hi there welcome to my studio, thank you for checking out this video
my name is Siobhan this is where i post videos about figure drawing and specifically how to
develop your own natural and responsive style of drawing through drawing the figure and i
also share my own process so if figure drawing is something that you're interested in or if you want
to learn how to develop a dynamic style of drawing then consider subscribing so we can stay in touch.
so today's video that i'm sharing with you is a drawing that i did
of the model from the new masters academy model series i'll leave a link in the description below
to the exact pose so that you can follow along with me and i wanted to talk about
how you can combine the two techniques of gesture and contour in one drawing
this approach is a great way to be able to draw the figure with detail and proportion but also
still keep some of that dynamic and expressive quality in your mark making so here's the video
i'll explain a bit more about the process as i go and i'll check back in with you at the
end
the gesture is always the first thing that i put down on paper
so my first marks are very very light you can you can't actually even see them here
but i'm trying to put down basically the direction and the movement of the pose
from head to toe so i'm not trying to break the figure up into sections just yet but really just
trying to fit that whole thing on the page and get a sense of that through these gestural marks
and i'm working with charcoal on compressed charcoal on newsprint paper and for the most
part when i'm working gesturally i try to use the side of the charcoal and kind of give it
those sweeping marks as much as i can so that for me really is what true gesture drawing is it's
about using big kind of sweeping marks that really very often don't even relate to the actual shape
or the outline of the model but they're important because they establish that dynamic quality of the
drawing and really can help you to set that up in the early phases and that's what this is all
about for me anyway the first half of the drawing is just using gesture marks really lightly it also
really helps me to map out the composition and to get proportion worked out without worrying
about making mistakes because all of these marks will eventually become the drawing in the end
for me using this very explorative way to kind of set a base for the drawing is great because
then you can go back in and you can work with a much more considered slower line and
that's where the contour line comes in so i use a contour line then to build on that base drawing
and i really love drawing like this gesture and contour are the two sides
i think of a total way of drawing that's grounded 100 in observation you actually don't need to do
all that much citing and measuring you're just using gesture in an explorative way
and then contour to be more specific so once i know that i've reached a stage where through the
gesture i feel that the composition is working i know where things are in terms of torso
head and legs then i'll find that it's better to move to a contour line and just pick out really
important contours at first so the really the edges of shapes and forms that will define the
pose like especially the legs in this standing pose those are important contours to pick out
so our contour line is generally slow and it's very considered and the point really
is that it's made with as much observation as you can it's almost like you're going to you
draw your contour lines without looking at the paper and just looking at the model if you can
when you combine that with your dynamic gestural marks then you really can express a lot through
your drawing but it also gives the drawing a really nice and a really good sense of rhythm
not all the lines then or all the marks are the same throughout the
drawing there's a nice variation there's a tempo when you combine both ways of drawing
whenever i'm finding it very difficult to draw a certain aspect of the pose like
you know the arm that's bent or the length of the leg i don't know really how to get
that without sort of measuring then i will use a controlled contour line to figure out the shape
because if it's well observed i find that a contour line will always give you a true shape
for the very last part of the drawing i just indicated with a few marks the
features of the face without going into too much detail i didn't want to get drawn into
that area necessarily because i've actually felt that the rest of the drawing was working
well as a loose study and i didn't want to get too bogged down in drawing a portrait i thought that
would detract from the lightness of the rest of the pose but that's just a personal choice
and you could obviously spend more time using a contour line if you want to draw the features
but i guess i chose in this instance just to leave it a bit more unfinished
so i really hope this was helpful to you and let me know if you've got any questions
if you want to know more about contour drawing i do have a longer video about that about contour
and blind contour so i'll leave a link to that below and you can check that out if you want
thank you so much for watching this video i really appreciate it and for sticking with me right to
the end please say hi in the comments or let me know what your thoughts are about gesture drawing
and about how you use gesture and contour in your figure drawing studies i'd love to hear from you
give the video a like if you think it's worthwhile and be sure to subscribe if
you haven't already so that we can stay in touch i try to post a video every week
thanks again for watching and i'll see you in the next video