>>4318642>Does anyone have examples of their gesture/scribble drawings though? The descriptions for that part seem really vague and I just skipped them because I couldn’t make sense of it.Thats the big liability of that book imo.
In my case my first life drawing teacher had us do all these drills in front of a live model - 10 sec, 15 sec, 30 sec drawings, using conte sticks, filling a big page of newsprint until there was no space left, then the next page and next page. The purpose was to exhaust all preciousness and pretense of doing masterpieces, and draw upon pure observation and unfiltered, loose, rhythmic hand response. He didnt really explain what we were supposed to do except to be loose and get the whole figure in in the timed sequences. Just to get the length and all the limbs down requires you to draw differently and figure it out.
But his presence was very important. He was always there driving us, “Move the line!” - almost like an aerobics instructor or something.
Once you gave up all hope of relying on any of your habits and tricks suddenly magic occurred.
He turned teenage fantasy art copyists into actual artists with a voice. By the time we got to 10/15/20/30 min poses it felt luxurious.
It was freaky how many amazing drawings from kids came out of that class. Guy was a fucking shaman. He later introduced anatomy and rendering in like your second year with him. But not before.
I always felt thats what Nicolaides was driving at with the gestures.
