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About instructor
Educator, painter, writer, and art historian. Author of Figure Drawing: Design and Invention.
comments 6 submissions
I gave some of these a try. The example/pose5 where the model is bent over is really tough. My arms look too long.
I worked on the spacing of my lines and creating more "flow" in my limbs instead of always drawing asymmetrical lines. I think they are starting to look ok. I love my arms in pose 1.
Great stuff, Michael! Learned a lot from this video.
LESSON NOTES
What's in Premium?
Learn how to adapt your gesture drawing techniques to handle challenging poses.
We focus on simplifying figures to their bare essentials, emphasizing fundamental movements and rhythms. You'll discover how to introduce subtle asymmetry in symmetrical poses to avoid stiffness and use curves—like C-curves and S-curves—and straights strategically to represent different body parts. We explore the importance of understanding weight and balance by adjusting poses and shifting the center of gravity.
You'll also learn how to incorporate anatomical details at key focal points without disrupting the overall rhythm. The lesson encourages experimentation, pushing diagonals, exaggerating tilts, and applying these methods universally across different body types and even animals. We highlight the value of repetition and timed practice to build familiarity, all while keeping a playful and exploratory approach to your gesture drawing.
Get this lesson and more in the premium course!
DOWNLOADS
demo-difficult-poses-part-1.mp4
665 MB
demo-difficult-poses-part-1-transcript-english.txt
25 kB
demo-difficult-poses-part-1-transcript-spanish.txt
27 kB
demo-difficult-poses-part-1-captions-english.srt
41 kB
demo-difficult-poses-part-1-captions-spanish.srt
46 kB
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Gesture drawing tips for handling complex poses through abstraction, balance, and expressive rhythm.
I took the opportunity not only to draw other gestures, but also to correct the ones I did for the assignment
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25d
Excellent!
I don’t have much experience but I’m trying to learn, thanks Michael your course are awesome I love it
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8mo
Great sketches!
I gave some of these a try. The example/pose5 where the model is bent over is really tough. My arms look too long.
I worked on the spacing of my lines and creating more "flow" in my limbs instead of always drawing asymmetrical lines. I think they are starting to look ok. I love my arms in pose 1.
Great stuff, Michael! Learned a lot from this video.
Hi Michael :)
Do you use wrapping lines to imply volume? Or is this a thought for later? My references are often broad but I feel my gesture reduces the volume of muscle and fat dramatically, so I use wide wrapping lines for bellies or big Thighs.
Thank you!
I think using wrapping lines in a gesture are mainly to provide direction/foreshortening. They also give some indication of volume but I think that's a secondary benefit. Good question, though! Maybe someone else with more experience than me will chime in.
As interesting as this approach is in itself, can you elaborate how it would be used for finishing an illustration?
If I may offer something, I take this as the "okay, what do we have here?" part of my process. It lets me make sense of what I'm looking at in terms of what the model or reference is maybe just hinting at, and allows me to build up my own intuition, and trust that my eyes are seeing what they are seeing. From there, I can push the hints in the direction of what I want to say. I've only been doing this for a few months now, and feel confident in what I've learned so that when I sit down to look at things I like, understand how to make those myself.
Now, if you're someone who already sees well or has an intuition already built up, it may not serve you to go to this level. Some folks can just get right to business in their own way and create something magical. What Michael is giving us, from my point of view, is a structured way to analyze what we see in terms of an idea which we eventually get to translate to the illustration once we are confident that we have what we're looking for to say what we want to say.
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8mo
This is an analytical approach aimed at understanding what's there. It's not as focused on creating an immediately rendered figure (if that's what you mean by illustration?).
However, I do have plenty of videos on my YouTube channel that might help show this complete process. Here's a couple links. One is sped up and another narrated. Hope this helps.
If I'm missing your question entirely here please just let me know.
https://youtu.be/pqHbUWmQODw?si=6leD9PvG2sw1kcVW
https://youtu.be/2H2NNpnN8a8?si=cGtaQcCgLVtdsjSx
