An important aspect of art which often gets neglected is the “gesture”. Perhaps most commonly applied to the figure drawing, a gestural approach can equally be applied to any subject.
If you can draw and paint it, there is an opportunity for gesture. I’m not going to describe exactly how to approach a gesture – it’s a personal approach: a quickly executed and intuitive response. It imbues work with a free flowing beauty that shines on in more developed studies. I commence many art classes with gestural work. It’s a great a warm-up to any studio session, however the enduring value is to underpin your longer studies and finished works. This article elaborates: https://www.craftsy.com/blog/2014/03/gesture-drawing/
I’d recommend a good reference video:
Clothed gestural drawing: http://thevirtualinstructor.com/gesturedrawing.html
Here’s some practice:
- Take subjects around the house, on video or from reference images and quickly complete 10 gestural studies – each under 2 minutes… if you can, under one minute! By all means nest some together on one or two large pages.
- Choose a couple of these studies and continue working for perhaps a further 5 minutes each…don’t start again…work over the gestural studies that you have started…this keeps things fresh.
- As an alternative, check out this site: https://onairvideo.com/ For “live” figure undraped drawing sessions.
