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(Please read part 1 of my post of Gesture Drawing HERE)

I was hanging out with a friend a few months ago during a sketch group.  My friend asked me to draw a certain pose.  I looked at the blank page and started to put together, in my mind, how the pose would go.  What foot is the weight on?  Where is the elbow is relation to the rib cage?  How many heads tall should I make this figure?  Structure?  Angles?  Depth? Lighting?  OK, you’ve got the chest connected to the arm this way, connected to the neck at this angle, etc., etc., etc.

After a couple of minutes my friend asks what was wrong and why I was taking so long.  I know you can draw, he said, and you should be able to knock this single pose out in seconds.  You’ve drawn it dozens of times.  I was a little taken aback.  I’m not the fastest artist I countered.  I told him about my thought process.  He picks up the pad and draws the sketch quickly, going boom, boom, boom.  There.  Done.

At the time I just thought my brain didn’t work like his.  He was self taught.  I was more classically trained.  I had a process.  He just drew.

I now understand and realize that you don’t drive a car by thinking about the individual parts.  Micheal Jordon does think cross-over, spin, put the ball in my right hand, then my left, and stick out my tongue before he dunks a basketball.  It’s a gestalt thing.  A left brain holistic thinking thing that my natural logical right brain tendencies try to overrule.  It’s hard to remember all the details of a person’s pose to draw but it’s very easy to remember the gesture of the person’s pose.

The really, really cool thing too is the gesture is what our brain recognizes most as the pose.  Like my earlier example from part 1 of this post on Gesture the image in your head of a man with his foot on the chair got much clearer and sharper in your mind when I added the context of him being sad.  It’s the same way you can remember hundreds of different faces of people you’ve meet.  When you see a person you recognize you don’t see the nose, add the eyes, the ears, the width and height of the face and then know who the person is.  You see the gesture.

So, do some gesture drawing every day to warm yourself up and after a while that looseness and life will begin to seep into your regular work.  Drawing will become easier and a lot more fun!

I recently received permission to post this piece I did last year for Destiny Games Publishing. Photoshop and painter. I’m starting to use Painter I lot more than I used to as I’ve finally began to devote some time to it’s brush engine, which is fantastic.

Last week I had the great opportunity to take a live online class with fantasy artist Jon Foster through Conceptart.org.  It’s still available for purchase, streaming, on demand here for anyone wants to spend 6 hours with Jon Foster.  Foster has always been one of my favorite artists and the class focused on doing a “Young Adult Book Cover from Start to Finish.”  The class was $95 dollars which isn’t really that much at all considering how much workshops with artists can cost.  The streaming technology was very good and my 4 year old Dell with a broadband connection had no problems.  Jon was a wealth of knowledge, sharing his methods and process and answering numerous questions on everything from how to break into the industry to how to use reference to how to use value correctly in your painting.  To make the session even more enjoyable, fabulous artist George Pratt hung our in the accompanying chat the entire time.   When Jon was busy painting a demo you could learn a thing or two from George if you could tear your eyes away from Jon’s beautiful work in progress.

The software for the online streaming displayed a large window that was linked to Jon’s computer.  To the side was a live chat and it was also possible to talk to Jon via microphone which some took advantage of.  Jon began with a slide show and talked about his process taking us through the process of one of his painting (the one at the beginning of this article, in fact).  We began with the script and went from Jon’s sketchbook to tight drawing to reference to black and white to color.  He showed us tons of images illustrating his decision making process and how and why he made the choices he did to end up with a successful illustration.

Foster is a very good teacher and seems to be incredibly humble.  Without question he’s got a lot of talent but from his methods you can see that the reason for his success his how hard he works and his attention to every single part of the illustration.  Jon was often asked how long it takes it to do an illustration.  His response was, “as long as it takes.”  That may seem like a canned response but after spending an afternoon with him it’s very true.  When most would think an illustration finished Jon is only halfway done.  That next 50% is what takes his work to that, “holy crap, that’s awesome” category.  He’s not overworking a piece, he’s just not settling for less when he as the ability to do better.

It was a wonderful class and I’d do it all over again in an instant.  One of the pluses to the class is that I am able to re watch it on demand any time I want for 30 days after the live class.  I’ve already watched it a second time and gotten a few nuggets I missed the first time around.  Conceptart.org is a real asset doing these classes and getting the very cream of the crop in the field to share their knowledge.  A big thank you also goes out to Jon for doing this class.  I’ll leave you with one of my favorite Foster pieces below.  Wow, is that not awesome or what!

Here is the final image I submitted to the ArtOrder blog for their cover challenge.  I had a blast doing this and learned quite a bit.

I did two thumbnails for the Hurakan challenge.  I ended up painting both.  Here is the first one although it’s not the one from the tight pencil sketch I showed previously. It’s the artwork for a book cover.  The back cover, spine and front cover reading from left to right.