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Before I studied the art, a punch to me was just like a punch, a kick just like a kick.  After I learned the art, a punch was no longer a punch, a kick no longer a kick. Now that I’ve understood the art, a punch is just like a punch, a kick just like a kick.

- Bruce Lee

Throughout my entire life as an artist I’ve always had a consistent problem with being too stiff, of staying loose and keeping my drawings loose.  I’ve discovered a number of methods and tools over the years to help with this but it’s only been recently that I’ve rediscovered something that helps dramatically.

Gesture drawing!

Most artists have fond (yes, this is sarcasm) memories of beginning figure drawing classes doing these scribble like drawings.   A gesture drawing is where an artist attempts to capture the “gesture” or “essence” of a pose or subject.  It’s usually done it very small window of time such as 10 seconds to 60 seconds.  The object isn’t to draw the actual pose but to get down that thing that represents the rhythm of the pose.  In the book, “The Natural Way to Draw“, artist and teacher, Kimon Nicolaides describes it like this.  I’m paraphrasing here.

Imagine that I describe to you a pose to draw of a man facing a chair with one foot on the chair.  He is leaning forward and his arm is resting on his knee.  His hand supports his head.  You could draw that fairly well.  But what changes if I add to the description that the man is sad.  Suddenly the pose is much more alive and defined in your mind.  This is where the gesture comes from.

In good drawing and painting most see composition or design as the key thing that makes or breaks a piece.  I’d put gesture right up there because this is the thing that conveys the “genesis” of what the viewer is relating to.  It’s what makes a drawing look alive.  It’s what causes a line to be a LINE and then just a line again.

(More to come in part 2)