Gesture drawing is good practice for urban sketching people, so I thought I’d have a quick session. I chose Gesture Drawing Party #228, which features a clothed couple entertaining themselves with reading a magazine and watching TV. I think it’s better to do people sketching practice – little and often. That way you can train your muscle memory to sketch people quickly when you’re sketching from life.
The timed poses on the Gesture Drawing Party YouTube Channel are a great free resource for practicing your people drawing. Let’s see how I did….
One Minute Gesture Poses
I’m a little rusty at timed gesture sketches. When I started the one minute gesture poses, it took me until the 4th sketch to realise that I was trying to fit in too much detail. These first attempts were less of a gesture sketch, and more how I rely on contour drawings when urban sketching.
When I started relying on capturing the pose rather than trying to depict the contour shape within such a short time frame, my results were better.
Two Minute Gesture Poses
With more time, I started reverting back to contour drawings, instead of capturing the essence of the pose.
I’m wondering if sketching shapes rather than contour lines and gesture lines with have been a more successful activity. Definitely need to revisit contour drawing to find an effective way to capture dynamic poses.
I should have probably watched the video I included in my 11 Steps to Great Gesture Drawing before I dived headlong into a session after such a long time. But sometimes, I just want to DO – and see what happens.
Five Minute Gesture Pose
With this five minute limit, there was only one way to go – contour lines. Admittedly, the faces are a disaster, it would have been better to go with just head shapes and not worry about features. But, this was a good opportunity to depict some clothes quickly, as well as capturing the interaction.
The interaction is recognisable. But there is still a little ambiguity about the story being told.
Gesture Drawing for Urban Sketching
Being able to capture interesting poses is essential for interesting urban sketches, so your figures don’t end up looking like a load of stuffed dummies.
Sketching from life, needs to depict lively interaction in order to tell a story, and to do that we need to understand the physics of a dynamic pose.
Out of all the quick sketches I did during this 20 minute session, the one that I coloured in was my favourite. The pose is dynamic as well as balanced, and it tells a story.
The goal of these quick studies isn’t to create perfect sketches, it’s to get confident with capturing a realistic and believable pose. So you have to lay aside your perfectionist tendencies, grab a pen, and just start scrawling.
