Gesture Drawing—"Spaghetti Noodle"

In this previous post, I talked about breaking my gesture drawing studies into two areas—"scribble" gestures and "spaghetti" noodle gestures—and discussed the scribble method in detail.

Now about the spaghetti noodle method…

I use the term "spaghetti noodle" instead of "stick figure" because stick figure implies straight, stiff lines, the opposite of what we're trying to achieve.

Instead, we want to draw curvy, rhythmic lines that quickly capture the action and feeling of the figure.

Stan Prokopenko's "spaghetti noodle" 30 second gesture.

Steps in the Samantha Youssef gesture drawing method.

With only one full week of practicing these two approaches, I feel that I'm seeing the figure more clearly. The blocking exercise has me seeing the various shapes that make up the figure and the gesture exercises have me capturing the figure's body language quickly.

If you want to improve your figure drawing, I recommend practicing gesture drawing until it becomes second nature. This will most likely take years or months but you'll be a better draftsperson as a result.

Gesture Drawing—"Scribbles"



As I progressed with my drawing instruction, I hit a wall. I traced that problem to having gone through Stan Prokopenko's Figure Drawing Fundamentals series too quickly.

 I'm now reviewing that series with an improved mindset of PATIENCE. 

 Although I took the time to practice gesture drawing when I first started these lessons, I didn't keep in mind the CONCEPT that was being taught with the lesson. Appreciating the concept of gesture is just as important as doing the gesture drawings.

 This time, while watching the full version of the Proko gesture lesson, I took FIVE pages of notes as a reminder of how to do the exercise and its purpose.

 Here's a summary of why gesture is the single most important part of the drawing:
  1. Gesture is: the movement between things; the motion, action body language, energy, story idea, message. It describes the relationship among the forms.
  2. Gesture is NOT the contours, forms nor the tone but the movement that connects the contours, forms and tone.
  3. The goal is to practice gesture so that it becomes second nature.
  4. Gesture is in everything. Without it, the drawing is static and boring.
  5. Gesture is more about how the object feels than how it looks.
  6. The concept to be learned from gesture: I'm training my mind to see rhythm in everything I draw; training my mind to consider more than just contours when I draw and shade.
Here's an example of how gesture is in everything—a Frank Gehry architecture gesture drawing:

After reviewing the Proko approach to gesture, I was reminded of the gesture lessons of Kimon Nicolaides, Samantha Youssef and Glenn Vilppu. Proko, Youssef and Vilppu have similar, spaghetti-noodle approaches to gesture.

 But Nicolaides teaches a scribble method that the others don't teach that I thought would be valuable to practice. Both methods require quickly recording the feeling of the pose but the scribbling involves a faster, even more visceral response to the pose. Plus, I like all of those moving, energetic lines.
I'm dedicating four weeks to practicing just gesture. My daily drawing practice now looks like this:
  1. Warmup circles (1-2 pages)
  2. Warmup ellipses  (1-2 pages)
  3. Warmup straight lines  (1 page)
  4. 50 drawings of 5 second "scribble" gestures
  5. 50 drawings of 30 second "spaghetti noodle" gestures
  6. Youssef blocking exercise (1 pose)
I start with the Watts warmup of circles, ellipses and straight lines using a charcoal pencil. Then I switch to a Tombow fine point and brush pen for the 5 second scribble drawings. I found free-flowing ink to work better than charcoal for those particular drawings. I then switch back to a blunt charcoal pencil for the 30 second gestures. For the blocking exercise, I use a well-sharpened charcoal pencil. All of these exercises are done on smooth newsprint.

In her book Movement and Form, Youssef describes blocking as "…the practice of training our eyes to recognize the individual shapes of the objects in our picture plane…It is meant to train your eyes to graphically translate what you see onto paper with accuracy."



This idea of blocking is similar to that of concept artist Robh Ruppel's in his book Graphic L.A. He talks about how drawing is symbol-making; that the way to make a drawing look real is the use of basic shapes, basic brushes and getting the relative values right. He recommends—like Youssef—reducing everything we see into simple geometric shapes and the fewest values. Youssef recommends daily blocking practice so that's exactly what I'm going to do. 

My goal in life is to be able to paint like THIS!


Oops! I Went Too Fast!

Student gesture drawing from Kimon Nicolaides' "The Natural Way to Draw."


Building a drawing foundation is proving to be more difficult than I originally imagined.

I've had so many starts and stops that I've lost count.

I've studied from numerous instructors, courses and books, too many to list.

But you can go TOO fast.

My problem is that I practice consistently for a brief period then…nothing. I come to a complete stop and never return.

This keeps happening because after about one week of practice, I start to second-guess why I'm doing that particular exercise. And the reason I question the exercise I'm doing is because it's so damn boring!

Gesture drawing, blind contours and other pure seeing/drawing exercises are necessary. But the reality is that these exercises quickly become dull. This is true of any drill, like practicing scales or layups. And with drawing, it's natural to want to get to the good part of creating completed art.

But like scales and layups, drawing exercises are ESSENTIAL to building a solid foundation.

The Lesson: don't rush your drawing studies!

Being studious means taking the time to genuinely understand each lesson AND apply that lesson to practice and final work.

I went through Stan Prokopenko's Figure Drawing Fundamentals series too quickly, not truly instilling each lesson.

And it shows every time I sit down to draw something.

So now I'm going all the way back to basics, to gesture drawing.

NEXT: more on gesture drawing.






How Not to Be a "Cover Band" Visual Artist


Artist Michael Mentler is know as The Bone Doctor for his knowledge of the human skeleton. He recently came to mind as I was struggling to draw the skull in the Watts Head drawing curriculum.

Awhile ago I downloaded an iPhone app of Mentler's book but the drawings and his handwriting were too small to be of any real use.

But after checking online, it turns out that he has a book and a video focusing on…THE SKULL!

Talk about synchronicity!

I immediately bought both and watched the section of the video related to drawing a frontal view of the skull (the video starts with the profile but it makes more sense to me to start with the front.)

This video shows clips from the lessons:



I'm still amazed that I found this just as I was struggling with this same topic!

The beauty of Mentler's approach is that he's taken the lessons of George Bridgman, Andrew Loomis and Robert Beverly Hale and combined them into a process of measuring accurately the drawing of the skull and skeleton, a method that works for him. Per Mentler:
"If you take any one master and try to follow that person exclusively, you become nothing more than a cover band for that artist. I don't care how well you play The Beatles, you're still a cover band for The Beatles."
Thanks to Mentler's skull measuring method, I am no longer aimlessly trying to learn how to draw the skull. Instead, I'm learning to draw the skull deliberately.

Since I have found no other method for accurately drawing a skull, I recommend Mentler's approach.

Do you have a method for drawing the skull? If so, please share in the comments. Thanks!

Watts Atelier Drawing Curriculum Temporarily On Hold



Working my way through the Watts Atelier Drawing Curriculum, I completed the Fundamentals section and eagerly started the Head section.

And immediately hit a wall!

The Head section begins with drawing the skull from various angles.

The problem I'm having is that the lack of a measuring system for the skull. I know how to measure when placing features onto the face but I don't know how to measure the placement of the parts of the skull to ensure that they're in the right place.

Since Watts is $99/month, I was happy to see that there's the option to put one's subscription on hold which I've now done.

Now I need to learn the skull.

I've been drawing from the model I have but there's been a nagging concern that I'm not really "getting it."

That's when The Bone Doctor popped into my head!

Michael Mentler aka The Bone Doctor

More about The Bone Doctor in the next post!

Part 01—Andrew Loomis's "Creative Illustration": The Form Principle



I love Andrew Loomis’s books. His knowledge and skills are undeniable. His diagrams and illustrations are dense with visual information and important lessons. All of his books are deserving of intense study.

There seems to be a lot of interest out there in Loomis's books and methods. Since I have either physical or PDF versions of all of his books, I'd like to share some highlights of his teachings from his book "Creative Illustration."

 "Creative Illustration" begins by outlining the basis of Loomis's approach, The Form Principle. Here are the pages from the book explaining the principles that are explored throughout the book (I own a copy of the actual book. These pages were taken from a free pdf download.) Future posting will be animated versions of his teachings:




How do you feel about Andrew Loomis's teachings? Tell us in the comments! Thanks!

Combining Watts Atelier and Proko Drawing Practice

With a limited amount of time and a lot to learn, it's important to be strategic about drawing practice.

The last post provided specific ways to improve one's drawing quickly and correctly.

Here's some of my practice:

I start with the Watts Atelier drawing fundamentals warmup, freehand circles using a conte charcoal pencil on smooth newsprint:


After the circles, I do free hand ovals/ellipses:


After the ovals are straight lines and curved lines:


Next it's applying tone. This is a challenge because if the pencil doesn't have a good taper from the wood to the charcoal, it leaves streaks. Becoming proficient at this is definitely going to take some time:


That concludes the Watts warmup.

Here I've combined the Proko lesson of reducing bones into basic shapes with the Watts lessons of negative space and drawing through the forms. Hopefully by doing that I'm learning twice as much in half the time!





Are you working to improve your drawing? If so, how? Have you considered taking the Jazza approach? Post in the comments below. Thanks!

Improving Your Art Skills the Smart Way



I'm 47-years-old.

I'm past the halfway mark of my life. And there's still a TON of stories I want to tell!

Therefore,  I'm constantly looking for ways to improve my drawing skills quickly YET thoroughly.

After much reading combined with trial and error, I realized that I could neither focus solely on skills improvement nor solely on project creation without something suffering. It's essential that I do both simultaneously.

My revelation was confirmed when I saw this video by Jazza that breaks down how to improve one's art skills into three main areas—Innate Practice, Inspired Practice and Developmental Practice. I was thrilled when I realized I was almost already doing this method!

Here's the approach:
Innate Practice—practice that is inherent in what you’re doing. Though you may not be sitting down with the intention of improving oneself, you’re working at a level that’s comfortable for your abilities and over time, doing this in repetition, inevitably approves your abilities. This usually involves projects. Less about the intensity and more about the volume, repetition.

Inspired Practice—it’s the most fun, feels the most impactful. The heart of improvement comes from rapid bursts of learning from observation and enthusiasm. Burns bright and briefly so it’s hard to maintain over a long period. Although it may be the easiest way to motivate and push oneself, it’s the most difficult to start and maintain.

Developmental Practice—the easiest one to assign exercises to. Intentionally acquired skills and developmental progress. This is often the most frustrating and boring of the three types of practices. It’s constructive, mechanical but shows the improvement.

The ultimate form of practice is to combine all three of these methods.

For me it's:
Innate Practice—A Universe of Trouble web series. I'm painting, drawing and learning how to use about 8 different programs.

Inspired Practice—OK, I admit, I'm not actually doing this at this time. I discovered that with my fundamentals skills being weak, this type of practice was simply taking away from the time I could use to build my fundamentals.

Developmental Practice—Watts Atelier instruction and Proko human anatomy studies.

That's it, folks! As someone who's been following this plan, I can strongly recommend it. Check out Jazza's videos and see how they can help you improve your skills, too.

Gary Vaynerchuk's P.H.C.C.

I love this acronym:

P—Patience
H—Hustle
C—Content
C—Community

I've already embraced Patience and Content and am now focused on Hustle. Specifically, in order to get more form drawing into my day, I've switched from reading during my commute to drawing. I also keep a charcoal pencil on my desk and regularly practice holding it the Watts Way. Muscle memory!

I'll let Gary Vee explain the rest:


Using Video Reference

Since buying my first digital camera, I've relied on my own photo reference for drawing.

What I accidentally discovered while studying the bones is that video reference is just as good, if not better than photo reference.

Per Robert Beverly Hale's suggestion, and as I go through the Stan Prokopenko artistic anatomy curriculum, I'm drawing the bones from every angle in the hope of being able to draw them from memory.

When commuting to work, I've discovered that having a video on my phone of the bone rotating 360° allows me to pause at every angle and analyze the position for drawing. I can scrub back and force and get an accurate idea of how the bone's shape changes and the point of view changes. Here's a recent video I made of a scapula from which I draw while riding the bus:


Consider shooting or finding videos of the bones to help in understanding their intricacies.

Stock Video from Videohive




It wasn't until I started production on Episode 03 of "A Universe of Trouble" that I realized that I needed some serious help.

I had a scene in which a spaceship lands at a spaceport. And I had no idea how I could create that quickly and convincingly.

But I found the answer…

Videohive.net!

Part of the Envato Market site, it's a huge source of stock video.

It's where I found this landing spaceship which fit my scene perfectly (ship animation by SpaceStockFootage):


Since then, I've made it my only source for stock video. What I like most about the site is when creators include After Effects files with your purchase (there's nothing free on this site which is OK with me since the files are inexpensive. Besides, the quality of the work on this site deserves compensation.) This allows me to customize the video while also dissecting how it was created. If I can learn how someone else did something, I can do it myself next time and save some money!

The files are in HD, 1920 x 1080 and often have alpha channels for compositing. You can contact a creator for help or information regarding their files. Both single-use and multi-use licenses are available.

If you need a professional-grade piece of stock video, check out Videohive.net.

Making the Web Series—Toon Boom Animate Pro 3


Goodbye, my friend. You served me well!

I'm using NINE different programs to make the animated web series "A Universe of Trouble."

I counted.

And the main program of the nine is Toon Boom Animate Pro 3.

This program was discontinued this year and replaced with Toon Boom's Harmony program. This makes good business sense and is also good for the customer but…a few complaints.

First, I would have appreciated a formal notification from Toon Boom regarding them discontinuing my expensive software. I learned about it accidentally while searching for something. Needless to say…I was FREAKED OUT!

Second, it shows a surprising lack of foresight that Animate Pro and Harmony are incompatible! Yep, the only way for me to get my Animate Pro files converted to be opened in Harmony is to send Toon Boom the files. And there's a size limit for this conversion.

Not. Cool.


Hello, Gorgeous!

Having said that, I HAVE fallen in love with this program and I've only scratched the surface of what it can do. Since I'm in the middle of production, I'll use Animate Pro until completion; then I'll use Harmony going forward. This means possibly re-animating in Harmony the numerous "Adult Toy Story" scenes already completed in Animate Pro. Although time-consuming, it will be an excellent way to learn this powerful program. Learning while creating!

One of the many features I like about this program is the ease at which I can add effects. Transparencies/fades, blurs and other effects are easily applied and manipulated. Easy camera movement is another feature I like.

I've never used Flash but many animators, including Nick Cross, John K and Adam Philips have switched to Toon Boom from Flash. Harmony has also been used on tv and film projects from Film Roman, Disney and Dreamworks.

I also like their support. There's both a user forum full of helpful information and a highly responsive professional team to promptly answer your questions (just remember the company is based in Canada so be mindful of their holidays!)

PLUS their new subscription service makes a once pricey product much more affordable especially if you're a student. By having the option to pay monthly, you're only paying for what you use.

If you're interested in creating 2D animation that can include 3D elements, I strongly recommend using Toon Boom Harmony.