My first experience with gesture sketching wasn’t until my college figure drawing class. By drawing hundreds of quick gesture sketches of the models, I quickly saw an improvement in my observation skills as an artist and my ability to draw the human body in variety of movements. I wish I would have started exploring figure drawing way before college, but I have no regrets with my own art journey as it’s brought me to where I am today.
My goal with this blog is to give beginning artists an introduction into gesture sketching, provide some tips that have helped me, and share some helpful video resources for artists to practice their skills.
What is a gesture sketch?
A gesture sketch is a quick sketch that captures the essence of the pose. I tell my students that a successful gesture sketch is able to capture the overall vibe of the movement with a minimal amount of lines in the shortest time possible. Gesture sketches often range form 15 seconds to 2 minutes. These sketches are not intended to be fully finalized, perfect drawings… rather, more of a skill building approach in observing the human form and its essential curves.
A gesture sketch is often of the human body, but can also be parts of the body like the hand or foot. It can also be of animals and other moving things!
Materials list:
You don’t need a lot of fancy items to create a gesture sketch. Simply, a piece of drawing paper… something to sketch with… and a model or photograph to reference.
Gesture drawing tips:
- It’s not about perfection. As artists we are always concerned with the finished product, but this is more about the process than the product. It’s not about perfection.. I promise!
- Practice is key! The more you practice and put time into this skill, the easier and more intuitive it will become. Just like any new skill, practice is key!
- Enjoy the process, be gentle on yourself. Take deep breaths and try not to get frustrated if one of your sketches isn’t working out how you want.
- Find your own style! Explore expressive, loose marks and allow yourself to find your artist voice.
Common mistakes:
- Squeezing things in (see image above). I see this all too often! Artists are getting close to the edge of the paper and try to make everything fit on the page. It is okay for it to go to the edge and crop off. It will look better, I promise!
- Erasing! Draw light and loose and avoid wasting valuable ticking seconds erasing work. By drawing light, you can work expressively and darken when you feel confident.
- Spending too much time on little details. Try to move around the page and capture the entire subject before focusing on smaller details like the facial features. You are striving for BIG PICTURE first.
Video tutorial of full body gesture sketching:
Video tutorial of hand pose gesture sketching:
I hope you found this post about gesture sketching to be helpful! Feel free to leave feedback below, I love to hear form my readers. Please follow me on Facebook to keep up with the latest post and check out my Instagram. Thanks!
-Stephanie Villiotis