Following along

First, I want to say thank you to Michael here. Your approach to gesture feels much easier to conceptualize (at least for me). That being said, I think I’m getting what I call “beginner blindness.” I’m having trouble getting my gestures to look as expressive as yours, and I think I might be getting caught up in form. I also think I may be struggling to self-diagnose issues, simply because I’m not always sure what the problem is due to a lack of knowledge. I follow the process you’ve mentioned elsewhere for checking my gestures as follows: 1. Connection points (joints) 2. Lines are always made off of other lines 3. Where does it feel stiff? 4. Are the proportions roughly correct? 5. Is it balanced with the center of gravity (if the pose should be)? I think my issue is that I’m not entirely sure what to look for at each stage. Some things I think I may be doing wrong are: 1. I might be focusing too much on form. I’m still pretty new to art and have mostly focused on gesture, so my understanding of what forms should look like may not be there yet. 2. I might not be pushing my C and S curves enough. 3. I know I struggle with connecting the legs. I think the issue is that when I draw the gesture, I tend to skip identifying the higher hip, something I’m trying to be more conscious of as of today. 4. Drawing feet is hard for me (haha), so my landing points and proportions might be more off than I realize. 5. I don’t ghost my lines at all. Since I work digitally, I usually just Ctrl+Z whenever I draw a line I’m not at least somewhat okay with. I appreciate any and all feedback I can get(I've attached my gesture drawing & the references from the course). Thank you for your time!

Hi! Watching this video gave me a lot. First of all, it made me realize how important it is to remember about the diagonals, because I think I was too often using something close to verticals or horizontals. Now I consciously exaggerate and use stronger diagonals. Searching for rhythms sometimes happens in one long stroke. I’ve adopted a strategy where I first draw while looking at the reference, and then I rely more on my own sketch rather than the reference to correct myself and increase my awareness. I’m really happy with this third sketch, even though I know you’re not supposed to be satisfied with yourself but I’m just really glad I managed to get some results so quickly. These gesture drawings really help with drawing figures from imagination. Now I can capture a pose in just a moment. And as always, I really like your teaching style, because above all, you’re logical. Everything comes from somewhere, which makes it so much easier to understand and absorb the material.

just me following along

Hi Michael! I had a question about gesturing the spine after looking at your suggestions. You pointed out that the spine has a S like curvature to it, starting with inward facing C curve. During your demo for the Dave Greeco piece around the 18-19minute mark in Critique 2, you've flipped the direction of that curve (I think), and I wanted to ask if that was to get a better asymmetric rhythm to the thoracic? I think something similar happened with the second example in Critique 1 where the cervical is a little right of the head, and I was wondering if that is what you meant that it didn't need to be central to form. Some other questions I had were how accurate to the underlaying part are we aiming to be? Is the concern stopping at general proportion according to the sheet we did earlier? Edit: I've looked at my screenshots longer, and it's probably not accurate to see these are inverted, but maybe off center might be a better way to describe it? I've posted some my attempts prior to this video incase that helps..

Drew along all the critiques to get a better sense of what you were looking for. Think I also was trying to just construct as they were shown to me rather then focusing on just the energy and rhythm of the pose. Im guessing as a rule all these gestures should be drawn from the arm to get that flowing line. (I drew from the wrist for most of my life)

Yeah more art history seeping into the lessons! Definitely gonna keep an eye on connections of rhythms.

Thanks for the critique Micheal that was very helpful!

Awesome critique video, Michael. I have to watch this again and take notes.

Thanks for the critiques, very insightful on things to pay attention to when working on these gestures

Thanks so much, Michael, for posting the critique video on the first lesson. I learned quite a bit from watching this one. Also, I truly enjoyed the assignment on finding pictures to go on to our first steps of mastering gestures. The stuff I found through my art books, I had, and poses I found were quite a fun challenge to conquer. I'm definitely going to watch the remaining videos soon and look forward to continuing to practice and preparing for the upcoming assignments. I'm definitely going to keep on practicing with this to get better. :)