Gesture Drawing Week 4: Space/ Depth

The fourth week of the Gesture Drawing Course is entitled space, but perhaps depth is a more appropriate title. The goal of this lecture is use depth and perspective cues to hint that our gestures  drawing occupy volume in 3 dimensions.

Conveniently, the human body is more or less symmetrical and has a lot of pairs. A pair of eyes, a pair of hands, a pair of feet etc. In this section we position these pairs to show depth. The most emphasized  method in the lecture is to pay attention to the spots on contact between the body and the ground.
Here's an example.

Here's an illustration on Pinocchio  which happened to be my desktop background. Notice how the foot on the left is smaller and placed rearward with respect to the foot on the right. This creates a sense of depth that lends the drawing more believability.   The eye on the left is also smaller than the on on the right. This reinforces the idea that his head is turned and the left eye is farther away from the viewer than the right.

The homework was to do an hour or cafe drawing practicing this idea, and another our doing the same thing with the non-dominant hand.

I don't really understand why, but Louis seemed to compliment my left hand drawing more than my right.

Daily Doodle

Daily Doodle: Thomas Jefferson ~Ball Point Pen

A short aside from Schoolism

So, I've been at this for a couple of months and have so far spent approximately $1400 on schoolism courses. It feels kind of strange to talk about money so blatantly, but I figure that it's an important topic for you the reader if you're considering trying these courses yourself.

You're probably wondering "is it worth the cost?" "Are you getting better?"

So, I thought you'd be interested in some of non-schoolism work. This way, you can decide for yourself whether or not I'm improving.

Here are some life drawing sessions from the past week or so.



Life Drawing at Mighty Good Coffee ~Ball Point Pen

Life Drawing at Work ~Ball Point Pen

In fairness, I should note that I am not working on Schoolism alone. I'm also spending a significant portion everyday work on Bridgeman's Guide to Constructive Anatomy and Assorted books by Andrew Loomis.

Gesture Drawing Week 3: Silhouette

Week 3 of the schoolism gesture drawing course was silhouette. This was by far the most difficult and time consuming week of the course so far.

The lecture follows logically from last weeks lesson on shape. The silhouette takes the directionality of the line of action and the balance of the shape and melds them together to make a recognizable human form. The goal of your silhouette should be to convey a sense of direction and balance, but most of all, it should be readable as a human pose. Even though it is a flat 2 dimensional shape, the viewer should be able to tell what the subject is and what it's doing. This becomes a problem when the pose places limbs in front of a body or has a lot of foreshortening. To combat this, Alex recommends that you ad negative space where you can, and rotate the model in your minds eye so that you can mitigate limbs being obscured by the body. This is a very useful but difficult skill to learn.

This lecture follows the pattern of the previous two. A short introduction of the topic followed by one 20 minute session of one minute poses where Alex talk through his process then closes with a second 20 minute video were you draw the poses.

The most infuriating part of this lecture was the critique. A reoccurring problem with this course is that it taught by Alex Woo, but critiqued by Louis Gonzales. I understand that this is an art class, and there is never just one way to do anything. However, it is annoying to work with one set of recommendations guidelines and goals, and then be critiqued for doing exactly what the instructor told you to do. This week's lecture was a prime example. Half of the lecture was focused turn arounds. However, Louis immediately side it was a mistake to rotate the model at all and I should have spent more time exaggerating the pose.

This weeks homework included the following parts
1-2 hours of life drawing focused on silhouette
2-Draw the silhouette from 10 picture of your choosing
3-Draw the silouette's from the second 20 minute session

Here are my submissions. I've practiced and included #3 multiple times.

Gesture Drawing Week 2: Shape

Week 2 of gesture drawing is titled "Shape." This lecture flows naturally from last weeks discussion on the line of action. The line of action implies direction and motion of your figure. Shape takes your gesture drawing one step further. It implies balance and weight as well as direction.

The instructor conveys the ideas of the lecture clearly. The Structure of the class is the same as week one: A brief discussion on the topic followed by a twenty minute session of gesture where Andrew talks through his process, and then a second 20 minute session of gesture drawing.

The critique was a confusing. The two instructors disagreed on whether the shape should be humanoid, or abstract.

The homework is:
1- The drawings from the second drawing session
2- 2 Hours of life drawing with shape
3- Find 10 pictures, and break the figure down into a single shape

Here is my submission.

Gesture Drawing Week 1: Line of Action

The first lecture of gesture drawing focuses of the line of action. In terms of delivery, the lecture was very coherent and well thought out. However, the concept of the line of action seems to be a bit fuzzy at the best of times, and while the explanations were easy to understand, they weren't always internally consistent. For instance, Alex Woo mentions that the line of action is not a contour or outline of the shape. However, I was advised to make my line of action something I could use for the rest of the gesture (which is another way of saying outline) by Louis. I think this is just an inherent issue when an art class is taught by two teachers. I don't think that either is wrong, just different.

The lecture also includes two 20 minute gesture drawing sessions made up of 30 second poses. This is a great resource in and of it's self. I drew threw them both several times just to unwind after a long day at the office.

The homework this week came in three parts.
-2 hours of live cafe gesture drawing
-Overlay a line of action for 10 pictures of your choosing
-Draw the lines of action for the second 20 minute video.

The cafe drawing and video drawings wouldn't make much sense without the reference, so I'll post the overlays.

Next Course: Gesture Drawing with Alex Woo and Louis Gonzales

So, it's been a while since I finished my first schoolism course (Drawing Fundamentals with Thomas Fluharty), and my next one is about to begin. By this point, I am at least cognizant of the fundamentals (hopefully), and the next step is get a better sense of motion and form. Gesture drawing seems like the next logical building block. Here is the lesson plan for the next 12 weeks.

Lesson 1 - Line of Action

The line of action is the foundation upon which you will build the rest of your drawing. It is analogous to the main idea or thesis in an essay paper. There is always a point to a well-written paper, and the same is true of a well-drawn drawing. For your first assignment, you will be distilling poses down to their bare essence - a single line of action.

Lesson 2 - Shape

Shape will help you determine the overall feel and dynamics of your drawing. It is another form of distillation, and the next step from your line of action. Your assignment this week will be to abstract poses into shapes.

Lesson 3 - Silhouette

Creating a strong silhouette will enhance your drawing's "readability". A strong drawing should be "readable" even when it is completely blacked out. This week, you will be drawing with the intention of creating strong silhouettes.

Lesson 4 - Space

Using space will help give your drawings depth, and make them feel grounded in a physical reality. Spatial depth will add dimension to your work and help pull your viewer into your drawing. For this assignment, you will focus on creating depth and space in your gesture drawings.

Lesson 5 - Exaggeration

Using exaggeration in drawings is analogous to using hyperbole in a rhetorical debate: you're pushing extreme examples in order to effectively communicate your ideas. In gesture drawing, we should aim for communicative accuracy over anatomical accuracy. For this week's assignment, you will focus on pushing and pulling aspects of the pose in order to effectively communicate your ideas.

Lesson 6 - Extrapolation

Extrapolation is the process by which you "read between the lines" and see beyond what is there. Through successful extrapolation, you will SEE a pose of limbs, muscle and bone, but FEEL an idea, emotion, or action. For your assignment, you will extract ideas you see in the pose, and instill them onto unrelated characters and objects.

Lesson 7 - Story

Story is the most important element in all of gesture drawing. All of the earlier topics we covered are meaningless unless they are used in the service of a greater good - telling a story. Your assignment this week will focus on drawing the pose in the context of a story.

Lesson 8 - Final Review

I will review the course topics, talk about how they fit into the final communication of your story, and offer you my final thoughts on gesture drawing and its importance on growing as an artist.

Wish me luck. I'll see you on the other side.
-DC

Drawing Fundamentals Week 4 ~ Composition

This was the last week of drawing fundamentals that has a homework assignment. The lecture was one of the more interesting and informative so far. Thomas makes the point that an artist who has mastery of composition will have control over where the viewer's eyes moves along the image. It basically boils down to this:

Every mass has 3 properties that effect the composition entire piece.
-The first is the placement of the mass in the image. Thomas recommends the rule of thirds as a rule of thumb.
-The second is the shape of the mass. This one is a bit foggier. You breakdown the mass into silhouette and consider what the shape is asking the viewer's eye to do. Eye's tend to follow straight lines, so you need to conscious of how many shapes are pointing up or down. Too many downward shapes will make the viewer's eyes slide off the page. A shape might also lead the eye off the page.
-The third is the light dark contrast. The amount of contrast decides which shapes the viewer's eyes go to first. You also must balance the light and dark masses on you image so that it is not right or left heavy.

Thomas provided four or five image for us to put together into a composition. One was a statue, another was a park, and the rest where dogs at play. My goal was to draw anything but a dog park.

I'm not very happy with this image but I'll show it in the spirit of transparency.

The provided images.

The original idea for my image was to have Dickens in his study being pestered by dog spirits.

 

However, I thought the dogs were hurting my image more than helping it so I took them out.

Drawing Fundamentals Week 3: The Power of Perspective

This week, we discussed home to construct large scale scenes and landscapes using 1,2, and 3 point perspective. I thought Thomas's explanation of the different types and rule of perspective was a little difficult to understand. There was just too much to cover in an hour and a half lecture.

I would highly recommend "Perspective for Comic Book Illustrators" by: David Chelsea. He cover's all of the points made by Thomas, but in more concrete terms and in more depth.

The homework this week was picture of the white house. I was little confused why Thomas chose this image because the perspective is muted almost to 1 point perspective. I decided to rotate the image and emphasize the 3rd perspective point in order to increase the challenge and add more drama (which Thomas consistently pings me on). I'm new to painting with straight color, so, this was a bit of an experiment for me. I'm pretty happy with it though.

Reference

My Version

                                 

Drawing Fundamentals Week 2: The Power of Value

This week we talked about using a full range of value to add depth and drama to our work. The assignments were to make a grey scale from 0%-100%, and draw either a lion of an angel. I chose to draw the Lion.

Here is the Reference

Here is my version