transverse axis lines on the figure, we first need to find pairs of points. Today, we're going to be focusing on two of the most prominent axis lines used in figure drawing, the axis of the shoulders and the axis of the pelvis. Let's start with the axis for the shoulders. Although there are a few different ways you can find the axis line for the shoulders, it can often help to find a pair of points on the section of the body you're trying to find the axis for, and run a line through them. So let me introduce you to a few very useful bony landmarks. A bony landmark occurs on the surface of the body when you can see a bone protruding underneath the skin. The two bony landmarks that are helpful when drawing the axis of the shoulders are the lateral ends of the clavicles. You can see them circled here. Now this isn't really an anatomy course, so it's not critical that you memorize all of the anatomical names of the landmarks we're talking about today. But depending on how seriously you want to take figure drawing, it can be useful to memorize all of the names of the landmarks we're talking about. So to help, here are a few ideas to keep in mind. You'll notice that we're referring to the lateral ends of the clavicles. When we use the word lateral in terms of anatomy, we're referring to forms of the body that are toward the sides of the body. This is as opposed to medial, which is toward the middle of the body. The clavicles, of course, have two ends and we're only interested today in the ends of the clavicles that are near this sides of the body. The clavicles, of course, are the correct anatomical term for what people often refer to as the collar bones. In fact, you can easily find your clavicle with your fingers. Now take your fingers and slowly move them along the clavicle towards your shoulder. Notice that you can feel the end of the clavicle with your fingers. That's the lateral end of your clavicle. Now watch as I remove the circles. Can you still find the lateral ends of the clavicles? Now watch as I add the circles back in. Once you're confident you can find the lateral ends of the clavicles from the front, let's move to the back. The lateral ends of the clavicles are just as visible from the back as they are from the front. Can you see them? Let me circle them just to make sure. Were they where you thought they were? Watch as I remove the circles. Hopefully, you can clearly see these two bony protrusions underneath the skin. These two points can serve as excellent landmarks when you're trying to figure out the axis of the shoulders. These two points are often, but not always visible. Watch as the model raises her arms. You can see that right about where the lateral ends of the clavicles used to be there now creases in the skin created when the arm's raise, but the lateral ends of the clavicles are still underneath. You can experience this happening in your own body. Once again, find the lateral end of one of your clavicles with your arm down. Slowly raise your arm and you can feel the lateral end of the clavicle disappear and become submerged as the muscles of the shoulder swell up around it. The higher the arms are raised, the deeper the creases get, and the more submerged the lateral ends of the clavicles become. If the lateral ends of the clavicles are visible, they're a great tool to find the axis line of the shoulders. But if they're not, we only need two corresponding points on the shoulders to figure out the axis line. These creases are a great alternative. As long as the points you're using to find the axis line of the shoulders are the same on either side, they'll give you an accurate axis line. Now let's move down to the pelvis, the bony landmarks that I find most useful to find the axis line of the pelvis are the anterior superior iliac spines or for short, people often refer to it as the ASIS or the ASIS. You can see the anterior superior iliac spines coming to the surface here and here. So let me dissect this anatomical term for you. Anterior refers to the front of the body as opposed to posterior, which of course refers to the back. Superior means above, while inferior means below. The word iliac refers to the ilium, which are the large broad bones that form the upper part of the pelvis. Spine refers to the bony process that is visible just underneath the skin. Again, you don't need to memorize all of this yet. For now, it's more important that you understand the concept and are able to find these landmarks on the body. If you can see them, the anterior superior iliac spines are excellent tools to help us find the axis of the pelvis, but they can be difficult to see depending on the individual anatomy of the model you're working with. So let's practice finding them with a different pose. Hopefully, you can already see the bones of the pelvis protruding from underneath the skin. It's located right here. Can you find the anterior superior iliac spine on the other side? Keep your eyes where you think it is. Did you get it right? Take a look once more without this circles. Once you're confident that you can see the anterior superior iliac spines, let's move to the back of the body. The landmarks we're looking for to help find the axis line of the pelvis from the back are the posterior superior iliac spines, or what you might hear referred to as the PSIS or the PSIS. You'll notice that with the exception of the word posterior, all of the rest of the words are the same as the anterior superior iliac spine. Again, it's not important that you memorize the vocabulary or that you even understand what the bones themselves look like. It's more important that you understand the concept and are able to find these bony landmarks on the surface of the body. When the body is upright, the posterior superior iliac spines actually appear as dimples. You can see them here and here. Now let's shift the pose. Can you still see them? Hopefully, you guessed that they were here and here. By connecting these two points, we can arrive at the axis line for the pelvis from the back. Let's put these ideas into use and start finding axis lines on actual poses. Let's start with the shoulders. Can you see the lateral ends of the clavicles? If not, let me help. They are here and here. Did you get it right? By connecting these points with a line, we have found that transverse axis line of the shoulders. In this next pose, let's try and find the axis of the pelvis. First, we need to locate the anterior superior iliac spines. Take a moment to find them. Did you get it right? Once you've found these bony landmarks, by connecting them with a line, you will have found the axis of the pelvis. Let's try finding the pelvic axis in one more pose. First, locate the anterior superior iliac spines. Next, connect them with a line, this will give you the axis of the pelvis. Now that you've got some practice, let's find both axis lines on the back of the body. Let's start with the shoulders. We can see that the arms are raised, which means we won't be able to clearly see the lateral ends of the clavicles, but as long as we find the same corresponding points on either side of the body, we can connect them to find the axis line of the shoulders. These two corresponding points will meet our needs. For this pose, here is the axis of the shoulders. Now let's move down to the pelvis. Can you find the dimples created by the posterior superior iliac spines? Is this where you thought they were? Let's connect these two points and extend the line outward to either side. This gives us the axis of the pelvis. Let's try this with one more pose. This time, let's start with the pelvis. First, we'll locate the posterior superior iliac spines and then extend the line through them to arrive at the axis of the pelvis. Now the shoulder axis in this pose might be a bit of a challenge because both arms are raised and the hair of the model is covering the left shoulder. Nevertheless, we can approximate the axis of the shoulders by sending a line through the tops of both shoulders. Now that you've got some practice finding the axis lines of the pelvis and shoulders, let's put these ideas into practice by showing you how to integrate them into the gesture drawing process you've learned this far. I'll start with a primary action line, just as I would encourage you to when you do your practice today. My primary action line will move down the front of the torso, indicating that the rib cage is tilting back and that the pelvis is tilting forward, which raises up the backside, which I've tried to capture in this gesture line. From there, I'll start a new gesture line that moves down the front of the leg, capturing the curvature outward before moving down to the lower part of the leg, which seems to be curving the opposite direction creating a beautiful S-curve for the leg. I've even indicated the direction of the foot. Now I'll add the axis line for the shoulders, by first finding the lateral ends up the clavicles and drawing a line indicating the connection between them. Notice how tilted it is. In your practice today, you'll want to make sure you're not stiffening up your gesture by drawing your axis lines more horizontal than they actually are. Next I'll move to the pelvis. Hopefully you can see the anterior superior iliac spines protruding. Once again, we find that the axis line is a quite a dramatic angle. Finally, I'll draw the gesture for the other leg as well as the other foot. I know I've said this many times over the past three lessons, but it's critical for you to understand, we are not yet drawing the figure itself. In this kind of gesture drawing, we are essentially drawing a diagram that indicates what direction the various parts of the body are going and how they are placed in relationship to one another. If it helps, you can think of these lines as arrows, to remind yourself that you are just drawing the direction that the parts of the body are going, you're not drawing the body itself. Hopefully, you can also see that this kind of gesture drawing seems to capture a rhythm or a flow that moves through the entire figure. This kind of gesture drawing helps us think of the figure in its entirety, instead of looking at the figure as separate parts: a head, a torso, an arm, a leg. Doing the dynamic gesture like this helps us see how these forms flow into one another and operate as a whole. Next pose. Remember, a gesture line can flow wherever it needs to. It can represent the outer contour of a form, cut through the middle or anywhere in between. It's entirely up to you. In this pose, there seems to be a natural gesture line that starts at the raised elbow and flows down the right side of the torso. Next I'll have this gesture line move up into the left to show that this side of the pelvis on our left is raised up. Next, I'll place the axis lines. Hopefully, you can see that the shoulder on our right is raised higher than the shoulder on our left and after locating the anterior superior iliac spines, I'll draw the axis for the pelvis, which is higher on the left and lower on the right. As always, in a gesture drawing, if you need to make any adjustments, that's fine, particularly when you're first starting out, you should expect that capturing the gesture and the axis lines might take multiple attempts. At this stage, there's no need to erase, just make the adjustments right over the lines you've already drawn. As I'm finishing up this simple gesture, hopefully you can see how well this simple diagram represents the pose. A good gesture is minimal, but effective, and if done properly, will provide an armature upon which we can later build the volumetric forms of the body. You'll notice that I'm not actually drawing where the bony landmarks are, we're just using them to get the axis lines. For now, there's no need to indicate in your drawing where exactly the anterior superior iliac spines are or any of the other bony landmarks we've talked about, you just need to draw the axis lines. Let's do one more before we get you to your practice. This time, we'll work with the back view. Again, I'll begin at the raised elbow and draw a line that flows down the left side of the figure before moving over to the right side to capture the rays of the pelvis on the right. From there, I'll follow the right leg down to the foot, capturing the curves of the different parts of the leg on the way down. I've also drawn a small curved line to indicate where the heel comes in contact with the ground. Next I'll draw the axis lines. Again, I'd like you to note how dramatically tilted they are and that they're tilting in a posing directions. As I finish up this gesture, I'd like you to note again what an effective job this gesture does at communicating the basics of the pose. Again, a good gesture distills a pose down to its essence and communicates the dynamic forces of the figure in the most simplified and minimal way possible. Only by understanding the figure in this fundamental and dynamic way can we expect to do finish drawings that have a sense of dynamism and vitality. For today's practice, once again, you will be drawing from one minute poses. Just like before, you're going to begin each pose with a primary action line. Next you're going to draw gesture lines for the rest of the parts of the body as well as axis lines for the shoulders and pelvis. Now remember, you don't have to actually draw in where the bony landmarks are in your gesture drawing, you just need to draw the axis line that they imply. Also, while you're practicing today, try and experiment with the order with which you draw these elements. Although most of the time I began with a primary action line, sometimes I begin with axis line, so it really depends on the pose and the model. If you're comfortable, see if you can explore and experiment to figure out what gesture process makes the most sense to you. Now this is the last lesson in which we're going to work with this linear or diagrammatic gesture drawing. In the next lesson you're actually going to start drawing forms of the body starting with the torso. But it's really important to me that you understand the value of simplifying the body into these basic linear gesture drawings. Remember, these gesture drawings are going to lay the foundation upon which you will build the rest of your drawing, so you'll want to make sure you're accurately capturing the axis lines in the dynamic directions that the various parts of the body are going. This will ensure that a more finished drawings are as dramatic and as dynamic as the poses that they're drawn from. Well, good luck with your practice today and I will see you back here for the next lesson, when you're going to learn how to gesture the torso. 9. Axis Lines - Practice Reel: Ten more seconds. Ten more seconds . Ten more seconds. Ten more seconds. Ten more seconds. Ten more seconds. Ten more seconds. 10. The Torso : To understand the basic shapes of the torso, let's start off with a simple upright standing pose. The easiest way to think about the torso is as a two chambered shape. There's an upper chamber that contains the rib cage and a lower chamber that contains the pelvis. Let's first take a look at the shape that contains the rib cage. You'll notice that it's a vertically oriented oval. This makes sense as the rib cage itself is an ovoid shape. Now remember, this isn't an anatomy course, so we're not going to be discussing the specifics of the shape of the rib cage as a skeletal structure. Because we're trying to simplify the torso, for today we're going to be ignoring the breasts, the arms, and the shoulders. Take a moment to observe how this basic oval interacts with the forms of the upper body. Pay particular attention to where it leaves the edges at this side of the torso, and moves inward toward the neck, leaving the arms and shoulders outside of the basic oval. Now let's take a look at the basic shape that contains the pelvis. You'll notice that from the front, it's much closer to a circle than the upper chamber containing the rib cage. Depending on the pose, both of these shapes can change, but for the most part, the upper chamber containing the rib cage will be a vertically oriented oval, while the lower chamber containing the pelvis will be a more horizontally oriented oval. To understand these shapes better, let's take a look at them together. The first thing I'd like you to notice is how the lower section of the upper chamber and the upper section of the lower chamber come together to form the indention at the waist. This indention is created in the space between the bottom of the rib cage and the top of the pelvis. Again, it's not important that you understand what these bones look like at this point. I just want you to have a very simple understanding of the basic shapes of the torso. The anatomical knowledge can come later. Before we move on, I'd also like you to notice that the bottom of the oval for the pelvis, is located at the lowest portion of the pelvic region. I'd also like you to notice that the top of the oval for the rib cage goes well up into the neck. To better understand this, let's take a look at the figure from the back. We'll talk more about this later. But because the back of the neck is higher than the front of the neck, you can better see from the back why the oval for the rib cage goes as high as it does. Again, take a moment to see where the oval for the rib cage cuts through the figure, leaving out the arms and the shoulders and how it interacts with the neck, particularly with the muscles at the sides of the neck. I'd also like you to note how the lower chamber cuts through the body, leaving out the legs and that the bottom of the oval is at the bottom of the glutes. Finally, I'd like you to note that from the front and the back, during a basic upright standing pose, these two shapes are vertically aligned. Now let's take a look at this two chambered shape from the side. The first thing I'd like you to notice is that generally speaking, the average human body is wider than it is deep. You can see that from the sides, these two chambers appear to be narrower, than they appear from the front view. Now let's take a look at just the lower section. You'll notice that it's access is no longer perfectly vertical, from the side the oval is tipped. To help balance the body, you'll also notice that the oval for the rib cage is also tipped but in the opposite direction. When taken together, hopefully you can see how well these basic shapes describe this simple shape of the torso. I'd like you to notice that once again, we need to ignore the breasts in order to understand this shape. Later on in this course, you'll learn how to attach the breast to the rib cage. But for now, we want to focus on the basic shapes of the torso in the most simple way possible. Moving forward, I want you to be able to understand this two chambered shape in two different ways. First, it's essential to understand that it is made up of two different shapes. A vertical oval that contains the rib cage, and a more horizontal oval that contains the pelvis. But as we bend and twist this shape, it's also important that you understand it as a single form. Starting at the indention at the waist, you'll see me remove the bottom section of the upper chamber, and the top section of the lower chamber. This leaves us with a basic shape that looks like this. It's also critical that you understand how the axis lines for both the pelvis and the shoulders interact with this form. Here's the basic set of elements that we're going to be focusing on today. Let's see what happens when we shift the figure into a basic contrapposto pose, with the axis lines for the shoulders and the pelvis encounter position, and the shape for the torso bending. Hopefully you can see that the axis for the upper chamber is now tilted. Take a moment to observe how the oval for the upper chamber interacts with the upper section of the torso. Now take a look at the lower section of the torso. Hopefully you can see that it too is now tilted. Now let's simplify these two basic shapes into a single compound bending shape. As we do this, let's take a look to see how this new bending form is different from the simple upright shape. As the shape for the torso bends, and the upper and lower chambers are at different angles. You can see that the indention at the waist on our left, is now more extreme. As the torso bends, this side compresses, creating a deeper indention. On our right side however, the angular indention has disappeared, because this side of the body is now stretching. On our left we see the muscles of the torso contracting, pulling the left side of the rib cage down toward the left side of the pelvis. When this happens, we'll refer to this as the active side. On the right, the muscles for the torso must relax to accommodate for the muscular contraction we see on our left. With the muscles on the right side relaxed, the space between the rib cage and the pelvis can expand. When this happens, we'll refer to it as the passive side. To sum up, the muscles on the active side, which is on our left, contract, pulling the rib cage and pelvis toward one another. This creates a greater indention on the active side, to accommodate the muscles on the passive side, which is on our right, must relax. This allows them to stretch, as the distance between the rib cage and pelvis on the passive side expands. When we combine the basic shape of the torso with axis lines for the shoulders and pelvis, we arrive at a descriptive, simplified form of the torso that will be incredibly useful as we move forward in the figure drawing process. Next, let's look at a more extreme example. In this pose, hopefully you can see that the active side of the figure is more compressed, and the passive side is more stretched. See if you can visualize the two chambered shape of the torso. Watch as I overlay the two basic shapes that will make up the compound form of the torso. How close is this to what you visualized? Now watch as I combine these two basic shapes into one single compound form for the torso. Hopefully you can see how well this shape describes both the compression of the active side, and the stretching on the passive side. Finally, we'll add the axis lines pulling together what you've learned today about the basic shape of the torso, and what you learned in the previous lesson. Now that you have a basic introduction to the shape of the torso, let's show you how to draw it. First, I'll demonstrate how to draw the shape of the torso by breaking it down into its two basic shapes. I'll start by drawing a basic circle. It's important to remember that depending on the pose and the model, this shape will often be more ovular. Next, I'll draw the vertically oriented oval above it, making sure the two overlap. Next, I'll darken the outer contour of this shape using fluid strokes. This gives us the shape of the torso we'll be working with. Now watch as I draw a modified version of this shape with the active side on the right, and the passive side on the left. You'll notice that I'm starting with the stretch of the passive side using a long fluid stroke, before drawing the lower chamber. Next I'll draw the top chamber. But here you'll see me use a shortcut. You'll notice I'm not drawing the complete oval. If it's helpful, you're welcome to start by drawing both of the shapes that the chamber of the torso is made up of, before combining them into a compound shape by darkening the contour. Once you are comfortable and competent drawing these basic shapes, you can simplify the process by combining them together in only drawing the outer contour of the shape. You'll notice that I've actually drawn an overlap where the top chamber overlaps the bottom chamber on the active side of the torso. You'll also see me draw a slight concavity on the passive side as the skin stretches between the space below the rib cage and above the pelvis. When combined with the intentionally active side, we have a shape that will provide an excellent foundation for the torso as we move forward in the figure drawing process. Now watch as I demonstrate how to draw the shape a few more times. Here, you'll see me skip the two basic shapes that make up the compound form of the shape of the torso and go right to drawing the contour. Notice how fluid the line work is. Once I'm happy with my light drawing of the shape of the torso, I can draw in this slight concavity on the passive side, as well as the angular indention and overlap on the active side. I use this shape in almost every figure drawing I do, as do many other master artists. You might hear different instructors refer to this shape in different ways. I've heard it referred to as a kidney, a bean, a peanut, but I like to think of it as a butternut squash. Just like the human body, butternut squashes come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes. But generally speaking, they all have this similar two chambered arrangement, with the chamber on top being more vertically oriented, and the chamber on the bottom being more horizontally oriented. The similarities between the human torso and a butternut squash can be striking. I often encourage students to practice drawing butternut squashes before they transition to figure drawing. For this next demonstration, I'm going to put a piece of tracing paper over a quick drawing that focuses on the torso. The unobscured drawing will remain on the left. To better understand the upper chamber of the shape of the torso we're working with today, you'll see me draw an ellipse where the cylinder of the neck joins with the top chamber of the torso. You don't need to draw this ellipse on your practice today. But I did want to explain this concept because it can be useful when trying to understand the upper chamber of the torso. You can think of this upper chamber which contains the rib cage as looping over the top of the ellipse for the neck. I'd also like you to notice where the sides of the upper chamber for the torso come to the surface on the sides of the figure itself, both on the active side where we find the compression, and on the passive side where the basic ovoid shape for the upper chamber of the torso runs alongside much of the outer edge of the figure before cutting in and moving toward the ellipse of the neck. You'll notice that the upper chamber is at a slightly tilted axis. Next, you'll see me lightly draw in the shape for the lower chamber. Notice how this basic shape comes to the surface on either side of the pelvic region, as well as where the bottom of this shape is touching the lower most point of the pelvis. Next, I'll draw on the axis lines for both the shoulders and the pelvis. In your practice today, you're going to begin by going through the same gestural process you've been learning over the past few lessons. But in today's practice, you'll include the shape of the torso. To show you what this should look like, I'll go ahead and finish up this gesture using the tracing paper. Just like you've seen me demonstrate many times, I'll start at the raised elbow on our right and follow this line right down the outer edge of the torso. Next, I'll move to the side on our left by defining the lower portion of the shape of the torso before moving up and to the left to indicate the rays of the pelvis on our left. You'll see me use this strategy in many gestures. From here, I'll move down the leg on our left side, indicating where the knee is, as well as the direction of the lower portion of the leg. Next, I'll indicate the direction of the leg on our right. Notice that for both legs, the gesture line moves along the outermost contour of the leg. This helps define the width of the overall figure. I've also drawn a quick simple shape for the foot. I'll apply the same strategy to the arm on our left before indicating the tilt of the head with a single directional line. When we remove the original drawing from underneath, we're left with an excellent example of the kind of gesture drawing I'd like you to produce today. Now let's finish today's lesson with some demonstrations. Just like you saw it demonstrate with a tracing paper, I'll begin this gesture with a raised arm on our right and move down the side of the torso, before moving to the raised hip on the left side of the body, and then following the outer contour of the left leg down to the foot. Now you'll see me lightly gesture in the two basic shapes for the torso, starting with the more vertically oriented oval of the upper chamber before drawing the lower chamber. This is just my first attempt. I'm almost certain that they will need to be adjusted as the drawing evolves. With each adjustment that I make, I'm drawing with a slightly darker line. Now watch as I draw an overlap where the lower chamber comes in front of the upper chamber, as well as the slight concavity on the passive side. Next, I'll add in the axis lines for the shoulders and pelvis before indicating the directions of the arms, as well as the direction of the foreshortened leg on our right. I'm making sure to indicate the inner curves of the leg. I'll finish this gesture by indicating the direction of the feet, as well as an indication of the tilted head. In this next drawing, you'll see me change up the order of the steps. After drawing a primary action line that runs down the side of the figure on our right, I'll immediately add the axis lines for the shoulders and the pelvis. Remember, there's no single correct way to draw the figure. Now, you'll see me make my first attempt at the shape for the torso. As I'm doing this, I'm paying particular attention to where the active and passive sides are in relationship to one another. I'm also paying attention to the axis of each of the chambers of the shape of the torso. When you're practicing today, it's important to remember that it's much more important to accurately capture the sides of the shape of the torso, because they can be directly observed. If you're not entirely sure exactly where the top or bottom of the shape of the torso is, that's okay. You'll learn much more about this shape as the course goes on. Remember, this is your first attempt and you're just practicing. Once the directions of the legs and feet have been indicated, you'll see me refine and darken the shape of the torso. I'd like you to notice that with each refinement, I've leaned to the upper chamber of the torso more and more toward the left. You can see evidence of this in the previous lines. Now we'll finish up the gesture by adding the overlap in the intentionally active side of the torso, as well as the arm on our right, the shoulder on our left, and I'm just going to give a slight indication of the shape of the head. In this final demonstration, you'll see me draw the shape of the torso from the side. You'll see me start with the curve of the back before shifting to the front of the leg. Next, I'll lightly draw the two shapes that make up the different chambers of the torso, paying particular attention to how they're tilted. Once they're established, I'll gesture in the directions of the rest of the parts of the body. As you watch me finish this gesture drawing, there's one thing I'd like to make very clear, in your drawings today the torso should be the only part of the body drawn with a closed shape. The rest of the body should simply be indicated with directional lines. The directional lines will often imply shapes and that's fine, but the torso is the only shape you should be drawing so far. You'll learn how to draw the shapes of the rest of the forms of the body later on in this course. With all of this in mind, let's get you to today's practice. Today's practice has two parts. First, I'd like you to practice drawing the shape of the torso on its own, just like I demonstrated before applying it to the actual figure. Make sure you're using light fluid strokes. I'd like you to do a minimum of 25 drawings of the shape of the torso in various positions. Once you're comfortable drawing the shape of the torso, move to the lesson for practice reel. In today's practice reel, you'll be drawing from two-minute poses. That's twice as long as the poses in your previous practice reel. For your practice drawings today, you'll go through the same process you saw me demonstrate. Your drawing should start with a basic linear gesture that indicates the directions of the various parts of the body, and also may include access lines for the shoulders and pelvis and the shape of the torso that you learned how to draw today. Just like in the previous lesson, feel free to experiment with the order of the steps to see what works best for you. If you're feeling ambitious and wanting to practice more, here's a bonus challenge for you. Once you've gone through today's practice reel, try and do the exact same exercise from today using the one-minute poses in the practice reel for lesson 3. The shorter poses will help sharpen your skills and challenge you to increase your efficiency when drawing. But if you're not up for that, that's totally fine. Well, good luck with your practice today and I will see you back here for the next lesson when you're going to learn how to turn this basic torso shape into a volumetric form by adding a central line. 11. The Torso - Practice Reel: 10 more seconds. 10 more seconds. 10 more seconds. 10 more seconds. 10 more seconds. 10 more seconds. 10 more seconds. 10 more seconds. 10 more seconds. 12. Center Lines: In today's lesson, you're going to learn how to draw a center line on the simple torso shape that you learned how to draw in the previous lesson. You're also going to learn how to use anatomical landmarks in order to turn this basic volume into a more complex drawing of the human torso. This combination of anatomical landmarks and the central line of the torso will bring a dramatic sense of volume and anatomical accuracy to your drawings. The torso is the largest single volume of the body and the tools and strategies you'll learn today will help you establish a believable and dynamic drawing of a torso that will serve as the foundational volume to which we will connect the arms, legs, and head later on in the drawing process. No matter how complex your torso drawings get, they need to be rooted in the basic shapes and concepts you've learned in these lessons. To understand how the center line works, let's start off with a basic torso shape that you learned how to draw in the previous lesson. When the models torso is upright and facing you directly, the center line of the torso will travel straight up and down the center of the body. Because the center line is straight from this point of view, it does not communicate any sense of volume. It's not until the torso begins to turn that this center line starts to communicate volume. Let's explore what happens to the center line when the torso begins to turn, as the torso shape begins to turn to our right, you can see that the center line now appears to be closer to the right side of the form than the left. You can also see that the center line is now beginning to curve, revealing both volume and the topography of the shape. To make it torso shape that appears to be turning to our left, we will need to place the center line closer to the left side of the form and have it curve accordingly. Now watch what happens when we turn the shape even more and begin to bend it. You can see that the center line has now moved even closer to the right side of the form. You can also see that the line appears to be more curved the more the form is turned. Once again, by mirroring these elements, we can create a bending torso shape that appears to be turning to our left. Hopefully, you can clearly see how a center line both establishes volume and tells the viewer how the form is oriented in space. Now to understand how to observe the center line on a model and how to get it into your drawings, you'll need to learn some anatomical landmarks. Let's start off by taking a look at a human skeleton. I'd like to remind you again that because this isn't a strict anatomy course, you're not required to learn all of the anatomical terms. That being said, if you want to take figure drawing seriously, at some point, you should learn the correct anatomical terms. But for now, I'm most interested in you learning the basic concepts behind these anatomical landmarks, even if you don't remember the correct anatomical terms. The first landmark you're going to learn is called the suprasternal notch. You can see it here. It's the space in between the clavicles and above this sternum or what is commonly called the breast bone. This indention at the front of the base of the neck is visible on most models most of the time, and is an excellent landmark when you're trying to draw the center line of the torso. When I'm drawing, if I can see the suprasternal notch, it definitely goes in my drawing. Now let's take a look at our model. Can you see the suprasternal notch? Hopefully it's clear to you that it's located here. Let's try one more. The suprasternal notch is located here. It's the most prominent indention at the center of the base of the throat. If you're struggling to find that different landmarks of the body, don't worry, it gets easier with practice. The next landmark is called the sternum. The sternum is this large bone that runs down the center of the ribcage. You'll notice that ribs from both sides come and attach to it. Now it's important to note that you do not need to know how to draw the actual bone. What is important is that you can identify the line of the sternum on the model. Our next landmark is attached to the bottom of the sternum. It's a small bone called the xiphoid process. The xiphoid process is not always visible directly on the model, but if the torso is bending, you can often figure out the location of xiphoid process because there will be a dramatic direction change at the bottom of the sternum. We'll revisit this idea during today's drawing demonstrations. With the models chest pushed out, you can actually see the xiphoid process pushing through the skin. Can you see it? It's located here. We can also clearly see the suprasternal notch at the top of the sternum, and of course, the line of this sternum runs between them. Now let's move to the pelvis. The only skeletal landmark associated with a pelvis that you need to know is called the pubic symphysis. It's located where the two halves of the pelvis fuse together at the front. Now this bony landmark is often difficult to detect, but it plays an important role in constructing the center line, as you'll see in a few minutes. Now, just like we saw in our basic torso shape, when the body is turned to the front, the center line appears as a straight line. This does not communicate any sense of volume. Let's see what happens when we start to turn the torso. First, let's locate this suprasternal notch and then the xiphoid process. Now I'd like you to notice that when the body is turned like this, the line for the sternum is actually curved. Now let's locate the pubic symphysis. When we view the center line on a living model, the entire line will curve over the surface of the body. The line of the diagram you're seeing here is oversimplified. The real center line will have much more detail and nuance to it, but all of the anatomical details will be arranged on this curving line. Now, let's observe and construct a center line on an actual model. Now in order to do this, there are actually two more surface landmarks that you need to learn, but neither of them are skeletal. The first is an obvious landmark that everyone is familiar with. It's the naval. It's an obvious landmark that's easy to see and it's always on the center line. This next landmark is called the linea alba. It's a long strip of tendon that runs down the center of the abdominal muscles. Linea alba translated means white line. It's called this because on a flayed cadaver, the linea alba appears as a stripe of white running down the center of the abdominals. I'd like you to notice that as it moves down the center of the body, it appears to dive into and then emerge out from the naval before heading down to the pubic symphysis where the linea alba attaches. Now that you've been introduced to all of the center line landmarks at the front of the body. Let's construct it on an actual model. We'll start by locating the suprasternal notch, which is clearly visible in this pose. Next we'll find the line for the sternum, which runs between the breasts and towards the xiphoid process, which you can see a protruding slightly underneath the skin. Next, we'll follow the linea alba down to the navel. This upper portion of the linea alba is actually pretty difficult to see in this particular pose, but that's what makes the landmark so valuable. Even when we can't see a section of the central line, we know where it's heading if we can find the landmarks. The linea alba dives into the naval and then emerges from it, heading down towards the pubic symphysis. You'll notice that the lower section of the linea alba is much more visible than the upper section. You'll also notice that as I mentioned before, the pubic symphysis is obscured both by shadow and by pubic hair. But the more obvious linea alba leads the way. Here is the completed center line. Now watch as I remove the diagram. Hopefully, you can still find the center line of the torso even with a diagram removed. Now let's take a look at how the center line works on the backup the body. The first landmark you need to know is called the seventh cervical vertebrae or what you'll hear me refer to from here on out as C7. As the name implies, C7 is the seventh vertebrae down from the top of the spine. You can actually find C7 very easily on the surface of your own body. Place your fingers at the top of the back of your neck and slowly move them down until you feel a prominent bone protruding at the base of the neck. That's C7, and it's often visible on many models. But as with all landmarks, it's important to remember that not all of them are visible all of the time. Now at the very bottom of the spine, we find our next landmark. It's called the coccyx or what people commonly refer to as the tailbone. It's often directly visible on the surface of the model but if it isn't, you can infer its location by finding the top of the gluteal cleft which we'll talk about in just a moment. Now if we connect these points from this point of view, we get nothing but a straight line which does not communicate volume. But once again, watch what happens when we turn the body. The spine goes from a mundane straight line to a dramatic set of curves. To understand the curves of the spine which make up the central line of the back, let's take a look at the skeleton from the side. To understand the center line of the back, we need to understand the curves of the spine. Let's start by taking a look at the ribcage. At the back of the ovoid shape of the ribcage, there's a long steady curve. This is called the thoracic curve. At the top of the thoracic curve, we find C7. The bottom of the thoracic curve is where the ribcage ends. You'll notice that underneath the bottom of the ribcage, the spine changes directions. This portion of the spine is called the lumbar curve. The lumbar curve is shorter and more curved than the thoracic curve above it. I'd also like you to notice that the lumbar curve occupies the space in between the ribcage and the pelvis. Underneath the lumbar curve we have the sacral curve. The sacral curve is the shortest in most curved section of the spine. At the bottom of the sacral curve, we find the coccyx, the skeletal landmark you learned about just a moment ago. Above the ribcage, we find the neck portion of the spine. This is called the cervical curve. We'll revisit this portion of the spine when you learn how to draw the head and neck, but until then we're not going to be working with it. Here are the curvatures of the spine from the side. For now, let's remove the cervical curve so we're left with a three portions of the spine that we'll be working with today. I'd like you to keep in mind that the thoracic curve is a longer, slower curve while the lumbar curve and the sacral curve are much faster and shorter curves. Now let's put this knowledge into practice by finding the center line on the back of an actual figure. We'll begin by locating the 7th cervical vertebrae or C7. In this pose, it's actually a little difficult to see. That's okay. Remember, you'll get better at finding these skeletal landmarks the more practice you get. I'd also like you to remember that you're not expected to draw every landmark in every pose. You're only expected to draw the landmarks you can see. If you can't find a particular landmark, move on to the next one that you can see. But with practice, you'll get better and better with discerning small pieces of visual information that will indicate these landmarks underneath the skin. At the bottom of the spine, we have the coccyx. Often, the coccyx will actually protrude from underneath the skin, but in this post that's not happening. Again, this is normal. Another way we can locate the coccyx is by finding the top of the gluteal cleft. Now luckily in this pose, the thoracic curve is very visible. We can see it curving slowly and smoothly down the upper back. If you look closely, you can also see evidence of the lumbar curve. Notice that the lumbar curve is more curved than the thoracic curve and it also is curving in the opposite direction. Finally, we have the sacral curve. Once again changing directions and ending at the coccyx. These three curves are what you're primarily going to be focusing on today. To complete the center line from the back, you can also draw the gluteal cleft, the line that runs in between the buttocks. From there, the center line runs right through the legs and up at the front side of the body. As I remove the diagram, I want you to try and visualize the center line running down the back of the figure. You'll notice that in this pose the center line isn't quite as obvious as it was from the front. But when you locate it and draw the center line, you're not simply copying what you see on the model. It's important to understand all of the landmarks and how they work. As you'll see the demonstration, even when I'm struggling to locate a particular landmark on the surface of the body, by knowing what I'm looking for I can piece together enough evidence to include it in the drawing, even if I don't see it on the model. But because the center line is such a powerful tool for communicating volume in a drawing, I will often emphasize and exaggerate what I can't see and use my knowledge of the figure as well as context to draw in the center line even in places that I can't see it on the actual model. With all of this in mind, let's get to our demonstrations. I began this gesture with the familiar motion, starting with the raised arm, running the gesture line down the outside of the figure and then switching to the opposite side to communicate the raised hip on our left. Also, to make my first attempt at the bottom of the shape of the torso. From there, I gesture the leg by following the outside contour on our left down to the knee. After finding the basic shape of the torso, I'll draw the indention and overlap on the active side, as well as the stretch in the space between the ribcage and the pelvis on the passive side. Now I can begin to construct the center line. I'll begin by finding the suprasternal notch which you can see I've represented as a light soft V-shaped mark. When placing the suprasternal notch, it's critical that you pay attention to how far it is from either side of the torso. For example, is it closer to the right side or the left side? In this drawing, it's closer to the side on our right. You also want to think of the placement of the suprasternal notch in relationship to the active and passive sides, particularly the indention on the active side because it's such an obvious landmark. With each new landmark I place or evaluate its distance from either side of the shape of the torso as well as its angle relationship to the previous landmarks that I've drawn. You can see here that I've located both the navel and the zygote process. By paying attention from their distance from either side of the shape of the torso as well as their angle relationship from the previous landmarks that I've drawn, primarily the active site of the torso as well as the suprasternal notch. Using the same measuring techniques and evaluations, I'll locate the pubic symphysis. Now I feel comfortable gesturing in the rest of the center line, which includes the curving line for the sternum as well as the linea alba. From here, you'll now see me darken and emphasize the most visible and prominent elements of both this center line as well as the overlaps and contours of the shape of the torso. These are the first lines I've drawn that I want seen by a viewer. Finally you'll see me draw the axis lines. These are all of the elements that I'd like to see in your drawings today. Let's do one more demonstration, this time from the back. Just like you'll do in your practice today, you can see that I've started with a basic directional gesture as well as the basic shape for the torso. Next, I'll build on the basic shape of the torso by drawing the active and passive sides. Now I can begin finding the center line, which from the back will primarily consists of the curvatures of the spine. With each curve I'll pay close attention to its distance from either side. You can see that the thoracic curve is incredibly close to the left side of the torso. We can clearly see a strong indication of the lumbar curve as well as some indication of the sacral curve. From there, the center line will flow right into the gluteal cleft. From here, you'll see me emphasize and darken the most prominent parts of the contour as well as the most prominent landmarks, including the posterior superior iliac spines that you learned about during the axis line lesson. The last thing I'd like you to note before I give you your practice for today, is that the top and bottom of the shape of the torso is still not to find. The only lines I've darkened are the lines of the contour as well as prominent landmarks in the center line. You'll learn how to flesh out the rest of the figure later on in this course. But for now, let's get you to your practice. Today you'll be drawing from three minute poses. You're going to include all of the elements that you've learned about gesture drawing this far. But today, you'll draw the center line using all of the tools and techniques that you learned about in this lesson. If you're looking for more practice, try doing the same drawing you just saw me demonstrate using the two-minute poses from the lesson 4 practice real. Well, good luck with your practice today and I will see you back here for the sixth lesson where you'll learn how to attach the legs. 13. Center Lines - Practice Reel: Ten more seconds. Ten more seconds. Ten more seconds. Ten more seconds. Ten more seconds. Ten more seconds. 14. The Legs : Now, before you learn how to gesture the legs, let's take stock of what you've learned so far. At this point in the course, your gesture drawing should look something like this. Let's break these drawings down, starting with a torso. Both drawings combined the basic two-chambered shape of the torso. You can see that I've combined the basic shape for the rib cage with a basic shape for the pelvis into one compound form. For each of these shapes, I've drawn the indention and overlaps at the active side of the torso. On the other sides of each torso, you can see that I've drawn the concave stretch of the passive side in the space between the bottom of the rib cage and the top of the pelvis. You'll also notice that each of the shapes of the torso has a lightly drawn center line, punctuated with the various landmarks that you learned in the previous lesson. Starting at the top, the first landmark is the suprasternal notch, which you can see I've indicated using a lightly drawn soft V-shape. Next, I've indicated the xiphoid process using a very soft light mark. Below that, we have the naval. The naval is indicated with a curved line. You'll notice that the linea alba flows out from the naval, traveling upward toward the xiphoid process and downward toward the pubic symphysis. The way it curves helps define the volume and the topography of the torso. At the very bottom, I've indicated the pubic symphysis. You'll also notice that each of these gesture drawings have the axis lines of both the shoulders and the pelvis drawn in. The rest of the forms of the body, the arms, legs, hands, feet, and head, are simply indicated with light directional lines. Before you go any further in this course, I want to make sure that you're comfortable getting your gesture drawings to this level. Assuming you're ready to move on, let's take a look at the shapes of the leg. Now, before you start drawing, it's important that you just get a sense of the shapes of the leg to make sure you know the most common shapes and elements that you'll observe on the model and use to draw the legs. First, let's look at how the legs attach to the pelvis. Most of the time, you'll be able to see an ellipse. Notice that this ellipse is angled upwards as it travels towards the outside of the body. If the man were wearing a bathing suit, often this ellipse can be found where the line where the opening for the leg would be. As the light travels down toward the knee, you'll see that it begins to taper. You'll see this on most models in most poses, that the top of the leg is wider and it narrows as it travels toward the knee. As we approach the knee, I want to remind you that this is a beginning figure drawing course that focuses on gesture drawing. The whole aim of gesture drawing is to simplify the pose, and to make sure that you understand the body as a dynamic whole before adding any anatomical detail. For now, we're going to think of the knee as a circular or spherical shape. I'd like you to notice, that this basic spherical shape encloses the entire joint of the knee. The basic shape for the upper leg in the knee looks like this. You'll want to familiarize yourself with this shape, because what you'll be drawing are variations on this basic form. Now, let's take a look at the shape that makes up the lower portion of the leg. Underneath the knee, you'll notice that they'll leg flares out. This is due to the calf muscle that you can see bulging out on either side of the leg. As the lower leg heads toward the ankle, it begins to taper. You'll also notice that the shape for the lower leg seems to turn inward right as it approaches the ankle. Here are the basic shapes of the leg as they appear from the front. From the back, you'd see these same basic shapes mirrored. It's also important to note, that the shape for the upper section of the leg actually overlaps the chamber for the pelvis. You'll see this demonstrated in my drawings in just a few minutes. Now let's take a look at the implied curves of the leg. The upper leg seems to bow outward and then traveled back inward as it approaches the knee. From there, the lower leg also seems to bow outward at the calf and then turn inward as it approaches the ankle. In most standing poses from the front, you'll see me use these kind lines lines to draw the initial gesture of the leg. The bowing out of the lower portion of the leg is in part due to the calf muscle, but it's also due to a bone called the tibia or what is commonly referred to as the shin bone. You can feel the front of the tibia coming to the surface of your own body. On the surface of the model, you can clearly see the visible part of the tibia bowing out and then traveling inward. This is especially visible on the model's leg on our left. If the curve of the tibia is visible on the model, it goes into my drawing. There are two more landmarks I'd like to point out. On either side of both ankles, you can see and feel bony protrusions. Each of these four protrusions is called a malleolus. The plural for malleolus is malleoli. The bony protrusions on the insides of the ankles are called the medial malleoli, while the protrusions on the outside of the ankles are called the lateral malleoli. Again, you can easily see and feel these on your own body. On the leg on our right, if we draw a transverse axis line from the medial malleolus to the lateral malleolus, you can see that it's at an angle. The lateral malleolus is lower than the medial malleolus, just like with the curve of the tibia, if I can see any of the malleoli, they go in my drawing. Now, let's take a look at the shape of the leg from the side. The shapes of the leg are remarkably similar from the side, but there are some important differences. First, you'll notice that the gesture for the legs from the side forms a beautiful S-curve, with the top portion of the leg seeming to bow outward toward the front. The lower portion of the leg seeming to switch directions and bow outward at the back of the calf before curving forward once again as it approaches the ankle. Hopefully, you can get a sense of this curve on the model without the diagram. Many master figure drawers will exaggerate this S-curve for dramatic effect. Just like from the front, we can think of the connection of the leg to the pelvis as running along the line of a bathing suit. Notice that from the side, the ellipse of the leg is higher at the front and lower at the back. You'll also notice that we are not including the buttocks as part of the leg. Just like from the front, you can see here that the leg appears to taper and that the entire joint of the knee can be enclosed in a spherical or circular shape. Later on you'll see me demonstrate, how this basic spherical shape of the knee can be drawn more angularly to indicate the bones underneath, but that should be taken on a pose-by-pose basis. Before we move on, take a look at how the shape of the upper leg from the side overlaps the basic shape of the pelvis. Once again, the shape for the lower leg from the side is remarkably similar as the shape from the front. We can see it bowing out at the back of the calf and then turning forward as it travels towards the ankle. Hopefully, you can see how well these simple, understandable shapes represent the basic form of the leg. Now before we get to our drawing demonstration, I'd like to take a minute to talk about measuring and proportion. Once again, I'd like to remind you that although this is a beginning figure drawing class, it is not a beginning drawing class. Hopefully, you're already comfortable using your pencil to take proportional measurements as well as angle sites. If for any reason you feel you need more experience with these concepts, I would highly recommend revisiting the measuring and proportion section of the original art and science of drawing series. Up until today's lesson, the only part of the figure that we've started to solidify with actual shapes has been the torso. Once the basic size, shapes, and placement of the torso had been established, every new form we add must be compared back to it. You'll want to make it a habit of considering the proportion of each section of the leg in relationship to the torso. For example, let's take a look at the length of the upper section of the leg. Now let's compare that length to the length of the torso by standing at the suprasternal notch and seeing how far down the torso, the length of the leg gets us. The length of the leg from the suprasternal notch gets us most of, but not all the way down to the bottom of the torso. This means that the upper portion of the leg is shorter than the torso. This is good information to have. As you're drawing today, you should be aware of as many of these relationships as possible. The specifics of course, will vary pose to pose, as you'll see me demonstrate. As one more example. Let's take a look at the length from the bottom of the knee down to the lateral malleolus of the leg. Now, starting at the very bottom of the pelvis, let's see how the length of the lower leg compares. In this particular pose, you can see that the length of the lower leg is the same distance as the length from the bottom of the pelvis to the indention at the active site of the torso. Once again, this is great information to have. In addition to proportional comparisons, you can also evaluate the angles between various points on the body. This is the same technique you are already using to draw the axis lines for the shoulders and pelvis. For example, let's take a look at the axis of the pelvis. One of the ways you learn to arrive at this axis line is to find the bony landmarks of the anterior superior iliac spines of the pelvis. You can use this same technique to find the angle relationship between the knees and between the ankles. Just a quick glance at the model will reveal that the knee on our left is slightly higher than the knee on our right. Of course, the ankle on the left is slightly higher than the ankle on our right. It's important to remember that in gesture drawing, we're prioritizing dynamism and action over accuracy. You don't need to actually measure these angles with your pencil every time. But you do want to be thinking about these relationships as you're drawing. This can be as simple as just asking yourself what you're drawing, if one knee is higher or lower than the other or if one ankle is higher or lower than the other. If so, how much? In fact, every time I place a new landmark such as a knee or an ankle, I try and find its placement in relationship to at least two other points on the model. Now once again, of course, the specifics will vary, pose to pose and model to model. But this information quickly adds up to give you a strong sense of the size, proportions, and placement of each of the parts of the body in relationship to one another. Now let's take a look at how to draw the basic shapes of the leg in various positions. When drawing the leg from the front, I would recommend starting by sending your initial line down the lateral contour of the leg. Once you reach where you think the bottom of the knee is, you can indicate it with a curved line. This curved line represents the bottom of the sphere of the joint of the knee. For the lower portion of the leg, if I can see the calf of the tibia, that's usually how I will gesture it, or you can also send a line down the outer contour of the leg. Remember, these lines are your first attempt. They should be light, soft and contain no detail and you will most likely need to revise them. You can see that I've already moved up the bottom of the knee. Now before we built on top of this simple linear gesture, we'll need to make sure that the lines making up the upper and lower section of the leg are not only going the right direction, but are at the right proportion. Now again, this will vary model to model and pose to pose. You should always measure the proportions of any part of the body from the actual model in front of you. But because this is just a generic drawing to introduce you to the process behind drawing the leg, we just need to make sure that the upper portion of the leg is longer than the lower portion. You can see at the bottom of the lower portion of the leg, I've indicated the medial malleolus. Once I'm sure that there's basic gestures working and that the two parts of the leg are in the right proportions, I can begin fleshing out the drawing, beginning with the ellipse that attaches the leg to the pelvis. Now it's important to note, that depending on the pose, this ellipse can travel upward and project into the pelvis as you saw in the diagrams earlier, or it can seem to scoop into the leg as you see here. The correct ellipse will need to be observed from the actual pose, with the ellipse in place, I'll now begin to work on the general shape of the leg. We know that the upper portion of the upper section of the leg will be wider and that it will narrow as it travels toward the knee. There's often a visual relationship between the bulges on either side of the upper portion of the leg. To capture this, I'll often draw a light oval shape at the top of the leg. As the leg travels down, it narrows until we get to the spherical bulge that encloses the joint of the knee. Next, I'll send a smooth curving line down the lateral side of the leg, at the bottom of which will be the lateral malleolus. Remember, the lateral malleolus should be lower than the medial malleolus. I'll finish up the leg by drawing another oval shape to represent the bulge of the calf muscle. Before drawing a concave line to connect to the bottom of the calf on the inside of the leg to the medial malleolus. You'll notice that I've used light soft fluid lines for the entire leg so far. It's only once I've worked out that basic shape that I would feel ready to darken up any of the lines and add any details. Now we're not drawing feet today, but I just thought I'd give a light indication so you could get the full effect of this basic shape of the leg. Next, I'll use a very similar process to draw the leg from the side. It's important to remember that nothing in drawing should be thought of as a rigid step-by-step process. But I did want to give you a sense of how you can think through the basic shapes and proportions of the leg before we start to change the position of the leg and attach it to the pelvis. To draw a bent leg, I'll start by sending a line down the top of the leg before flipping underneath and continuing the line down the front of the shin. Now when the leg is bent, you'll notice that both the upper and lower chambers of the leg will retain many of the same features of the upright leg. There are few minor but important deviations. The biggest difference is that the back of the calf muscle will often seem to press into the upper chamber of the leg, further compressing the upper section of the leg as it approaches the knee. Nearly every leg you draw will be a variation of the shapes and proportions that you've learned in this lesson. The specifics will need to be derived from the actual model and pose. With all of this in mind, let's show you how to incorporate the legs into the gesture process you've learned thus far. In this gesture drawing, I started the primary action line at the raised arm on the left, swooped down the left side of the torso, rounded out the bottom of the torso, and flip the line backup to indicate the raised hip on our right. From there, just as you saw a moment ago, I dropped a line down from the hip that followed the outside contour of the leg indicated the bottom of this sphere for the knee and then followed the curve of the tibia to the medial malleolus. To flesh out the leg, I'll first find the ellipse where it attaches to the pelvis. Notice how it overlaps with the basic shape of the pelvis. I'm making sure that the upper portion of the leg is wider at the top and narrows as it approaches the knee. From there, I'll follow the outside contour of the bottom of the leg down to the lateral malleolus. Paying careful attention to how far this line is from the curve of the tibia. Next, I'll draw the medial bulge of the calf muscle. Once I'm happy with this lightly drawn basic shape of the leg, I can add any details in the contour, including overlaps. I'll use a similar process to gesture the leg on our left. First, I'll find the line that attaches the leg to the pelvis. Next, I'll taper the shape of the leg as it travels down to the sphere of the knee. You'll see me checking the angle between the knees to make sure that the knee on our left is lower than the knee on our right. I'll also check the relationship between the ankles. Remember, it's entirely up to you how often you use these measuring techniques. Before you go any further with darkening the lines or adding any more detail, you'll want to make sure that the proportions of the legs, as well as the axis between the various landmarks are working. From there, feel free to flesh out the legs, adding any details you think are relevant. Let's look at one more. In this pose, you can see that the legs are bent. Instead of following the outside contours of the legs. Here, you'll see me gesture down the top of the leg before flipping underneath and following the line of the shin back underneath the model. I'll use this same strategy to gesture the leg on our right. I'm paying close attention to the slight difference in angles of the two legs, as well as the fact that the knee on our right appears to be slightly above the knee on our left. Next, I'll establish the ellipse where the leg on our left attaches to the pelvis. From there, I can flesh out the leg just as you saw me do with the previous legs. Finally, I'll follow the same process for the leg on our right. Now let's get you to your practice. During today's practice, you'll be drawing from two different practice reels. In the first practice reel, You'll draw from three minute close-ups of the legs. This will give you an opportunity to get a sense of the shapes and forms of the legs on their own. This is a great opportunity to just familiarize yourself with the legs. In the second practice reel, you'll draw from four-and-half minute poses of the entire figure. Here, you'll pay close attention to how the legs attach to the torso and how they relate to the rest of the body. Make sure you're paying particular attention to how the proportions of the legs relate to the torso. You'll also want to pay attention to the angles between the various landmarks of the legs and the torso. Good luck with your practice today, and I will see you back here for the next lesson when you're going to learn how to ground the figure, by gesturing the feet. 15. The Legs - Practice Reel Pt. 1: 10 more seconds. 10 more seconds. 10 more seconds. 10 more seconds. 10 more seconds. 10 more seconds. 16. The Legs - Practice Reel Pt. 2: - 10 more seconds. - 10 more seconds. - 10 more seconds. - 10 more seconds. 17. The Feet: First, let's explore the shapes of the feet, starting from the front. I'll start by drawing the lower leg, just like you learned how to do in the previous lesson. This way, as we explore the shapes of the feet, we can also talk about how they attach to the leg. You'll see me start with some familiar landmarks, the spherical shape for the knee, the curve of the tibia, and the lateral and medial malleoli. Next, I'll draw the convex lines of the bulges at either side of the calf, as well as the concave lines as the lower leg narrows and approaches the ankle. After adding a few anatomical details of the knee and emphasizing the curve of the tibia, we're ready to attach the foot. Now, remember, whenever you draw a complex form, the first thing you need to do is understand it as simply as possible, to start off, I'm going to drop a line that goes nearly straight down from the medial malleolus. Next, I'll draw a line that angles outward from the lateral malleolus. Now remember, the foot is complex and the specific angles that drop down from the malleoli will vary from pose to pose and model to model. But hopefully you can see how these two lines simplify the flare of the foot, the details can come later. As we talked about in previous lessons, it's critical that you get in the habit of comparing the proportions of each new part of the body you draw with the parts of the body you've drawn previously. Before I determine the height of the foot from this point of view, you'll see me compare the proportion to the rest of the leg. What I've learned is that the distance from the medial malleolus to about the middle of the knee is about three times the distance from the medial malleolus down to the big toe. Now again, the specifics will change from model to model and from pose to pose, so you should always evaluate the forms that are right in front of you and not make assumptions about the proportions. So once I understand how the height of the foot at its highest and lowest points relates to the rest of the lower leg, I'm ready to draw the simplified line for the front of the foot. Now, if we start at the big toe and follow the curve of the front of the foot toward the pinkie, you'll notice that it curves upward. One of the most common mistakes I see students make while drawing the feet in the studio is that they'll immediately start to draw toes and even toenails without figuring out how the toes line up. So before you draw any details, you should begin the foot with this simple shape. Notice that it almost looks like a foot with a sock on it, and that's fine. Remember, this is gesture drawing.. Gesture drawing is not about detail, it's about simplification. We must understand the form as simple as possible before any details are added. So now that we've arrived at the simple shape of the foot, let's explore some important elements that you should try and include in your gesture drawings. In order to add some volume to the foot, we can draw a curved line between the two malleoli that represents the arch of the top of the foot. Now, this line is often visible on the actual model. But if it isn't or if it's difficult to see, I'll usually accentuate it as it's a powerful tool to indicate the volume of the foot. You can also draw a line that shows where the toes attach to the rest of the foot. Notice that this line nearly mirrors the curved line we use for the front of the foot. Although, because the big toe is much longer than the pinkie toe, the distance between these two lines narrows as it moves toward the outer edge of the foot. The final detail of the foot that I usually include in my gesture drawings is an indication of the big toe. From this point of view, the big toe can be represented with a horizontal oval. With these fundamental forms represented, I can now alter the contour, adding any detail I think is important. But remember, this is just gesture drawing and we don't want to get mired in too many details. To draw the foot on our right, I'll use the exact same elements and set of steps. But I'd like you to notice that even though this food is very similar to the other foot, there are some small but important differences. This is due to both the slight difference in the position of the foot as well as natural asymmetries that occur in every human body. The resulting drawing of the foot on our right is an excellent example of a variation of the ideas and principles you learned when I drew the foot on our left just a moment ago. Now, let's take a look at the feet from the back. As always, you'll see me begin by gesturing in the lower leg, as well as the malleoli of the ankle. It's important to remember that when the leg is upright, the medial malleolus will be higher than the lateral malleolus. For the moment, I'm going to ignore the front of the foot and focus on the heel. I'll do this by first dropping lines down from the malleoli, and then drawing the rounded portion of the bottom of the heel. Notice that the oval for the heel is nearly as wide as the two malleoli above it. Another critical element of the foot that you should always draw if you can see it, is the Achilles tendon. It stretches between the bone of the heel and the calf muscles above it. Notice that the Achilles tendon flares out at both the top and the bottom where it reaches down toward the heel and up toward the calf muscles. I'd also like you to pay close attention to the kinds of lines I'm using here. Where the achilles tendon is most visible, I've used strong dark lines in my drawing, but where are the Achilles tendon begins to flare out and disappear at either end, you'll notice that my lines becomes softer and lighter until they disappear entirely. To finish this drawing, I'll indicate the small simple shape of the front of the foot that is visible behind the heel and the ankle. Once again, you'll see me use this same strategy to draw the other foot, which is a minor variation of the ideas you just saw demonstrated. Now, we'll take a look at the lateral side view of the foot. First, I'd like you to notice how the lines for the foot seem to flare out from the narrower ankle. Now, you'll see me indicate the lateral malleolus. Notice that it's closer to the back of the leg than it is to the front. It's also important to note that the line behind the medial malleolus at the back of the leg is, of course, the achilles tendon. Now, before I go any further, I need to compare the length of the foot to the height of the leg. A quick proportional evaluation will reveal that the height of the leg is one in one-thirds times as long as the length of the foot. Once this proportion is marked in my drawing, I can now flesh out the rest of the foot. I'm paying close attention to the exact angle of the top of the foot that moves from the ankle toward the toes. Once again, this initial drawing is best thought of as almost like a foot in a sock. I'm paying particular attention to the line from the big toe that curves around towards the pinkie toe, but I'm not yet indicating any individual toes. Finally, I'm paying close attention to the angle of the line that represents the bottom of the foot where the foot comes into contact with the ground. Notice that this basic shape for the foot is narrower near the toes and widens as it approaches the ankle. Finally, I'll draw the curved shape of the heel, completing this basic shape for the foot. With this basic shape done, I can begin to add some new ones, but it's important to remember that this is just the gesture phase and we should avoid getting mired in details. I'll add a few nuances to the contour of where the foot hits the ground, indicate the big toe, and draw the line that separates the toes from the rest of the foot. In this next demonstration, we'll take a look at the medial side of the foot. I'll get the basic shape of the foot by going through the same steps and processes that you've seen me demonstrate in this lesson so far. But the biggest and most important difference that we find on the medial side of the foot, is that there is a dramatic arch between the wheel and the ball of the foot. In the photograph on the left, take a look at the lateral side of the foot on our right. Hopefully, you can see how flat it is in comparison with a medial view of the foot on our left. I'll complete this foot by darkening the ball of the foot as well as indicating the big toe. Again, in terms of detail, this is about as far as you should go during the gesture drawing process. But I hope you can see how descriptive this seemingly simple form actually is. In just a few minutes, I'll show you in some more completed drawings how I use this strategy. But for now, let's switch gears while I introduce an essential concepts, how to ground the figure. Now in most poses, one or both of the models feet will be planted firmly on the ground. We need to convey this in our drawings. How was this done? Well first, we need to pay attention to the relationship between where on the ground, the feet are placed. If it helps, you can even draw perspective lines between the feet in your gesture drawings as I'm demonstrating here. You'll notice that the foot on our right is closer to us than the foot on our left, and therefore, it appears larger. The perspective lines reinforce this. To help you understand the perspective even more, I'll draw a perspective line between the knees. You'll notice that all three of these lines appear to be traveling toward the same vanishing point. If you need any reminders on how linear perspective works, I would highly recommend taking the form and space course of the original art and science of drawing series. After adding some detail to the big toe and delineating the separation between the big toe and the rest of the toes, you'll see me darken the areas on both feet that come into contact with the ground plane. These darker, heavier lines convey weight and force. You'll notice that these darker lines make the feet appear heavier and more firmly planted on the ground. Without grounding your figures, they can appear as if they're floating, which can be distracting to a viewer. However, if you want that look, not grounding the figure can be a powerful and dramatic tool. In this next demonstration, we'll see how the foot changes when it goes up on its toes. This is a common position you'll regularly encounter when drawing the figure. You'll notice that the basic shape of the foot remains similar from the heel to the line that separates the toes. But here, you can see that the toes are at a dramatically different angle than the rest of the foot. The bend occurs at the line that separates the toes from the rest of the foot. Now because the big toe is hidden behind the toe next to it from this point of view, I'm actually going to delineate the separation between these two toes, instead of only drawing the big toe. Now watch as I ground this foot by darkening the area of the contour where the foot most firmly plants itself on the ground. The foot on our right is in a very similar position. But I'd like you to notice how different the medial view looks because of the dramatic arch we find on this side of the foot. I'll finish this demonstration by grounding the foot and adding some nuance to both the contours of the foot as well as the toes. Before we move on, I just want to point out the action lines that represent these feet. On the foot on our left, you can clearly see the action line comes down the leg and then curves as it moves toward the ground, becoming horizontal at the toes. However, on the foot on our right, the action line comes down the leg and then bows outward as the foot arches before changing direction again as it moves into the toes. Remember, gesture drawing is all about recognizing dynamic forces in the body. When drawing the full figure, I'll often start out by drawing action lines, just like these for the feet, before figuring out the shapes and then adding any details. With all of this in mind, let's take a look at how to incorporate these ideas into your full figured gesture drawings. Most of the elements making up the drawing on the left should be pretty familiar to you. Other than the small amount of shading and the subtle indications of the breasts, everything in this drawing, you should already know how to do. The drawing on the right, of course, is much more finished. But for now, let's just focus on the drawing on the left. The feet in this drawing contain the exact elements that you were introduced to in this lesson. Hopefully, you can easily see the malleoli, the basic shape of the foot, and indications of the heels and big toes. Now watch as I further ground the foot on our right. In addition to using dark, heavy lines in the areas where the foot comes into contact with the ground, I'm also going to draw a subtle indication of the cast shadow. I'll do the same thing with a foot on the far left. Here, are a few critical things to think about when using this strategy. First, you'll notice that the cast shadows are going similar directions. This is of course, because they're lit by the same light source. Assuming the pose is lit by a single light source, like all of the poses in this course are, you'll easily be able to see the direction of the casts shadows. I'd also like you to notice that the cast shadow and the lines use to ground the foot on our right are darker than the foot on the left. This allows the foot and the right to be pulled forward in space and to allow the foot on the left to drop back. You'll also notice that both of these casts shadows diffuse and get lighter, the further away they get from the feet. Now I'd like you to look at the foot on the far left. Notice that the cast shadow helps to communicate that the back part of the foot is lifted off the ground while only the front of the foot where the toe is curled under, is resting on the ground plane. Hopefully, you can see that even in a simple unfinished gesture drawing like this one, these grounding strategies really lock the figure down at the ground plane, giving the figure a sense of stability and weight. Now let's take a look at the drawing on our right. Now this drawing is more finished and include some basic light and shadow. But you'll notice that the feet are drawn with the exact same strategies you learned today. The only difference is that these feet have a bit of white pencil added to the lit areas. The feet are rarely a main focus in a drawing. In most drawings I do, I'm actually only using the strategies you've learned in this lesson. Occasionally, I'll add more detail near the end of a drawing. But for now in the gesture drawing process, these strategies will serve you well. Any details that are added later must be drawn in relationship to these basic shapes and landmarks. Now watch as I ground this figure even further by applying a subtle indication of the casts shadows. Let's take a look at another more finished drawing. Now it's critical for you to remember that when you're applying this technique, you want to make absolutely sure that the feet are in the right place. You never want to use dark lines or marks like this until you are absolutely certain that you will not be moving them. These dark marks are difficult to erase. Again, notice how successful these strategies are at communicating the forms of the foot as well as grounding the figure. Now, it's important to note how flexible and versatile the foot actually is. In this next example, we'll take a look at some unique positions of the foot. On the foot on our left, we see the toes curling under. You can see that I started drawing this foot using the same tools and strategies you learned today. But when I got to the toe, I paid close attention to where the bends of the toe occurred and how the size and shape of the toe related to the rest of the foot. Now take a look at the foot on our right. Hopefully, you can see that it's bending with the toes pointed. Now in this drawing, I'm actually going to avoid using dark lines that would ground the feet. On the foot and our right, you can see that I'm only using soft light lines. This gives the figure a sense of weightlessness as if it's floating or leaping. The reason I ended the demonstrations with this drawing is because I really want you to be conscious and aware of what you're drawing and why. Figure or your drawing should not be thought of as a step-by-step process. Now often, you will use the same set of steps and processes in your drawings. But I know that when I draw, I frequently deviate from the normal set of steps I usually go through because a particular pose or model seems to require a different solution. This flexibility will keep your drawings fresh. Now with all this in mind, let's get you to your practice. Just like in the previous lesson, today you'll be drawing from two different practice reels. In the first practice reel, you'll draw from three-minute close ups of the feet. This is an opportunity to just familiarize yourself with the basic shapes of the feet and the various landmarks. In this first practice reel, you only need a subtle indication of the legs where the feet attach. In the second practice reel, you'll be drawing from six minute poses where you will incorporate the feet into your gesture drawings of the full figure. Pay particular attention to how the feet are grounded. Now I'd like to remind you, even though we're focusing on the feet in this lesson, you should still give the same attention to the rest of the body as you have in the previous lessons. Good figure drawing, even gesture drawing requires you to keep a lot of concepts and ideas in your head at one time. At this stage in the course, if you feel like you're forgetting anything you learned in the earlier lessons, please feel free to go back and re-watch them. These lessons are designed for you to watch over and over again. Don't think just because you've watched it once, that you'll have absorbed everything and memorized all of the ideas, strategies, and landmarks. Repetition is critical in both the lessons and the practice. Well, good luck with your practice today, and I will see you back for the next lesson when you're going to learn how to draw the elements of the upper torso. 18. The Feet - Practice Reel Pt. 1: 10 more seconds. 10 more seconds. 10 more seconds. 10 more seconds. 10 more seconds. 10 more seconds. 19. The Feet - Practice Reel Pt. 2: Three more minutes. One more minute. Ten more seconds. Three more minutes. One more minute. Ten more seconds. Three more minutes. One more minute. Ten more seconds. 20. The Upper Torso : Let's start by looking at the forms of the upper back. Now, you should already be familiar with the basic ovoid for the ribcage. On either side we see two flat triangular bones, these are called the scapulae. As with any other landmark, you won't always be able to see evidence of the scapula on the surface of the body. But if you can't see them, I would recommend drawing them. You're most likely to see evidence of this scapulae along the medial edges of each scapula. There are a number of muscles that are attached to the scapula and move outward toward the bone of the arm. What you're most likely to see in the surface of the actual model is these muscles curving around the bottom of the scapula and heading toward the armpits. For our purposes in figure drawing, we're going to simplify the scapulae as well as these muscles into one simple shape. To better understand this, let's take a look at the actual model. Remember, sometimes the scapula will be obvious and other times it'll be more difficult to see. Here, we see some evidence of the scapulae, but not much. I'll show you where they are. The medial edges of the scapula are most visible on the top where you can see an indention. On the outside edges of the scapula, you can actually see a slight bulge, as the muscles that run between the scapula and the arm come to the surface. Now that you have a sense of where the scapula and their adjoining muscles are, let me remove the diagram. Hopefully, you can still see enough visual information to visualize the basic shapes of the scapulae. But remember, this comes with practice. You'll get better at it over time. Watch carefully as I place the diagram back over the model. Hopefully, you're starting to get a sense where the scapulae are in relationship to the ribcage. Watch what happens to the angles of this scapulae as the model raises her arms. The bottoms of this scapulae begin to swing outward toward the sides of the body. While the tops of this scapulae remain in a similar position, the angles of the scapula continue to become more extreme the higher the model raises her arms. I'd also like you to notice, how easily you can see the bulges of the muscles that run from the scapula to the bones of the arms. Watches I removed the diagram. Hopefully you can still see the prominent shapes of both the scapulae and the muscles attached to them. Let's move to the front of the body. You're already familiar with the suprasternal notch, which is created in part by the medial ends of the clavicles. For today's lesson, we're going to follow the tops of the clavicles outward toward the shoulders, where we find the lateral ends up the clavicles. Which if you recall, are the bony landmarks that we used to derive the axis lines of the shoulders. As I removed the diagram, I want you to notice how prominent these bones actually are. From a front view like this, you'll notice that the top edges of the clavicles appear as straight lines. But the clavicles have a complex shape. When viewed from above, the clavicles actually have an S-shaped curve. When you're drawing the clavicles, you'll want to pay close attention to whether they appear straight or curved. It's also important to note that the clavicles move independently of one another. Take a look at this image where the model has one shoulder raised up. This photo was taken slightly from above, so both clavicles have a curve. But you can see that the clavicle on our left appears to be rather horizontal, while the clavicle on our right appears to be raised at a dramatic angle. Now, let's take a look at the breasts. You can see that the basic shape of the breasts is rather ovular. But you'll notice that the axis for the office of the breasts are at an angle. This has to do with how the breasts connect to the upper torso. There are two points of connection for each breast that you need to be aware of. The first pair of connection points are located here on either side of this xiphoid process. Regardless of the shape and size of the models breasts, you'll find that they always connect here on either side of the xiphoid process. The second pair of connection points for the breasts are located here. To better understand this connection point, we're going to take a look at the edges of the pectoral muscles. At this stage of that gesture drawing process, you don't need to have a deep understanding of the pectoral muscle. But you do need to understand the outer edges of the pictorials. The upper edges of the pictorials began near the armpits. From the armpits, you can see that the edges of the pictorials run downward and inward and actually go underneath the breast tissue. These outer points of connection for the breasts occur at the point where the pectoralis disappear underneath the breast tissue and the breast tissue swells outward. You'll notice that when the pectoral muscles are relaxed, they appear as convex curves. Taken together, the shapes of the breasts, as well as the outer edges of the pectoralis look like this. We'll talk more about the pictorials in just a moment. But for now, let's focus on the breasts. You can clearly see that the lateral connections of the breasts are higher than the medial connections of the breasts. This means that the breasts don't just hangs straight downward. Gravity pulls the weight of the breasts downward, but also outward and round toward the sides of the body. One of the most common mistakes I see when people draw breasts is that they draw them either hanging straight down or they appear to be defying gravity altogether. As I'll demonstrate in just a few minutes, it's important to capture how gravity actually affects the breasts, pulling them both downward and outward toward the sides of the body. Next, you'll see me place a line underneath the bottom of the breasts. Watch what happens when the model raises her arms. You can clearly see that the breasts go up as well. The reason this happens is because the lateral edges of the breasts are connected to the pectoral muscles. The pectoral muscles are connected to the upper arms, near the armpits. As the arm's raise, they pull up on the pectoral muscles, which in turn pull up on the breasts at the moment, or the breasts attached to the pectorals. You'll remember that when the pictorials were relaxed, they appeared as convex lines. But here is they stretch, they now appear concave. I'd also like you to notice that as the pectorals pull up on the outside connections of the breasts, the shapes of the breasts themselves appear to become more vertically oriented. Now I'd like you to draw your attention to the outermost edges of the armpits. What you're seeing here are the undersides of the scapulae and their associated muscles that you just learned about at the beginning of this lesson. The pits of the arms are just the spaces between the pectoral muscles and the scapulae, along with the muscles that run from the scapulae toward the arms. Now, you'll remember that the horizontal line underneath the breasts represents the lowest point of the breasts when the arms were at rest. Now watch what happens when the model raises her arms even further. Once again, the breasts raise up even higher and the outer edges of the pectoralis stretch and length and even more. If you remember back to the diagrams of the scapulae, when the arms are raised, the bottoms of the scapulae push out toward the sides. You can clearly see them here. Watch what happens when the model lowers her arms. You can see the breasts fall as well as succumb to the forces of gravity. Once again, being pulled outward and downward. If we look at the breasts from the side, when the models arms are at rest, you can see the curved contour created by the weight of the breasts. But as the model raises her arms, the breasts are once again pulled upward, which changes the contour and shape of the breasts. Now I know this is a lot of information. Before we get to today's drawing demonstrations, I just want to make sure you have a bit more experience locating all of these anatomical features and landmarks on the surface of the model. Here we haven't image of the upper torso of the model with one arm raised in one arm at rest. First, let's locate the suprasternal notch. We know that on either side of the suprasternal notch, we have the medial ends of the clavicles. From there we can follow the tops of the clavicles outward toward the lateral ends of the clavicles at the shoulders. With the arm raised, you can see that the clavicle on our left disappears behind the shoulder. While the clavicle on our right, we can follow to its most lateral end. Now let's take a look at the shapes of the breasts. You can clearly see that the ovals making up the basic shapes of the breasts are at different axes. The breast on our right, which is being pulled down by gravity, has a very diagonal axis, which is around 45 degrees. The breast on our left is being pulled upward as the arm raises, and has a much more vertical axis. Now, of course, we usually don't see the entire ovals of the basic shapes of the breasts. But it's important for you to understand the basic shapes that the visible contours of the breasts are derived from. Here we have the visible contours of the breasts, along with the suprasternal notch, as well as the visible tops of the clavicles. Now let's find the lines for the outer edges of the pictorials. They are located here. Hopefully, you can see particularly on the breast on our right that the contours of the breasts overlap the contours of the outer edges of the pectoral muscles. Remember, the breast sit on top of and cover the lower section of the pectoral muscles. You can see that the outer edge of the pectoral muscle on our right is shorter and more curved because the arm is at rest, while the pectoral muscle on our left is longer and more stretched out due to the raised to arm. Let's take a moment to talk about overlaps, where the contour of one form overlaps and goes in front of the contour of another form. Simply put, overlaps help us understand what's in front and what's behind, so we know that the breasts are in front of the pectoral muscles. So the contours of the breasts overlap the contours of the pectoral muscles.o In turn, the pectoral muscles are on top of the ribcage, and all the way in the back. Where the arm raises on our left. We can see evidence of the scapula and its muscles reaching towards the bone of the arm. The final thing you'll learn today about the breasts, is how to draw the nipples. You'll notice that the shapes of the nipples are not simple circles, they are ovals. Each of these ovals has its own axis, which is created by the direction that each breast is being pulled. For example, the breast on our left is being pulled up by the arm. Therefore, the nipple is at a more vertical axis, while the breast on our right is being pulled down into the right by gravity. Therefore, the axis line for the nipple is angling downward into the right. Now it's time to show you how to get this information into your gesture drawings. I'll start this demonstration, having already drawn the basic shape for the torso, as well as this simple center line. First, you'll see me locate that suprasternal notch using a light V-shape. Next, I'll indicate the directions that the clavicles are going. At this stage, the important thing is to capture their directions accurately. You don't yet need to figure out exactly where the clavicles end. Next, I'll draw a line indicating the direction of the edge of the pectoral muscle on our left side. You'll want to pay particular attention to how far away it is from the clavicle above it. Next, you'll see me gesture the basic shape for the breast on our left. Notice that because the arm on our left is raised, that the shape of the breast is pulled more vertically. When placing the breasts, you'll want to pay attention to how close they are to the line for the sternum, as well as their location in relationship to the outside edges of the torso. For example, you can see a small amount of space between the left side of the breast on our left and the outside contour on our left side of the rib cage. You'll notice that the oval for the breast on our right is more horizontal. You can also see that I've drawn the shorter, more curved edge of the pectoral muscle on our right. Because the torso is slightly turned, you can see the oval for the breast protruding past the shape for the rib cage. Now take a look at the armpit on our left. You can see that with the arm raised, part of the scapula is visible behind the rib cage. For now, I'm going to draw the gestures of the arms by simply indicating their direction using a single line. In the next lesson, you'll learn how to flesh out the arms. Now, gesture drawing is all about capturing the dynamic forces of the pose. Hopefully, you can really feel that the pectoral on our left is really stretching as the arm raises and that the breast on our left is being pulled up by the pectoral. Hopefully, you can also start to feel the compression that occurs in the space between the rib cage and the pelvis on our right and hopefully you can also feel the breast on our right being pulled down by gravity. The last things I'll draw are the basic shapes for the nipples. The nipple on our left takes its shape from the breast that it is attached to and it stretches vertically as the breast is lifted. While nipple on our right mimics the shape of the breast that it is attached to and has a much more horizontal axis. Now in this drawing, I've exaggerated the directions of the shapes of the nipples but hopefully you can see that it really does compliment the dynamic forces of the pose. Watch again as I go through this same process on the similar pose, but in this pose, the arm on our right is raised straight up while the arm on our left is down. One thing I'd like you to remember is that even though I'm working with the same elements as the demonstration drawing you just saw, I'm not necessarily drawing them in the same order. For example, unlike the previous demonstration, in this drawing, I drew the breasts before I drew the pectoral muscles. As this gesture drawing develops, hopefully you can really feel the stretch that occurs on the side of the body on our right. Remember, a good gesture drawing can give you a visceral sensation of what it might feel like to hold a particular pose. Hopefully, you can recognize all of the individual elements that have gone into this gesture drawing. For our final demonstration, let's draw a pose from the back. You'll first see me construct the basic shape of the torso, as well as the central line using the familiar elements that you've learned in the previous lessons, including the curves of the spine, the sacrum, as well as the gluteal fold. Now I'm ready to indicate this scapulae. I'll start with the scapula on our right. I'll first indicate the medial edge of the scapula, which is actually quite visible in this pose. Next, I'll indicate the lower corner of the scapula. Now, I'm ready to draw the scapula on our left. In this particular pose, you really get a sense of how the basic shape for the rib cage interacts with the basic shapes for the scapulae. You really get the sense that each scapula is sitting on top of the rib cage. Now let's go back to the scapula on our right. You can actually see the individual muscles that stretch from the bottom of the scapula up toward the armpit. This is an excellent view of the basic shape for the scapula and it's muscles that you learned about today. Next, I'll indicate the directions of the arm by using one line for each arm. Finally, I'll indicate the breast, which we can see peeking out from behind the rib cage. Hopefully, you can see how these elements of the upper torso really added new sense of dynamism, energy and specificity to the gesture drawing process. Now before we get you to your practice, I'd like to look at a few variations on these ideas. Even though in this course, we're only working with one female model, the tools and concepts you're learning in this course should apply to most models of any body type. Here's a drawing of a larger model with larger breasts. Here you can see the breasts pulling much further down into the sides, but you'll notice you can still clearly see the connection points at either side of the xiphoid process. However, when the breasts get larger and heavier, you can see that they start to pull more from behind the pectorals. You'll want to observe the exact point of connection on individual models. Of course, on a male model, we don't need to draw the breasts. Instead, you can see the outer edge of the pectoral traveling further down. Depending on the model, you can often see the bottom of the pectoral muscle, but it's more important at this stage to capture the outer edge of the pectorals, but everything else is roughly the same. Here you can see the line for the back of the rib cage and behind that, you can see the scapula. Here are a couple more variations. Hopefully, you can clearly see the outer edges of the pectorals at either side and with the absence of the breasts, everything else is exactly the same. You can see the rib cage as well as the scapula protruding from behind. On the figure on our left, we can see both scapulae and on the figure on our right, we can only see the one, the exact sizes, shapes and proportions of these features should be derived from the individual model that you happen to be drawing from. Now, let's get you to your practice. Once again, you're going to be drawing from two different practice reels. In the first practice reel, you're going to be drawing from three-minute close-ups of the torso, just as you saw me demonstrate today. In your drawings, you'll want to include the clavicles, the outer edges of the pectoral muscles, the breasts and if you can see them, the scapulae. This is of course, in addition to all of the other elements that you've previously learned, including the suprasternal notch, the center line etc. During the second practice reel, you'll be drawing from six minute poses of the full figure. This is an opportunity to incorporate what you've learned in this lesson into the rest of your gesture drawing process. Now you may have noticed that even though I'm asking you to include more information in today's gesture drawing or keeping the pose time for the full figure poses at six minutes. There are two important reasons for these short pose times. The first is that I'm preparing you to draw from a live model, regular practice drawing in front of a live model is one of the most powerful ways you can practice figure drawing and figure drawing models can only hold poses for a short amount of time but even if you never draw in front of a live model, these shorter poses will help bring a sense of dynamism and energy to your drawings that's nearly impossible to replicate if you're drawing slowly and from long poses. It's not so much about drawing fast. It's about drawing with the spirit and vitality that simply doesn't come if you're drawing slowly, but if these six minute poses are really just not enough time for you, it's okay to pause the practice reel. Well, good luck with your practice today and I will see you at the next lesson where you'll learn to flesh out the arms. 21. The Upper Torso - Practice Reel Pt. 1: Ten more seconds. Ten more seconds. Ten more seconds. Ten more seconds. Ten more seconds. 22. The Upper Torso - Practice Reel Pt. 2: Three more minutes. One more minute. Ten more seconds. 23. The Arms: Today you'll learn how to gesture the arms. So we'll begin by looking at this skeletal landmarks. This is a view of the skeleton from the back. You can clearly see the bones of the arms hanging down on either side of the rib cage. The first and most prominent landmark you're going to learn about today is called the olecranon process. This is a fancy name for the bone that protrudes most prominently at the elbow. The olecranon process is one of the easiest skeletal landmarks to find. I'd like you to bend your arm, and bring your elbow forward. That big bone sticking out at the elbow, that's the olecranon process. With your arm still bent, if you move your fingers out toward the outside of the elbow, you can feel another prominent landmark. It's called the lateral epicondyle, and of course, you have one on both of your elbows. Whenever you have a lateral landmark, you can expect that there will be a medial landmark that comes with it. On the insides of the elbows, we have the medial epicondyles. When the arms are straight, and the elbows are locked, all three of these landmarks line up. Let's take a look at these on an actual figure. The most prominent bones sticking out in the center of the elbows are the olecranon processes. Now when the arms are straight, and the elbows are locked, the lateral epicondyles actually appear as divots in the flesh. The muscles surrounding the lateral epicondyles, create a furrow, but whenever you see this furrow, you can be sure that the lateral epicondyles are there. The medial epicondyles can be a little trickier to see, but remember, you only need to draw the landmarks you see. Now let's take a closer look at the joint of the elbow. We know that when the arms are straight, all of these landmarks line up, but watch what happens when we bend the elbow. The epicondyles stay in the exact same place, but the olecranon process drops considerably. When the elbow is bent, these three landmarks taken together create a triangle. Once again, let's take a look at this on an actual figure. You can see that with the elbows bent, the olecranon processes protrude dramatically. The olecranon process will be the most common landmark you use to draw the arms, but with the elbows bent, you can pretty clearly see evidence of the medial, and lateral epicondyles. Of course, you can clearly see the triangles that these landmarks make on each of the elbows. For the final two landmarks, we're going to move down to the wrists. There are two prominent bony landmarks of the wrists, one on either side of each wrist. We'll start with the thumb side of the wrist. Above the thumb, we find the head of the radius. Take a moment to feel the head of the radius on your own wrists. Next, let's move to the opposite side of the hand, and wrist. The side with the little finger, or the pinky finger as many people call it. On the side with a pinky finger, we find the head of the ulna. When we're looking at the dry bones, you can clearly see that the head of the ulna is much smaller than the head of the radius. However, on an actual figure, the head of the ulna is much more prominent. Once again, you can clearly see this on your own body. Take a moment to look at your own wrists. On most people, most of the time, the head of the ulna will be much more visible than the head of the radius. Once again, let's take a look at this on an actual model. Take a look at the arm that is lowered down. Hopefully you can easily find the head of the ulna. It's the most prominent bone on this wrist. If you have any trouble finding it, it's right here. While we're here, there's something I'd like to point out. The olecranon process at the elbow is actually at the other end of the ulna. It's part of the same bone, and you can see the crest of this bone running between both of these landmarks. If I can see the crest of the ulna, I'll often use it in my gesture drawings. Now as we discussed earlier, the radius is actually a little more difficult to see, but usually you can find some evidence of it. While we're here, I thought I'd point out the furrow where the lateral epicondyle lies. Now let's move to the other arm. Here you can see some evidence of the medial epicondyle coming to the surface, but it's not as obvious as the other landmarks that we've discussed. You'll notice that we're looking at the underside of the wrist of this arm, and neither of the skeletal landmarks of the wrists are visible. The heads of the ulna, and the radius are prominent on the top sides of the wrist, but difficult to detect on the undersides. Nevertheless, it should still be clear to you where the wrist ends, and the hand begins. Now let's take a look at the basic shapes that make up the arm. We'll be focusing on the arm, on our left. Taken as a whole, you'll notice that the arm is larger at the shoulder, and narrows as it approaches the wrist. If we take a look at the inside of the arm from this view, you'll notice that this straight line does a pretty good job at simplifying the contour. Of course, there are subtle curves, but in the gesture process we're less concerned with subtleties like these. This straight line does a great job of summing up the basic contour, but if we look at the outside line, you'll notice that there are two prominent bulges that protrude past the straight line, one at the shoulder, and one at the forearm. Most of the time, it works well to think of the shoulder as an oval. The deltoids are the collection of muscles that make up the shoulder. As you'll see, the deltoids are well-represented by an oval, or an egg shape. Now the upper forearm has a bulge that is primarily located around the lateral epicondyle. As the arm moves, bends, and is pressed against the body in various ways, you will find other bulges, but these two at the shoulder, and at the forearm are very prominent, and are visible on most poses most of the time. Now let's take a look at an arm that is starting to bend. Before you learn how to draw this arm, I'd like to point out a few of the basic landmarks. When drawing the arms, or any other part of the body for that matter, placing the landmarks first, and making sure they're in proper relationship to one another will help keep your drawing in proper proportions. One of the most common landmarks I use when drawing the arms is actually a landmark from a previous lesson. It is the lateral end of the clavicle. Next of course, we can clearly see the olecranon process, and finally, the head of the ulna. When we connect these three points, they create a triangle. Getting this triangle right is essential to keeping your drawings accurate, and in proper proportions. So what can this triangle tell us? Well, take a look at the point that runs between the lateral end of the clavicle, and the head of the ulna. When drawing, I often ask questions like, is the head of the ulna to the left of, to the right of, or directly underneath the lateral end of the clavicle. If you're paying attention to these kinds of relationships, it should be immediately obvious that the head of the ulna is to the right of the lateral end of the clavicle. This may seem simple and obvious with the triangle in place, but it's amazing how often students fail to capture these important relationships. What else can we learn? Compare the length of the line that runs from the lateral end of the clavicle to the olecranon process with the line that runs from the olecranon process down to the head of the ulna. Hopefully you can see that the line from the olecranon process to the ulna is quite a bit shorter than the line from the lateral end of the clavicle to the olecranon process. Again, this is a critical piece of information, and you want to train your brain to always be making these kinds of evaluations when you're drawing. Now, I should note that it's rare that I physically draw these triangles when I'm doing a gesture drawing, although I occasionally do, and it can be a helpful tool, but regardless, I've trained my brain to think in terms of these triangles. Let's take a look at one more, this time from an image of the full figure. In this image, we can see evidence of the olecranon process as well as the head of the ulna. Now you'll note that the lateral end of the clavicle is not visible. It's hidden behind the shoulder. Now in a case like this, we just need some obvious point to use as a substitute. So I'm going to select the apex where the arm meets the armpit. Before I draw the arm, I want to pay attention to the triangle that these three points create. When drawing the figure, whenever you add a new part of the body, you want to make it a habit of comparing its size, shape, and placement to the size, shape, and placement of all of the other parts of the body that you've previously drawn. In addition to the points that make up the triangle of the arm, here are some of the other potential points that you could compare these points to. I have a rule when I draw the figure that I would encourage you to adopt. Whenever I place a new point, I compare it to at least two other points of the figure that I've previously drawn. This diagram illustrates only some of the potential points that you could compare, but even limited to these points, there's still numerous relationships that you can evaluate. So whenever you are placing a new point, get in the habit of asking yourself what's above this point? What's below it? What's to the left of it? What's to the right of it? Even if you're not engaging in more technical measuring processes, consistently asking yourself these questions will do wonders to keep your drawing in proper proportion. With all of this in mind, let's get to our drawing demonstrations. Hopefully, you recognize this image in this pose from just a few minutes ago. I'll start this drawing by indicating the location of the lateral end of the clavicle. Next, to make my initial attempt at capturing the directions of both parts of the arms, I'll usually select one side of the arm. Most often, this is the outside edge. These are my first attempts at both the angles and the lengths of the parts of the arm. Now I'll place the other landmarks starting with the olecranon process. As soon as I establish the olecranon process, I've established the length of the upper arm. Now I need to make sure that the length of the forearm is in proper proportional relationship to the upper arm. Most importantly, I need to make sure that the distance from the olecranon process to the head of the ulna is shorter than the distance from the lateral end of the clavicle to the olecranon process. Once these landmarks had been established, I can draw the basic shapes of the arm. I'll start by making a light, soft attempt to establish the thickness of the arm. Notice that it narrows as it approaches the wrist. Now I can add more complexity to these lines later on, but first, it's most important to capture the simplicity of the basic size, shape, and proportion of the arm. Next, I'll round out the shoulder using the basic oval that we discussed a few minutes ago. I'd like you to notice how the simple oval even informs the location where the arm meets the armpit. These kinds of relationships are easy to miss if you're not thinking and drawing using basic shapes. Next, I'll draw the bulge below the shoulder. This bulge is occurring, because the triceps at the back of the arm are being pressed out as the arm is pressed against the torso. Next, I'll draw the slight convexity that occurs where the bicep bulges, right above the inner bend of the arm. This isn't something you have to include in a gesture drawing, but it's one example of how you can flesh out and bring to life an otherwise basic conception of the arm. Next, I'll draw the convex bulge of the forearm. Hopefully you can see how far these basic elements go toward describing the arm. This next demonstration is designed to teach you one thing, how using three landmarks to create a triangle, will help you properly draw an arm or a leg, that is bent foreshortened. You can see that we're seeing the full length of the upper portion of the arm, but the forearm is turned away from us and it's going into foreshortening. This decreases its perceived length and makes it appear shorter. But by paying close attention to the triangle created by the three landmarks of the arm, we can accurately capture the proportions created by the foreshortening of the forearm. From here, the construction steps are exactly the same. Start with a simplified shapes of the arm, and then flesh it out, paying particular attention to the bulges of the shoulder, the forearm, and any other bulges that may be unique to this particular pose and arm position. Now, let's take a look at how to incorporate the arm into the rest of the gesture drawing process. This drawing is a good representation of about where your gesture drawing should be at this point in the course. There shouldn't be anything in this drawing that you don't recognize. But before we further incorporate the arms, there are a few essential ideas that I'd like to remind you of. One of the most common mistakes I see in the figure drawing studio, is that when students learn more specific information about various parts of the body, they tend to forget about the body as a whole. Now, even though this gesture drawing does include a good amount of detail in anatomy, the most important relationship is right here. This beautiful S-shaped curve flowing throughout the entire body is what holds all of these details in relationship to one another. It defines the entire drawing. This is the primary action line that you learned about in the very first lesson in this course, and it has served as the foundation for every other detail built on top of it. I'd also like to note that most of the secondary action lines flow right out from the primary action line, such as the line for the weight-bearing leg, even the gesture line for the foot flows out from that line. Notice that you can even find a gestural relationship between the foot, and the bent arm at the back of the pose. It's these relationships that make a gesture drawing beautiful. I'd also like you to notice that this drawing is slightly exaggerated for dramatic effect. Notice that the torso in the drawing is bent just a little more than the torso in the photo, and that the leg that's extended out behind the model, is curving just a little more dramatically. This is what I mean when I say that it's okay to sacrifice some accuracy for dynamism. The proportions may not all be accurate, but the drawing is dynamic and exciting, which in gesture drawing, is more important. Now, let's flesh out the arm. In the last lesson, you learned about the upper torso, including how to locate the medial edge of the scapula, shown here, as well as the muscles that stretch from the bottom of the scapula up toward the arm. They can be seen here. I've already drawn a simple linear gesture that establishes the direction of the arm. I've also indicated the allegro non process. If you look right above the dark indication of the allegro non process, you'll be able to clearly see that this was not my first attempt. Remember, figure drawing is a process, and most parts of the body you draw will require multiple attempts. This is perfectly normal. Here, you'll see me slightly change the direction of the line that runs from the allegro non process to the head of the ulna at the wrist. I've been drawing the figure for over 25 years, and I still make these adjustments on a regular basis. It's just part of the process and nothing to be concerned about. Once I'm satisfied with these simple directional lines of the arm, now will indicate the head of the ulna, paying careful attention to the length of the forearm as it relates to the length of the upper arm, as well as the angle that runs between the head of the ulna and the apex created where the muscles of the scapula meet the upper arm. I'm also aware that the head of the ulna is nearly directly above the scapula below. Remember, you should make a habit out of making these evaluations between as many landmarks on the body as you're comfortable with. Now, I will give the arm some thickness. Notice how each section of the arm appears to be slightly curved. This was evident in my initial gesture line, and it's following through the drawing of the arm as I fleshed it out. I'd also like you to notice that in the forearm in particular, you can see it's starting wider near the elbow and narrowing as it approaches the wrist. To finish the arm, I'll draw the oval at the shoulder, which indicates the bulge of the deltoid of the shoulder muscle. I'll also draw the convex line of the forearm near the inside bend of the elbow. Now, I'll apply a similar process to the other arm, but this arm is even simpler than the first arm. Remember, gesture drawing is not about detail. It's about capturing that dynamism of a pose using simple shapes and forms. Now, let's look at a few of the relationships that make this pose what it is. You'll notice that the arm I just drew appears slightly smaller than the first time I drew. This is because it is further away from us. This is why it's so important to evaluate the proportions and the relationships of the forms right in front of you, rather than rely on a preconceived set of average human proportions. Even though I've exaggerated this pose for drama, I'm still maintaining an awareness of the relationships between different parts of the body. For example, as I was placing the allegro non process up the raised arm, I was making sure that it was placed further forward than the heel of the weight-bearing foot by paying attention to the angle between them. Some of the other relationships I paid attention to, included the angle between the allegro non process of the raised arm and the lateral malleolus of the back foot, as well as the angle between the allegro non process of the arm behind the figure in the heel of the weight-bearing foot. Even though I'm doing little to no technical measuring using any tools or devices in these gesture drawings, I'm always making these angle evaluations, as well as proportional evaluations using my eyes and mind. For today's practice, you'll actually be drawing from three different practice reels. In the first practice reel, you'll draw from three-minute close-ups of the arms. This will give you a opportunity to familiarize yourself with the basic landmarks of the arms, as well as their basic shapes and proportions. In the remaining two practice reels, you'll be drawing from eight minute poses of the full figure. This will give you an opportunity to practice everything you've learned so far, including what you've learned today about the arms. Now that we're at less than nine, if you feel that you needed a refresher on any of the ideas we've covered thus far in the course, I would encourage you to go back and watch previous lessons. Even though gesture drawing focuses on simplifying the figure, it's still requires you to keep a lot of information in your mind. Don't assume that just because you've watched the lesson once, that means that you've absorbed all of the information within that lesson. Hopefully, you're revisiting these lessons again and again. The final thing I'd like to share with you before you start your practice, is that you shouldn't feel like you have to race to include every single element we've discussed thus far before the clock on the pose runs out. You'll notice that the lower legs and the feet in this drawing remain unfinished. Include in your drawing, what you think is most important, and if you run out of time, that's okay. Speed will come with time. Well, good luck with your practice today, and I hope to see you back here for the next lesson when you're going to learn how to gesture the hands. 24. The Arms - Practice Reel Pt. 1: 10 more seconds. 10 more seconds. 10 more seconds. 10 more seconds. 10 more seconds. 10 more seconds. 25. The Arms - Practice Reel Pt. 2: three more minutes. One more minute. - 10 more seconds. Three more minutes. One more minute. - 10 more seconds. 26. The Arms - Practice Reel Pt. 3: three more minutes. - One more minute. - 10 more seconds. Three more minutes. One more minute. - 10 more seconds. 27. The Hands : We're going to start this lesson by introducing the parts of the hand that we'll be referring to during today's drawing demonstrations. We'll start with the most familiar parts of the hand, the thumb and fingers. This is a dorsal view of the bones of the right hand or what is commonly referred to as the back of the hand. On our left, we have the thumb. Next to that, we have the index finger, or what some people call the pointer finger. Next to that is the middle finger. Next we have the ring finger, and finally, we have the little finger. These are the names I'll be using to refer to these fingers during the course. Now as we shift to more technical anatomical terms, I'd like to remind you that you're not required to memorize all of the names of the bones at this point, it's much more important that you understand the concepts, even if you don't know all of the anatomical terms, the reason I'm using more technical anatomical terms is so that you're prepared and are familiar with them if you decide to learn anatomy later on. The first landmarks of the hand you need to know are the heads of the metacarpals. To help orient you, hold out your own right hand. The heads of the metacarpals are the bony protrusions sciences that can be found where the individual fingers meet the large flat section of the hand. They become particularly prominent if you make a fist. Now in gesture drawing, we won't need to draw these individually, but we need to be aware of the line they make when they are connected. Notice that this line is slightly curved. If we combine this line with a line that separates the hand from the wrist, as well as the lines of the side of the hand, we arrive at this trapezoidal shape that perfectly represents the shape of the broad flat section of the hand. I'll show you how to use this shape in your drawings and just a few minutes. But for now, let's move on to the fingers. You can see that each finger consists of three bones, and each of these bones is called a phalanx. All you'll need to focus on at this point are the heads of the proximal phalanxes, these are the large joints you find near the middle of each individual finger. If you're curious, the word proximal refers to something that is closer to the center of the human body, as opposed to distal, which means something that is further away from the center of the body. This brings us to our next set of landmarks, the ends of the distal phalanxes, or what I'll refer to from here on as the fingertip. These three sets of bony landmarks each create their own line. These three lines, combined with the shape for the broad flat section of the hand, are the biggest and most important elements will be working with today. Here's a look at the basic shapes we'll be working with today. Notice that I've enclosed the section for the fingers with lines that run up either side. Now let's shift over to the thumb. The thumb is constructed largely the same way as the rest of the fingers. For example, here is the head of the metacarpal for the thumb, if we extend a line from the other metacarpal heads down to the head of the metacarpal of the thumb and then extend a line from the wrist to the outside of the thumb, we arrive at a triangle. I'll show you how to gesture the rest of the thumb later in this lesson. But for now, this is the shape will be working with. Now, let's apply this information to an actual hand. Let's start by dividing the hand from the wrist by running a line between the ulna and the radius, which you learned about in the previous lesson. Next, let's find the line created when we connect to the heads of the metacarpals. Take a moment to try and visualize it before I lay the diagram over the image. The line for the heads of the metacarpals is here. Now let's connect these two lines by adding at the sides of the shape of the broad flat section of the hand. It's important to remember that this shape for the broad flat section of the hand will change dramatically depending on the pose, the view of the hand, and of course, the individual model. The specifics should always be derived from the figure in front of you. Next, let's find the line for the heads of the proximal phalanxes. Remember, you don't need to remember this term as long as you understand what line I'm talking about. Now, watch as I unify all four of the proximal phalanxes into one basic shape, the sides of which extend right out from the sides of the shape for the broad flat section of the hand. Remember, in gesture drawing or trying to unify parts of the body and simplify them. Again, one of the biggest mistakes I see students make is adding details without an understanding of these more basic unified forms of the body. It's these basic shapes that organize all of the details that come later on in the drawing process. Next, we'll find the line for the fingertips and once again, unify these into one big shape. Finally, we'll add the triangle forth a thumb. These shapes and relationships are the most important thing to capture in the gesture drawing process. This is how the hand must be understood before any smaller details should be added. Often when I'm drawing Gestures, this is about as far as I'll take the hand. In quick gesture drawings, hands her best implied rather than stated. But if you truly feel that a more detailed drawing of the hand is essential to the pose, you can then further divide these shapes into individual fingers. But remember, a good gesture drawing is a dynamic simplification of the body as a whole. Individual fingers are pretty small details. Choose wisely whether or not you put them in your gesture drawings. Now let's take a look at the palm side of the hand. Although the bony heads of the metacarpals are not visible, you can clearly see a crease where the fingers meet the poem. This is called the palmar digital crease. It's a great element to include in your gesture drawings of hands if you can see it. I'd also like you to notice that from this view, you can see an ovular bulge with the muscles of the thumb are. This rounded group of muscles is what helps bend the thumb inward. With these two elements in place, you can draw the rest of the hand using a similar strategy to the one you just learned. You can block in the side of the hand, find the line where the fingers crease and the fingertips and combine the fingers into a shape. You'll notice that this shape only contains two fingers. This is because the other fingers are separated and doing something entirely different. This is a great strategy when the hand takes different positions, you can unify only the fingers that are grouped together into a single shape. In this pose, the other two fingers also seem to group naturally together. To gesture the left side of the thumb, I'm going to send a line from the oval of the muscles of the thumb and along the outside contour until it dives in and hits the thumbnail bed. From there, you'll notice that the thumbnail makes an abrupt direction change. This is a common visual element of the thumb and it's a great way to delineate the thumb from other fingers. I'll simplify the right side of the thumb into a single curving line that meets the line for the end of the thumbnail. Here's the final simplified hand. Remember, in gesture drawing, the hand should be simply implied. Gesture drawing is not the place for detailed hand drawing. But understanding the hand in terms of these basic shapes and forms is essential to doing more detailed hand drawings later on. Now I'll show you how to get this information into your drawings. Will start by focusing just on the hand. Here you can clearly see the line for the heads of the metacarpals as with any other angle in Figure Drawing, you'll want to make sure that this is at the proper angle. Next, I'll draw the sides of the hand. Now even though the hand is more detailed, we should still be looking for the big relationships between the hand and other parts of the body. For example, if we follow the gesture of the index finger, it seems to curve right into the radial side of the wrist. While I'm here, I'll locate the head of the radius as well as the head of the ulna. As the drawing advances, I want to make sure to retain this beautiful S-shaped curve that unifies the hand and the arm. Here, you'll see me unify the bent fingers into a single shape. Remember, in the gesture phase, understanding these big relationships is much more important than individual details. Here you'll see me draw the triangle for the base of the thumb. Even at this simple stage, you can really see the hand starting to come together. Once I'm confident that these basic shapes and forms are accurate, I can begin to spend some time adding more detail to individual fingers. Now remember, in gesture drawing, time is critical and individual fingers should not be thought of as a high priority. But it is important that if you want to draw individual fingers, you understand how. Here you'll see me simplifying the outside contour up the thumb. First, identifying where the head of the metacarpal comes to the surface. Next, following the contour to where it dives in towards the bed up to the thumbnail. Here, you can see the thumbnail itself changing direction dramatically. In gesture drawing, I rarely enclose the shape of an entire finger. More often than not, I'll just draw one side, as you can see that I've done with the thumb. If for some reason you do decide to draw individual fingers, remember, keep the shapes simple and pay attention to the width of each finger as it relates to the other fingers, as well as how it relates to the shape of all of the fingers you've grouped together. Though this drawing already has more information than I would normally include in a gesture drawing of a hand. But before we move on, I'd like you to see how the basic elements that I introduced at the beginning of this course are holding this drawing together. You can clearly see the line for the heads of the metacarpals, the line for the heads of the proximal phalanxes, the beautiful gesture line that runs from the wrist to the fingertip of the index finger, and the triangle for the base of the thumb. It's critical to get these elements working before adding any additional details. The very last thing I'll add to this drawing before we move on, are curving indications of the heads of the metacarpals, which as you'll see in a minute, are occasionally rather prominent and have a place even in a simplified gesture drawing. Of course, you can clearly see how they all line up on the original line that indicated the heads of the metacarpals. Now watch as I apply a very similar process to draw a hand from a view where the palm is visible. I've started by blocking in the basic shape for the wrist, the side of the hand that contains the little finger, and one angle of the triangle for the base of the thumb. Now, instead of drawing a line for the heads of the metacarpals here, we'll draw the crease that occurs where the fingers meet the palm. You'll notice that not all of this line is visible as some of it is covered up by the fingers that are folding in towards the palm. Nevertheless, I can still get a good sense of the entire line, even though part of it is covered up, because I can see where it begins and where it ends. Once again, we find this beautiful S-shaped curve that runs from the radial side of the wrist to the tip of the index finger. Next, I'll draw the line for the heads of the proximal phalanxes, which is very visible with the fingers bent. Once again, you'll see me draw the triangle for the base of the thumb. As you learned about earlier, you can see here, the large ovular shape that contains the muscles of the thumb. Notice how it combines with the triangle for the base of the thumb. Next, you'll see me draw the outside contour of the thumb, paying particular attention to where the thumbnail bed meets the rest of the thumb. So here's something I really like you to think about. If I think the hands are important enough to include, I want to make sure to give the viewer enough information to tell the basic position and orientation of the hand. You know the position of the hand that I'm drawing because of the photographic reference on the left. But imagine if you hadn't seen this photograph, focus solely on what the drawing tells you, many viewers would have difficulty discerning whether we're looking at the backside or the palm side of this hand. So if the hands are important enough to include, you want to give the viewer enough information to understand their basic position. Remember, a good gesture drawing is somewhat minimalist, it operates on a, less is more theory. So the question you should ask yourself is, what is the least amount of information I can give the viewer that will allow them to understand the position and orientation of the hand? Although there's never one right answer for questions like these, in this pose, I think the viewer should understand that the middle finger, the ring finger, and little finger are bending inward toward the palm. I actually think the position of the hand becomes clear when drawing the middle finger bending in toward the palm. But of course, if you feel it's essential for your drawing, you can always further delineate the individual fingers. I also find that emphasizing the palm or digital crease, can also be an effective way to communicate the position of the hand. For today's practice, you'll once again be drawing from three different gesture reals. In the first gesture real, you'll be doing larger drawings of hands like this. During your second practice real, you'll focus more on attaching the hand to the arm, as you'll see me demonstrate here. The process you'll use to connect to the hand to the arm is basically the same as I've demonstrated in the last two drawings. But there are two things you need to pay more attention to. First, is the dynamic directional line that flows from the wrist into the hand, which you've heard me talk about in the last two demonstrations. The second, which I haven't yet talked about, is the proportion of the hand in relationship to the rest of the body, particularly how the overall size of the hand relates to the forearm. If the arm is in proportion to the rest of the body, and the hand is in proportion to the arm, then the hand will be in proportion to the rest of the body. Again, I'd like to remind you that when the model poses, there is no standard set of proportions that you can apply. When foreshortening kicks in, every proportion and size relationship needs to be evaluated unopposed by pose basis. After locating the ulna and the radius, in drawing a line that flows from the radial side of the wrist to the fingertip, I'll evaluate how long the overall hand is compared to the forearm. A quick visual evaluation tells me that roughly speaking, the length of the hand from the wrist to the tip of the index finger is slightly larger than half of the distance from the bones of the wrist to the olecranon process of the elbow. After marking the location of the fingertip, I'll begin to go through the exact same process you've seen me demonstrate over the last two drawings. While drawing the hand, I'm always asking myself how much information is really necessary to communicate the basic position of the hand, but I'm also making sure that I'm not getting mired in details. I think this is more than enough information to imply the position of the hand. You'll notice I'm paying particular attention to the angles between the various fingers. In this pose, you can see that the hand above is closed. So after blocking of the basic shape for the broad flat part of the hand and gesturing in the thumb, I'll actually give some shape to the individual heads of the metacarpals, as this seems necessary to communicate the position of the hand to a viewer in this particular pose. The hand below is primarily seen from the side. You can also see that the fingers of this hand are curving over the side of the model stand. So in my gesture, I'll want to draw a basic slender shape that represents the hand seen from the side that is curving. Even though this basic shape that looks like a flipper, it provides a foundational shape that I can craft into a more specific hand using the elements that you've learned about today. Most of what we see are the thumb and the index finger, with the rest of the fingers barely indicated behind them. During your third practice real today, you'll incorporate the hands into your gesture drawings of the entire figure. It's important to remember that when you do this, you'll be drawing the hands rather small, and there simply won't be enough space for you to do a very detailed drawing of the hand. When drawing of this scale, you'll truly understand why we focused on the elements of the hand that we did, and you'll see how far they go in indicating the position and orientation of the hands. Further details should only be included if you think they're essential and you have extra time. Now, let's take a look at some real gesture drawings that include the hands. It's important to remember that all of these drawings were under 10 minutes. Here, you can see that the hand placed on the leg is much more prominent than the hand behind the model. The hand on the leg is drawn with more detail and you can see me relying heavily on the elements that you've learned about today. I'd like you to notice that you can actually tell what position the hand is in, even though the index finger and the thumb are the only fingers that have been drawn with any specificity. The hand on the back has been indicated using only a single curved line. All that tells us is that this hand is slightly bent and resting on the shoulder, this is all it needs to tell us. In this drawing, neither hand is articulated, but you can get a sense of the position of both of them. One hand is resting flat on the leg, while the other hand has the fingers curled in. This is a great example of hands that are implied but not stated. In these two drawings, we see a little more articulation of the hands as well as individual fingers. But again, notice how few elements these drawings actually contain. Even though the fingers are more articulated than the other poses, these are not detailed hand drawings. But notice how well these simple drawings of the hands work in context. In this final drawing, you can see how minimally a hand can be drawn and still give us a sense of what that hand is doing. For example, you can clearly see that the fingers of the hand on our right are spread, while the fingers of the hand on our left are grouped together, in both hands, the thumbs are extended. All of this information, including the general proportion of the hands, comes through in just a few marks. This is gesture drawing at it's most efficient. Now, let's get you to your practice. Today, you'll be drawing from three different practice reels. In the first practice reel, you'll be drawing from six minute poses of the hands. You only need to draw the hands themselves in this practice real, this is an opportunity for you to familiarize yourself with the elements of the hand that you learned about today. I would highly recommend watching this lesson again before starting your practice to make sure that you understand all of the elements that you've learned. In the second practice reel, you'll be drawing from four and a half minute poses that include both the hands and the arms. In this practice reel, you'll practice attaching the hands to the arms. You'll want to make sure to pay attention to the proportional relationship between them. You'll notice that in this practice reel, the pose times are shorter. This is an opportunity to practice drawing efficiently. Drawing these elements more quickly will prepare you for the third practice reel, where you'll be drawing from nine and a half minute poses of the full figure. Here, you'll incorporate the hands into the rest of your gesture drawing process. Good luck with your practice today, and I will see you here for the next lesson, when you'll learn how to draw the neck and head. 28. The Hands - Practice Reel Pt. 1: three more minutes. One more minute. - 10 more seconds. Three more minutes. One more minute. - 10 more seconds. Three more minutes. One more minute. - 10 more seconds. 29. The Hands - Practice Reel Pt. 2: One more minute. Ten more seconds. One more minute. Ten more seconds. One more minute. Ten more seconds. One more minute. Ten more seconds. 30. The Hands - Practice Reel Pt. 3: - three more minutes. One more minute. - 10 more seconds. - Three more minutes. One more minute. - 10 more seconds. 31. The Head & Neck : In this lesson, we're going to focus on the head and neck. As always, the first thing we want to do is understand the head and neck in terms of their most basic shapes before slowly adding complexity. From the front, the head simplifies easily into an egg shape. The wider part of the egg at the top contains the cranium and then the egg narrows as it approaches the chin. Here's a look at this shape on its own. Although in gesture drawing, I wouldn't advise adding many facial features. There are a few basic proportions you should know. If we take the height of the head and divide it in half, you can see that the eyes fall right on this halfway line. Next, let's take a look at this skull from a side view. The shape of the head from the side is a little more complex. You can see that the cranium, which is the part of the skull that contains the brain, simplifies into an egg shape with a diagonal axis. What we think of as the face part of the head hangs down off of the egg for the cranium. At the front of the face, you can see that the line is vertical before curving underneath the chin and following the line for the jaw upward where it meets back with the egg of the cranium. On an actual model, particularly if the model has a lot of hair, the shape for the cranium can be a little difficult to discern. But in the gesture phase, it's just important that you do your best. If you can't see the shape of the cranium well, you can usually block in the shape of the hair, but we'll discuss that in a few minutes. Here's the basic shape for the cranium. Just like we saw with the skull, we can follow a line from the front of the cranium shape down the face, where it will curve underneath the chin and follow the jawline back up. The jawline will vary wildly from model to model, so you'll always want to take the specifics of the jawline from the model that you're drawing from. Hopefully you can see, even without an overlay, that the eyes are about halfway between the top of the head and the bottom of the chin. Being able to see these kinds of proportional relationships without me overlaying a diagram is a critical skill. You'll get better at this skill the more you make these kinds of evaluations on your own, in your own drawings. Next, let's once again take a look at the shape of the head from the front. Imagine a line running straight down the center of the face, drawing this center line, as well as the line for the eyes, is an essential tool that will help give the viewer a sense of which way the head is turning and if it is raised or lowered. Now that you've been introduced to these basic elements, let's see what happens when we start to move the head into some different positions. First, let's find the basic shape for the cranium. It's important to remember that hair has volume. You can see that this basic shape for the cranium is slightly smaller than the outside contour of the hair. Now let's drop a line that runs along the edge of the face. This simplification is critical when you're learning to draw the head. You'll notice that this line simplifies all of the complex contours of the face into one line that helps us understand the shape of the head and face as a whole. Now I'll create a line that simplifies the jaw that runs from the chin and connects back up with a line for the shape of the cranium. Next, I'll add the line for the eyes. But you'll notice that because the head is turned and slightly foreshortened, this line is at a diagonal. You'll also notice that because we're looking at the head from slightly below, the line for the eyes is a little closer to the top of the head than it is to the chin. Again, you'll always want to take this information directly from the model that you're drawing from. Next, let's take a look at the vertical line that runs down the center of the facial features. Again, at this stage, this line must be simple. It's not attempting to record the nose or any other protruding facial features. You'll also notice that with the head turned, this line is much closer to the left side of the head than the right. Again, this gives the viewer an indication of how the head is turned. Here's a look at this simplified shape on its own, with both the line for the eyes and the center line running down the face. You can see how well this simplification tells us which way the head is turned. In this next pose, the head is turned even more and the top of it is tilting away from us, revealing part of the underside of the chin. After finding the basic shape for the cranium, let's drop a line down the front of the face that curves underneath the far side of the chin. Now in order to create the illusion that we're seeing the underside of the chin, we'll need a separate line that runs along the side of the jaw that's closest to us and comes into contact with the line that runs along the side of the jaw on the other side of the head that is further away. Here is what all of these elements look like together. Now let's take a look at the basic proportions. You can see that because the head is tilting away from us even further than the last image we worked from, that the eyes have come even closer to the top of the head. Now that I've got a diagram showing the height of the head, let's take a few minutes to explore some strategies to make sure that your head is in proportion to the rest of your drawing. By now, you should be used to the idea that whenever you add a part of the body into your drawing, you want to compare it's size, shape and placement to other parts of the body that you've previously drawn, and the head is no exception. But remember, the specific proportions of the various parts of the body will change model to model and pose to pose. It's important that you're never relying on a preconceived set of proportions and forcing them onto your drawing. What you want is to get a sense of how the height of the head of the modeling pose that's in front of you, relates to the rest of the body. As I've mentioned before, if you're doing figure drawing, you should already be competent at basic measuring techniques. Here, I'm going to focus on what of proportions to compare and assume that you understand how to actually take these measurements from a model. If for any reason you need a refresher on measuring techniques, I would highly recommend taking the measuring and proportion course in the original art and science of drawing series. Before you place the head in your drawing, once you have an idea of the height of the head, you want to compare the height to other parts of the body that you think might be similar. When doing this, we find that the distance from the top of the head to the bottom of the chin is about the same distance as the distance from the suprasternal notch to about the line of the nipples. We can also see that the distance of the head is about the same as the distance from the suprasternal notch to the lateral end of the clavicle. I would encourage you to make as many of these proportional comparisons as you need to comfortably get the size of the head into your drawing. Now let's take a look at what happens when the model lowers her chin. You can see that much more of the top of the head is visible. You can also see that because the head is slightly turned, we can see part of the cranium bulging out at the back. Here's what the basic shape of the head would look like. Now let's add the center line for the face and the line for the eyes. You can see that the center line for the face curves its way up and back around the cranium, further giving us a sense of the volume of the shape of the head. You can see that the line for the eyes has lowered and also is shown curving. If you need a refresher on basic volumetric drawing, I would highly recommend taking the Form and Space course in the original Art and Science of Drawing series. Next, let's focus on the shape of the neck. In terms of volume, the shape of the neck can be thought of as a simple cylinder that the volume of the head rests on top of. Now in gesture drawing, it's up to you how volumetric you want your drawings to be. But at the very least, you want to be able to draw the sides of this cylinder, as I'll demonstrate in a few minutes. Next, take a look at either side of the cylinder for the neck. Here you'll find the edges of the trapezius. Technically, the trapezius is a muscle that's located primarily on the back of the body, but it can be seen from the front on either side of the neck. You don't need to understand this muscle in its entirety, but including these edges of the trapezius in your drawings of the neck will bring a sense of dynamism and realism to your gesture drawing. Now let's take a look at another pair of muscles. Take a look at the suprasternal notch in this image. You'll notice a pair of muscles rising up from the suprasternal notch and creating a V-shape. In gesture drawing, we're particularly interested in the lateral edges of these muscles, which are called the sternocleidomastoids. The sternocleidomastoids originate at the suprasternal notch and they connect at the base of the cranium, right below the ears. Now when the head turns, as you can see in this photo, the sternocleidomastoid that is opposite the direction that the head is turning, will flex and become much more prominent while the other sternocleidomastoid will relax and almost disappear. Here you can see that the model has turned her head to our right so the sternocleidomastoid and our left has become much more prominent and we can clearly see the lateral edge of it traveling up from the suprasternal notch toward its attachment underneath the ear. In this photograph, we have a great view of both of the muscles that we've been talking about. Hopefully you can see the lateral edge of the sternocleidomastoid heading up from the suprasternal notch in toward the base of the cranium under the ear, it's located right here. The other sternocleidomastoid is difficult to see because it is relaxed due to the turn of the head as well as in shadow. Of course, on either side of the neck, we can see the edges of the trapezius heading down towards the shoulders. Now let's put these ideas into practice with some demonstration drawings. First we'll take a look at the head all on its own. I usually start my gesture drawings of the head at this suprasternal notch. In this demonstration, I'll also draw an indication for the directions of the clavicles. In the photograph on the left, hopefully you could clearly see the lateral edge of the sternocleidomastoid rising up from the suprasternal notch and attaching underneath and behind the ear. Next I'll draw a very simple shape for the cranium. You'll notice that I'm not completing the entire egg shape, but only drawing the part that is more visible. Now before I drop the line for the front of the face down from the cranium into the chin, I want to make sure that I have a sense of where the chin is. Here you'll see me evaluating the angle from the suprasternal notch to the chin. I'm also thinking about the location of the chin, in relationship to the bottom of the back of the cranium. Once I'm ready, I can draw the line for the front of the face. Now it's important to remember that the reason I'm drawing so lightly right now is that I'm assuming that most of these elements will need to be adjusted and light lines are much easier to move or erase than dark lines. With these elements in place, I'll now draw a line for the jaw. Notice that there's some space between this line for the jaw and the line for the front of the face. At the neck, the line for the front of the face will turn inward and travel toward the neck. Here you'll notice that we can actually see part of the ellipse of the cylinder at the base of the neck. With these elements in place, I'll begin making my adjustments in adding more information and complexity. To do this, I'm looking back and forth from my drawing to the reference photo, asking myself what's different and what needs to be changed or added. I noticed that the head in my drawing was wider than the head in the reference photo. I moved to the line for the front of the face inward, which then required me to re-adjust the line for the jaw. These kinds of adjustments are very common. You'll notice that I've also placed and given some shape to the ear, which is simply part of an egg shape with a wider end at the top and the narrower end at the bottom. I'm also going to draw the slight indention right above the nose. This is one of my favorite details to add in a gesture drawing, although I rarely draw facial features in a gesture drawing, this indention will give the viewers a sense of where the top of the nose is, as well as where the line for the eyes might be. Here you'll see me add the line for the back of the neck. You can really see the head starting to take shape now. From here, I'll finish the ellipse at the base of the neck and add the trapezius muscles. Notice how the trapezius muscles really giving a sense to how the neck is stretching. Finally, I'll add this slightly curving line where the eyes would be placed. I'd like to note that because the view of this head is in profile, we cannot see and do not need to draw the line that runs down the center of the face. This is a great representation of how you should understand the head before any further details are added. The simple gesture drawing of the head tells us which way the head is turned, how it's tilted, how the neck is stretching, and how the head and neck are interacting with the upper torso. Once you've understood and drawn these basic elements of the head, you're welcome to add a little more detail. I'm going to take this opportunity to block in the shape of the hair. We can be a little more expressive and free with the shape of the hair because it's not as exacting as the other parts of the body. If you do decide to block in the shape of the hair, remember, keep it simple. Focus on the big shapes and not the smaller details. Although I rarely draw facial features in gesture drawing, the basic elements of the head, neck that you've just seen demonstrated, will lay a great foundation for adding other subtle details, like the basic shape for the nose, a subtle indication of where the eye is or even an eyebrow. But remember in gesture drawing, these are details that should only be hinted at or implied. But hopefully you can see what a great job these basic elements do, giving us the position, size, shape, and proportion of the head. These elements even set us up to get a few facial features in details in. I'll start this next drawing in the exact same way with the suprasternal notch and the edges of the clavicles. Next, I'll follow this sternocleidomastoid up and around the cranium. Draw the line for the front of the face. Place the chin and add some mass to the back of the cranium. Next I'll draw the line for the jaw. Notice how well this gives us the indication of the head being tilted back as it indicates that we can see the underside of the chin. Next I'll place the line where the eyes would be. Notice that it's closer to the top of the head than to the bottom of the chin because the head is tilted back. Next, I'll draw the line running down the center of the face. Notice that it's much closer to the side on our right, which gives the indication that the head is turned. Next I'll add in the trapezius muscles. Notice that the one on the left is much smaller and lower down. The trapezius muscles really give us a sense of how the neck is stretching. Next I'll indicate an indention where the eyes would be. This is another one of my favorite details to add in a gesture drawing. With all of these elements in place, I'll block in the hair. When you're practicing drawing the head, it's critical that you first understand the basic shapes and forms of the head and neck without the hair. You'll first just want to focus on practicing the elements of the head and neck as if the head were bald. But hopefully you can see how well these elements describe the basic position in forms of the head and neck. Once you understand these basic forms and elements, you can add a little more detail and block in the hair. Here's your practice for the day. Once again, you'll be drawing from three different practice reels. In the first practice reel, you'll be drawing from four minute close-ups of the head and neck. Remember, keep these drawings simple. Don't get caught up in facial features. Focus only on the elements that you've learned today. In the next two practice reels, you'll be drawing from 12 minute poses of the full figure. This is an opportunity to bring everything that you've learned together into the gesture process. These 12 minute poses may seem short, but it's important for you to realize that most gesture drawings are done from poses under 10 minutes and often under five minutes. Rather than feel a sense of stress that you have to include all of the elements that you've learned in this course. Take these shorter pose times as an opportunity to simplify your poses and focus only on what's essential to the pose. That's entirely up to you. If you don't get every single element that you've learned about into your drawing, that's totally normal and fine. Being able to draw quickly and efficiently is critical for figure drawing. With time and practice, you'll get quicker and quicker at drawing the figure. Remember to keep your pencil moving and try to draw with a sense of vitality and energy. Remember, viewers can tell if a line was drawn slowly and without any passion. Drawing quickly and efficiently is a great way to bring a sense of dynamism and excitement to your drawings. Have fun with your practice today and remember that it's okay if your drawings aren't finished. I will see you back here for the final lesson when you'll learn how to add light and shadow to your gesture drawings. 32. The Head & Neck - Practice Reel Pt. 1: one more minute. - 10 more seconds. One more minute. - 10 more seconds. One more minute. - 10 more seconds. One more minute. - 10 more seconds. 33. The Head & Neck - Practice Reel Pt. 2: nine more minutes. Six more minutes. Three more minutes. One more minute. - 10 more seconds. 34. The Head & Neck - Practice Reel Pt. 3: Nine more minutes. Six more minutes. Three more minutes. One more minute. Ten more seconds. 35. Light & Shadow: In this lesson, we're going to do two different things. First, you're going to learn some powerful tools and techniques that will allow you to get light and shadow into your gesture drawings. Second, once you have all the tools and techniques you need to draw dynamic and exciting gestures. We're going to take a look at that gesture drawing process as a whole, to make sure that you have a solid understanding of the gesture drawing process, and that you leave this course with a knowledge, experience, and confidence to produce dynamic and exciting gesture drawings, either from life or from photographic reference. Now, let me introduce one of the most powerful strategies you can use that will allow you to bring a dynamic sense of light and shadow into your gesture drawings. Now before we deal with shading something as complex as the human figure, let's first start with a more simple subject. I often tell students that drawing butternut squashes is a great way to prepare for figure drawing. This is because it shares many of the same shapes and characteristics as the human body, and it's the perfect subject to observe as we explore the shading process. The biggest mistake students make when shading is that they get caught up rendering small details and completely miss the big overall lighting scheme that defines the form. As you've heard me say over and over in this course, gesture drawing is not about small details. It's about observing and constructing the figure as a dynamic hole. This holds equally true as we apply lightened shadow to our gesture drawings. To start, we want to think about light and shadow in the most simple way we possibly can. We want to think about our subject as having a lit side and a shadow side. In reality, there are an infinite number of values in between, but we want to focus on the exact moment that the subject turns away from the light and goes into shadow. We want to be able to simplify and draw the moment when light ends and shadow begins. Here you can see a simplified version of the line of termination or the line that marks when the light ends. Now of course, you can see a few small shadows that are on the lit side of the line of termination. But for the most part, this line does an excellent job simplifying the lighting scheme and dividing the subject into a lit side and a shadow side. It's only after you understand this basic division of light and shadow that you can shade with more detail. Now watch as I add complexity to this line of termination. Notice how these more detailed shadows seem to grow directly out of the original simplified line of termination. When students start shading these details first, they tend to miss the overall lighting patterns and the small shading details make little sense. Don't make this mistake in your own drawings. You should always understand your shadows in terms of their most simple shapes first, before adding complexity. Before we apply this to an actual figure, there's one more thing I want to point out underneath the squash, we find the cast shadow. Now on a simple subject like this, the shadow is cast on the surface that the object is sitting upon. But often the figure will cast shadows on itself. Now you should already have some basic shading skills before attempting figure drawing. You should already know that we refer to shadows on the subject itself as form shadows and shadows created when a subject blocks light from hitting an adjacent surface as casts shadows. It's important to distinguish between these two shadows in your drawings, casts shadows are darker and harder edged, while formed shadows, although dark are slightly lighter than casts shadows and half softer edges. Again, if you're doing figure drawing, this should all be review. If you need a refresher on light and shadow, I would highly recommend taking the shading Fundamentals course and the shading beyond the basics course in the original art and science of drawing series. Now let's apply these ideas to an actual figure. When you look at this figure, hopefully you can see a clear division between the lit side and the shadow side. Sometimes it's easier to simplify values if you squint your eyes or let your eyes go softly out-of-focus. Again, the first thing we want to do is be able to see and draw the lightened shadow patterns as simply as possible. Although there's not a single correct solution to this problem, I would say that the primary line of termination is here. This line simply divides the most prominent shapes and forms of the figure into a lit side and a shadow side. Now, take a look at the glutes. You'll see that the glute on our left is casting a shadow onto the glute on our right. Finally, we can follow the line of termination down the left leg. I'm sure you've noticed that this line of termination doesn't capture all of the shadows. For example, the shadows on the foot and shadows on the lower back are not included in this simple line of termination, but the shadows we've left out or details that only make sense in the context of a larger lighting scheme. In gesture drawing, we're much more interested in creating a simple and dynamic sense of light and shadow. Only once the light and shadow patterns are understood simply like this, should we attempt to add more complexity. Now, we're going to take everything you've learned and pull it together into one demonstration drawing. The demonstration drawing you're about to see was done in under ten minutes. It was also done using the exact same tools and techniques that you learned in this course. As you watch this demonstration, I want you to note that even though I'm using the exact same elements that you've learned about in this course, I'm not using them in the same order that you learned them. Remember, the tools and techniques you've learned in this course are yours to use in whatever way you think is best, you should feel free to experiment with them to design your own gesture drawing process. But in this demonstration, I'm going to try and give you a sense of how I made the decisions that I made to give you a sense of how you should be thinking about the gesture drawing process, overall. You'll see me start with a primary action line. This is an attempt to simplify the pose into as few lines as possible. I started with the raised arm on our right and down the side of the torso on our right before flipping the line upward into are left with the intention of really communicating how high that hip is raised and pushed out. From there, I'll take the line down the outside contour of the leg toward the foot. Next, I'll draw a secondary action line, capturing the direction of the leg on our right, making sure that the foot on our right is lower than the foot on our left. This should all be done within the first minute of your gesture drawing. In fact, when I'm drawing, I try and get this done within the first 30 seconds. Hopefully you can see how well this simple collection of lines communicates that dynamic pose of the figure. Next you'll see me draw the axis lines for the shoulders and pelvis. Now everything at this point in the drawing is malleable, but the drawing becomes more solid as I add more information. Now I'll start to draw the two chambered shape for the torso. This is the first closed shape of the drawing with a torso in place, each new shape I draw needs to be drawn in relationship to it. Here you'll see me add this suprasternal notch and follow the sternocleidomastoid on our left up and around the shape of the head. With a suprasternal notch in place, I'll now draw other visible indications of the center line of the torso. For instance, the navel, as well as indications of the linear alba traveling out of the naval, both above it and below it. Here I'll indicate the direction of the arm on our left before adjusting the lines for the legs. I'm paying particular attention to the placement of the knees. Although you won't see much evidence of my measuring in this demonstration drawing, I'm always thinking in terms of measuring. I'm always making visual comparisons between the part of the body I'm drawing and the parts of the body that I've previously drawn. At this point, the figure is starting to solidify. This is roughly where you want your drawing to be within the first three minutes before I take the drawing any further or add any more detail, I want to make sure that the general shapes and proportions are working. I'm not seeing any major proportional errors. I'll begin the process of building the rest of the figure on top of this simple gesture drawing. Now there are some important differences between my drawing and the reference photo. My drawing is more exaggerated. I've made the pose more extreme. The upper torso that I've drawn is tilted more than the upper torso in the photograph. You can also see that I've pushed the hip out further to our left. This gives my drawing a greater sense of trauma and dynamism. You can see that I've drawn the breasts and now I'll start to give shape to the legs. You'll notice that as my drawing takes shape, the lines I'm drawing with are getting darker and sharper, but I'm still saving the darkest lines for later on in the drawing. Before I refine the head, I'm going to use my pencil to take a proportional measurement from the reference photo. What I learned is that the distance from the indention on the left side of the torso to the suprasternal notch is about the same as the distance from the suprasternal notch to the top of the head. As I refine the head, you'll notice that I initially drew it too big and now I'm moving the top of it down. To make sure I remember which line is more accurate, you'll see that I'm drawing this new top of the head using a darker line. Again, these adjustments are common and normal and you should expect that you'll make many of them while doing your gesture drawings. You'll see me make a similar adjustment to the arm on our left. I really like the way this drawing is turning out. Now I'll start to add some details to the contours, starting with the weight-bearing leg on our left. I'm using a strong dark line to emphasize the curve that occurs when the muscles of the leg flex as they bear the weight of the figure. Next, you'll see me draw the curve of the tibia on our left before adding some detail in the foot, you'll notice that I'm using the same tools and techniques that you learned about the feet in this course. Generally speaking, this is where your drawing should be around the five-minute mark, we have a dynamic statement of the entire pose. Although this doesn't always happen within the first five minutes, I try and include enough information in the drawing that someone could get into the pose just by looking at the drawing itself without seeing the model. With the entirety of the pose addressed, now I can start to shift to smaller details. In addition to drawing smaller details, you'll see me making subtle of refinements throughout the rest of the drawing. You'll notice that now I'm spending much more time crafting the contours of the figure, and I'm particularly interested in creating overlaps where the contour for one part of the body comes in front of an overlaps the contour of another part of the body. Overlaps help give that gesture a sense of depth and volume because they tell us which parts of the body are in front and which are behind. A good example of this can be found where the right side of the torso overlaps the line representing the scapula. The further the drawing gets the smaller the details get. I usually like to leave myself at least three minutes at the end of a gesture drawing for shading. Before I start the shading process, I'll ground the foot with an emphasis on the big toe, flesh out the raised arm and emphasize the naval. Now, I feel ready to begin the shading process, but before I do, I'd like to point out that not all of the drawing is equally finished. The leg on our right is left undone as is the arm on our left. Remember, this is very normal and perfectly fine for a gesture drawing. One interesting thing I'd like you to note is that the parts of the drawings that are most finished or the parts of the body that are associated with the initial primary action line. You can still strongly detect the beautiful S-shaped curve that runs from the elbow of the raised arm and down the side of the torso on our right before moving over to the hip on our left and then down to the foot. I'll now begin the shading process by drawing a simplified line of termination, the line that will divide the right side of the figure from the shadow side. In this first pass, you'll notice that I'm drawing the line of termination with a very light soft line and I am only drawing the most prominent direction changes in curvatures of the line of termination. Here you can see the shadow of the torso casting on to the leg on our right before continuing down the right side of the leg. I'll end this initial pass of the line of termination with a ball-shaped joint of the knee. I'll now draw a second line of termination on the leg on our left. Remember, a complex form like the figure may have many different lines of termination on the different parts of the body. Sometimes they connect and other times they do not. Here you'll see me draw a simplified line of termination for the face. There's not a specific order that you should address these lines of termination, but generally speaking, you want to address the biggest forms of the body first and work your way down to the smaller forms. Remember, in drawing, simplicity should always come before complexity. Now, that I've got a simplified line of termination for most of the parts of the body, I can make a second pass and start to record smaller details. On the second pass, you'll notice that the line I'm using is still soft but darker than the first pass. There are two reasons for this, first, it lets the second pass at the line of termination stand out from the first. Second, the second more detailed pass at the line of termination represents the core shadow, the darker band of shadow that runs down the line of termination before the shadow side gets lighter due to reflected light. I'd like you to notice how well this second and more detailed pass at the line of termination is able to describe numerous anatomical details that were left out in the rest of the gesture process. For example, the line of termination now helps describe individual ribs. Now, using the side of my pencil, you'll see me lay a light wash of value on the shadow side of the line of termination. I'm moving my pencil back and forth using parallels strokes. By using the side of my pencil, I'm able to make thick, soft lines that appear to unify into a single value. Now, that the largest and most prominent shadow shapes of this figure are drawn, I'll move around the drawing and refine the lines of termination, adding more and more detail and complexity to the drawing. The amazing thing about a well-crafted line of termination is that it has the power to describe all kinds of anatomical features on the surface of the body. Even if you don't have a strong sense of the bones and muscles that are creating these shifts enlightened shadow. As I mentioned before, this drawing was done from a 10 minute pose and I'm quickly running out of time. So now, I'm going to start thinking about what this drawing needs to have a sense of completion. This does not mean that all parts of the drawings need to be at an equal level of completion. Leaving parts of a gesture drawing unfinished, can add a sense of drama and mystery to the drawing and invites the viewer to help complete the illusion that you've created on the page. When I'm finishing a drawing, the question I ask myself is, what do I want to stand out to the viewer? There are three primary ways you can emphasize parts of your drawing. One, is to add darker and more refined contours, particularly contours that are drawn quickly and dynamically. You can find an example of this kind of line on the inside of the thigh, of the leg on our right. Another way to add emphasis is to darken the values, particularly at the line of termination. Thirdly, by adding more detail, detail draws people in and often distracts viewers from less finished parts of the drawing, leaving them with the impression that that drawing is more finished than it actually is. You can see all three of these emphasis strategies coming together at one of my favorite parts of the body to draw, the knees. Pay particular attention to the knee on our right. Another strategy that gives a sense of completion to a drawing is the grounding of the feet. Now, if I have drawn the head and a gesture drawing, and I don't always do. I think it's also important to block in the hair. Now, if you have time and you'd like to suggest some facial features, a detailed line of termination will often create a compelling illusion of the face. The trick here is not getting overly detailed. You'll notice that the facial features are implied using value, but they're not stated with any detail using contours. Remember, one of the goals of gesture drawing is to communicate as much information as you can, using as few lines and strokes as possible. As with any other parts of the drawing process this comes with practice. The pose time is nearly over, so I'd like to take just a moment to see if there are any final details I'd like to add. One of the most amazing things of that gesture drawing process is that any new thing you learned, whether it's anatomical or a technique, you can fold it into your gesture process. For the final touches I'll draw the shadow that the head is casting over the neck as well as flesh out the arm on our left just a little more. Time is up. This drawing took just under 10 minutes. It'll take a good amount of time in practice for you to be able to accomplish this much in a 10 minute pose. But hopefully this demonstration has given you a sense of how the gesture drawing process works as a whole, as well as how much can be accomplished in a short amount of time by drawing efficiently and passionately. Again, it's not about drawing fast, it's more about simplifying the figure and focusing on what's essential to the pose instead of getting mired in small details. Ultimately, there are no rules to gesture drawing. Every artist does it differently. But in this course, I've tried to introduce you to the elements that most master drawers are using most of the time. Good gesture drawing is at the foundation of all figure drawing. Underneath every more finished and rendered figure drawing is a dynamic gesture drawing, where the dynamics of the pose were first worked out in the basic forms of the body were drawn as simply as they could be. Gesture drawing is the first and most important step you can take toward learning how to do more complex figure drawings. But gesture drawings can also stand on their own as beautiful works of art. Some of my favorite drawings are gesture drawings that were done in under five minutes. Gesture drawings can be mysterious and ethereal or they can have more detail and a greater sense of light and shadow. But what they always share is a sense of beauty and dynamism that only comes from drawing with vitality and figure. For today's practice, you'll be drawing from three different practice reels. Each practice reel will contain one, 15 minute pose. This as an opportunity to bring together everything that you've learned in this course. As you practice today, draw boldly, experiment, have fun, and remember to focus more on your drawing process than the outcome. Good drawing is a byproduct of good process. I wish you the best of luck with your goals as an artist, it has sincerely been my pleasure and privilege to have played a role in your process of learning to draw. 36. Light & Shadow - Practice Reel Pt 1: Ten more minutes. Five more minutes. Three more minutes. One more minute. Ten more seconds.. 37. Light & Shadow - Practice Reel Pt. 2: 10 more minutes. Five more minutes. Three more minutes. One more minute. Ten more seconds. 38. Light & Shadow - Practice Reel Pt. 3: Ten more minutes. Five more minutes. Three more minutes. One more minute.