I had a hard time letting go of my tendency toward detail, but I enjoyed doing these. I draw birds occasionally, so I found those much easier to do than the foxes (which don't even look like foxes on my page!) Now I'm waiting for our morning feeder crowd to arrive so I can practice with our local birds. Thank you to Nataija for sharing the link to Line of Action. Your drawings are great!

I love how gesture drawing captures movement perfectly. Even if the drawing is pretty messy you can still clearly see the energy moving through the subject. It forces you to really look at what the animal is doing rather than drawing what you THINK it's doing. Because there's a big difference between the two!

Gesture sketching is an amazing way to capture the essence of a subject! I practiced drawing birds in 60s intervals using line-of-action.com. For each drawing I tried to focus on direction, the big shapes, proportions and finally a few characteristic details. I also added some quick shading where it mattered to suggest form or darker plumage.

I recycle my paper, so this portion of class would be the human subjects.  Gesture drawing is liberating, I can move quickly and freely to try and capture the overall feeling, but also intimidating.  We're all critical of our own work and want masterpieces; gesture drawing forces me to focus on the bigger picture and less on the detail.  The sitting model I had a problem interpreting the chest area, it was shadowed dark and I could'nt figure out how to relay that onto paper, so I cross hatched it out and put on a bikini.  Perhaps I should attempt again, sans the bikini and shading!

Getting Started with Gesture Drawing- 03/17/22 Less time = less attention to finer details!

I found the lack of control hard! Fun to try!

Gesture drawing has definitely helped me capture unique moments that don't feel so staged. It was hard at first to let go and be loose, you can see from my wren, but I feel that the more I did it, the looser it got. Something I noticed that I might not have had I not done gesture drawing is that the sketches become a lot more natural looking even if there are sketchy lines.

of course `gesture drawing´ helps me with the observations, but was difficult to coordinate both of them, because capturing a specific moment when I don´t Know when the animal leaves the scene, or change their movements or posture, made me feel a little nervous and was not easy to represent so quickly.  I agree with one of the nature journalist´s comment, that sometimes feels like the the drawing is unfinished, and I need to highlight, shade, color, etc. but it´s not the essence of the exercise I suppose, so once again, a question of practice, anyway, for this first time, I´am quite happy and satisfied with the result.

Gesture drawing helps me capture the essence of a subject which is oftentimes fresher and more “alive” than when I have more time. It forces me to focus on the most prominent aspects of a subject. However, I find I see even more if I just watch first and don’t try to draw at all to take it all in, then gesture draw. Surprisingly I also found contour drawing to be a great warm up before gesture drawing. It got me to focus more on my subject and less on the paper.

I really enjoy the crazy nature of gesture drawings however I constantly combat myself and my slow processing.  Then I tend to guilt myself when they don't look cool and sketchy.

Yes, trying to do quick gesture drawing really brings the animals to life.  I noticed more patterns in movement. Watching a desert waterhole in Africa I see animals return to the same postures over and over again.  I also noticed how one male oryx seemed dominant and was able to stay closest to the female while all of the others circled around hoping to get closer. Lots of live webcams on the internet now that are great for this practice!  Hard to avoid the temptation to push the "pause" button though.  I definitely want to get better at these quick drawings with minimal detail to incorporate into my nature journaling.

I feel gesture drawing is definitely helping . I am noticing details and behaviors that I had never noticed before and also noticing the placement and angles  of various parts of the body. For instance, I noticed that cardinals and tufted titmice almost flatten their tufts when eating.  The more I tried to do this, the more I wanted to keep trying. I never thought I would be able to look at 3D animals and nature and capture what I see on paper. I have only drawn from photos.

Gesture drawing is helping me to pay closer attention to details of movement, habits of movement, and I am watching the moving animal more than looking at my paper, because if I look down too much, I lose the subject, it has moved on. That said, it is rather challenging. My goal now is to be able to go back to poses I captured and add to them, rather than creating a new sketch each time the animal moves.

I am really enjoying doing gesture drawing. For me, it takes the pressure off my perfectionism, and puts me in a state where I'm concentrating so hard that I'm really in the moment. And sometimes there are "happy accidents," when with just a few strokes of the pencil I somehow accidentally capture the essence of my subject.

Yes, observing the many shapes and movements of the subject.

Their shape and movements.

I found most helpful to sketch in snap shot like style, meaning that I sketch a body part, for instance like the leg, or head, or body. Since the bird I was sketching was moving rather quickly, it was easier to just get a little sections of the bird and then try to get the whole body.This way I was able to notice more detail in the quick sketch of the legs and how they were joined the position of the head, and the long beak attachment to the head. I definitely have a ways to go but it’s a good beginning.

Gesture drawing does help in getting the observation down on paper and with motion implied in the quick sketch. You obtain a sense of motion that helps make the observation become more life like. The roadrunner was in stride, head pointing forward in its chase. I had trouble getting the tail represented to make the proportions right. 

Capturing gestural drawings with creatures in motion is super hard for me. Like others have mentioned, I hardly can get a wing or leg or tail sketched before the foxes or birds move. Often, because I feel so slow, I find that I keep a brief memory image and draw from that for a few seconds before trying to capture a new pose. Need lots more practice!