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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)

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.

The pencils are done for the Hurakan book cover challenge over at the Artorder blog.  I’ve enlarged the drawing and mounted it on a roughly 27″ x 40″ piece of gessoed hardboard.  The final piece will be done in oil paint.  I’ve got some free time coming up so I’ll be able to spend some time on it.