Gesture Sketch Directly in Ink
I’ve been doing a lot of speed sketching recently, as I thought it would be good practice for sketching people when I’m out and about. But doing a 6 minute speed sketch when the model is holding a still pose is very different from sketching person who doesn’t know their being sketched. Those people fidget and move, and could even leave without a moment’s notice.
So I decided it was time to revisit a sketching tutorial called Sketching People in Motion by Marc Tarot Holmes on Craftsy. I watched this video more than four years ago, and I remember liking his approach of pencil, pen, and watercolour, so I thought I’d give it another spin and see if it still resonated with me, and if there were some tips I could soak up to improve my sketching people in motion.
Sketching What First Attracts You
When I’m speed sketching a face, I tend to look at the element that attracts my attention the most. It could be the pair of glasses and where the eyes are positioned within the frame, or the shape of the hair, or an eye-catching feature, like an oversized ear, nose, or mouth.
When you’re sketching a portrait, whatever catches your eye the most is probably what inspires you to sketch the portrait. I know for me, if I look at a face and there’s nothing remarkable about it, I’ll usually start by sketching the eyes – they are the windows to the soul after all!
During the 30 second pose section of a recent speed sketching with Dylan zoom event, I began each sketch by sketching the eyes first.
Looking at them now, it’s interesting how I was able to capture a little more with each new pose, even though the time limit was the same:
- Eyes and Nose
- Glasses, Eyes, Nose, and Mouth
- Expressive Eyes, Eyebrows, Nose and cheek lines
- Eyes, Eyebrows, Nose, cheek lines and Mouth
It’s also insightful to see that it only takes me a couple of poses to increase the coordination between my hand and eye.
Observational Approach to Urban Sketching
When I’m doing urban sketching people, I tend to take the same observational approach, and look for an interesting element to start sketching first. The trouble with sketching the details first, means you often have to abandon a sketch.
If the person you’re sketching leaves, and won’t have captured enough of the overall feel and shape of the figure, and you won’t have sketched enough of the key information needed to effortlessly finish the sketch from your imagination.
As an urban sketcher of people, I don’t want to be at the mercy of them leaving and having to abandon my sketch. So I want to develop different sketching styles depending on the situation.
Revisiting a Marc Tarot Holmes Tutorial
This desire for a different sketching approach got me thinking about Marc’s Sketching People in Motion tutorial from years ago. I wasn’t a fan of gestural sketching back then, maybe because I was in the early stages of sketching people, and I wasn’t ready to take onboard all of the information covered in his sketching tutorial. But now that I’m at a sketching impasse, it’s time to give this tutorial another spin (especially since Craftsy are offering a 12 month subscription for less than 3 euros).
The Pencil Gesture of Sketching People in Motion
The first video in Marc’s tutorial is all about the pencil gesture. And below are the notes I took this time around, about how to create a gesture sketch of a figure in motion.
In theory this gesture sketch is all you need to create a solid foundation, so if the person leaves, you’d have enough information to be able to finish the sketch in ink because you have all the key information you need.
Stage One to Create a Pencil Gesture Sketch
During this first stage the pencil moves stays on the page and moves freely with continuous restated lines. It’s meant to be a loose sketch, and if you look at the subject more than your paper, you’ll be able to achieve that. It’s also important to just keep going if you feel a line is in the wrong place. Don’t stop to correct a it, just make a better line.
Here’s the two elements you should focus on during this first stage of sketching:
- Capture the gesture in big shapes – body first and then the head
- Make note of anchor point to mark the relationship between points to capture proportions.
The key anchor points of the body are (depending how much of the figure you can see):
- Clavicle
- Shoulders
- Elbows
- Wrist
- Hips
- Knees
- Ankles
It’s all about prioritising the big shapes and key anchor points first, before getting distracted by the secondary shapes and objects.
Stage Two to Create a Pencil Gesture Sketch
The purpose of doing this stage is to capture enough of the secondary shapes that bolsters your gestural outline, so that you could finish off your sketch if the person gets up to leave.
Here’s some of the secondary shapes to look out for:
- Shape of the hair and hairline
- Clothing shapes, or where the skin stops and the clothes start
- Inanimate objects (e.g. tables, chairs, big background shapes like windows etc.)
- Areas of Negative Space
Adding an anchor point for the ear and chin, gives you enough information to see the slant of the face and the direction the subject is looking. And if there’s time, you can capture the other anchor points. The key anchor points of the face are:
- Brow line
- Bottom of the nose
- Where the lips meet
- The bottom of the chin.
The key with this gesture drawing stage in pencil, is that you don’t want to overdo it. The goal isn’t to capture so much information that when you get to the pen stages you only have to trace over your existing pencil line in ink. This would mean your sketch would end up looking lifeless and stiff, so you may as well forego the gestural sketch in the first place!
Gestural Sketching in Motion
I only got about half way through Marc’s gestural sketching tutorial, and then I had to go out. So grabbed my sketchbook and pen and decided to try some gestural sketches while I was waiting in the reception area of a local clinic.
The first issue was that I’d only grabbed my pen and not a pencil. But I decided to try some gestural sketches away, and see how it turned out.
I started sketching from left to right, and did the ink sketches while sitting near the reception, but added watercolour at home.
I started sketching the first figure on the far left too big (I’d started with his head) and of course I didn’t have enough room to draw his legs. So I quickly started the next gestural sketch starting with the jacket. Although this figure was smaller, I had to give him stumpy legs because the figure was too big for the page.
I sketched the next figure is smaller still, and started with the jacket. The upper and lower body look in proportion to each other, and I do like that I managed to capture the way the weight is dispersed onto the left leg as he leans on the counter. It looks like his head is too small, but he was looking down so only the top of his head was visible – I just forgot to draw his neck!
Not sure what happened with the last sketch (on the right). It looks static and I chopped his feet off.
Cutting Feet of your People Sketches
If you haven’t already seen my post about How Not to Cut the Feet off your Figures, you can read it here:
Cutting feet off is a common error made by artists, and it’s one I’m actively working on to avoid. As you can see in this image above, I have a ways to go! Knowing you need to solve the missing feet problem is one thing. But remembering what you need to do to solve it is another, when you’re speed sketching a live person.
My Gesture Sketches from Marc’s Tutorial
When I got back home, I watched the rest of the tutorial and had a go at the gestural sketches in pencil that Marc was showing us. The first video he sketched from was of a girl reading a book, and periodically drinking from a mug.
I had a go at focusing on the big shapes and key anchor points.
Then I captured the secondary elements. Like the hair, clothing, and restating the head position, which wasn’t quite right.
Even these are loose gestural sketches, they seem to have enough information in them that would enable me to complete the sketch if the person walked away.
In this first tutorial Marc also did a couple more practice gestural sketches of a different girl drinking from a mug, and of a couple of musicians.
I’m pleased I managed to fit the feet into this last gestural sketch – so maybe there’s hope for me yet!
Marc uses a method of indicating the top and the bottom of the figure on his page, before he starts sketching. I tried this, but as soon as I drew the head of the musician on the left, I knew I was going to run out of space. So I took a different approach.
- I measured the head (it was one-finger height)
- Then I measured the height of the musicians using one-finger units
- Then I sketched some head height dashes down the page to make sure my figure would fit in, to make sure I had the size of his head in proportion.
- Then I continued with my stage one and two of gesture drawing.
A standard male figure is about 7 1/2 heads high, but these figures were actually a lot shorter than that. Something to bear in mind, that there’s actually a lot more variance in heights of the people, and to sketch from what you see and ignore those standards.
I’m looking forward to exploring the rest of this tutorial, and seeing how easy or challenging it is to flesh out these gesture drawings with ink lines.
Sketching Directly in Ink
Part of my sketching style philosophy is: directly in ink. But I can’t expect different end results if I’m not willing to review and change my methods.
I’ve been training myself to sketch directly in pen since I first started sketching figures from life. I wanted to commit to my ink lines. I didn’t want to be an artist who sketched in pencil and then traced over the lines in ink. But after watching Marc’s tutorial video again, I’m realising that the goal isn’t to trace over the pencil lines with ink. The gestural pencil sketch is simply there to act as scaffolding, and the ink lines are what bring the sketch to life.
So it’s time to reacquaint myself with my pencil again, and use it for a quick gestural sketching, and I can still develop and finish my people sketches off with ink. As we’re nearing the end of end of January, I’m designating February as my gestural pencil sketching month. I’m going to incorporate this gesture approach with Suhita Shirodkar’s line of action approach to sketching. She’s another urban sketcher who sketches lots of figures in action, and I did her Crafty’s Class at the same time that I did Marc’s.
Let’s see if I can see the benefits of my new approach to capturing people in motion with gestural lines and lines of action. At a minimum, it’s got to help me fit more feet into my people sketches. That’s my criteria for success anyway!
