1/13 GESTURE DRAWING

First night drawing.  The evening started with some cross-contour exercises. Subject: gourds.  Cross-contour lines map the topography of an object similar to the latitudinal and longitudinal lines on a globe. Note the lines crossing the gourd accentuate the roundness of the gourd by arching from left to right.  The lines also transition from dark to light.  This gives a greater sense of volume and suggests a light source (darker lines representing the shadow side).

Next, we made continuous line drawings.  A continuous line drawing is composed of one long continuous line.  The pencil should not leave the paper from start to finish.  Continuous lines should record the path of the artist's eye as it moves across his/her subject. Continuous lines wrap and draw through forms defining structure. Again when the line quality is varied with thick lines and thin lines, dark lines and light lines, you can suggest more depth and volume.

And finally after viewing some slides, we made gesture drawings. Gesture drawings are a quick and spontaneous, all encomposing line that searches to define its form. Like the previous exercises, it records the path of the eyes. We addressed three different types of gesture: Line, Mass, and Scribble.

Line gesture suggests structure and volume. Mass and Scribble gestures suggest mass, volume and light. The example above is a Scribble gesture.