Second of three catch-ups!

Here we go again, this time I think I'm going to focus on gesture drawings, since I added a pic of an early-semester gesture that I did, and I will be adding a more recent one on the end of this post.

I definitely think gesture drawings have been the most bittersweet thing for me in this class over the semester. I think I have improved so much on them over the course of the entire semester, but when I'm actually doing them, I hate them so much, haha. I always feel like an idiot for the first chunk of the drawings, just because I'm trying to remember every single little hint and tip we've learned up to that point. I really do think I improved over the semester though, mostly due to the sheer number of gestures that we did.

I realized pretty quickly that I would have to abandon my normally uptight drawing style while in the Life Drawing classroom, and that was extremely difficult for me to do at first. I have always been the type of artist that takes every line very carefully and precisely, trying not to make any mistakes, but now I see that there's really no point in doing that; the mistakes actually add together to make the picture unique and interesting. Once I understood that fact, I was able to start loosening up and being more fluid with my strokes, making for better overall drawings in the end.

The gesture at the bottom of this page is from a few weeks ago, after Amy showed us a little tutorial on how our gestures should be looking at that point. I think I definitely improved, mostly in my use of line weight and the fluidity of my stokes. I also broke away from trying to draw every single line, and instead focused on the overall flow of each limb, using one or two lines to show the majority of the contours of the legs and arms. Hopefully you guys agree!