hello, nice attempt at gesture drawing. I feel what you need is basically there but you struggle to elaborate a good solution to answer your issue. Here you could use some solid shapes in order to create overlap and create solidity on your character. I would recommend grounding your character related to your current prespective (feet for example). From there I would try and get the pelvis, the ribcage, and the shoulder line. Depending on the time you've got to draw (30 seconds, 1 minutes, 3 minutes, and so on), you have to focus your effort on getting the whole figure and so choose which technic and tools you have at your disposal in order to do that. Gesture is about getting the energy and the pose in order to later refine your drawing, not a purpose. So to summarize, you're gesture need energy BUT clarity. how do you achieve that, by analysing what tool do you have and use them to depict the pose as best. If it means using volumes or some sort of tricks you learned before, than be it. I draw a bit where I think you should give more care in order to get the pose right and I also put some of my morning routine drawings (30 seconds to 3 minutes) to show you the difference of refining and where I put emphasize in order to achieve that. I hope this feedback will be useful. Let me know if you have more question, I'll be glad to answer them.
Thank you very much for your feedback, could you maybe explain further on your morning routines of gesture and how to go about doing them?
Sure thing ! I start my day by warming up by simply drawing things I'm currently working on (could be humain anatomy, the arm, or maybe animals, objects really depend what you're currently into and gives you the fire in order to improve) I would draw for 10 minutes (I use a timer application call "Free Timer for windows" free-timer .com) Then I would move on for: -10 poses 30 seconds -5 poses 1 minutes -3 poses 3 minutes in that order you should be able to keep and drawing for a while. I use the « Quiposes » application for this warm-up I think the app is 15 bucks but it's worth the price in my opinion since you can add your own files and create a library of poses you would like to draw. You just need to add the file and set your time and the number of poses and your good to go. I strongly advise you to sort your library by topic in order to keep everything pretty clean when you select a file so you won't have the surprise of an unwanted picture popping up when you were focus on another topic (let say you have Belgian Sheperd dog photos library that you decided to draw and suddenly a Belgian Malinois Sheperd or a BullDog pop off, it can be that specific when you split your files) Other than that I would recommand you to stay as loose as possible. You're not playing your life and you won't see huge difference over 2 weeks. But if you stick to it, you will definitely see great result. The first time I did 30 second gesture poses, I use to do like 1h straight of that and it took me 3 months to see result. But that include drawing a first time, see it doesn't work, asking myself why it doesn't work and then start again. For comparison, you're running a marathon, not a sprint. If you start a marathon by sprinting, you will burn yourself pretty quickly and we don't want that 'cause you won't reach the finish line. Get use to the rythm of the 30 seconds to 1 minutes poses. The great idea behin this exercice is that you use your tool properly in order to create a readable pose, NOT a FINISHED ONE (I insiste on this one) and get use to fast thinking process so when you come back to more long poses (like the 3 minutes one) you will see a huge gap in how at ease you are with drawing. The more you'll do it, the more confortable you'll get when it comes to make precise and delibarate decisions. And last but not least, do not compare yourself and stay hopeful. Great results won't show directly but in time you'll see you will improve. It took me time and that's one of the advise I would recommand everybody is to "trust the process". As long as you're asking yourself question about how to manage something and try and find solutions when doing it, you're on the right path.
When I say 3 minutes 3 poses. This means 3 minutes per pose. (so 30 seconds per pose for 10 poses for example)
thank you so much