<< music playing in background >>
My name is Chris Warner and today we are going to
be demonstrating Gesture drawing here in the Life Drawing studio. Gesture drawing is essentially
summing up the figure in totality and a holistic way in the first few moments of your drawing.
So typically a Gesture drawing might only be two or three minutes at most and the idea
is to convey the action, the movement, and the attitude of the figure. I'm going to sort
of breakdown the process where we do it very quickly and gesture it so I'm going to break
it down bit by bit here. Shirley is going to give us a pose here, a classic pose, we
call it the contra-posta pose, which means all your weight is on one foot, on her left
foot, on a the right hand side of course. What that means is, it's raising the pelvis
on that side higher, and her shoulder is dropping to meet it so there's kind of a compression
on her weight-bearing side. This the dynamic if you will that we want to try and capture
in our gesture. I'm going to start the drawing as we've talked about with a mark that simply
indicates the top of the composition but doesn't define the scale of it, and then I'm going
to try to find a mark that flows all the way through to the bottom of my composition. And
I'm already putting in something called a vertical reference mark, which has to be parallel
to the vertical edge of the page. But the next step would be to take that total length
and divide it in half and so we've got the axis of the shoulders and the axis of the
hips. What do I mean by axis? An axis is simply a line between two common parts or points
across a figure, and I establish it by literally putting my pencil across her shoulders and
transferring that angle or that direction to my drawing. You notice those marks are
nice and wide, the body will be something less than that. And them I'm going to come
down and make the same analysis of the tip or tilt of her hips, which I see as being
that - the axis of her hips. And now, knowing this axis of her shoulders determines that
her sternum is going to be at a right angle to that. That is going to be the major axis
of her rib cage. So as I begin to gesture in that egg for her rib cage, that's the orientation.
Very very important. And then we are going to try and honor the axis of her hips and
draw a bowl form that is a simplified description of her pelvis, and the bowl is going to tip
or spill forward if you will according the structure of the pelvis and the spinal column
of the back. I want to wrap her rib cage a little bit, maybe indicate a little bit of
her thoracic arch. And also I want to indicate as I see any indication of one side or the
other. You notice here I came in and found the near corner of her hip because I'm catching
a little bit of that depth dimension here on that side. And in this case I'm catching
just a little bit on this side, so I'll bring that indication of that near corner there
and I'll allow her neck to drop well below her shoulders into and near clavicles, okay.
Sternum. I'm going to look for her linea alba or her white line which is her center line.
And again the posture is very helpful here is indicating it is moving in this direction.
Okay. So sternum through the navel about here and into the pubic synthesis. The head or
skull raised up on that lovely neck, and then is a blocked form. And what you will typically
find in a contra-posta pose is that everything else is having various angles of change. The
head itself is very erect and straight. Just a center line and a horizontal mark might
just indicate the position of the features, just a little bit, very generic of course.
Nothing to dark and nothing within any sort of concern for detail. So what we've done
so far is to draw the rib cage, pelvis, and her skull. And those are the three great structures
of the upper half. And we know from the cannons or proportions of the human skeleton that
from the top of the head to the bottom of the foot, if you divide the skeleton in half,
you'll find the pubic synthesis and that of course is parallel to the great trochanter
of the femur, which are slightly broader than the lip of this bowl, so okay they are going
to flow out a little wider. Now we are going to check up on our leg length by simply multiplying
this by length times two. And what I'm finding is that actually my legs need to be just slightly
shorter than my initial assumption there. Now the next thing is to find the position
of that length relative to her head, and when I do that it comes right through this eye,
so I'm coming from this eye straight on down, and it's landing here, and that's going to
be the position of that weight bearing foot, which I will now sketch just very lightly,
entering inner and outer ankle and a little arc here between the two, and an indication
of her large toe should just about do the trick. Halfway from here, I'll pull a line
out of her great trochanter or pubic synthesis, that's that halfway mark, and I'll pull that
down to the bottom and then divide that in half to find the position of her knee. So,
rib cage, pelvis, skull, weight bearing foot. Notice I didn't draw the knee on my way down.
And now I come in here and find the position of the knee and this is just in terms of efficiency
you aren't going to be redrawing or resketching the leg length, having to resketch the knee
every time you'll get it pretty close the first time. Now what we know about the tibia
or shin bone as you can see has a a nice flow from the center of her knee to the inside
ankle. Will invest the leg, the skeletal analogy, with that flow right of the bat which is very
very important it has that swing to it. Now we can draw with some freedom and describe
the position of the off weight leg. I'm using an angle sight between a toe and heel here
to position that. Coming down and finding that knee halfway. You'll notice that this
is a little bit lower. When I angle sight between both knees, sure enough this needs to be a
little bit lower as well. Now I have a profile view of that tibia which yields a straighter
angle, a straighter line than this nice curve here that I'm going to catch here. Now the
arms and hands are last in our process. That's because of their relative weight, being light.
So they don't really affect the dynamic of the pose like the other heavier elements do.
So we are going to lay those in after everything else is in place, looking for the hand here.
Little indication of her thumb and maybe just a mitten form if you will for that hand, nothing
detailed at all. You might remember to draw that a hand a little thicker than it needs
to be because typically we want to make those things too small. I'll come down and draw
this hand in isolation. It's position relative to her pelvis and so on. A little indication
of her thumb, and then pull it back up, find that elbow. Make this analysis from elbow
to elbow, just to make sure. So this just quickly is the step by step process. Now what
I think I can do is a quick gesture. What I would normally do for my own kind of drawing
in a situation like this, based on that method.
Oh I broke my rule didn't I, put that knee in too early.
Well it turns out in drawing these rules are made to be broken, but I think
its really important to have a method. To have a sequential step by step approach to
things. So I hope this has helped you to understand a little bit about gesture and how important
it is. These finished drawings, which are beautiful in their completeness and their
detail, rely so importantly and so completely on that initial summation that happens in
the gesture phase. The first three minutes of the drawing are so important in order to
capture that actual movement and that attitude of the model.