Quick Poses --- from Complete Life Drawing Book

SHORT GESTURE POSES


Exercise: Following the lines of the body to capture the essentials of a pose

Objectives: Loosens up drawing, Concentrates the mind, Helps the student to convey movement

Starting the Life Drawing session with short poses helps the artist to deal with the blank page because you have to jump in and make quick decisions since you don't have time to ponder.





Decide the movement of the pose and find a starting point that is furthermost left, right, top or bottom. Put your charcoal down at that edge of the paper, keep it on the paper and keep it moving as you then look at the pose, following the flow of the body.

Your eyes discover the essential movement and rhythm and your hand responds in kind. Not much need to look at the paper since you are in quick-seeing mode and are training your quick-seeing eye to see the whole pose and its flow.

Keep your eyes moving on the model and your hand moving on the paper.

We favor a set of brief 15-second poses as our warm-up exercise. As we progress to longer poses we still want to jump in quickly and establish the overall movement of the pose before adding details and spatial elements.