How to Draw Gestures With Stick Men
Grab a roller ball pen or pencil and let your creativity loose in the form of gesture drawing. Gesture drawing can be used to draw stick men that generate ideas for action poses. It is a visual shorthand that lets the artist see what different poses will look like before committing to them. Gesture drawing with stick men really takes only a small amount of skill, but a ton of creativity. Knowledge of the human form and how it moves can be helpful if the goal is to create realistic poses. Drawing gestures can free artists from the normal tendency to painstakingly draw the details. It allows them to focus more on the overall form and function of the figure before deciding on the specifics.
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Instructions
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Understand that the basic stick man consists of a circle for the head and lines for arms and legs that shoot right out of the torso. This is not a realistic portrayal, however. A realistic stick man has a circle head, a line torso, and two horizontal lines extending from the middle of the torso. The top horizontal line is just below the head and represents the shoulders. The lower horizontal line at the bottom of the torso is the pelvic line. Lines for the arms and legs can then be extended from these lines to more accurately represent a human figure. Gesture drawing is a method to quickly draw stick men and lay out their basic forms.
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Use a roller ball pen or pencil to quickly make a gesture drawing of a stick man in a pose. Roller ball pens flow quickly and allow you to make many sweeping lines, which loosens up the drawing hand. If necessary, refer to action pose reference such as sports photos from the newspaper to get you started. Draw the stick man with the idea of capturing the motion of the figure, which is essentially what good gesture drawing does. Start with a center line of action that not only represents the spine, but also dictates the direction of the figure's motion. Add the head, pelvis, and limbs after. Bend the line of action to create different action poses that move the figure in all directions.
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Draw many different poses on one sheet of paper. Don't worry about making a mistake. Just keep going, putting down as many lines as possible to describe the forms and poses of the figures. You will be amazed at how lively and exciting your gesture drawings with stick men will be. Good gesture drawing allows you to free the artistic side of your brain and produce stick men that have lifelike movements and occupy three dimensional space. Avoid drawing the stick men stiffly by twisting and bending your center line of action. The three-dimensionality of the stick man is due to its flexible line of action makes it seem alive. Make a different pose for each stick man by manipulating the placement and shape of the center line of action.
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