5.1

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Welcome to module 4, and welcome to gesture drawing foundations. In this module we're going to look at

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what gesture is, the kinds of gestures, the kinds of ways we want to see gestures, and gesture drawing

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and really just understand "what is gesture?", "what is gesture?".

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So a lot of the time when you think about gesture drawing, you probably have this idea in your mind that

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people are doing, kind of, life drawing. Maybe life drawings from photos or life drawings from, you know,

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real models.

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But the truth really is that, those artists are attempting to try to capture the essence, or the core

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of the pose.

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And that really is what gesture drawing is- capturing the core or the essence of the figure, of the form.

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But more importantly, once you understand how to capture it and how to see it, that you will then be able

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to utilize this knowledge, to give your characters feeling and emotion and life. Because this course obviously

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isn't a figure drawing course, it's a character drawing course, and characters are very much full of personality,

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full of life.

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They can relate to one another, they can relate to the viewer.

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And people just feel inspired and motivated and they believe in this sort of life that you're putting

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into the page. So gesture is very very very important.

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A good way to think about gesture, sort of at its core, is that it really is the soul, the point, the entire

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kind of, overall message or structure of a pose, or of a character's sort of emotions in a sense, it's

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the core, kind of the foundation of it. And you'll hear me using different words like this: core and

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essence and the directional flow, and things like that

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when we talk about gesture. So gestures very very important. And gesture falls into the shape category.

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So it's very much falling into our, kind of, compositional category, we're looking at in terms of a strictly drawing

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type of sense, it would fall into shape.

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It's got everything to do with how we think about dynamic shapes, and how we structure the foundations

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or that shape, the composition of the pose, and things like that. So it's important to remember that it

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falls into shape.

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So, the way we're going to be learning about gesture is, instead of just having this kind of vague idea

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where, you know, we're going to be drawing figure drawings off photos, we're going to learn gesture

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in four, five, four or four ways.

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Right.

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And the first way is directional flow shapes.

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Now as we've learned, we know that, sort of, static shapes, they don't seem to have any directionality, but

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when we bend them, we can give them a sense of directionality.

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So the first way we will be learning about gestures, is by doing directional flow gestures, and I'll do a example

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over here, so that we can get a sense of what that's going to be like.

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And so, directional flow gestures, would be just focusing really on flat shapes, and not thinking too much

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about forms, and just feeling out the gestures.

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So, I'll just do something very basic here, and you may be recognizing some of these general, some of the general

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flow, from us doing the form module in module 3.

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So this would be directional flow shapes, Let's call it directional flow shapes

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or really just shape gestures.

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So we're not thinking about form , and this is really important that we grasp this, that we're understanding,

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that we're grabbing this type of silhouette, it's just very flat, but still very readable, types of shapes and

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directional flow shapes, right.

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And then we'll be doing form, dynamic form gestures.

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So we'll kind of take our directional form, directional flow shape gestures here, and we will then add

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form onto them, which we hopefully know how to do, and I'm going to actually put this in a different color,

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and we'll start building those basic forms on top of the gestures.

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And kind of, imagining all of our structures.

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Put some center lines there, so that we can get that sense that the forms are based on the directional

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flow, or the energy, kind of, flow gestures, right. Directional, directional energy, and the directional movement.

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Kinetic energy through the forms.

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So then here we have form based gesture, and then we'll be doing anatomical gestures.

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Where we're going to combine our shape and our form knowledge, and we hopefully going to then use our

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anatomical knowledge that we learned from the reference material, to build on top of what we have here,

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I'm just going to lighten this a little bit.

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And we will then start utilizing the reference, and building anatomy on top of these structures.

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Obviously I'm doing this out of my head here.

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I'm going to imply some anatomical forms here, the pecs and the pelvis.

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OK.

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So we want to, we want to grasp gestures from a fundamental perspective first, before we start getting

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into doing crazy hard core life drawings, where, you know, if you had to just start out with that without

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any decent fundamental knowledge, you would probably not be very successful for a long time, and you'd waste

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a lot of time trying to figure out why you weren't being very successful.

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So this would be our anatomical gestures, where we're looking at references and drawing out those gestures,

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and we will certainly get into that in the next few lessons.

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And then last but not least, we will then do life gestures, right, life gesture drawing and you may be like "Well what

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the heck is that?" Well once we know the shape, and the form, and we have a good understanding of the anatomy

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of the gestures.

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And we've also been doing on a daily anatomy studies, then we can actually move into life based gestures,

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where we're looking at people and we're doing that typical thing, maybe where you sit at the coffee shop,

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and you're looking at people walk by, and you're trying to capture the entire gesture of the person as

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quickly as possible.

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So for example, a typical life based gesture, might be something like this.

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And it's not really, I'm not doing some crazy drawing here.

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Let's see, I'm going to draw something like this, maybe something like that,

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quickly just doing, almost a scribble if you wish, but just trying to get the gesture, and we have an

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old lady with a stick, or an old man with a stick or what have you.

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And these are sort of life based gestures, or life gestures, where we're trying to quickly capture overall forms

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of things, for example, perhaps a man waiting at a bus stop, might look something like this, and he's got a sling

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bag on him.

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He's quite a broad man, he's wearing a hat.

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So these are really the life gestures.

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So we want to think of gestures in these categories.

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So let's just take a look at them one more time.

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We have our shape based gestures, which are what we're going to be learning first, then form, then an anatomical

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gestures, and then we're going to look at life gestures, and all of these gesture work is done from life.

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We want to learn gesture from life, so that when we're drawing imaginatively, we have strong, strong, strong,

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foundations on how to capture those, those movements and that energetic feeling, and the dynamic

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flow of the human forms, in those characters, and even more so, once again reiterating, that we want to

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then be able to imbue how the character is feeling, what the character is thinking, and then utilize what

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we know of gesture to better communicate these aspects of our characters, who our characters are, how they're

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feeling, what they're doing, what they're anticipating, and so on and so forth.

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Last but not least, and this is a very, very, very important point that I want you to remember throughout

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your drawing career, hopefully for the rest of your life, but especially while we're doing this module,

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and it's really one of the main fundamental points of gesture drawing, is that you need to exaggerate

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the gesture, Alright, exaggerate the gesture.

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And the reason you need to exaggerate it, particularly just the basic gesture of the form, is when you're

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doing a drawing and you're kind of getting your dynamic forms going, and you're doing like a cool, you

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know, you're trying to get all these kind of nice dynamism happening in the piece, and so on.

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If you don't tilt things enough, twist things enough, and do adequate rotations, and push the actual

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pose, push the pose, and really try to make it as exaggerated as possible, and not overly exaggerated, but fairly

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exaggerated.

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What happens is when we get to the cleanup stage, where we are now putting in some clean lines, and we're

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detailing, and we're drawing in the face, and we're drawing the anatomy in, and the clothes, and the hair, what happens

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is, if the gesture is not exaggerated enough underneath, then when you start adding the details, and adding

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the anatomy, and the clothes, and the accessories, and all the other elements to the character; it can tend to

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kill the gesture a little bit.

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So basically adding details, and adding these elements, kills, or really tones down the initial gesture.

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That's why it's important that we need to exaggerate the gesture a little bit, so that we are compensating

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for that, sort of, toning down effect that adding detail can have to a character drawing.

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OK, so remember, exaggerate the gesture, exaggerate the gesture, and you will see, maybe even if you exaggerate

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a little too much, that when you do start adding the details, the details tend to really, tone the gesture

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down quite a bit.

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So, very important point, exaggerates the gesture.

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Let's not forget that.

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Right.

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That's the end of the intro to the module.

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Let's get into it.

5.1

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