Studying Gesture—Kimon Nicolaides

I'm working from a variety of drawing resources to "hack" my learning—to learn as much as possible as quickly as possible.

Now that I've settled on developing my gesture drawing skills as the foundation of my abilities, I want to know as much about it and the best way to approach it.

I'm pulling from 9 sources of gesture drawing lessons and I wanted to devote a full post to each source.

The first source of gesture drawing instruction is from Kimon Nicolaides. I've had his book "The Natural Way to Draw" for many years and have tried about 3 times to follow his specific course of study. Due to time limitations and my own lack of discipline, I always gave up, but the lessons I learned were important and the exercises were often fun.

After contour drawing, the second lesson Nicolaides teaches is gesture. His method is that you're to feel the movement of the whole form in your whole body. You're to focus on the entire figure and should keep the whole thing going at once.

But I think this is the key to gesture drawing from the book: "Draw rapidly and continuously in a ceaseless line, from top to bottom, around and around, without taking your pencil off the paper. Let the pencil roam, reporting the gesture."

When I first started doing these studies, I removed my pencil from the paper to draw each part of the body separately. But once I read about keeping the pencil on the paper, I found that both the experience and the results improved.

So that's the Nicolaides scribble gesture method in more detail. "The Natural Way to Draw" has gotten mixed reviews. I like it's discipline and the way it breaks learning to draw into a curriculum that let's your newly-learned skills build upon each other. Even if you don't follow the curriculum as presented, I recommend trying some or all of the book's exercises in the time that you have.

Happy drawing!

See Robert Valley's "Pear Cider and Cigarettes" NOW!

I've been inspired by a lot of animation lately.

The work coming out of the Ecole de l'image Les Gobelins is amazing. Like this:

So there's a lot of animation—especially hand drawn/2D animation—out there to inspire and emulate.

And one person's work that I'm really loving is Robert Valley. He draws like this:

And he animates like this:

He's amazing! And although I wish that all of his women weren't insanely skinny, I love the ethnic diversity of his characters, something that many artists don't do. Usually diversity, especially of women, translates into one blonde, one brunette and one redhead. Hair color diversity! Obviously, that leaves out a lot of other people.

So when I heard that Valley not only made a 35-minute mature film that was accompanied by an ebook and tutorials, all available for purchase, I bought them immediately!

A page of thumbnails from "Pear Cider and Cigarettes" making of book. Valley explains why doing thumbnails is important.

And if you're interested in being an independent animator, I recommend you purchase the film and the bonus features of the ebook, tutorials and commentary.

I've watched the film twice (and intend to watch it again with the commentary), studied his ebook, which contains the original script, and went through all four of the Photoshop tutorials. And it was the most inspirational and educational experience for which any independent animator could hope.

A page from "Pear Cider and Cigarettes" making of book. 

One idea in particular that I thought was incredibly smart was that Valley designed the artwork for the graphic novel to also be used in the film. To keep the work to a minimum, he used a specific aspect ratio— 19:9—that worked for his graphic novel panels as well as for the film frames. The graphic novel ended up essentially being a storyboard for the film! 

Each panel of the graphic novel is a layered Photoshop file. Valley then takes that completed panel and puts it into a Premiere file and times it to music. This creates a placeholder/animatic showing the timing of every scene. He would then take the panel art and extend it and adjust it to create the animation for the film. So awesome!

A page from "Pear Cider and Cigarettes" making of book.

The ebook contains links to YouTube for the music, which is just as great as the animation. I downloaded the whole playlist. I'm listening to it as I write this! And it has a private password to watch Valley's "Shinjuku" animation, a precursor to the methods he used in "Pear."

A page from "Pear Cider and Cigarettes" making of book.

Valley's "Pear" is a big step in the direction of convincing people that animation isn't just for children and is a great medium for adult topics.

"Pear Cider and Cigarettes" is available for rent or purchase at Vimeo.

Practice—Scribble and Spaghetti Noodle Gestures 11/15/16

5 second "scribble" gesture drawings made with black and brown Pentel Touch Sign Pens on smooth newsprint. I like them because the ink flows just right and they're short so they can be held between the fingers like a charcoal pencil.

30 second "spaghetti noodle" gesture drawing made with Conté à Paris Pierre Noir B charcoal pencils on smooth newsprint.

Drawing Horse for an Apartment

The election has me so out-of-sorts that I'm neglecting my drawing practice.

But after venting, meditating and commiserating, I'm back to doing the only thing any of us can do: live our lives and pursue our life's purpose.

With all of the gesture drawing I've been doing, I was sitting in a way that ended up straining a few muscles in my leg. Clearly I needed a drawing horse but in a small room like my drawing room, a standard one wouldn't work.

Then I discovered The Folding Art Horse®! This is a perfect drawing horse for a small space since it folds flat and has a hole for hanging. There are 4 different models depending on your needs.

Now back to practicing and making good art!

Make. Good. Art.

Like many other Americans, I've spent the last week upset over the outcome of our latest presidential election.

I've had some time to recover. To inspire others to move forward, I wanted to share Neil Gaiman's words from his keynote address for the  2012 University of the Arts commencement:

  Zen Pencils made a wonderful comic version of his address:

There's nothing else to say…

Blocking Practice

Part 03—Andrew Loomis's "Creative Illustration": Formal Design

In Creative Illustration, Andrew Loomis explains that one of the functions of line is to produce formal design.

Here's an animated version of Loomis's formal subdivision diagram. The diagram is captioned, "This is the key to formal subdivision."

From Loomis: "Subdivision by diagonals, verticals and horizontals produces unlimited design. Try it."

Yes, try it!

(Music: http://www.bensound.com)

A Universe of Trouble Episode 11 Storyboard

Learning is More Valuable than the Final Product

Jony Ive of Apple.

From "Playing The Long Game Inside Tim Cook's Apple":

"I’ve always thought there are a number of things that you have achieved at the end of a project," Jony Ive told me and Brent Schlender…"There’s the object, the actual product itself, and then there’s all that you learned. What you learned is as tangible as the product itself, but much more valuable, because that’s your future."

As I make this web series, I believe this more and more.

Although the final product will reflect the best of my abilities at this time, what I've learned as I'm making it will be incredibly valuable for the next projects.

Play the long game!

Scene from Episode 10 of "A Universe of Trouble"

Practice—Mentler Skulls

Before I decided to put skull studies aside to focus on gesture, I was doing these skull studies based on the measurements of artist Michael Mentler.

I like his system and look forward to returning to studying it.

Scene from Episode 09 of "A Universe of Trouble"

Spaghetti Noodle Practice

Scene from Episode 08 of "A Universe of Trouble"

Gesture Drawing—"Spaghetti Noodle"

In this previous post, I talked about breaking my gesture drawing studies into two areas—"scribble" gestures and "spaghetti" noodle gestures—and discussed the scribble method in detail.

Now about the spaghetti noodle method…

I use the term "spaghetti noodle" instead of "stick figure" because stick figure implies straight, stiff lines, the opposite of what we're trying to achieve.

Instead, we want to draw curvy, rhythmic lines that quickly capture the action and feeling of the figure.

Stan Prokopenko's "spaghetti noodle" 30 second gesture.

Steps in the Samantha Youssef gesture drawing method.

With only one full week of practicing these two approaches, I feel that I'm seeing the figure more clearly. The blocking exercise has me seeing the various shapes that make up the figure and the gesture exercises have me capturing the figure's body language quickly.

If you want to improve your figure drawing, I recommend practicing gesture drawing until it becomes second nature. This will most likely take years or months but you'll be a better draftsperson as a result.

Scene from Episode 07 of "A Universe of Trouble"

Scribble Gesture Practice

Scene from Episode 06 of "A Universe of Trouble"

Gesture Drawing—"Scribbles"

As I progressed with my drawing instruction, I hit a wall. I traced that problem to having gone through Stan Prokopenko's Figure Drawing Fundamentals series too quickly.

I'm now reviewing that series with an improved mindset of PATIENCE. 

Although I took the time to practice gesture drawing when I first started these lessons, I didn't keep in mind the CONCEPT that was being taught with the lesson. Appreciating the concept of gesture is just as important as doing the gesture drawings.

This time, while watching the full version of the Proko gesture lesson, I took FIVE pages of notes as a reminder of how to do the exercise and its purpose.

Here's a summary of why gesture is the single most important part of the drawing:

1. Gesture is: the movement between things; the motion, action body language, energy, story idea, message. It describes the relationship among the forms.
2. Gesture is NOT the contours, forms nor the tone but the movement that connects the contours, forms and tone.
3. The goal is to practice gesture so that it becomes second nature.
4. Gesture is in everything. Without it, the drawing is static and boring.
5. Gesture is more about how the object feels than how it looks.
6. The concept to be learned from gesture: I'm training my mind to see rhythm in everything I draw; training my mind to consider more than just contours when I draw and shade.

Here's an example of how gesture is in everything—a Frank Gehry architecture gesture drawing:

After reviewing the Proko approach to gesture, I was reminded of the gesture lessons of Kimon Nicolaides, Samantha Youssef and Glenn Vilppu. Proko, Youssef and Vilppu have similar, spaghetti-noodle approaches to gesture.

But Nicolaides teaches a scribble method that the others don't teach that I thought would be valuable to practice. Both methods require quickly recording the feeling of the pose but the scribbling involves a faster, even more visceral response to the pose. Plus, I like all of those moving, energetic lines.

I'm dedicating four weeks to practicing just gesture. My daily drawing practice now looks like this:

1. Warmup circles (1-2 pages)
2. Warmup ellipses  (1-2 pages)
3. Warmup straight lines  (1 page)
4. 50 drawings of 5 second "scribble" gestures
5. 50 drawings of 30 second "spaghetti noodle" gestures
6. Youssef blocking exercise (1 pose)

I start with the Watts warmup of circles, ellipses and straight lines using a charcoal pencil. Then I switch to a Tombow fine point and brush pen for the 5 second scribble drawings. I found free-flowing ink to work better than charcoal for those particular drawings. I then switch back to a blunt charcoal pencil for the 30 second gestures. For the blocking exercise, I use a well-sharpened charcoal pencil. All of these exercises are done on smooth newsprint.

In her book Movement and Form, Youssef describes blocking as "…the practice of training our eyes to recognize the individual shapes of the objects in our picture plane…It is meant to train your eyes to graphically translate what you see onto paper with accuracy."

This idea of blocking is similar to that of concept artist Robh Ruppel's in his book Graphic L.A. He talks about how drawing is symbol-making; that the way to make a drawing look real is the use of basic shapes, basic brushes and getting the relative values right. He recommends—like Youssef—reducing everything we see into simple geometric shapes and the fewest values. Youssef recommends daily blocking practice so that's exactly what I'm going to do. 

My goal in life is to be able to paint like THIS!

Oops! I Went Too Fast!

Student gesture drawing from Kimon Nicolaides' "The Natural Way to Draw."

Building a drawing foundation is proving to be more difficult than I originally imagined.

I've had so many starts and stops that I've lost count.

I've studied from numerous instructors, courses and books, too many to list.

But you can go TOO fast.

My problem is that I practice consistently for a brief period then…nothing. I come to a complete stop and never return.

This keeps happening because after about one week of practice, I start to second-guess why I'm doing that particular exercise. And the reason I question the exercise I'm doing is because it's so damn boring!

Gesture drawing, blind contours and other pure seeing/drawing exercises are necessary. But the reality is that these exercises quickly become dull. This is true of any drill, like practicing scales or layups. And with drawing, it's natural to want to get to the good part of creating completed art.

But like scales and layups, drawing exercises are ESSENTIAL to building a solid foundation.

The Lesson: don't rush your drawing studies!

Being studious means taking the time to genuinely understand each lesson AND apply that lesson to practice and final work.

I went through Stan Prokopenko's Figure Drawing Fundamentals series too quickly, not truly instilling each lesson.

And it shows every time I sit down to draw something.

So now I'm going all the way back to basics, to gesture drawing.

NEXT: more on gesture drawing.

How Not to Be a "Cover Band" Visual Artist

Artist Michael Mentler is know as The Bone Doctor for his knowledge of the human skeleton. He recently came to mind as I was struggling to draw the skull in the Watts Head drawing curriculum.

Awhile ago I downloaded an iPhone app of Mentler's book but the drawings and his handwriting were too small to be of any real use.

But after checking online, it turns out that he has a book and a video focusing on…THE SKULL!

Talk about synchronicity!

I immediately bought both and watched the section of the video related to drawing a frontal view of the skull (the video starts with the profile but it makes more sense to me to start with the front.)

This video shows clips from the lessons:



I'm still amazed that I found this just as I was struggling with this same topic!

The beauty of Mentler's approach is that he's taken the lessons of George Bridgman, Andrew Loomis and Robert Beverly Hale and combined them into a process of measuring accurately the drawing of the skull and skeleton, a method that works for him. Per Mentler:

"If you take any one master and try to follow that person exclusively, you become nothing more than a cover band for that artist. I don't care how well you play The Beatles, you're still a cover band for The Beatles."

Thanks to Mentler's skull measuring method, I am no longer aimlessly trying to learn how to draw the skull. Instead, I'm learning to draw the skull deliberately.

Since I have found no other method for accurately drawing a skull, I recommend Mentler's approach.

Do you have a method for drawing the skull? If so, please share in the comments. Thanks!

Watts Atelier Drawing Curriculum Temporarily On Hold

Working my way through the Watts Atelier Drawing Curriculum, I completed the Fundamentals section and eagerly started the Head section.

And immediately hit a wall!

The Head section begins with drawing the skull from various angles.

The problem I'm having is that the lack of a measuring system for the skull. I know how to measure when placing features onto the face but I don't know how to measure the placement of the parts of the skull to ensure that they're in the right place.

Since Watts is $99/month, I was happy to see that there's the option to put one's subscription on hold which I've now done.

Now I need to learn the skull.

I've been drawing from the model I have but there's been a nagging concern that I'm not really "getting it."

That's when The Bone Doctor popped into my head!

Michael Mentler aka The Bone Doctor

More about The Bone Doctor in the next post!

Practice

Artist Andy Griffiths is a Creative Illustration Fan!

Comic artist Andy Griffiths of toonskool.com made this video extolling the virtues of Andrew Loomis's "Creative Illustration."

Actually, Griffiths recommends ALL of  Loomis's books!

Watch his demo of Loomis's informal subdivision done in Manga Studio: