Thanqol Learns To Draw!

[Silviya]

Ooh, Posemaniacs and gesture drawing. That's definitely good to be doing.

I've found three timed gesture drawing sites so far. Posemaniacs, Pixelovely, and Lovecastle. Posmaniacs uses 3d models, and the other two use actual photographs. I actually found that the 3d models of Posemaniacs made it more difficult for me, since the muscles sort of broke up the form of figure and distracted me from the basic shape. I like Lovecastle more than Pixelovely, mainly because it has a larger variety of photos to work from. It also has hands, heads, and several different kinds of animals, if you want to practice drawing those.

Of course, the sites that use photographs have lots of pictures of nude models and are definitely NSFW. I'm also not linking to them for that reason, since I'm not exactly sure what the forum rules are regarding linking to sites like that. You can probably find them on Google without too much trouble though.

As far as the technique of gesture drawing goes, I think just go with what you feel works best for you? As long as you're paying attention to the shape of the form, it should work fine. I personally do lots of pretty chaotic, sketchy lines with a very fine mechanical pencil, because that's how I usually sketch, and try to capture the outline of the form before getting the basic muscle shapes drawn in, if I have time. I also general draw poses for 60 or even 120 seconds instead of 30, which is probably bad of me, but I kept getting frustrated by not being able to get the form right in 30 seconds.

For gesture drawings, it's best to spend a little bit of time doing them every day, instead of doing them for a long time every few days. If you're really serious about learning anatomy, try to set aside a time every day for gesture drawings, and make it part of your daily routine. I generally spend half an hour on poses, ten minutes on faces, and five minutes on hands a day. Amusingly enough, I actually just got done with my gesture drawings for the day, only to check this thread and see that you've started doing them too.

Edit: It turns out that this tutorial has examples of gesture drawing, both 30 ones and 60 or 120 second ones. It might help you some to see how other people do it.