168: Gesture studies posemaniacs (30 sec)

I had a really bad life drawing session on Tuesday because I thought that without any preparation I could just go in and make amazing gesture drawings. I now realize that figure studies are COMPLETELY different from gesture drawings. I think you can make fantastic gestures with a very limited knowledge of anatomy. So that meant I needed to go back to the drawing board! Gesture studies on the menu!

What better tool to use than posemaniacs.com. I set all poses to 30 seconds, even though sometimes I skipped a pose so I could add some details (that serve story) to a gesture. I definitely got a lot looser after a couple of these, and less occupied with unimportant elements, but instead focus on the general feel of the pose.

 AND...most importantly maybe, the question: "what is this pose?",if you don't know what the pose is about. Then how will you draw it? What is this character thinking, doing? I know it sounds crazy to think of ALL those things in 30 seconds, but when you take more than 30 seconds you will overthink it! At least I was :P

1) This is an exercise from Alex Woo (life drawing teacher at Pixar)m just draw the silhouette..BUT..yes there's a small catch. You need to be able to change the pose so it read better. rotate the model to get the best read or even change the pose to something that enforces the idea you are drawing! And all of this happens IN your head IN 30 seconds :)

I then switched to line..yikes!
You would think a 5 year old did this. It took me two pages
of bad drawings to finally get something going.