steps toward amazing

90 second gestures

90 second gestures

Gesture drawings are fast impressions of a pose or a mood, a quick map of the twist and weight of the pose. I think that these drawings are fun. Whimsical. Charming. Gesture drawings are my favorite kind of figure drawings.

15 minute drawing

20 minute drawing

When drawing the longer poses, I still want to capture the energy of the gesture drawing and then correct the shapes and angles of the drawing to match the model's pose. It's hard to know when enough is enough. In the 20 minute drawing, I was especially concerned to get the right alignment of the head to the shoulders and knees. Somehow, that made the model look more like an old fashioned television antenna! I wonder if she gets good reception...

25 minute drawing

I continue to look at ways to vary my mark making. All of these are done with the same piece of charcoal, the trick is to vary the pressure, to use both the side of the stick and the point to get a different character in the line. In the 25 minute drawing above, the model moved her head as I drew so that it sank lower to her chest. I smudged the old position out and drew in the new position as I saw it. These corrections make this one of my favorite drawings.

Figure drawing feels like jazz to me. It's all about improvising and responding to what's going on in the room and in me.

Chick Corea and Gary Burton "Eleanor Rigby."  The melody is well known (especially to Beatles' fans), but when these two musicians wrap themselves around it, amazing!