GESTURE DRAWING DO's and DON'Ts; Stop doing this and focus on the right things instead

In this video you’ll learn the purpose of gestures. I’ll point out what artists tend to do wrong in the beginning and what you should focus on instead.
You’ll see me pick apart my own gesture drawing process so you know what to prioritize in future drawings.
See me demo:
Lines of action
Rhythms
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Materials I used in this video:
Wollf’s Carbon Pencils 4B
Newsprint Paper
Drawing Board

[@michaelebron1280]

This was really useful, my gesture and anatomy drawings come out very stiff sometimes.

[@CarolinPeters]

So glad it was useful! Let me know if there's anything else you'd like me to address in a future video :)

[@michaelebron1280]

@@CarolinPeters If possible could you make a video about improving your shading techniques.

[@CarolinPeters]

@@michaelebron1280 Sounds like a good one. I'll put it on my list! Thanks for the suggestion.

[@moss6235]

Big help, thanks! I like how you briefly, but accurately, explain what a “line of action” is.

[@CarolinPeters]

Hey, I'm so glad you found this to be useful! Let me know if there are any other drawing questions that you have. I'm always happy to help :)

[@koolkat123]

i always underestimated the importance of doing these....ugh. im realizing now that details don't matter as much as the basic shapes and flow of a pose. all that detail can always be added after but if you get good at gestures it adds so much life and flow and action to your art. currently filling a sketchbook with these. thanks for the tips :D

[@CarolinPeters]

That's a great thing to be working on. Let me know how it goes! Glad that this was useful.

[@semys1274]

Thanks for your advice, i was focusing to much on details and forms of the body

[@CarolinPeters]

That's a natural thing to do, and certainly something worthwhile to pursue in longer drawings. But for short gestures we can do without them 😊 Glad you found this useful!

[@Skyeleafe]

I'm practicing this and I kept messing up everytime. I always check, yet couldn't see what was wrong. Thanks to this video, it helped me see my flaw when gesture drawing as I have a heavy hand and always draw chicken scratch lines.

[@CarolinPeters]

Glad it's been helpful for you

[@billgallagher8182]

This is a very nuanced issue that I had no idea of. So very interesting and thought-provoking. Excellent instruction, Carolin!

[@CarolinPeters]

Thank you! Glad it's educational :)

[@Joyboy9776]

Really helpful

[@b00gi3]

Fantastic instruction Carolin. We are really lucky you are sharing your skills and experience with us!

[@CarolinPeters]

So happy you're enjoying the videos!

[@sunshinecommentswoop4902]

Loved this demonstration very helpful thank you!!!

[@CarolinPeters]

You're so welcome!!!

[@Saf1ouane]

short and to the point, my kind of thing, very helpul too, thank you.

[@CarolinPeters]

Excellent! So glad it was helpful for ya :)

[@star_liiight]

I love how you do gesture drawings! Your tutorials are the best! 🥰

[@CarolinPeters]

Aww, thanks. So happy they’re helpful for you!

[@lol-jx9qi]

quick to the point & very useful! thank you for the tips!

[@CarolinPeters]

Your so welcome ☺️

[@ains7563]

Thanks for this video! I’m going into my second year of art school this fall, and in first year we didn’t end up working on drawing people too much. Thanks for this - I hope to improve my people drawing skills so that I can create dynamic poses and perspectives for my comic zines

[@CarolinPeters]

Good luck with your studies. Glad this was helpful!

[@aliozel2541]

extremely useful. Thank you much for lessons.

[@CarolinPeters]

So glad it was useful :)

[@personaljosh1006]

Thank you! This is very helpful.

[@CarolinPeters]

Happy to hear it! Got any questions for me?

[@nylemurad3440]

This was extremely helpful Thank you 💙

[@CarolinPeters]

Oh that's so great to hear :) You're welcome!

[@carlosgalvezrios845]

This is truly basic and simple to comprehend. Thank you for sharing this information!

[@CarolinPeters]

Glad it was helpful!

[@oz-pubg3213]

I was doing all these things at first, but then I was confused, as many people said different things to do......i tried and my gesture drawings became worse. I was really worried, and then I saw your video and realised, I was doing all rrigh at first.... Now, I am fully relaxed and confident😊 Thankyou really so much💗

[@CarolinPeters]

OMG, it can be so overwhelming in the beginning when you realize how ny different ways of doing things there are out there. Remember there's no ONE way, just different options to get you to different results. I'm happy that my explanation helped in lifting the confusion a bit. Keep going and keep asking questions. Happy drawing to you!

[@oz-pubg3213]

@@CarolinPeters Thank you😊 I am actually so happy to get yr reply😅

[@madmoisellechaotica6934]

Thanks for this helpful video! Gestures are so hard and its good to watch this then from time to time!

[@CarolinPeters]

You're so welcome. I'm happy it helped. What are you studying gestures for if I may ask?

[@kelseymatarese]

Incredibly helpful! Thanks!

[@CarolinPeters]

Love to hear that! Let me know if you have any drawing related questions. I'm always happy to help.

[@dannibruh6366]

Thanks much! I spent too much time on the small details. This was so helpful!

[@CarolinPeters]

So glad it was useful for you. Let me know if you have any other drawing questions for me. I'm always happy to help

[@ArtsyLadyCrafter]

Yep! Very helpful! Thanks!

[@CarolinPeters]

Awesome. So happy to hear it's useful for you!

[@plamenenew]

Thank you for the explanation, going to try it out right now!!

[@CarolinPeters]

Excellent! Have fun!

[@cory99998]

thank you, this was very to the point and helpful

[@CarolinPeters]

Yay, so happy it helped!

[@Trylobyte]

That was great -thanks!

[@CarolinPeters]

Yay, so glad you enjoyed it! (Sorry for the late reply, I'm just catching up on a bunch of comments I've missed.)

[@sadashivashetty3810]

Super gesture pencil sketch drawing technique, thank you lots

[@CarolinPeters]

So glad it's helpful for you!

[@marzzarella]

thank you so much for this video!

[@CarolinPeters]

You're so welcome. Glad it was helpful

[@ducky5415]

thank you for making a concise intro video!

[@CarolinPeters]

So glad this was useful for you :)

[@robbinwaslost890]

an actual useful and short video that isn't talking about random things that no one cares about,this must be a blessing from the lord

[@CarolinPeters]

So glad this was what you were hoping for :)

[@vnaykmar7]

Thank you ma'am this was very useful !

[@CarolinPeters]

You're so welcome, I'm glad it helped!

[@stiles3337]

Thanks for the video !! Really helpfull !

[@CarolinPeters]

Yay! So happy to hear that. You're welcome!

[@antuffati2966]

Yes! Now I can improve faster!

[@CarolinPeters]

Yes! I hope it'll help!

[@zooropa414]

I love this channel, very practical advice and straight to the point

[@CarolinPeters]

So glad you like the videos! Let me know if you have any drawing questions you'd like me to answer in future videos!

[@falcononthesax]

Hi !! thank you for this awesome video. I've been struggling to understand gesture and kept watching youtube videos and reading stuff online. A lot of it overcomplicated the process for me but using the line of action seems so much simpler. Now to get the line of action correct :p

[@CarolinPeters]

Good luck with your practice. So happy my video helped you move forward!

[@jeffisded1222]

Thanks!

[@CarolinPeters]

Happy drawing to you!

[@morita688]

Thanks to this video, I discovered a tremendously useful channel. You have excellent material. Thanks for sharing it! ☆

[@CarolinPeters]

Amazing! So glad you're benefitting from my material. Let me know if you have any drawing questions burning on your mind!

[@FLESHCATALYST]

I actually forgot a lot of this from ap art. Thank you! Now i can draw more interesting stuff.

[@CarolinPeters]

Awesome. Keep up the good work!

[@9dk4.5]

I feel honored to give the 1000th like 😂 Thanks for the tutorial. It's helpful and concise.

[@CarolinPeters]

Yay, thanks so much! It makes me happy to hear this. Here's something slightly different. I’m currently conducting research on how I can best support people in their drawing growth journey. If you’re open to it, I would really appreciate it if we could hop on a quick call and I could ask you a few questions. Let me know either way! If not, no worries and I wish you all the best. You can find open call (Zoom) times here: calendly.com/curastudios/30min

[@franciscoacevedo8153]

MUCHISIMAS GRACIAS CAROLIN..TE AGRADEZCO DE CORAZON X TUS LINDOS VIDEOS Y MARAVILLOSAS EXPLICACIONES..APRENDI MUCHO Y CON MUCHA PRSCTICA..SOS UNA GRAN ARTISTA Y TUS VIDEOS ME AYUDAN MUCHO..MUCHOS ÉXITOS MAS EN TU VIDA AMIGA..SALUDOS DESDE ARGENTINA...MUCHAS GRACIAS..ABRAZOS AMIGA.👍🙆

[@CarolinPeters]

You're so welcome!

[@Daily_Digital_Drawing_D.D.D]

열시미 공부 하겠습니다. ^^

[@albertrovinmathew443]

I always used draw the contour but not the gesture. I felt i was heading nowhere but when i saw this video, i want to thank you on how simple you made it. Thank you so much Carolin, its was a great help 🌹❣ You deserve the subscribe!!

[@CarolinPeters]

So happy to hear that the video helped you out!

[@The__Pengwin]

Yes, it was very helpful. My gesture drawings are feeling much more like a gesture drawing sessions instead of a tedious anatomical study . It is always the short videos that have the most valuable information!

[@CarolinPeters]

So glad it helped you out!

[@eshlost5604]

Sometimes I want to remind myself what do I focus on anyway, or maybe, rather have someone else reassure me that what I'm doing is correct. This video is spot-on, thank you!

[@CarolinPeters]

So glad you're already doing this! It's best to know where you want to go before you get started, right?! Happy drawing to you, and let me know if you have any other drawing questions for me.

[@eshlost5604]

@@CarolinPeters I actually do, though I don't know if they're a bit too oddly specific and might seem like I could be overthinking, but guess it's worth a shot! First off, I wanted to ask if you know what would be a globally accepted definition for a gesture? By that I mean, every teacher really explains gesture in different ways and often times I find their suggestions contradictory, while all of them are great at the craft, so I find it hard to figure out who should I rather follow. An example would be Proko, here on youtube, telling us to focus on the flow of the shapes and forms in space while, Glenn Vilppu for instance, tells us to focus on guiding the eye and try not to separate shapes at that stage at all. It really shows in the gestures they draw as well, completely different, but each beautiful in their own way. So maybe you have a few thoughts on this, or maybe have any source that could be considered "barebones gesture" while everything else is the style that those masters draw gesture with. (Again might just be me overthinking it too, so maybe you could tell me that :D) Another thing I was curious about, is if you know how could I replicate traditional, bold pencil lines with digital medium. I really can't hold the stylus the same way I do regular pencil, not to mention our pencils don't have 10000 pressure levels, but I know a lot of masters draw practically the same way regardless if it's traditional or digital, maybe you have a few tips for that as well? Thank you a lot in advance!

[@CarolinPeters]

​@@eshlost5604 Hi again! I love this question about a universal/barebones gesture definition and how to execute that practically. For the execution part I'll have to make a video to demonstrate but let's get started with the beginning part of the question. A universally acceptable definition for what a gesture drawing is, and what it's for goes something like this: To capture the gesture of a subject (figure, animal, still-life or landscape) means to capture its essence. Another way of saying that would be to capture the most simple elements about it,i.e. how big is this thing, which way is it leaning, what direction is most dominant about it, and how does it relate to its smaller, less dominant parts within it. That's the "what it is". The what's it for question will lead to various stylistic choices. If you're interested in communicating movement and liveliness you'll go with either Stan's or Glenn's recommendations, if you're drawing the gesture to get better at judging where the three major masses fall in relation to each other, so basically as a reduced anatomical practice exercise, then you may result with more of stick figure and circular shape looking result. The question like this isn't "who is right and which one should I practice" but instead your question is more useful when you ask yourself "what am I using this gesture exercise for to get better at?" Does that make sense? Practicing gesture drawing is a tool to get better at various things, like connecting disparate parts into unified whole, capturing movement, judging the three major masses, translating a pose with the least amount of time and effort,... The look your results yield will be determined by what your main focus was. Glen and Stan each have their respective preferences for what they focus on and this has yielded their unique to them styles. SO ask yourself, what do I want to practice most in my next set of gestures? Do that over and over again and see where the journey will take you. As I said, I'll do my best to make a video with some visual examples so you can put that into practice soon. About your second question, unfortunately I'm the wrong person to ask as I rarely draw digitally. Maybe ask Jens Claessen on IG. His work looks to me like he has a nicely dialed in technique. Best of luck and thanks for the great question!

[@eshlost5604]

@@CarolinPeters Thank you a lot for a thorough answer like that. I'll be re-reading it a lot now from time to time :) Another great thing to return to when I inevitably dive deep into such thoughts. Once again, great videos and I'm really happy to have found out about your channel, keep up the amazing work!

[@CarolinPeters]

@@eshlost5604 You're so welcome!

[@eggy_peggyd762]

Thank you!

[@CarolinPeters]

You're so welcome! Is there anything else you need help with?

[@eggy_peggyd762]

@@CarolinPeters No thank you, I think I’m fine at the moment. But I appreciate you asking! 😊

[@Nicksspeed]

Thank you very much

[@CarolinPeters]

So glad this was helpful for you :)

[@dr-johngy-brongen]

i wish i could like this more than one time.. wonderful tips, thank you!

[@CarolinPeters]

Aww, yay. So happy it was helpful. What other drawing questions do you have on your mind?

[@dr-johngy-brongen]

@@CarolinPeters well, currently I have a difficult time drawing faces that are proportional to the head and to the body. This happens only for full body drawings, portraits are more or less normal.

[@CarolinPeters]

@@dr-johngy-brongen I get that. That's a pretty common issue. It usually has to do with how you're set up when you draw or with where your eyes go when you draw. In terms of set-up, that's an easy fix. We tend to distort the figure accidentally when we have our sketchbook flat on our lap or flat on a table. The distortion happens because our line of sight isn't perpendicular to our page. It's better to have your page on a drawing board that you can lean against an easel or the edge of your desk so you can maintain that 90 degree angle of your sight-line to your page. The second reason for accidentally distorting the scale of the head to the body is because we don't move our eye intentionally, and instead let them operate on auto-pilot. This is totally normal as a lot of instructors fail to mention the importance of becoming aware of how we use our eyes. It's important to remember that we can control if we zoom in and out, which will be our best defense against distortion. The distortion goes unnoticed if we let our eyes stay zoomed in too much on the parts. Instead we need to build in a regular intervals during which we pause and zoom out to a) see the entirety of our drawing so far, and b) compare back and forth between our subject and our drawing. These two things will make it much less likely that your heads end up too big or small for the rest of the body. If you haven't already feel free to sign up for my free Figure Drawing How and Why Mini-course. I'm sure you'll pick up some more useful insights there: artisapractice.com/figure/ Happy drawing to you :)

[@dr-johngy-brongen]

@@CarolinPeters ok, i'll check it out! thanks for detailed explanation, yes i think i got a tendency to focus on one body part at a time, gonna need to pause and view the full picture more often

[@artoholicgudness8015]

It's awesome YT chennal. Keep creating such kind of videos. Lots of best wishes to you♥️♥️

[@carolinhosac904]

Yay, that makes me so happy to hear :) Even though I'm currently taking a break because I'm creating a new program I will get back to creating videos in a few months again. Let me know if there's anything you'd want me to cover

[@CarolinPeters]

Thanks ✌️

[@raven2.084]

My whole class in year 9 was set homework and the homework was to watch this and its so helpful!

[@CarolinPeters]

Aww, that's wonderful to hear! Glad it helped you out. Do you have any other drawing questions for me?

[@raven2.084]

@@CarolinPeters No I don't have any questions but thanks for asking

[@CarolinPeters]

@@raven2.084 NP. You know where to find me if anything comes to mind. Who's your teacher?

[@raven2.084]

@@CarolinPeters Mr Hughes is my teachers name I live near Peterborough but not in Peterborough

[@CarolinPeters]

@@raven2.084 Very cool. Tell Mr Hughes hello and I'm wishing you all my best for your future drawings :)

[@massa_art]

With what frequency and how long do you recommend drilling gesture drawings? Currently trying to go for about 20 minutes daily, for no particular reason. Also, i'm going through the poses from Proko, once i've gone through them all do you recommend (1) gathering new ones, (2) repeating them, (3) start going off from imagination?

[@CarolinPeters]

Hey Dustin, so nice to hear from you! Frustratingly enough there is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. It all depends on your drawing goals, your time availability, your urgency of growth and how you best process information. How satisfied are you with your growth process so far? Do you feel like your 20 minutes a day are leading to improved gestures or do you find yourself repeating what you do over and over, not seeing significant changes from week to week? Learning to assess your work and your growth are just as important as the actual time you put into drawing things. This is a much longer conversation. Making a personally tailored game plan to helps artists truly understand drawing so they can bring their inner images onto the page is what I do for a living. If you're interested I think that this masterclass may turn you in the right direction: draw.clickfunnels.com/seperate-webinar-opt-in-page1666717801595 Happy drawing to you!

[@stephlala094]

Needed this for a contest for a University scharship 😮‍💨😅

[@CarolinPeters]

Good luck with the scholarship!

[@stephlala094]

@@CarolinPeters thank you !

[@ArtyMartyD]

I've been using the new masters academy timed life drawing series this last couple weeks, only just realised I've been chicken scratching all over my drawings and whilst the drawings look okay, they don't flow quite as nicely at the start to get that form in.

[@CarolinPeters]

Glad you had a valuable moment of insight! Keep up the good work!

[@Exsecrabilis]

-12/19/2022 @ 1602- I got a trembling problem with both hands, and I wonder if that will be a problem for drawing, doodling, sketching or painting?

[@CarolinPeters]

Sorry, I'm just seeing this. Not necessarily, you'll just want to be open to having slightly different looking results. I say, give it a go without trying to control the trembling. Focus on staying relaxed and being ok with the trembles. It'll result in drawings that are uniquely yours

[@anthonyciemniecki3115]

I can see the lines of action but they aren’t proportional what do I do?

[@polar6066]

i coudnt quite get my hand on what you were trying to say (im a spanish speaker). do we get that line out of a random woobly line that becomes the worso then we add the limbs afterwards or what? am i even allowed to follow this if my anatomy ia questionable? to be fair, i took a course when i studied animation bit our theory in art was quite poor.

[@CarolinPeters]

Hi there. Are you talking about that first curvy line I drew? That's the line of action, which doesn't describe a body part, it rather describes the flow of direction of the most defining body parts of the given pose. Most of the times this will include the torso, as the torso it the origin of all action. Any more questions?

[@pulsee.]

Please I didn't understand what method is the best between the left and the right one at 1:27

[@CarolinPeters]

You'll want to avoid doing what I demonstrated on the right and orient on what I'm demonstrating on the left.

[@sushirollart3722]

When new uploads

[@Exsecrabilis]

-12/19/2022:1601- 🙂

[@xamyool]

I know I'm not meant to go over a line multiple times, but as a beginner I simply can't get my hand to do the line my brain sees in the pose. Got to erase or go over a line again or it looks like a four year old drew it. ;⁠) Great video!

[@CarolinPeters]

Haha, I'm sure it looks better than that. You know, it's totally normal not to be able to " hit" the right line, right away, instead of doing the same exact one over and over again, though, I invite you to think of them as "searching" lines. This becomes possible if you slow down the speed with which you draw. Good luck and happy drawing!

[@xamyool]

Thanks! I'll give it a go. :⁠-)

[@akeelyaqub2538]

Im a digital artist and my pencil skills on digital and traditional are identical except gesture I can only do well traditionally with a pen, so weird.

[@CarolinPeters]

Lol, that is weird. I don't do well digitally. I prefer the real paper under my pencil.

[@oliviateston4240]

la traduction en français est épouvantable !!!

[@CarolinPeters]

Je suis désolé. Je souhaite que il était meilleur!

[@iwmioneday7418]

I’m so lost to gesture drawing :(

[@CarolinPeters]

Sorry to hear that. Yes, it can be quite confusing in the beginning.

[@iwmioneday7418]

@@CarolinPeters thank you , And thank for the series. Any tips for progressing gesture drawing?

[@nuraortoma1820]

How do you even do that?

[@CarolinPeters]

Lol, it took a while to get there, but I can teach you ;) What are your drawing goals?

[@sea-ra9995]

I am still drawing stiff :(

[@CarolinPeters]

Hi Sea-Ra, I know how frustrating stiff drawings can be. I wrote out an answer that was much too long for the KZbin comment box. Watch for this week's video in which I'll deliver a comprehensive reply to your comment :)

[@strvb3]

this was really helpful (thank u sm :)) but I genuinely can not stop chicken scratching 😭

[@CarolinPeters]

I'm so happy this was helpful. I know how pervasive the chicken scratch is. It's a hand-eye trust issue. There are some mark making exercises you can do to practice letting go of the chicken scratch. I'll make a note to myself to make a video about it when I get back to filming in September.

[@jorgeabarboza5461]

Everybody is doing the same źzzzzzz

[@WEERG2008]

im looking and realising i can't even draw gestures lol

[@CarolinPeters]

Hey, realizing this is the first step toward getting better. Gestures look so easy but they're actually quite challenging. So don't feel bad, just keep working toward improving. Good luck and let me know if you have any drawing questions for me!

[@MidosujiSen]

0:45 I am being personally targeted

[@CarolinPeters]

You know I was looking at you, John ;)

[@colt9948]

Okay... I learnt nothing... None of this helped... I suppose this is more advanced. I don't know how to see the lines in a photograph or a painting I'm trying to emulate. Everyone seems to instinctively know what to draw & where I don't know what is where.

[@CarolinPeters]

I know how frustrating that feeling is. I've been there myself. You can try and watch this video, which is much more in depth about what the whole point of a gesture drawing actually is: kzbin.info/www/bejne/bWPGp6x6gd-bbLs And sometimes you just need someone else to explain the same thing in a different way. Not all teachers are for all people. I hope you'll find some explanations that will open this drawing thing up for you eventually. Don't give up. I'm cheering you on!

[@colt9948]

@@CarolinPeters Thank you very much Carolin! You're a god-send, I need the first principles behind it. I've been told I don't see the S shapes intuitively. It's more an issue of perception, I have since tried to check out other videos, they've also helped me understand some of the fundamentals, although, I still struggle with seeing anything other than the outlines.

[@CarolinPeters]

@@colt9948 Yes, it's a tricky thing because we have to learn to see in a different way from how we look around the world when we're just going about our normal business. That retraining will often feel alien and awkward, not because we're bad at drawing or because we shouldn't do it, but simply because our brain has had lots of training looking around the way we always do and very little training in this new, artistic seeing. Therefore the synaptic connections are stronger in our habitual seeing and very weak in the artistic way of seeing. I'm saying all of this to let you know that you are not defective or that there's nothing wrong with your perception, it's simply very difficult for an untrained brain to see in the artists way, just how it is very difficult for an untrained body to perform precise, athletic movements. Keep practicing in a focused way and things will change for you, too. Wishing you all the best!!!

[@ASMRSketchbook-nk5jw]

I'm so happy @samseemian sent me here. This is so helpful. Thannk you!

[@CarolinPeters]

So glad it helped you out!