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How to Improve Gesture/Flow in art?

oCe said something in another forum post today that got me to thinking. How does one work to improve gesture/movement/flow in their art?

I recognise that I have some problems with it myself and I've always been a little jealous of the fluidity of some artists work. Particularly in poses. It's really not something that comes naturally to some people and while I seem to have somewhat decent a grasp on it when it comes to hair or cloth, I'd really like to improve even further and extend it.

Any techniques or exercises I could use in general?

If anyone has a mind to - I have no qualms about you going to my gallery and using and altering a piece I've uploaded to illustrate a point.

Thanks in advance. :3

Spend some time drawing quick curved lines. Try to make them curve in all kinds of directions. Upward swoops, downward swoops, "c"-curves, "s"-curves, and so on... just draw lots of quick little curves.

After you have a page full of curves, try constructing figures on top of them. Try using the same kinds of quick curvy strokes to define the features and shapes. Don't worry if the proportions are a little off, just keep it quick and loose.

Heh, interesting you'd start a topic for this. :) When I posted my response (in General Chat > Review Process and Transparency) I was thinking about it, myself; what specific recommendations could be made for making improvements?

I think the most important one is life drawing*, especially figure drawing and quick observation of people/animals/things in motion. As Xazy said, drawing with quick, smooth, confident motions is important. "Gesture" is what you could call the essence of the subject. What really stands out about a person's figure? A sleeping cat? A happy, energetic dog? Gesture drawing is reducing your subject to just a few curves, lines or blobs (depending on your medium) that define its shape, character, movement. These drawings aren't meant to be "finished"; they're strictly for practice. They're excercises sharpen your eye, and your hand, and the link between the two. They're something to do many hundreds and hundreds of times, and continue to do - not something to keep and dote over and erase and redraw and try to perfect.

For people who are just starting out with this, figure drawing may seem like a chore, perhaps even a waste of time. Your first life drawings will invariably be wobbly messes - which are much less satisfying than creating a "finished piece." It's not something to scan and upload to a gallery site. But it's necessary gruntwork. So my suggestion for beginners is to devote a whole sketchbook to nothing but gestural/life drawings. Go to the mall or bus station and do 2-minute pencil sketches of people. Draw your own hands, feet, yourself in the mirror, your friends and relatives. Go to the zoo and draw animals. Fill up a book with fast, rough, drawn-from-life things. Don't worry if it's "right," just draw what you see. Get your hand and your eyes moving! And keep at it; it gets easier (and more fun) as time passes. As you do it more and more you'll start to understand your subjects on a deeper level, and that understanding is what shines through in pretty much any "good" drawing.

* Life drawing, as distinct from still life. Drawing a living human model is life drawing, whereas drawing a cow skull and a leather boot is still life.

Yes yes! Everything that oCe said is spot on. I am currently taking a figure drawing class through my city's "communiversity" as they call it. If you have a free evening, I would look into a local community college if I were you and sign up for a night life-drawing class. They're cheap and well worth it. Great excercise. And you can't really get any better reference for the human figure than a nude model truthfully (though I wouldn't mind if they wore at least a thong sometimes as I'm more after muscles and framework and general curves than genetalia). If you live near a beach I bet you can find a lot of great human references come summertime. Fat blobby people are just as fun to draw as skinny ones too. So many body-types! Everyone's unique. I find that exaggeration helps me break away from my perfectionist tendencies...as does using a fatter messier medium (like charcoal). And of course having only thirty seconds to draw a pose keeps you from getting bogged down in the details too.

I think if I have the $$ I might just go to the zoo this next Saturday. I feel inspired since this class has loosened me up.

Like Oce said I think life drawing is the best bet for improving the flow of the body. Get a friend or a relative to walk around the house and just observe them.(or people watch at work, just really concentrate on how they move, and look away if they look back at you funny XDD) When I need to practice I follow Josh around and draw very fast gestures, I don't spend more than a few minutes on the drawing because I'm just watching him move and that's all I am trying to capture.
Works with your pets too XD

Another thing I do, to try to improve fluidity, is before I draw my sketch I draw a gesture line and make the body follow that line, it works with legs/arms too :B

To answer oCe's question in the other forum post, yes, gesture is something we do look for. If something is too stiff, we try to show in the redline how to loosen it up. It does come down to having one line flow into another, one curve opposing the next and so on.

As for learning it, yes, drawing from life is wonderful—quick sketches. A book, two actually, that are wonderful for learning this are Vilppu's Drawing Manual and the Weatherly Guide to Drawing Animals. They are all about the flow. And about making things look 3D, both in construction and in the rendering stage with contours, which is the other thing we primarily look for. Is the subject convincing in its space?

Trace those books. Seriously. Develop the muscle motion to make the edge of one muscle flow over the curve of another, and then come back to draw a few short contour lines. Dance with the pencil, back and forth. Or pen. Or paintbrush. Whatever your medium of choice is!

Come to think of it, I just thought of a tutorial or two to put in this group. Now, only to find the time...

I will second (third? fourth? I dunno) the call to figure drawing class! I noticed my art showed a marked improvement after I spent some time in one. What also may have helped was working in a different method from what I was used to, which was curled up with a teeny sketchbook and a small-leaded pencil. Getting into a studio environment with an easel, a huge sheet of newsprint, and a chunky, imprecise tool like a piece of charcoal -really- loosened up my work. Having a time limit kind of helps, too, since you only have so much time to get the basic feel of stuff. You can end up with some pretty beautiful stuff, even in just 20 seconds.

Draw fast. Draw loose.

One thing that helped me a lot was some amount of time spent working direct in pen. Can't fix mistakes, gotta just go with what you laid down. Make a mess!

Another thing that's helped a lot is learning to draw with the side of the pencil: throw away that .5mm mechanical pencil so many people are in love with, grab a cheap 2B. Sharpen it and hold it so most of the length of the graphite touches the paper, rather than just the point. You'll get a broad, light line... and you'll get forced to draw larger, with your arm doing more of the work. Bigger motions means more flowing lines. Plus less wrist motion means less wrist abuse!

I learnt the side-of-pencil trick in animation; I think just about everyone I know in the animation world does this. And people outside animation almost never seem to have heard of it...

Life drawing helps a lot; any practice of technique does: the more things you know how to draw without thinking about it much, the more you can draw quickly, confidently, and gesturally.

This might help as well. Sheldon Borenstein taught us that You start with what the character is thinking, because, from thought becomes action. So on the theme of action and acting, I offer this:

http://punchandbrodie.com/leo/stanchfield/

Scott

try creating an animation or anything that involves movement that's fun and will involve you. In animation you will really need to be involved with anatomy, action and also movement to make something convincing and lifelike. And even without a reference beside you, the attempt at creating an animation will be very educational, probably because it's easy to eyeball a glaring animated flaw.

Because it's also a fun, dynamic, and satisfying break that demands artistic skill and observation, you'll probably be more driven to learn the nitty gritty details involved in anatomy to get to a great looking animation. And yea, it's true you can force yourself to figure draw, butif you have goals in mind that drive you to draw the results will be much better.

so if you dread drawing the human anatomy, try drawing a walk cycle. if you get into it, you might learn more than you bargained for :)

work big.

i mean BIG. butcher paper big. those tablets the size of your body big.

by working big, you're forced to involve more than your finger tips. you involve you fingers, your wrist, your elbow your arm your torso, your body. this is gunna sound very artsy fartsy, but by involving your whole body in mark making, you understand the gesture better, and your flow improves. you get less caught up in detail.

and like egypt said, work loose and fast!

work with big messy media. like egypt also said, use the side of your pencil instead of the tip; broader less precise strokes, plus it forces you to hold your pencil in a way you're not used to (in a way you haven't been conditioned to tighten up).

try vine charcoal; light fast and messy. smudge and work over everything. throw water on it. erase ALL of it and draw it again. tie some pastel to the end of a stick. anything to get you thinking about the lines and movement, instead of the detail.

the greatest thing about junior colleges and other small institutions and classes (or just sitting observing); you don't have to know a lot or have a super talent art teacher to have a beneficial figure drawing class. it's really a bang for your buck since drawing from life is a lot of learning-by-doing. i've forgotten everything my figure drawing teachers told me, but i learn and retained TONS in those classes simply by watching and doing. look and draw. look. draw. erase. smear.

so anyway, that's my long winded solution to the subject: work big, work fast, use your whole body.

I second everything said here, but I'd also like to add that it's not enough to do a lot of figure drawing, if you're not analyzing what you're doing... I think it's just as important to understand the mechanics of what creates "flow" in a pose... it's not necessarily something you just "get" by drawing a lot.

I wrote a tutorial a while back that explains what lines in a drawing do, and how they create movement and flow in a pose, if it helps at all: http://tigrin.deviantart.com/art/Dynamic-Figure-Drawing-24974156

the first thing i'd suggest is just relax. don't think that you're drawing something that needs to look like something when its finished. Just capture the essence of the form in motion with quick swooshy lines.

Wow! How'd I miss this topic?? This is a HUGE problem for me. Thanks for the tutorials, links and info everyone! I need some more S curves!