Teaching Gesture Drawing

as human beings. We draw other people and ourselves a lot.

Um This has been going on for a very very long time.

For instance we have the french cave paintings.

These were done in approximately 17,000 B. C. E.

So obviously very early humans still drawing the human form

Additionally of course we have a very common example a very popular

example of the human form being put to paper by another person.

We have Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa painted in 1503.

And nowadays you don't even need to go to classical art school or

have a completely crazy creative mind in order to draw the human body.

Anyone can learn how to draw the human body. Now of course we have Youtube.

We have wiki how we have so many different resources

in order to help us learn how to draw.

But if we have so many resources to learn how to draw why are there

still so many people that are still unable to get past a stick figure?

Um Some people are still unable to add that extra mass that

extra little bit of mile that bit of to the drawing.

That makes it look more like a person a real human being sitting in front of

you with all of their texture and density and mass that is attached to them.

And that's why for my lesson today I'm going

to be teaching how to draw gesture drawings.

Um Specifically I'm going to be focusing on three types.

Um I'm going to be focusing on mass gesture drawings.

Um line gesture drawings and scribbled gesture.

Um for mass gesture, we're going to be using charcoal of course as you can see here.

And for line and scribble, we're going to be using a pencil or pen.

I prefer pencil just because you can restart if you need to.

Mm hmm.

So my activity actually requires very minimal materials.

Especially you can find a lot of these things around the house.

You probably have pencils at least.

Um and charcoal of course, you don't need to get the package charcoal,

a piece of charcoal from a burnt piece of wood also works.

Um, that is literally what these are burned pieces of wood into charcoal.

Um,

so we're going to need block charcoal

condensed charcoal is the best because it's going

to give us the blackest black and that's what we want for a mass gesture.

And then of course we're going to need pencil.

Any type of hardness is okay, It does not matter for this type of exercise.

Um, we're also going to want something big and flat and kind of strong, um,

like a foam core board.

Um,

and this is just going to be like our makeshift easel

and this is because we want basically a 45 degree angle,

um,

from the table to where we're sitting because we want to

be able to sit straight and look forward and um,

be able to be eye level with the thing that we're drawing right now.

And that is the biggest thing about gesture drawing

is that you want to make sure that you're

sitting up straight looking at them the way that

a human being would look at another human being,

not necessarily looking down at your paper than looking up,

it's much easier to capture the movement and the essence of the image.

If you're just able to look up really quickly and then look down

at your paper and look up and look down at your paper,

sort of look up and look down.

Yes,

so for mass gesture drawings,

the first thing that I'm going to be showing my students

during this lesson is actually going to be a silhouette.

Um and that is because most students have probably

not ever heard of a mass gesture drawing,

especially if they're in the first year art class,

like I'm going to be teaching in a high school.

Um and so obviously this is something that everyone has been exposed to,

Everyone has seen a silhouette of someone there in advertisements there in movies,

there on movie posters, they're everywhere in media, right?

And so since we know what a silhouette is,

after I show my students the silhouette and they get an idea of what a

mass gesture drawing is and that they're going

to be using condensed charcoal for it,

I'm going to ask them to look at the model that they've

chosen this model is either going to be in the classroom itself,

right in the middle,

where everyone is going to be able to see it from their different views

um or it's going to be on the computer or printed piece of paper

after I complete um that after my students complete that exercise,

um I'm going to ask them what about the silhouette?

Could have been better for them.

Um For instance, we have this silhouette right here,

we have this man's hands kind of like in this pose, right,

and we can't really see what he's doing with his hands and so in a silhouette,

it's not actually very readable, we can read his legs very well though.

Um and so a very good example of a silhouette that

was turned into a mass gesture drawing is right here,

right.

This is a very good one.

After my students did their um try at it and they maybe got

some unreadable kind of silhouette based on the images that they were choosing.

Um I would show them here's a very readable silhouette.

We have, we know exactly what this man is doing, he's kneeling down on one knee.

Um and then I'd show them exactly how to do this.

The techniques that I would use um starting with the big darkest areas,

we can see that this is done um in the same method, I would use,

where you're going to block out of that huge chunk of body right in the middle first

and then turn your charcoal block and get that leg and that other leg and that foot

um for line gesture, I'm going to be doing a very similar thing,

like with the silhouette,

but I'm going to be showing them a stick figure and basically saying that

this is the base of the drawing that we're going to be working on.

This is a completed line gesture drawing all the way

the third image on the on the far right.

Uh And then we can see that this is our stick figure drawing.

We see that it has a lot more curve, a lot more movement to the body.

Um But after I showed my students the stick figure,

I would ask them to look at their image and basically apply a stick figure to it.

For instance, looking at me, we have ahead, we have a body,

we have arms and they're doing this and so not necessarily straight um lines with the

stick figure is and curved lines to kind

of replicate the motion that that body is making

uh same way to the mass gesture as well.

Um following their try at it,

I'm going to show them um the easiest way to do this is going to be right here.

We can see in this second image

um where they've added the big shapes to the stick figure.

I'll tell them that it's really nice to be able to add in those blocks.

We see that big, nice big rectangle for the torso.

And then by the third image we can see those nice

long oblong shapes and rectangles and circles for those legs,

feet and hands.

For my third and final part of the lesson, I would show my students um this globe,

not necessarily this globe,

but a globe because this is a really good example of

dimensional lines that we're going to be using in scribbled gesture.

Um as we can see that even though this is a two D.

Image, we our brains perceive it as it has mass, it has density, It's real,

it's three D.

Right?

Because of these lines that are coming at us, these dimensional lines,

these longitudinal attitudinal lines.

Um After I showed my students this, I would ask them to take their model again,

look at it and apply those longitudinal attitudinal lines

to the model in a way that would create dimension.

For instance, looking at this,

this is a good example of like approximately what

ahead would look like if it had no features.

But we can see that if you added a nose to it,

it would probably do this and then we'll come out a little

bit and then tuck back under and all of that with the lips

And then it would come across and they would have to come up a

little bit for the nose and then go all the way across again.

So they would do that for their entire model and I would

probably give them approximately 10-15 minutes for this part of the project.

Um just because that takes a very long time when you're still learning how to do it.

And so similarly after they did their try, I would show them my try.

And this would only take me about 30 seconds to a minute because I'm starting

with this very broad gesture of the motion um and the density of the body.

We can see that it starts with the curve of her butt

right there um that curves into her legs and that's the motion and

the density that that body has um coming all the way over to

here in the very last part of the image with the leg.

Um We can see these lines that are wrapping around it left to right.

Um And that is showing that it's round, it has mass, it's not just a two D.

Object that was being drawn.

And so overall um for my project,

I believe that I'm demonstrating multiple different theories and connections to

theories that we've learned over the course of the semester.

Um In general, I think that I take a very constructivist view in teaching.

Um I think that students should be able to connect

their prior knowledge to their current knowledge on their own.

Um And try that first before they get a direct instruction from their teacher.

Um That's why I like doing all of the

things that they probably would have seen before, like the stick figure, the globe,

the silhouette, et cetera,

um and just showing them that like you can pull on this back information in

your head that you already know about and be able to elaborate on that.

And that's also my second point is that I think that art in general as a discipline,

um it works a lot on elaboration um just because it

always is building off of something else that you already know,

you already know um what a silhouette is,

you know that it's a big blackened image of the form of the body.

So how do I translate that into a correct mass gesture drawing

of course, since my students are doing it uh learning by doing,

I think that it's also a very good example of enactment.

Um And finally, I'd like to say that since I'm working,

um I'm planning on working with high schoolers,

um I'm mostly working from PJ's formal operational stage,

and I'm asking them to use some deductive reasoning um

when I'm asking them about the readable nous of the silhouettes

and the movement of the bodies that they're making,

make them kind of trying to deduce what makes the silhouette readable,

what makes it not readable,

thank you so much for watching my presentation, I would be very good

Teaching Gesture Drawing

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