I love gesture drawing. I also love thumbnails.

As an artist these are areas where the rules of art are all about the vibes. The whole point of gesture drawing is to capture the feeling, weight, movement, value, and idea of a a person.

Now granted a gesture drawing is meant to be a means to an end- capture a moving human body in motion. The rules are that they aren’t meant to be finished works.

But then rules are meant to be broken.

Gesture drawings are taught in art school as you view a nude human standing in place for a variety of time frames. I believe once a professor did 10 second, 30 second, and 1 minute poses before moving into 2 and then 5 minute poses.

It makes me wonder if we can apply the gesture drawing idea to other areas of art- portraits, landscapes, and still lives?

I attended a nude* modeling session with a friend of mine a couple of weeks back. I had a great time. My college figure drawing classes lacked in male models and our model was male. 

After having such a good time I then saw Koosje Koene recent video about gesture drawing and figure drawing and discovered the Ges Drawing Party Youtube Channel (they wear clothes) and started to draw from their videos- starting at number 1. I don’t know if I’ll draw from all of their videos, after all there are 200 of them!!! They are all about 20 minutes long and each features five 1 minute poses, four 2 minutes poses and a single 5 minute pose. I’ve had a lot of fun with them.

As for gesture drawings not being finished images. I’ve taken to layering my images. I do the one minute drawings in a pale color. Then the 2 minutes in a slightly darker color and finally the 5 minute pose in the darkest color. The resulting image, when I pick a good combination of colors, is a lovely layered series of images with the final 5 minute gesture popping off the page and looking more like a finished work of art. There’s a sense of movement on the page.

I really like this.

*I recently joined a local art association and I’m going to propose a Nudes and Noods session. Where we draw nude figures then go for ramen after. I think this will be hilarious.