Gesture Critiques with Marshall Vandruff
Marshall Vandruff joins Stan Prokopenko to critique student gesture drawings. To watch the full 1 hour version of the conversation visit https://www.proko.com/figure
Marshall’s website – http://www.marshallart.com
Filed in: Critiques / Q&A • Figure • Videos
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BRAVO!!!
Thanks for the critique!
Hey Dylan, thanks for sending in your work! Hope you liked the video and thought the advice was helpful 🙂
A lot of the weight and compression errors in these drawings could be alleviated by establishing a line across the hips and shoulders before developing the rest of the proportions of the figures. The heads tend to be too small and because that tends to be the starting point for many of these drawings the body hangs like a marionette from the head. The consequence of this is that the figures are not grounded. They’re weightless.
Chris, that’s great advice. Thanks!
Thanks, this was so informative! Love the reference to Kimon Nicolaides!
I’m a dog, I’m a dog,I’m a dog,I’m a dog, I,m a WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF…,DOG!! Nice video!
Nice video Stan, very informative. Love the way you explain and critique the drawings with Marshall. I am still a begginer and some day do something closer to these gesture drawings, i am really enjoying this serie of fundamentals.
Exceptional, informative and applicable with just the right amount of Proko entertainment. LOVED your “Special” guest! What a dynamite combo you two are!
How wonderful. I learned a great amount.
Thank you
This was the best critique video I’ve seen.Also,the most helpful.So many critiques focus on critisisms & shortcomings.I loved Stan’s knowledge and insightfulness.
Thanks David!
Great video! Good critique from bowth. I don’t know why is so hard for me to draw like this (30 sec, 2 min). If I learn to draw from my imagination I will become a god in drawings! I draw from my phone, and I go stre8 for detail, eyes first … don’t know why. Drawing female is easier, tipe aatheone on deviantart. All my drawings there I consider them practice like i go realy detailed with all the (nose, eyes, lips, not the hair) I draw rarely but now seeing your videos inspires me to draw more often. I learn a lot from drawing to drawing. What are your critiques about my drawings cuz my friends all they say “ooooo f**king awesome give-it to me” or “draw me”. I never went a drawing class, school I just can do that and I want to improve-it.
I did not expect a 35 minute critique session, and featuring another artist as guest at that.
This was a treat!, enjoyed every minute of it.
Love the casualness and conversation between the two of you.
Hope im jinxing myself, but i wish we can see videos like this again some time in the future.
Excellent! great Work as always.
I’m enjoying it so much.:)
-P-
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http://apprendre-a-dessiner.org
Nice. I want to submit stuff too!
I new here and I’m hoping for someone to look at my work. Heres the link:
http://spiritdetective2010.deviantart.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqezHyNoFqM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b15QJ7LeKZs
Very informative and very funny 🙂
What were the names of the other artists Marshall mentioned? Love the videos! My wife is a teacher and she has been saying how much she appreciates the way you go through things with thoughtfulness and an eye for both the big and little pictures.
Hello! This is my first comment here so I just wanted to give
a quick shout out and tell you I really enjoy reading through your posts.
Can you suggest any other blogs/websites/forums that go over the
same topics? Thank you so much!
I just discover Marshall’s website. It’s amazing the illustrations he can create ! Some of the monsters are freakning !
This is really good and useful
hahaha LOVE this video. So informative, funny and well presented. Well done!
Just came here to say you don’t have an idea of how useful is to be able to see your old drawings, really encouraging… thank you for sharing that!
Something Marshall said at the end was great… “make sure you’re drawing a gesture” — I got so caught up in learning all these techniques that I found I couldn’t actually say what gesture drawing was meant to accomplish. Since they said in the video that Nicolaides coined the term gesture drawing, I looked up his definition:
“You should draw not what the thing looks like, not even what it is, but what it is doing… Gesture has no precise edges, no forms. The forms are in the act of changing. Gesture is movement in space. ”
What does that mean? I guess instead of drawing, say, a crouched figure, you’re drawing a person who is hiding. Instead of drawing a head, you’re drawing him peering over his shoulder. Instead of drawing a leg, you’re drawing him balancing on the balls of his feet, ready to bolt.
A great reference mentioned in the video was the artist NC Wyeth- I looked his paintings up and the figures in those paintings all so clearly communicate a story. Maybe we’re not drawing figures so much as characters in a snapshot of a story that we get to make up. Maybe that’s why the finished painting can look grandiose, shattered, or at peace, depending on the artist, though we all drew the same pose.