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.