How to Draw Gesture
This lesson has a premium version with extra content. Get it now!

Figure Drawing Fundamentals

Gesture

How to Draw Gesture

4.6M
Mark as Completed

How to Draw Gesture

4.6M
Mark as Completed

In the next lesson, I’ll show some examples of gesture quick sketches and guide you step by step through the process. But, I suggest you attempt to practice these concepts on your own before watching the step by step video. You’ll have an idea of what it’s like and will be able to pull more information from it because you know what to look for. You’ll have questions you can focus on, and you can compare what you did with what I do. If you need reference photos, I have some pose file sets you can get in the proko store.

Submit your assignments here
Drop images here to attach them to the message
Newest
Tyler
I’ve been practicing a bit on gesture, but I can’t tell if I’m on the right track in terms of hitting a strong pose. The lower left pose is definitely the worst one overall, and the one on top of it I think is off balanced. I’ll probably start using more dynamic/variety of poses too.
Write reply...
Drop images here to attach them to the message
Makoto Yasumasa
I'll try 'How to Draw Gesture course' from today. I'm excited! I already have fun. Thank you so much for creating proko's courses.
Write reply...
Drop images here to attach them to the message
Vera Robson
I find it very hard to get myself into the 'gesture mode', perhaps because I have done a lot of life drawing without properly focusing on gesture, and now need to consciously break the bad habits that I have inadvertently acquired. These drawings are 30 seconds, 1 and 2 mins from tonight's life drawing session at the University of Waterloo.
Write reply...
Drop images here to attach them to the message
@guywhodraws
Here are the gesture quick sketches I did for this lesson! I tried giving them a try before moving onto the demo in the next lesson, like Stan suggested. But I'd still love some critique! The first five were 30-second drawings, and the last five are 2-minute drawings. I definitely struggled with trying to remember and apply all the concepts from the lessons and with getting good gesture and proportion with the time constraints, but I hope to keep improving as I continue with the course!
Write reply...
Drop images here to attach them to the message
@egusisoup
Hello everyone. Here is a recent figure drawing session. Trying to focus more on the model than my drawing. Would appreciate any feedback
Write reply...
Drop images here to attach them to the message
Vin
Finding the flow is still hard for me, I will keep practice. I would appreciate for some feedback.
Write reply...
Drop images here to attach them to the message
@pokey_art2
Hi, my name is pokey_art2, and I'm in need of art guidance. I'm trying to learn anatomy, but I keep getting lost on what to learn. I have no clue what I need to learn for what I'm trying to do for that being a web comic. I'm inspired by two artist being @CyanY5 and @wafferscotch on Twitter. Two of their artworks are below. I'm not a complete beginner or beginner when it comes to art, and my knowledge of the art fundamentals is fragmented. If someone can help me with guidance on art, I would really really appreciate it. TY
Write reply...
Drop images here to attach them to the message
@lambs
Try not to worry so much about style right now. Worrying about style is going to kill your gains. Just really really lock in on 3d forms, poses, anatomy and foreshorting. Style is more of the end goal rather the beginning. I can’t stress enough the importance of really not worry of style right now. But, keep the artist you inspire to be like in the back of your mind, as a motivation for what you want the end result to be. Now as what to work on, I would say 3d forms.
Reply
@vonun
hi, i'm quite new to figure drawing and would love a critique on my figures. i used the website line of action so i can't upload the pictures i used as reference. hope you have a nice day!
Write reply...
Drop images here to attach them to the message
Jesper Axelsson
Hi @vonun, cool drawings! - The rhythm is nice 😎👍In the next ones I would focus on improving the structure and proportion. Think of the shapes that the figure is made up from and note how they relate to eachother. Start growing curious about proportion and ask things like "which one is longest, the upper arm or the upper leg?" "What's the angle between these points?" etc. I think you would appreciate watching this video How Animators Use Basic Shapes with Aaron Blaise. Try to use his approach for your figure drawings. - I noticed that you've posted some assignments for the Drawing Basics course as well. I would encourage you to keep taking it. It gives you a broad foundation and complements the figure drawing course well. But if you have to choose one or the other, I would say focus your efforts on the Drawing Basics course. - What are your art goals? Knowing that might help me guide you better :) I hope this helps :) Keep up the good work!
Reply
@hermitsketcher
Hi everyone, here's a sample of my 2 minute gestures. Loved doing these, but I'd really like some feedback on how to improve! Thanks :)
Write reply...
Drop images here to attach them to the message
@wintersouls
Hey there! I really like how you're using simple, smooth-looking lines for your gestures! They look very clean and easy to read. I can see that you're drawing some of the contours of the body though, which seems to be adding a little bit of stiffness with the pose and awkwardness with the proportions. For gesture drawings specifically, I'd recommend shortening the time from two minutes to about a minute to start off with. This forces you to focus on the movement and gesture of the pose rather than the contours. I try to make the my gestures 30 seconds for the reason, since I know myself to get super bogged down in details if I give myself any longer than that. I also notice that you sometimes push the pose and that's great!! More of that too, please! Great job so far, keep up the great work!
Reply
Jesper Axelsson
Hi @hermitsketcher, nice drawings! Good rhythms! - What are your art goals? What type of work do you want to create? Feel free to share examples, by artists that you admire. Knowing your goals might help me guide you better, since if you want to do animation for example, there is a certain focus on gesture, whereas if you want to do Florence Academy type drawing for example, you might have optical accuracy as your main focus. - To improve your gesture drawings, I would try to be more clear about where the weight is. Before you start to draw, ask what part is carrying most of the weight. Feel the pose, imagine striking it yourself. You might even want to get up and try the pose yourself to actually feel it (assuming that the pose is safe to strike XD). Capturing the gesture is a lot about feeling the pose yourself. I attached a slide with some tips on weight. In short: weight causes things to bend. How much it bends depends on how heavy the weight is and how strong the thing is. - The proportions could be improved on. Thinking of the body as built out of clear pieces, with certain proportions could help. You've drawn from the same model here, so the proportions of the pieces won't change from pose to pose. In the bottom right drawing you've made the torso much longer, suggesting that you were now drawing from a model with different proportions. It goes a long way to note, that the halfway point of the body is at, about, the crotch. Considering the bilateral symmetry of the body is also important. The corresponding parts, such as the upper arms, have the same size, only mirrored. Getting this right is important, and something I struggle with. In short, start to be curious about proportion! Don't stress over it. It could get in the way of your focus on gesture. But start to be curious about it and ask yourself questions like "which one is thickest, the upper leg or the upper arm?" "Where does the leg attach to the hip?" "What's the angle between these points?" "How long is an arm in relationship to the torso?" "How many heads down from the chin is the belly button?" etc. I hope this helps :) Keep up the good work!
Reply
@longbeard
Hello all - I started this course a little over a week ago and love doing these gesture assignments! I think based on my attempts that my knowledge of anatomy has clear gaps in it and I have a tendancy to try and follow the contour rather than the gesture. I also have a weird problem where I usually start with the head but then draw everything else much bigger and have the scale up the head at the end - this isn't a huge issue but means some drawings end up overlapping. I would really appreciate some feedback on how to improve. Mix of 30 sec & 2 min poses. Cheers!
Write reply...
Drop images here to attach them to the message
@wintersouls
I think you're headed in a great direction, actually! Judging by your drawings and your post, you're already very self-aware of what needs improving. The mileage alone should help in the long run! I'm no master myself, but here is some advice I can think of: - If drawing the head first messes with your scale, try drawing the head last! I usually draw a line for the shoulders or the line of action first so I can orient myself on the paper - You already mentioned your tendency to draw contours as opposed to gesture, so what if you weren't allowed to draw any contours at all? Maybe you could keep doing 30 second gesture drawings to really practice getting the overall flow of a pose down first. Once I did that for a while, I found I was able to sketch much more fluidly in the long run! Highly recommend - Anatomy can be really hard if you're bogging yourself down in the details. The shapes and landmarks lessons in this course really helps with that, I think. If you're still on gesture though, I wouldn't worry much about anatomy right now. Anatomy without gesture is very stiff, so it's important to sharpen your gesture skillset when you can - A little random, but I use colored pencil for my gesture sketches! They make things colorful and more interesting for me to look at. They also prevent erasing so I can think critically about where I messed up. Just a little fun tidbit I hope this helps some! Best of luck with your journey!
Reply
@longbeard
Additional images
Reply
Samuel Sanjaya
My gesture study with different duration. I've been looking for another sources on gesture, and i think my gestures improve a bit. I hope I can get some feedbacks and critiques on these gestures..
Write reply...
Drop images here to attach them to the message
Styrbjörn Andersson
My first steps into this course. These are some 30 second gestures to start out. The goal was to have decent line economy, but I am wondering if I am losing out on important information by using so few lines per pose. Also, I am wondering if it is even possible (for me) to add more detail in such limited time, while still keeping the proportions at least somewhat decent. Several of the poses already have quite questionable measurements, but I guess that will improve with more practice.
Write reply...
Drop images here to attach them to the message
Jeremy Harper
These are fantastic
Reply
@xxslayer
Mostly did 2-3 minutes but, i did a few 30 second ones that i did not save.
Write reply...
Drop images here to attach them to the message
Martha Muniz
Good gestures, especially for the quick time limit! You have some really cool examples of simplification for flow. I think something that can help push it further is keeping an eye out for static or dead shapes, like Mike Mattesi covers in the Drawing Basics course: https://www.proko.com/s/P3bk to push the dynamic, live quality as much as possible. I noted some specific cases below, I hope it helps :)
Reply
@soffe
Write reply...
Drop images here to attach them to the message
Martha Muniz
You have nice flow and energy throughout these :) I'd just say to watch for areas of tangents (where two lines meet), like the knees in the third figure. When tangents are unintentionally placed, it can feel awkward or draw more attention than necessary. So often times, these are an opportunity to further push or clarify your silhouette, like by moving the knee further to one side or the other. Also, I think there's a tendency towards smaller heads, so it can help to use nearby landmarks for measurement references, like the shoulders + sternum, but for a more detailed look at proportions, this video from later in the course is great: https://www.proko.com/s/9sB5
Reply
@culhwch
Hello. Here's a sample of my 30 second and 2 minute gestures. I'm a little reluctant to post these because I've been working on gesture daily for two months and I don't really think my drawings reflect that time investment. But I think posting these is probably good for me. I've watched some videos on the Force method and I'd love to get my drawings even more gestural like that, but my eyes and hand can't seem to make it happen yet.
Write reply...
Drop images here to attach them to the message
@culhwch
Two weeks later, here's where I'm at (30 second, 1 minute, and 2 minute poses). I tend to feel like my sketches are regressing, but hopefully they aren't! I can "see through" the contours to the spirit of a gesture pretty well by now, but I have a very hard time getting myself to modify poses under pressure the way that Stan and other skilled artists do in their demos.
Reply
Marco Sordi
2023/11/7. Good morning everybody. Here's some poses I drew from my imagination. It's the first time I do it so I'd like to have some feedback about it. Thanks.
Write reply...
Drop images here to attach them to the message
JAMES G
Hi everyone, for a while now I have been working on gestures and doing my best to understand the subject to the best of my current abilities. My gestures have primarily been 2 and 1-minute ones, with some occasional 30 secs. If anyone could give me any feedback on these and what I could do to improve them going forward it would be much appreciated. Also, I would like to mention that I mainly have tried to use Michael Hampton's and Proko's gesture methods when doing them.
Write reply...
Drop images here to attach them to the message
Liandro
Hey, @JAMES G, these look really good! Nice flow, clear read, enough simplification. You’re definitely on track with gesture, great job! I have a suggestion, but I don’t know if it’s necessarily “something you should do to improve” - I think it’s more like just a subjective point of view that I’d like to share and that maybe you could find useful in some way. Personally, when I want to focus on gesture, I usually don’t think too much about form or construction, I try to think mostly of an abstract idea of movement and flow. Sometimes, I'll use cross-controus moderately if they help clarify the pose, but, mainly, I tend to let go of the idea that the body parts are solid and, instead, I envision as if they were made of “pure energy” - I find this helps me push the idea of gesture, motion and force to its maximum. I’m attaching a couple of gesture sketches I’ve done in the past to help illustrate what I mean. In your gesture drawings, I can see you’re using plenty of cross-contours and even occasional boxes and cylinders, which leads me to believe that you’re considering form, too, as you work on the gestures. And I think that’s not a problem at all - in fact, many artists tend to blend gesture and construction together when sketching. Your sketches still look concise and fluid, so, as long as thinking of form doesn’t hurt thinking of the gesture, it’s fine. But, just in case, perhaps you might find it useful to know that it’s also okay to “ignore” a bit more of the construction aspect of the drawing when you want to focus mainly on gesture. As I mentioned before, I think this is not something you “should do to improve”, it’s just a possibility I notice. Hope this helps!
Reply
@kinage01
Hi everyone, I tried to do 2 min gesture drawings and would really appreciated feedback on what I could better and if I should add more time to gesture drawings? Thank you!
Write reply...
Drop images here to attach them to the message
Tasha
This is nice start, I can see you are trying to find the centre line and the lines of action. Try and keep your lines decided and a little less scratchy & think about where the weight is (eg.5 looks like the model is falling) I recommend the video Stan recently did on rhythms, I found this really helpful! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNYZ_NsTc24 Also in future try not to get your shadow in the picture. Good work, keep drawing!
Reply
@robot0906
What references did you use? or was it from imagination?
Reply
@zij
1mo
Hello!
Write reply...
Drop images here to attach them to the message
@zij
1mo
could i have some feedback :)
Reply
@pixlbny
ummmmm well, help
Write reply...
Drop images here to attach them to the message
Martha Muniz
Overall, it's a good start--you have overall good proportions for the figure, a good representation of depth, and clear actions, so nice work :) I think your troubles may stem from focusing on capturing perfect detail or following the outline of the figure one section at a time. There seems to be lines that try to capture every muscle and bump of a leg or arm all in one go, which is a very difficult task to achieve with accuracy. Try to keep to CSI lines, so each line is intentional and simplified into a plain curve or a straight. This will help you capture the bigger picture of the gesture before adding any detail. Also, don't be afraid to draw through the figure, as you don't have to keep to the outline. Having construction lines, rhythms, and sketchy lines is totally okay and part of the process--think of the Drawing Basics assignment for "Sketching from Observation" (the one with the hand, the robot girl, and the penguin). Gesture acts in the same way as those initial lay-ins, it serves to help us build the foundation before the final product. Hope this helps and let me know if you have any further questions. You got this! :)
Reply
Give a gift
Give a gift card for art students to use on anything in the Proko store.
Or gift this course:
About instructor
Founder of Proko, artist and teacher of drawing, painting, and anatomy. I try to make my lessons fun and ultra packed with information.
Help!
Browse the FAQs or our more detailed Documentation. If you still need help or to contact us for any reason, drop us a line and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible!
Your name
Email
Message