Gesture: A Dramatic Purpose

I still think that gesture is about hitting a pose clearly. Before you can even reach that point, a vital step too easily overlooked is that gesture always needs a dramatic context no matter what, or else there's no purpose to the gesture. I mean, if there's no purpose to the gesture, you might as well be drawing perfect circles and ellipses anyway (which one probably should be doing from time to time anyway).

It's important to bring dramatic context to a gesture:

1. Milt Kahl did it: he would spend a whole day just staring out in space thinking about what he's going to do before he even does it.
2. It clarifies what you're doing without being very technical about it.
3. It gives you far more control and authority over what you want to achieve.
4. I have to stress that you really have to think about the dramatic context before you even lay one line down, and you have to have dramatic context even when you draw naked figures in space.

For example, lets say I was to draw a naked guy in space, inventively, . . . what are some things I would think about:

1. What does a naked guy in space do?
Stand, in some open space, like an exhibitionist, not just stand, but he's hitting a definite artistic pose, because he knows he's being drawn. He would probably look off to the side, or up in the air, because it would be weird to look directly at people drawing you . . .

I mean these sort of thoughts help you paint a visual picture, that lets your imagination fill in the clues, as opposed to jotting off lines and letting the muscle mechanics of drawing or happy accidents do the work of drawing for you . . .

Usually, you don't even intend to draw naked people in space, and an easy way to jump into a good pose when you intend to just sketch one character is to just imagine that there's some other character there that's just not shown- NOW you're character is doing something- DRAMATIC.


The only technical things about thinking things through is you want to definitely decides the hips, knees, and head are going to be for compositional/proportional purposes. Also it helps to draw the head tilt first, that way the character has a definite state of being- because a head tilt is never generic, a tilting a head a certain way is the most specific dramatic thing a human can do- they say it does more that words can.

Another technical thing I just discovered that is really awesome is to double up your lines like this:




There's something about it that absolutely clarifies every single line that you do- it's like your first line is always bad because you're finding something out, and then your second line verifies the statement.

Convex Concave other tips

Avoid right angles in poses. Make sure one side of limbs is smaller than the side facing you.

When drawing cartoons its best to exaggerate the attachment of the head, almost as if the head is a toy ball jointed onto the neck. But it can only look this way if the shape design of the head is very solid- the shape cannot look wobbly. In fact, most of the time, the head ISNT volumetrically drawn, when you overconstruct the head you loose the graphic sense of it- most of the time, the outline of the head itself, as a shape, has solid enough qualities to be graphic and solid and the same time, without overconstructing.

And the neck is something you just have to plain get right, because it's part of the spine. If the neck is off the entire body is off. 

Especially for the arms, legs, and hands, always refer to other body parts to size it out. Always know your peak, angle, and the width of a limb cross section before executing the outlines. Keep the outer contours of the limbs convex. 

Easy cartoon ryhtym (most of the time)- outer contours- convex, inner contours- concave.

If you are going to build a line don't lift your pencil to do it, execute the line as if you're coloring a coloring book. Build your lines for  inking things like hair, eyes, and lips, because they have soft complex curves.

Random stuff

It's a good idea to draw the entire line, and then build up your line around the middle when inking. Get used to building up your line when it comes to difficult curves.

Keep the structural integrity of the neck shoulder area. Keep the thighs long and triangular. compare arm sizes to leg sizes. The torso actually flows more like a volcano (head to crotch), it's just that there is stuff going on in your back that fools the silouette into being more barrel shaped.

Pause when you gesture more often. More definite shape statements.
Fool around with foot shapes more- stage it sideways often simply to make a stance clearer.

Kaizen approach- improve drawing- one drawing at a time.

Pencil Movement: Watching People Draw

There's a lot of physiological mysteries in drawing. Sometimes I like to watch videos of really awesome artists draw and see how they move.

Me: My natural instinct is heavy handedness- just feel it out in the beginning, get any kind of silouette desired any way possible, no matter how messy. I draw like Wanderlei Silva, I swing for the ropes and hope it lands, and if it doesn't I keep on trying.

Artists whose pencil movement I like:

Eric Goldberg: I think his pencil movement is the simplest to understand, and is the most effective in most cases. He has almost an etch-a-sketch quality to the way he moves his pencil- it barely ever jumps off the page, so he has a quality of pushing the line to make it what he wants. He also uses his small fingers to thrust subtle smaller lines to be more confident, which is an awesome idea, as it allows speedy coverage and easy closure of shapes. He arcs his wrist frequently to make the most out of his pencil tip and get an ideal angle. When he moves to different body parts, he DOESN'T PAUSE at all, he almost teleports his pencil tip across the figure as if he intended everything as one piece.



Jim Lee: I like his pencil movements because he's brisk in a good way, the best thing about him is his CONSTANT movement. He never pauses, wherever his pencil is, it's doing something. And he does this because he wants to keep the entire image unified. He never lingers in one place for too long. Watch him draw that hard line of the Joker's jaw- you can FEEL that he felt how hard the bone is just from how swift the line was at 1:27. And he draws details he keeps it light, brisk, and easy. He switches up his grip from time to time- further back to start, tighter when things are tighter. He shows you that you can do a lot with simple tools.

Artists who are amazing, but have movements that don't work well if you attempt it:
Glen Keane: His video is actually the first video I've seen of an artist that really inspired me just watching him draw, but I think I picked up a lot of bad habits from him. He draws very heavy-handedly. He hacks down lines, and his grip is constantly stiff. When I watched this video a year ago, I felt as though the boldness of his line is how every statement should be- so not knowing any better I imitated this behavior to bad effect.

It's bad because Glen doesn't have much dynamics to his pencil movement compared to Eric Goldberg, every line is fierce- frequent elbow/shoulder movement. Less fine control. He draws more like Mike Tyson compared to Eric Goldberg's more Sugar Ray Leonard fluidity.


Skottie Young: is a huge mystery to me, he draws freakishly well and fast. I can barely analyze how, because he's left handed and he has a really odd grip on top of it, and it doesn't even appear that he has any under-drawing at all on that sketch. Furthermore, it looks like he's using a Faber-Castell brush pen, which is, in my opinion, a very difficult pen to use. He jumps around almost as if he's drawing drunk. Must be talent.

Dont overlook contrast

Shape design is a tricky subject. Something I've realized just now is that you can't lump in "flow" with shape design. I think flow is something that you just have to have in your bones, you can't even think about it- flow can mess up the larger goal of shape design.

I think the most important strategy of shape design is contrast of sizes- know how to make something big, medium, or small, short, skinny, wide, fat, etc to your advantage. Thinking in this mode at least allows you to lay something out- and it works excellently with groups of figures.

In fact, I would go as far as to say that the shape of any part itself isn't important- it's the contrast of it that really matters.

Even for poses, you can look for where the body is tight, versus where the body is loose.

Gesture

I can finally say what gesture is about in a way I am happy with-

Gesture is about hitting a pose CLEARLY.

The best tool to be clear is shape design- as it lends to graphic poses. When you want to draw an intended pose you have to have a graphic idea of the entire pose. To make sure you confine the pose as a unified shape design it's a good idea to mark the top, bottom and side boundaries- that way you pack in all your lines in the right places.

When you copy drawings you learn a graphic shorthand- that wont help you hit naturalistic poses necessarily. To hit naturalistic poses, you have to draw sets of graphic shorthands in relation to other sets- you have to keep all of your line placement graphically relational.

Always pay attention to where your line starts and ends.

2nd pass roughs & Inker's Mindset

So inking should be more difficult than drawing because you have that added pressure of putting down a perfect line and not making a mistake. So the 2nd pass is all about making the final inking pass easier.

Here are some things I look for in a second pass:
1. Flip the gesture horizontally, because you see problems you normally cant if you dont.
2. Quickly clarify the shape separations by solving the tangency issues and implying more line weight separations. Dont worry about drawing a perfect line. This pass is about making shapes more graphic and not tangent, because you don't want to make these decisions in an inking pass.

3. Take time to perfect the hands & feet. Generally, in a second pass, you want the hands and feet to already look as you intend them to, and when you actually ink it, you'll look to simplify it so it looks more graphic.

And when you actually ink, you might find that you didn't do everything you should have in the 2nd pass- if that's the case, don't draw things with an inker's mindset. Switch modes, rough it out enough . . .


Here, I didn't follow my second pass game-plan exactly, as my inks don't follow where the blue shapes are exactly, but I found it more effortless to rough little touch ups than to ink and guess.