Gesture Drawing Explorations: Expressive & Experimental Figure Drawing

1. Gesture Drawing Explorations Trailer: Welcome to Gesture Drawing Explorations. I'll be your instructor, Brent Eviston. I created this course so I could give students the experience of some of the more creative, expressive, and experimental sides of the gesture drawing process. Now as important as the more practical aspects of gesture drawing are, there are so many lessons we can learn from the experimental and creative parts of the gesture drawing process. In this course, you're going to be introduced to three different kinds of gesture drawing. Each one will make you see the figure in a completely new and different way than you have before. By engaging in these more creative and expressive forms of gesture drawing, you'll see improvements in your more traditional figure drawing. Whether you're looking at master drawings from renaissance artists or contemporary comic book illustrators, all of them are going well beyond what they see. They're exaggerating. They're experimenting. They're choosing what details they want to include and what they want to leave out. They're dramatizing their figures. Some of the tools and techniques that allowed them to do this, you're going to learn in the next few lessons. Here are the three different types of gesture drawing you're going to learn in this course. First, you'll do straight line studies. In this exercise, you'll draw the figure using only straight lines. These straight lines will meet at angles. This kind of drawing will reveal just how dynamic and structured the figure really is. Next, you'll learn elliptical modeling. In this exercise, you'll draw swirling ellipses to create volumes. This is a perfect counterpoint to the angular straight line studies from the previous exercise. Elliptical modeling will teach you how to see volumes as a whole and to understand their orientation in space. Elliptical modeling will push you to see the figure even more volumetrically than you have in the past. It teaches you how to see volumes as a whole and understand their orientation in space. Finally, you'll learn dynamic exaggeration. One of the most important truths you need to learn as an artist is that nearly all great figurative art is exaggerated. The proportions, pose, dynamics, and anatomy are enhanced for dramatic effect. Learning how to do this is one of the most essential skills you can learn as an artist. The lessons within these exercises are invaluable. If you want your figures to be dynamic and beautiful, to push the boundaries of figure drawing, this is where you're going to learn to do that. Enroll in Gesture Drawing Explorations today. 2. Straight Line Studies: Welcome to Gesture Drawing Explorations. I'll be your instructor, Brent Eviston. I created this course so I could give students the experience of some of the more creative, expressive, and experimental sides of the gesture drawing process. This course is a companion course to my first gesture drawing course titled, The Art and Science of Figure Drawing Gesture. Now if you haven't yet taken my first gesture drawing course, I strongly recommend you do so. This course builds on that first gesture drawing course. As always, I'd like to remind my students that if you're new to drawing, I highly recommend going through the original art and science of drawing series before attempting any figure drawing courses. Now in my first gesture drawing course, I focused on the more practical side of the gesture drawing process. I taught a process that students could use as a first step toward more finished figure drawings. But there is so much more to gesture drawing than what I was able to focus on in that first course. Now as important as the more practical aspects of gesture drawing are, there are so many lessons we can learn from the experimental and creative parts of the gesture drawing process. In this course, you're going to be introduced to three different kinds of gesture drawing. Each one will make you see the figure in a completely new and different way than you had before. By engaging in these more creative and expressive forms of gesture drawing, you'll see improvements in your more traditional figure drawing. Now it's important to note that the following exercises are not intended to yield finished work. These are simply exercises. These exercises provide a forum for you to have new and interesting experiences with the figure. In them you're going to learn lessons that you will not learn from more traditional kinds of figure drawing. Now when you draw the figure, if all you're doing is attempting to copy what you see, if your only goal is to create a facsimile of reality, then you are missing the point of figure drawing. Figure drawing is an art form and art requires us to make decisions about what we want to communicate to our viewers. Whether you're looking at master drawings from Renaissance artists or contemporary comic book illustrators, all of them are going well beyond what they see. They're exaggerating, they're experimenting, they're choosing what details they want to include and what they want to leave out. They're dramatizing their figures. They are not simply trying to capture reality. They're trying to create art work that enhances reality, that in a way seems more real than reality. Some of the tools and techniques that allow them to do this, you're going to learn in the next few lessons. Here are the three different types of gesture drawing you're going to learn in this course. First, you'll do straight line studies. In this exercise, you will draw the figure using only straight lines. These straight lines will meet at angles. This kind of drawing will reveal just how dynamic and structured the figure really is. Next, you'll learn elliptical modeling. In this exercise, you'll draw swirling ellipses to create volumes. This is a perfect counterpoint to the angular straight line studies from the previous exercise. Elliptical modeling will teach you how to see volumes as a whole and to understand their orientation in space. Elliptical modeling will push you to see the figure even more volumetrically than you have in the past. It teaches you how to see volumes as a whole and to understand their orientation in space. Finally, you'll learn dynamic exaggeration. One of the most important truths you need to learn as an artist is that nearly all great figurative art is exaggerated. The proportions, pose dynamics, and anatomy are enhanced for dramatic effect. Learning how to do this is one of the most essential skills you can learn as an artist. Now some of these exercises may seem strange to you. You may not see how they're immediately applicable in the figure drawing process. But trust me, the lessons within these exercises are invaluable. If you want your figures to be dynamic and beautiful, to push the boundaries of figure drawing, this is where you're going to learn to do that. In this course, you'll see me drawing on 18 by 24 inch white paper. Now for those of you who have taken my other courses, you may be surprised to see you that in two out of the three lessons, I'm going to be drawing with ballpoint pen using the traditional tripod grip. In the third lesson, I'll just be using my usual drawing pencil. But as always, you can go through these projects with whatever you have on hand. You're free to use pen or pencil or whatever else you may have access to. Thank you so much for joining me in this course. Let's get started with straight line studies. The materials I'll be using are very simple. Just a white sheet of paper, and a ballpoint pen. I'm using a ballpoint pen, because they put out an even line weight. I don't need to use soft lines or thick lines. But as always, you're welcome to use whatever materials you have on hand. Now for those of you who have taken many courses of mine, you'll be surprised to see that I'm using the tripod grip. Once again, this is because I'm not varying the quality of the line. This exercise works best when drawing with a uniform line weight. This allows us to completely focus on the direction, length, and placement of each line. Now remember, our goal is to create a gesture drawing using exclusively straight lines. Just like a regular gesture drawing, we want to start off by finding the primary action line. A line that distills the action of the pose down to its essence. I'm going to derive my straight lines from the edges of the figure. I'll begin with the line at the left upper edge of the torso from where we see the corner of the ribcage jutting out up toward the neck. From there, I'll come down from the corner of the ribcage towards the leg that is projecting forward. You'll see me draw a small line to show where these two lines meet. From there, I'm going to send a line down the front of the leg that is projecting backward. With this primary action line now established, I'll begin to flesh out the larger parts of this figure, specifically the torso and the leg projecting forward. Now because I'm drawing using straight lines, I need to be very conscious of where I'm deciding these lines should change direction, and of course, straight lines do not come together in curves. They come together at sharp angles. To see this in action, let's take a look at the upper contour of the leg projecting forward. We can see in the reference photo that there is a strong curve as the contour travels over the quadriceps and down towards the knee. You can see that I've simplified this curve into two lines. Now there's no single correct way to do this, but your goal should be to simplify curves into as few straight lines as possible. With this in mind, I'll head down toward the feet. Now, drawing using all of these straight lines and angles should make you more aware of the relationships between different parts of the body. For example, take a look at where the left side of the model's neck meets the line for the shoulders. They come together at a very specific point in space. From there, it becomes clear to me that that point in space travels down, hits the corner of the ribcage that's projecting and continues down and hits the knee. All of these line up on a straight line. You'll see me draw the straight line that connects them. Thinking in terms of straight lines and angles will make these kinds of relationships jump out at you more. Here you can see I've indicated the location of the feet. Although the feet are close to being in horizontal alignment, the foot on our right is actually slightly higher. You'll see me draw a straight line to connect the feet and to show this relationship. Before I add any more detail, I want to check the relationship between the back of the shoulders, and the bottom of the foot on our right, specifically where it comes in contact with the ground plane. It's important that I make sure these big relationships and angles are properly drawn before I add any detail. Now, I'm sure there are some minor inaccuracies, but all in all, my simplified straight line gesture appears to accurately capture the dynamics of this pose. From here, I'm going to use shorter lines to start breaking down the details. Even as I address smaller details, my goal will be to use as few straight lines as possible to communicate the forms of the subject. As I work through this drawing, I'd like to talk about some of the benefits of this exercise. Working with straight lines and angles reveals the underlying structure of a pose. When working primarily with curves, as you would in a normal figure drawing, it's easy to get caught up in the looseness of the pose. We tend to focus on the curves rather than the structure. But when we force ourselves to think and draw only using straight lines, we become much more aware of the direction these forms are traveling, the relationships between them, and the structure that undergirds the curves. Again, one of the main goals of this course is to force your mind to think about the figure in completely different ways than you normally would. Each new and different way you can think about the figure will reveal different relationships, characteristics, and organizing principles of a pose. Now when I described this exercise, many students assume that it will yield a stiff drawing. But hopefully you can see that these straight lines reveal the opposite. When all of these angles come together, they reveal just how dynamic the structure of the pose really is. After practicing this exercise many times, you'll find that the contours in your drawings will become more structured and you'll be more likely to capture that dynamic and dramatic angles in a pose. You can even use this technique to draw the line of termination and separate light from shadow. Now you're welcome to take these kinds of drawings as far as you like. But remember, these are just studies, they're just exercises. They are a forum for you to have a new experience with the figure and to learn something. These are not intended to yield finished drawings. Here's another drawing I've done using exclusively straight lines. This drawing was done with graphite pencil. The specific materials you use aren't really important. What is important is that you challenge yourself to think about the figure in completely new ways. Hopefully you can see that these straight lines and angles really showcase the dynamism of the pose. There's not a true vertical or true horizontal line in this drawing, everything comes down to angles. Accurately capturing these angles in your drawing is what's going to give you a truly dynamic and dramatic pose. With all of this in mind, let's get you practicing. Each lesson in this course contains two practice reels. Each practice reel contains two poses at eight minutes each. Now, I'm assuming you've already taken my first gesture course and that you're familiar with how these practice reels work. While practicing today, remember, these are gesture drawings, so it's not important that you finish these drawings. Your goal is to work quickly and efficiently, not getting caught up in details, but distilling each post to its essence according to the technique you're practicing. Get setup to draw and then begin the practice reels. 5. Elliptical Modeling: In this exercise, you'll be modeling the forms of the body using volumes created entirely out of ellipses. You will not be drawing any outer contours. Once again, for this project, I'll be using a ballpoint pen. Now before you start this gesture exercise, there's some practice I recommend you do. In this exercise, you'll be creating round volumes using ellipses. What makes this technique unique is that you will not be drawing any outer contours to craft your volumes. Instead, you're going to be swirling your drawing tool, making numerous ellipses. These ellipses will come together to create the illusion of a volume. Here you can see me swirl my pen around, making the motion of ellipses. The width of my volume is determined by how wide the ellipse is that I'm starting with. As I make this swirling motion for the ellipses, I'm also moving my hand, giving the volume length. Some volumes you draw today will have a uniform width, while others make it thicker or thinner in certain places. One of the most important things to practice is only darkening one side of the ellipses. Although you can see me making the motion of a full ellipse, my pen is only coming into contact with the paper on either the top or bottom of these ellipses. If you look at the top of each volume that I've drawn, you can see that some of them appear to be tilting toward us, while others appear to be tilting away from us. Finally, you'll notice that each of these volumes has an axis, a particular tilt in space, and the volume on the bottom left is curving, which means of course, that it has a curve to axis. Volumes like these are the building blocks we will use to construct our gesture drawings in this exercise. Let's get to it. As always, you'll see me begin with the largest volume. In this drawing, that's going to be the upper torso. If it helps, you can mark the top and the bottom of the volume you're going to draw. With the top and bottom ellipses indicated, I've established the length and an approximate axis. You'll notice that for this volume, I'm darkening only the top of the ellipse. This gives the impression that the upper torso is tilting back. It creates the illusion that we can see up into the bottom of the torso, but not the top. During my first pass, I didn't make the torso wide enough. I'm going to go over it again, this time, making it a little wider. You'll probably need to do this a lot during today's practice. Now we have a volume for the upper torso that has a width, a height, and a specific orientation in space. We can clearly see that the top is tilting away from us. This is one of the reasons this exercise is so powerful. It forces us to understand and focus directly on the orientation of each volume in space. Now I'll work on the lower torso containing the pelvis. For this volume, I'm darkening only the bottom of the ellipse. This creates the illusion that we can see into the top of the bowl for the pelvis. Together, these two volumes create a powerful illusion. We can really see and feel the torso opening up in the center. While focusing primarily on contours as we wouldn't in a more traditional drawing, it's so easy to lose sight of the volumes that make up the figure. This exercise reverses that problem. In this exercise, not only do we focus on the volumes directly, but we're not even drawing any contours. Instead of tracing a contour around the volume, we are actually sculpting the volumes out of ellipses. After doing this exercise many times, it will solidify in your mind the fact that every part of the figure is a volume that has a specific length, width, and an orientation in space. Here you'll see me go through the same process to construct the legs. Notice that the ellipses of the leg on our left are more open, communicating that this leg is turned towards us slightly more than the leg on our right. Next, I'll draw the head. The head is more of an egg shape or an ovoid. The ellipsis tell us that the top of the head is tilting away from us. Another strategy you can use to help you draw these volumes is to draw the axis line first. Here, you can see that I've drawn the curved axis line for the entire arm. Having the axis line already drawn makes it much easier for me to focus on the changing width of the arm as it travels down. For example, the egg-shaped shoulder of the arm is wider than the cylindrical part of the arm directly below it. As we arrive at the forearm underneath this cylinder, the arm widens once again before narrowing towards the wrist. Now I'll work my way through the drawing, fleshing out any part of the body that I haven't already drawn. You'll also see me making refinements, widening some parts of the body, and trying to make others a little more slender. It's worth noting that it's much easier to make a volume wider than it is to try and make it more slender. To add girth, we just need to widen the ellipses, but take a look at the shoulder on our left. While drawing in pen, my first attempts at the shoulder, which were a little too wide, stay on the page. I need to draw a much darker to help the viewer focus on the more accurate part of the volume. This kind of drawing takes quite a bit of practice. But hopefully, you can see the value in training your brain to think purely in terms of volumes, which will in turn bring a much greater sense of three-dimensionality and volume to your more traditional figure drawings. Now let's take a look at a couple of other examples. In this drawing, the top of the torso is tilting toward us. As the torso travels down, it also goes back in space, followed by the leg on our left, which is also going back in space. The volumes of the torso and the leg on our left work together to create a dramatic illusion of a funnel-shaped volume projecting backward and forward in space. Now take a look at the smaller volumes that make up the arms. Notice that each arm has a distinct direction and orientation in space, and this is communicated entirely through ellipses to emphasize the volumetric quality of the pose. In the previous lesson, you learned how to do straight line studies. Straight line studies can emphasize the dramatic angles in a pose, but they tend to look a little flat. Now let's take a look at the same pose drawn with the elliptical modeling technique I've just demonstrated. Notice that these drawings are almost opposite to one another. This drawing has no straight lines in it, but it really focuses on volume, roundness, and orientation in space. The same pose drawn in different ways can teach us completely different things about the figure. Now let's get you practicing. Before you draw from today's practice reel, remember to practice these kinds of elliptical volumes on their own. Practice drawing ovoids and cylinders using this technique. You can also practice curving and tapering them. Once you feel like you're ready, proceed to the first practice reel. 8. Dynamic Exaggeration: Dynamic exaggeration is my absolute favorite form of figure drawing. In fact, every single drawing I do uses some form of exaggeration. The vast majority of figurative art created by masters, regardless of whether it's classical drawing or painting or contemporary comics and illustration is using some form of exaggeration. In this demonstration, you'll see me using more traditional drawing techniques. You'll see me using the overhand grip to draw with an oil-based colored pencil. I'll begin with a primary action line. But as I'm doing so, I'm intentionally trying to make it more extreme than what I see in the pose. I'll start with the line from the top of the rib cage down to the leg projecting backward on our right. But I'd like you to notice that I didn't simply try and capture the direction of the back leg. I've extended it out further and it's going in a more extreme direction. It's as if the model were deepening her lunge even further. As I'm looking at the primary action line, I'm noticing that the ribcage is not as exaggerated as I would've liked. This is actually very common. Remember the tendency of the human brain is to stiffen the pose. Oftentimes when we feel like we're exaggerating, we're simply just capturing what's actually there. Now you'll see me tilt the ribcage back even more. Now I'll start to flesh out the torso a little more. It's important to remember that not every part of the figure needs to be exaggerated. You want to make decisions. For example, I'm drawing the width of the torso as well as the bowl for the pelvis pretty much as I see them. The torso is already going to seem exaggerated because I tilted the ribcage back. I don't need to also exaggerate the tilt of the pelvis. This isn't a hard and fast rule. It's just how I'm reacting to this particular pose. This is why it's critical to practice this gesture drawing a lot, to familiarize yourself with the body, to experiment and to see what exaggerations will work. After fleshing out the torso a bit, you'll now see me gesture the front leg. As you can see, I've drawn the leg projecting outward and forward more than I see in the pose itself. I've also extended the leg, making it longer than it appears in the reference photo. This wasn't intentional. I just got caught up in the flow of the drawing. But I like the way it looks. I'm keeping it. Extending the length of the legs is actually incredibly common in both fashion design illustration as well as comic book drawing. Next, I'll head up towards the clavicles. I think the curvature of the clavicles is very beautiful. I'm going to overemphasize the curvature of the clavicles as well as extend the gesture line well beyond the figure. Extending gesture lines is an interesting exaggeration. It's a technique I use often to suggest movement, fluidity, and dynamism outside of the figure. Extended gesture lines operate almost like motion blurs. They can give the viewer a dramatic sense of time and movement. Even in my more realistic figure drawings, I tend to leave these extended gesture lines ghosted in the background. From here, you'll see me fleshing out the various parts of the body as I'm doing so, if a part of the body is a little curved, I'll make it much more curved. You can see this best in the upper arm. The arm in the reference photo is a little straighter, but the arm and my drawing tends to curve much more. You can see me doing this in the back leg as well. In the reference photo, the back leg appears to project out a little more straight, but in my drawing, I've emphasized the S curve. As I finish this drawing, it's important to note that I'm not demonstrating the one correct way to do this. I'm experimenting. I didn't start off with the plan for this gesture that I'm following through on, nor did I try and draw this pose before I demonstrated it. You're seeing me experiment in real time. Before we get you to your practice, there are a few other exaggerations I'd like to point out. First, is that you can see that I've actually turned the ribcage slightly more toward the viewer. This helps emphasize the twist, which adds a little more drama intention to the drawing. I've also exaggerated the appearance of the thoracic arch. You'll notice that it's much more visible in my drawing than it is in the reference photo. I've also tilted the head back a little more. These gesture drawings should not be thought of as precious drawings that need to be finished or resolved. These are experiments. Some of them will work and some of them won't, and that's perfectly fine. But the more of these exercises you do, the more comfortable you'll become with exaggeration, you'll be able to tell in advance what exaggerations will work in a drawing and which should be avoided. There's no concrete list of which exaggerations will work and which won't. It's a very subjective process. Finally, you'll see me gesture the line of termination and separate the light from the shadows. Even the line of termination is slightly exaggerated. Now maybe you like this type of drawing and maybe you don't. The important thing is that I'm experimenting to figure out how I like to draw, and that's what you should be doing as well. Now, as important as I think it is to compare drawings to reference photos, I think it's equally important to look at drawings on their own without seeing the reference they were drawn from. This allows us to see what the language of drawing communicates all on its own. In this trio, the drawing on the left and the drawing in the center should be familiar to you. The drawing on the right is drawn from the same references, the other two photos. But here I've used dynamic exaggeration to push the expressive aspects of the drawing. The drawing on the right was a quick study that took somewhere between 7-10 minutes. Now it's easy to look at a drawing like this and assume that the artist is just copying reality. But a closer inspection will reveal some dramatic exaggerations that I've made. First, take a look at the leg on our right. I've extended this leg back much further than it actually appeared, and I've curved it much more. Real human legs don't curve this way. Or at least not this dramatically. I've tried to exaggerate the curvature just enough to add drama and dynamism to the drawing without making the leg appear broken. How far you can push curvatures like this is somewhat subjective. That's why it's important for you to experiment to see what looks right to you. Now let's take a look at the arm that's coming in front of the torso. Once again, you can see that I've dramatized and exaggerated the curves. In particular, take a look at the forearm. The entire forearm has a bend to it that is not naturally found in real people. Real forearms curves somewhat, but I've exaggerated this curve for dramatic effect. Is it realistic? No. Is it dramatic? Yes. Now because this is a quick study, I feel much more free to experiment. Some of these experiments work and others don't. That's to be expected. But what I found overall is that these quick experimental gesture drawings yield some of my very favorite drawings that I've ever done. These drawings have a vitality to them that you just don't find in more finished work. In fact, the unfinished quality of these drawings is what makes them so compelling to viewers. Leaving parts of a drawing unfinished invites the viewer to participate in the illusion. Most viewers really love the feeling of their minds having to assemble images of a figure from pigments smeared across a page. When we look at this quick study up-close, we can see how rough some aspects of it really are. But we can also see numerous dramatic enhancements. For example, every curve in the outer contour, I've curved just a little more than I observed in reality. I've increased the contrast between light and shadow, dramatizing the overall lighting effects. Nearly every line in this drawing was drawn quickly and passionately. This is important because most viewers can tell whether a line was drawn quickly or slowly. Viewers tend to prefer lines that were drawn quickly. They evoke a more emotional response. Now let's take a look at a more finished drawing in which I've used these techniques. Now this drawing took somewhere between 30 and 45 minutes. It's much more detailed than the previous drawing we just looked at. But hopefully you can see many of the same techniques being used. The arms are slightly elongated. The curvatures of the individual limbs, as well as the contours have been enhanced. The light and shadow had been traumatized to make the musculature appear more dramatic. Many parts of the drawing are left unfinished, inviting the viewer to participate in the illusion and while gesture lines flow freely around the drawing, giving the drawing an enhanced sense of movement and dynamism. Now, as somebody who absolutely loves drawings, I actually prefer dynamic drawings like this to more finished drawings. Often a drawing that's too finished or too realistic, appears uninviting to me. Now this is purely subjective, but ask yourself, would your drawings be improved by having more drama and more dynamism? If your answer is yes, then these experiments with dynamic exaggeration are an excellent way to achieve that. I know this course is much shorter than some of my other courses, but I just wanted to give you a sense of some of the creative things you can do with gesture drawing. Experimenting with gesture drawing, using different materials and drawing the figure in new ways are all excellent ways for you to have new experiences with the figure. The lessons you've learned in this course will hopefully allow you to push your figure drawings to new creative and expressive areas. Well, again thank you so much for joining me and I hope to see you in other courses.