Gesture

Today, I felt that I had a breakthrough in my Figure Drawing II class. My professor Tendai Johnson always says that you know you've improved as an artist when you "surprise yourself" and I was greatly surprised today when we finished up our gesture drawings. In class, Professor Johnson always begins work with gesture drawings starting with 30 seconds, then 60 seconds, then 2 minutes. As I continued to draw, I noticed how much more overworked my gestures became with the increase in time. On the last drawing, I thought to myself about what people have told me the past few weeks. (Pictured left: A gesture from late 2009)

At the beginning of the winter semester at my current college, Professor Johnson approached me when he noticed how quickly I worked. In regards to the poor quality of my pieces he said that I was impatient. It was shocking to me to hear that, but after a moment, I realized what he said was true. Even in my better pieces, I recalled not ever pondering the way I made a mark or formed a highlight or shadow. I rushed through every part of the figure only thinking of perfection. So, I decided to work more slowly.

Yesterday, I submitted the nude figure (pictured in my last post) to an artwork/critique image board asking for opinions. I mentioned that the piece took 45 minutes and someone commented what I had shown could have been accomplished in five minutes. "This may seem counter-intuitive" he said, "but you should work faster." I thought this was a paradox: I should not be impatient, but I should work faster. After these thoughts came to mind today, I began blocking in values as a gesture rather than creating line or mass. When we posted it up on the wall to view, I was shocked at how good it was. I didn't step back but maybe once during the production of this one gesture and the simple values and planes seemed well-placed. It was a very successful drawing. (mentioned gesture seen below)


Gestures should be one of the first drawing techniques an artist learns, but I never even heard the term until the summer of 2007. My first 100 gesture drawings seemed to follow things I had seen in How-To-Draw books: using circular shapes to describe structure. The problem was, however, that I did not know the first thing about the human body and even if I did, the technique the books encouraged would result in stiff, lifeless figures. As I progressed, I learned to loosen up and view the body as a whole rather than separate pieces and I believe today was a great revelation: to work quickly, but patiently.

I also applied such an idea to the later 30 minute long torso study here:


It's not all perfect, but it's a start.