Early Gestures

My first early gesture drawing shows some of the beginning stages of developing a core frame with which to build on top of. The most essential part of figure drawing I believe, is structure, and these drawings help to understand the underlying form with the human body. I'm beginning to develop some line variation (2) in the arms and limbs, but it does not illustrate a certain depth of form as it should. The figure is contained within the picture plane (3) but is not a finished figure, later we would add feet. Even the basic outline of the feet can give you a sense of where the figure meets the ground and how, even though structure is most important now. Since we hadn't yet discovered the egg and hip shapes and relationships, my spine is elongated (1). Without the aid of the egg guide, it is hard to tell exactly how long the spinal column is, and where the lumbar and thorasic curve reside. This was a 30 second pose.

Here is another early gesture drawing that shows some developments from the first one. First of all, I am now using boxes, a technique a friend showed me in high-school (2) to develop the base for the frame.The spine connects the two, and here I have exaggerated the curve. The frame consists of two boxes, one for the shoulder and one for the hips. While these structures are similar in width, simplifying them to this extent probably won't help me to fully visually understand their function. (the most important function being their connection to the arms and legs.) The elbows and knees are represented by a circle for the joints (1), but this technique will make it difficult to drawing muscles over and is generally unnecessary. The proportions of the upper torso are looking alright, but I seem to have rushed through the lower half. The figure doesn't seem complete (3) as it cuts off somewhere around the shin. The line weight differs, but again, not enough to really signify it as a valid approach to implying depth. This was a one minute pose.

This drawing was still done before we studied the ribcage. The shape of my ribcage doesn't have the convex edge of the lower rib (3). Instead I have more of a pointed, 2-dimensional oval, rather than a 3-dimensional egg. I am starting to utilized line weight (2), and the drawing fits on the page, and the figure even sits on the ground. The addition of the feet help to give put it in a context of space and weight, even on a small, less detailed gesture. I still have not stepped away from illustrating the box hip (4) and the circle joints (1), but I can see a lot of development in form and structure, as well as proportion. The arm on the left is a bit long, but overall, I am please with the look of this early gesture drawing.

My gestures done at the beginning of the semester have developed. The very first drawings I did were simple contour outlines, but I felt for sake of comparison, those drawings are so far away from the intent of this class that I left them out and decided to post these, which I believe are representative of my first few weeks of drawing the human figure.