“You would hardly believe how difficult it is to place a figure alone on a canvas, and to concentrate all the interest on this single and universal figure

and still keep it living and real.”

Edouard Manet

Gesture is a basic discipline that serves multiple ends. The practice of gesture drawing trains the eye, hand and mind to function as a coordinated unit. Gesture not only records the necessities of the physical attributes of the model, but also expresses the artist’s empathy with the core of the humanity of the subject. Whether an artist treats this ability subjectively or objectively, an artist’s gesture becomes as personalized as his signature.

The faster an image is assessed and laid down on the drawing surface, the better. The hand should draw as rapidly as the eyes move - quickly analyzing the figure. Gesture captures the essence of the weight, shape, movement, proportion, and attitude that the eyes see, the mind processes, and the hand records.

Leonardo also suggested that an artist should have the model take an expressive pose and then quickly draw the image again and again, leaving the details till later. “The eye of the observer must be able to scan the whole of the picture without being disturbed in any way, like a bird of prey in flight. Everything must be harmony and continuity...” (Maiotti, Ettore. The Painting the Nude Handbook: Learning from the Masters. New York: Clarkson N.Potter Inc., 1991, p. 18.)

Be aware of the following and the effect of each on your gesture. These guidelines are listed in no particular order:

1. Your selection of media and surface.

2. Whether you are sitting or standing.

3. The amount of concentration and observation before you draw.

4. The speed with which you work.

5. Whether the drawing tool stays in contact with the surface, or is lifted occasionally.

6. Whether you draw using large, whole arm-extended movement or a smaller, wrist movement.

7. Whether you draw from inside the figure or an outside edge. Try drawing through forms; use x-ray vision to see the other side.

8. If you use measuring and directional lines, or let distortion play.

9. The extent to which you have studied anatomy.

10. The shapes that you employ: whether you use organic (biomorphic or rounded) or inorganic (geometric or angular)

11. The scale of your figure: whether you employ proportion, elongation or compression.

12. The scale of your picture plane: massive to miniature.

13. The shape of your picture plane: vertical or horizontal rectangle, square, tondo, divided, etc.

14. The placement of the figure in the picture plane: from exploded beyond the edges to isolated deep within the space of the picture plane.

15. The attitude expressed through the figure.

Types of gesture - artists whose work may serve as an example

1. mass - Georges Seurat, David Park, Käthe Kollwitz

2. mass & line - J-A. D. Ingres, Edgar Degas, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

a. wash with line -

Pontormo, Tiepolo, Auguste Rodin, Honoré Daumier

b. cross-contour or cross-volume -

Henry Moore, Fernando Botero, Paul Cadmus

c. blurred or pentimenti -

Madden Harkness, Jim Dine, Cezanne, Pontormo

3. line -

David Hockney, Keith Haring, Rembrandt van Rijn, Aubrey Beardsley

a. quick contour -

Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, George Grosz, Alexander Calder

b. organizational -

Alberto Giacometti

c. scribble -

William Wylie, Robert Arnason, Susan Rothenberg

d. contour with hatching -

Raphael, Albrecht Dürer, Paul Cadmus, Balthus, Mario Dubsky

4. sustained -

Gustav Klimt, Philip Pearlstein, the Helga drawings by Andrew Wyeth

Qualities - artists whose work may serve as an example

1. opposition or contrapposto - Kouros figures, Classical Greek / Roman statues, J-A. D. Ingres

2. conceptual - Jonathan Borofsky, Yves Klein, Kiki Smith, Louise Bourgeois

3. anatomically distorted, or subjective - Bronzino, Leonard Baskin, Francis Bacon, Jim Dine, George Grosz, Jean Dubuffet, Nancy Grossman, Tom of Findland, Rob Krier, Gaston Lachaise, Otto Dix, Odd Nerdrum, Ida Applebroog, Auguste Rodin

anatomically expressive - Eric Fischl, Madden Harkness, Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, Lucian Freud, Francesco Clemente, Paul Cézanne, Alice Neel, Carlo Maria Mariani

4. anatomically proportionate, or objective - Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Titian, Correggio, Guido Reni, Leonardo de Vinci, Pierre Paul Prud’hon, Théodore Géricault, Aristide Maillol, Peter Paul Rubens, , Michael Leonard, Edward Allington, John Nava, Martha Meyer Erlebacher

anatomically hyper-real - John de Andrea, William Beckman, James Valerio, Kent Bellows

5. layered or sequential - Susan Rothenberg, Gael Stack, Egyptian, Mayan, Nancy Spero

6. organic - Edvard Munch, Henry Moore, Amedeo Modigliani, Magdalena Abakanowicz

7. angular - Cranach, Albrecht Dürer, Egon Schiele, Leon Golub

8. geometric - Ferdinand Léger, Paul Cezanne, Pablo Picasso, Georges Rouault, Robert Colescott

GESTURE