Day 15 (First Half) - Gestures/Lines of Action

Day 15 - 1st half.

Trying something a bit different today - posting half of day 15s work. Too tired to do it all in one night.

the drawings tonight come from the very awesome new sketchbook Deadlines 3 by Sanford Greene. It's totally subjective -but this is one of my absolute favourite sketchbooks of this con season. There are a ton of great sketchbooks out there -but this one is really dynamic. Sanford really pushes his drawings and isn't afraid to exaggerate. Both his sketches and colour work are exciting and that's why I like it so much.

To be clear - although all the gesture drawings I did are drawn from this sketchbook, I didn't take pictures of all the pages I drew from. I just took a few random photos of the sketchbook for you to get a sense of the type of book it is.

I continued to draw on 11 by 17 inch paper, doing as many gesture drawings as I could in 30 minutes. The drawings are a bit more sophisticated than stick figures (but only slightly). Key differences include rough shapes for the chest, as well as added curves to to break up the arms and legs into 2 parts each ( the part above and below the elbow and the part above and below the knees). Notice that for the legs and arms - I used curves rather than sticks to both describe the direction of the limbs as well as describing a bit of the form without going into great detail. When I eventually hit stage 2, I will tighten this up to get 3 dimensional forms.

Tonights drawings were done in order to give a clear example of what you should aim for in the first stage of drawing. The Gesture drawing should demonstrate Action and Attitude as well as proportion (of body parts to one another.) If you are new to drawing, doing a lot of gesture drawings is a great starting point. The key to see if it's working is to compare the gesture drawings to the images you are working from and decide if you've captured the Action/Attitude of those drawings.

Tomorrow I will draw several pages of stage 2 (volumes) in order to hopefully show clearly what you should aim for in that stage.

I am continuing to form my ideas about drawing as I go through this process. So if you notice any inconsistencies in my method or ideology, please feel free to comment so we can work them out and clarify.