Butter Up

All the easels were set up when we got to class. Everyone else got there before me, even though I was on time. So, there were only two easels left. You know how sometimes when you are at a fundraising dinner, and the dinner guests around you don't seem to remember which butter plate belongs to them, and you end up not getting one? Well, there were two easels left, but no table to go with one of them, because someone had taken the other person's butter plate, so to speak. Therefore, I got the easel by the door as you walk in, which generally meant that for all the poses, I got Susan's (our model) back. Susan is a very thin woman.

We started out by doing scribble "gestures." Apparently, a gesture is a quick summary drawing reserving territory (on paper) in which the subject will sit. It's not designed to be accurate, per se, but rather give one a general idea how to build a painting or drawing around a "gesture." I'm still not sure that I completely understand it myself...but it has something to do with "positive and negative" space. All of this art terminology is new to me. Back to scribbles....we scribbled the space of the model, then drew an outline of her body based on our scribbles.

The second gesture we did was ball and oval. Some guy back in the day, invented this concept of drawing a human figure based on balls and ovals. The head would be an oval, the neck a ball, the torso an oval, the shoulder a ball, arm an oval, elbow a ball....you get the idea. So we sketched the model in balls and ovals, then drew an outline around that.

The third type of gesture we learned today was the value gesture. A value gesture is basically coloring in the shape of the model, and then outlining that. Value gesture drawing was my favorite of the three types of gestures we learned today. I could see the shape more clearly, rather than drawing random lines in space on paper. I could see where to put the lines based on the shape or value of what I had sketched.

In between the fourth or fifth pose, students would walk aound and look at each other's sketches. These were my two favorite gestures of the day.