In the nineties, I studied in an Atelier with an informal curriculum that could be summarized as a copy of a copy of the “How to draw comics the Marvel way”. About that time, if someone would tell me that hiring art models to maintain poses for about 3 minutes (short poses) is good art training, teenager-me would immediately treat that idea as garbage, say something arrogant, and tag the person as a lazy expressionist. But, teenager-me would have been wrong. This was the third year I participated in the Figuary challenge, which consists of drawing short poses every day of February. While I know why teenager-me was so certain of everything, I am not sure why I changed my mind.
When I was a boy of 14 my father was so ignorant I could hardly bear to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21 I was astonished at what he had learned in 7 years.
Mark Twain, cited in the book “Why the Toast Always Lands Butter Side Down” by Richard Robinson, under the headline “Hire a teenager, while they know everything”
Drawing such short poses is usually referred to as gesture drawing. To me, it is not exactly clear why art students should practice that kind of drawing, but it is usually listed as part of the fundamentals, and, sooner or later, most of us try it. In this series, you will find my reflections around gesture drawing along with resources to learn it. This is the first of I do not know how many parts.
First of all, it is totally fine if you are thinking of “what is he saying? I practice gesture drawing to learn how to produce pretty drawings of undressed people, that’s all!”. Many think that way. For instance, I believe that this is what Love Life Drawing is mainly about (well, I am not sure if Kenzo will agree with what I am saying here, but that is what I get from listening to him). However, I am on a different path. I am practicing gesture drawing because two main reasons: (1) I want to know how to draw expressive poses from imagination, and (2) I believe that gesture is somehow related to picture composition.
I am pretty sure that one of the first times I heard about gesture was when Stan Prokopenko released “How to draw gesture”. But, around that time, I was subscribed to Schoolism, where I found the course “Gesture Drawing with Alex Woo”. Soon, I realized that gesture drawing was all over the place (though I probably was a victim of the frequency illusion, it is indeed very common). But, from where does this approach come from? What school of thought fomented short poses? What role do animators play in the history of gesture drawing? As you can imagine, those questions cannot be answered in a single blog post. As a start, I will analyze the teachings of Stan Prokopenko and Mike Mattesi.
Stan Prokopenko
In the intro of the video “How to draw gesture”, Stan says “gesture is in everything”, placing gesture at a level higher than figure drawing. Then, focusing on gesture applied to figure drawing, he says that we should seek to draw the least amount of lines that viewers can recognize as a particular human emotion.
Use gesture to tell a story by capturing the body language
Stan Prokopenko
I think that Stan, regarding gesture, tends to go back and forward between composition and animation concepts. Also, I think that, between lines, he poses the diference between drawing the gesture and gesture drawing by presenting the latter as an exercise for “training your mind to see rhythm in everything”.
Although Stan mixs several things under the gesture umbrella, he offers this concise definition: “the movement that connects the contours, forms, and tones” (here I think he refers to the building blocks of pictures), and presents motion, rhythm, action, and flow as synonim. Then, he illustrates this definition with an eye-opener example that I reproduce below.
The example demonstrates that gesture is not directly observable in the reference, but I bet that you can feel it.
Michael Mattesi and the FORCE method
Michael (Mike) Mattesi has experience at Walt Disney Animation and is the creator of the FORCE drawing brand, under which he wrote many books that are being used to teach animation all around the world. I consider myself a former FORCE student because I took a course with Diego Lucia when he was an official FORCE instructor (January 2019), I made good use of a basic subscription to the FORCE platform for about four months, and I took a one-day online class with Diego Lucia and Swendly Benilia. (UPDATE 7th July 2021: I forget to mention that in March 2019 I took a 1o1 mentorship session with Diego Lucia)
The FORCE platform is full of lectures by Mike. Listening to him could be enlightening and confusing at the same time. What he teaches definitely works, but why he thinks it works seems incorrect to me, and therefore the theory he teaches is counterproductive for my understanding. The problem is that he believes that the FORCE is a real thing that we need to learn to see. Believe me, I have some background in Physics and there is not a FORCE like that in the real world. At first glance, what Mike says does not seem too different from “training your mind to see rhythm in everything”, which is what Stan says. But, Stan is encouraging us to learn to find rhythm even if it is not there (UPDATE 30th January 2022: which can be understood as a principle of goog design). That is something I can work with. But, I cannot take FORCE as a reality when science says otherwise.
However, what Mike teaches really works, as I previously said. Let me show you why. Let’s go back to Stan’s figure. I am pretty sure that Mike would draw the gesture of these balls differently than Stan.
Mike uses the concept of applied FORCE to explain why we should draw gesture that way. But, as I said, why he thinks it works is not why it really works. It works because of how our visual system functions. We can interpret a line drawing of a face as a face because, in our very eyeballs, we have neurons attached to the photoreceptors arranged in such a way that they codify contrast (edges) as lines. And, because of how the silhouette works, our visual system also predicts that the line encloses the mass of the object that is producing contrast in our field of vision. So, the correct way to draw the gesture of the three balls is how Mike would do it. (UPDATE 7th July 2021: Well… now I am not too sure… part 2 is comming soon…)
You should not believe me since I am making strong affirmations without providing evidence. For that, you can refer to the books “Vision and Art” and “Active vision” (see references for details). But, they are probably not the easiest to read. I would like to introduce some key concepts from these books in future posts. Stay tunned if you are interested!
Conclusion
Studying gestures could be confusing if you do not keep in mind the obvious fact: images do not depict true movement at all; it is all about what the viewer feels.
Spoon boy : Do not try and bend the spoon. That’s impossible. Instead… only try to realize the truth.
Neo : What truth?
Spoon boy : There is no spoon.
Neo : There is no spoon?
Spoon boy : Then you’ll see, that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself.
The Spoon scene from Matrix (1999)
In part two of this series, I will write about Michael Hampton’s approach to gesture.
Gesture drawing demonstrations!
This February, I recorded my Figuary drawing sessions and patiently selected my best drawings, edited the videos, and so on. My goal was to share them as drawing demonstrations. It was a challenge. I had to learn about video editions and audio recordings, among a myriad of details about YouTube and Gumroad.
References
- Book: How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way by Stan Lee anb John Buscema
- Love Live Drawing web page
- Proko video: How to draw gesture
- Schoolism: Gesture drawing with Alex Woo
- Q&A with Artist Mike Mattesi, Creator of FORCE Drawing
- FORCE official web page
- Diego Lucia web page
- Swendly Benilia web page
- Play list from Mike Mattesi YouTube channel: FORCE Fridays
- Proko video: Improving Line Quality and Rhythm – FORCE Series Part 1
- Proko video: Drawing Gestural Forms – FORCE Series Part 2
- Proko video: How to Draw Dynamic Shapes – FORCE Series Part 3
- Book: Vision and Art: the biology of seeing by Margaret Livingstone
- Book: Active Vision: The Psychology of Looking and Seeing by John M. Findlay
Educated Guess—on Learning to Draw&Write 
I stumbled upon this article after months of thinking about improving art and working through the process and what it means for me. This post aligns with a lot of what I have been thinking about lately, and some of the “canned” approaches being taught. I really appreciate you sharing your perspective!!
IG: @JHarold
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Thank you for your message! I found it tricky how much important it is for me to think about art lately, I mean, instead of drawing. You know, one has a given time to spend on art study, and we can spend it drawing/painting, or reading/thinking. When I found myself in that position, I remember this quote “A man paints with his brains, not with his hands.”, Michelangelo.
For self-taught like me, thinking is key since I do not have a mentor thinking for me. 🙂
Now we are in contact through IG as well. See you around!
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