Monday 12 July 2010




Course work: A second squatting drawing, again somewhat shortened by model’s discomfort. Two kneeling sketches proved unexpectedly difficult, and time ran out on both before I approached satisfactory representations. The second kneeling pose is interesting enough to be worth a later revisit.

Now I proceed to that great mystery, gesture, for which I did some “off the clock” review in books beforehand. The concept of gesture remains somewhat elusive, not only to me, but to authors and teachers of the subject. Nicolaides: ”…the action you feel. Draw rapidly and continuously in a ceaseless line, from top to bottom, around and around, without taking your pencil off the paper.” Mellem: “Gesture allows you to quickly convey what your subject is doing.” Barrett: “…a gesture drawing is simply a quick study of the model in its entirety.” Vilppu: “…”gesture”…means the movement and attitude of the figure.” Ryder: “Gesture is not a technique or a “thing.” “Gesture is life and movement.” While the definitions are superficially somewhat similar, the gesture drawing in practice ranges from the continuous line (described by one student as “a tangle of fish-line”) through an ellipse with a few dependent lines to something more resembling a two-minute sketch.



While rewatching the Ruth Bock tape of Gesture (A.I.R. Productions, Berkeley, CA, USA, 1989), I did 24 30-second gestures from the tape, using charcoal pencil, then eleven more 1-minute gestures using Conté crayon (I have put only a few of these in the log and on the blog, but all are on the CD of work done).

30-second gesture sketches

One-minute gesture sketches





Reading:



Kenneth Clark The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form

Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, USA, 1972

Pp. 198-224



Michael Mattesi Force: The Key to Capturing Life Through Drawing

iUniverse Star, New York, 2004

Pp. 36-53



Total time: 2 hours 42 minutes (11h6m)

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1-Kimon Nicolaides The Natural Way to Draw


Houghton Miflin, Boston, MA., USA, 1941

2-Jeff Mellem Sketching People: Life Drawing Basics

North Light Books, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, 2009

3-Robert Barrett Life Drawing

North Light Books, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, 2008

4-Glenn Vilppu The Vilppu Drawing Manual

Vilppu Studio Press, Acton, CA, USA, 1997

5-Anthony Ryder The Artist’s Complete Guide to Figure Drawing

Watson-Guptill Publications, New York,1998