How do you do that? How do you get on paper those fleeting gestures with a few lines of the pen?
An outfielder watching the action at home plate, hyper alert, poised to dart in any direction to intercept the ball; a musician or dancer, in thrall to the rhythm; a girl on the beach pausing to look at the sole of her foot, checking for tar; two people conversing, one expostulating with hand gestures, the other listening, rapt.
The broad answer is to practice drawing from the live, unposed, unaware model in the world around you.
Specifically, however, there are some techniques to help get started. When I first realized how important it is to master the skill of rendering motions and attitudes truly, I was a first semester student at the Art Center School in Los Angeles. Not much social interaction with my fellow students; the average age of a freshman was about 26. Most were college graduates or veterans on the G.I. Bill. One was a Rear Admiral with gray in his hair. I was 17 and looked more like 14. I ate lunch in my car in the lot behind the school. Across the street from the parking lot was the playground of a neighborhood elementary school with a tether-ball set up near the fence. Children playing tether-ball always stood in the same places and repeated the same actions of hitting the ball. Over and over, the same gestures, even though the players changed. It gave me time to observe and remember the violent motions, which involved the whole body, long enough to catch them with my pen. Later, I discovered he same advantage at the bowling alley.
Drawing from any model, posed or not, is an exercise in memory. The artist looks at the model, memorizing as much as she/he can, then looks at the paper and makes the marks which will represent the model. Back and forth, model to drawing.
One instructor at the Art Center put us through an exercise which forced us to lengthen the time between observing and drawing: the benches and materials were set up in one studio, while the model was posed in an adjoining room. The artist could make as many trips next door as she/he wanted, to look at the model, but the drawing equipment had to remain in the studio. It is an effective method.
After a couple of hours of that, those students who smoked were badly in need of a cigarette.
This kind of hasty drawing usually has extraneous lines, some inaccuracies of proportion and few details, but, at its best, unmistakably conveys something which needs no caption or explanation.
An outfielder watching the action at home plate, hyper alert, poised to dart in any direction to intercept the ball; a musician or dancer, in thrall to the rhythm; a girl on the beach pausing to look at the sole of her foot, checking for tar; two people conversing, one expostulating with hand gestures, the other listening, rapt.
The broad answer is to practice drawing from the live, unposed, unaware model in the world around you.
Specifically, however, there are some techniques to help get started. When I first realized how important it is to master the skill of rendering motions and attitudes truly, I was a first semester student at the Art Center School in Los Angeles. Not much social interaction with my fellow students; the average age of a freshman was about 26. Most were college graduates or veterans on the G.I. Bill. One was a Rear Admiral with gray in his hair. I was 17 and looked more like 14. I ate lunch in my car in the lot behind the school. Across the street from the parking lot was the playground of a neighborhood elementary school with a tether-ball set up near the fence. Children playing tether-ball always stood in the same places and repeated the same actions of hitting the ball. Over and over, the same gestures, even though the players changed. It gave me time to observe and remember the violent motions, which involved the whole body, long enough to catch them with my pen. Later, I discovered he same advantage at the bowling alley.
Drawing from any model, posed or not, is an exercise in memory. The artist looks at the model, memorizing as much as she/he can, then looks at the paper and makes the marks which will represent the model. Back and forth, model to drawing.
One instructor at the Art Center put us through an exercise which forced us to lengthen the time between observing and drawing: the benches and materials were set up in one studio, while the model was posed in an adjoining room. The artist could make as many trips next door as she/he wanted, to look at the model, but the drawing equipment had to remain in the studio. It is an effective method.
After a couple of hours of that, those students who smoked were badly in need of a cigarette.
This kind of hasty drawing usually has extraneous lines, some inaccuracies of proportion and few details, but, at its best, unmistakably conveys something which needs no caption or explanation.
