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How to best study gesture? My drawings just feel altogether stiff
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Don't just draw the gesture. Be the gesture.
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>>3071169
Practice forms and then start using those frames (with like the lines on the face and stuff) when drawing, it helps with the structure
They help because you can do the expression and form first and better, and not have to worry as much later
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>>3071169
you have to do more than draw, you have to FEEL the form
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>>3071169
worst thing is to go ahead and draw gesture from the start. You have to know what you're drawing if you're going to simplify it. Start maybe by seeing the gesture in individual body parts and get some structure first before you dive into the whole gesture thing
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>>3072756
The fuck?
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>>3072756
don't listen to this retard
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>>3072911
>He's not wrong
Except he and you are indeed wrong.
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>>3072911
No, fuck off.
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>>3071169
Proko.com my dude
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>>3072911
do gesture and then construct anatomy from ref over it. Kill two birds with one stone.
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>>3072911
I agree with you 100%. Gesture is more of an intermediate skill than a beginner one. If you don't know basic anatomy and can't do basic observational drawing you will just be struggling for no reason when you try gesture drawing.
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>>3073172
(you)
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Michael Hampton
First lesson before construction and anatomy is gesture.
You learn gesture first to get a feel for the movement. If you have cgp download his video class. The whole thing is only over 10gig.
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>>3072756
Listen to this. Before hitting the canvas have a general visual idea of what you're going for.
Study references, either illustration, life or something else.
And don't give up.
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>>3071172
yes
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>>3071169
A few points that may help left-brained people understand gesture better.
For people who are drawing from imagination, gesture is largely about posing. This is opposed to how people like Proko explain gesture. What he's really doing is finding major lines in a subject in front of him. That's fine, but it's actually not going to help much with your stiffness problems.
The pose dictates the overall form, so you visualize the pose first before you construct. In combining gesture and construction, you are basically trying to fit some rigid parts to smooth curves as closely as you can.
Within a very active pose, the kind that implies a strong motion, there is a combination of larger and smaller gestures. The largest gesture is the primary action, the greatest exertion of force. Animators would refer to this as line of action. This gesture is usually a very smooth, long curve, because the human body spreads out the movement evenly through as many joints as possible, reducing stress on the body. Understanding this intuitively is going to be very important to creating dynamic poses from imagination. Failure to do this results in poses that are doll-like (for example, heads turned in one direction, but the torso is not turning with it).
The smaller gestures are the remaining body parts that are trying to keep the balance of the body. They're loser and can do all kinds of weird things.
A standing pose will have straighter gestures in the legs, because the body isn't exerting much strength. The joints in the legs lock, as they are designed to do, and mainly you're just fighting gravity.
A resting pose can have a lot of weird, bendy gestures, because little force is being applied. You're only limited to postures that one can hold comfortably.
Hope that helps.
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>>3072911
Gesture isn't reliant on anatomy though, see: cartoons.
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this book is pretty tiiiight. it helped with the stiffness in my drawings. it's aimed for animators, but there's a bunch to learn from it.
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