Welcome to the Weekly Art Action for the week of March 8th!

These art actions are designed to give you something specific to do, related to drawing or nature journalling, to help you build and practice your skills, or maybe learn a new skill along the way.

This week’s art action involves gesture drawing. Your assignment is to do a quick gesture drawing of a family pet (if you have one) or other living thing. So, for example, creating a quick gesture drawing of fish in a fish tank, your dog, or your cat, or even your sibling, child, or roommate. Gesture drawings are a great way to capture the basic information about an object, to fill in the details later, such as sketching subjects which do not stay put for long (a dog for example). They are also a useful way to warm up before drawing.

Supplies

Like contour drawing, gesture drawing needs room, so use the largest sheet of paper available to you. A large sketchbook would work well, but use what you have available.

Because we are going to be working quickly, freely, and loosely when doing gesture drawings, we need to work with media that will help us work as freely as possible. When I am sketching on  location, I usally use whatever I have available, and that is generally a mechanical pencil or a pen of some sort. Any kind of drawing pencil will work. Other options which my drawing professors used to recommend for gesture exercises include woodless pencils (for example, Prismacolor Art Stix), graphite sticks, crayons, or even chalk, though each of these (except crayons) can be messy. (by crayons, I mean just your normal Crayolas, not anything fancy).

You should also have either a regular kitchen timer (or something with a timer function), or just a regular clock.

How is a gesture drawing made?

Begin by setting the timer for 1 minute when you are ready to start. If you are just starting off, and you find that one minute isn’t enough time, then set it for 5 minutes, and work on trying to shave off as much time as you can from that. Think of it like a race.

A gesture drawing is a very quick drawing designed to capture the basic form, position, and action of the subject we are drawing. Though a contour drawing or a blind contour drawing are both designed to be done slowly, creating an outline of the object, the gesture is done to get as much information down on paper as quickly as possible. It’s usually done to capture the position and basic shape of living things, such as animals or people in action poses.

Create your gesture drawing by first taking a moment to look at your subject, and notice the basic shape, the position it is in, and how the light is hitting it (where the highlights and shadows fall on the subject). Next, take your pencil or crayon, and very quickly get as much information freely down on paper about this subject. A gesture drawing often looks like scribbles on paper, but it shouldn’t be just random scribbling.

Start off by getting the basic shape down on paper, and then the shadows. If you still have time left over (I doubt it, but if you by chance do…) fill in as much detail as you can fit in your remaining time, starting with whatever is most important.

When the timer dings, or your subject moves, start over, on the same paper if possible, and draw the subject in it’s new pose or from a different angle (if the subject is still in the same position). If you’re using a person for your gesture drawing, have them switch positions after one minute. Draw several gesture drawings, one after the other, of the same subject, in different poses or from different angles.

The Goal

The goal here is to get as much information down as fast as possible, presumably before the subject changes position, or walks away. This is superb practice for that day when you see a magnificent animal out in nature, and you don’t have a camera, and you have no idea how long it will be sticking around as you draw it. By getting as much of the basic shape and shadows down, you will have a great starting point to draw a more detailed picture when you get home and think about what the subject looked like, and what it was doing.

As I said earlier, a gesture drawing is also a great way to warm up before doing other drawing, in addition to being a great tool for sketching animals in nature.

Going Forward

A great way to use gesture drawing is to bring along a sketchbook and pencil the next time you go to the zoo, or to the park. Try to make a gesture drawing of the different animals you see.

Use gesture drawing as a regular warm-up when drawing and sketching.

Share

If you’ve done this lesson, and you’d like to share your results, just post a link to your photo in the comments section. (This is family friendly, so please keep it PG, or it will be deleted! Thanks!) If you don’t have a website or blog of your own, you could upload it to a site like Flickr.com and share with us that way.