After completing their figure gesture drawing practice, my 4th grade artists are now practicing drawing figures using wood mannequins. Such concentration!
We are following up this figure drawing work with a large single figure drawing. My students are learning about body proportion and are even using some fractions as they work to make their figures “eight heads tall”.
Love your Figure Gesture Drawings! Very cool how the colors merge.
Thanks!!!
What size is the paper?
Laura,those babies were 12″ x 24″. The larger size was nice to work with for this project.
Did you have them outline the figure with Sharpie? Before they added the color?
Kelly – yes; we used large black permanent markers to trace a thick black line first. I am a fan of the RediMark Ticonderoga chisel tip; it lays down a nice dark juicy line, and the markers last a long time.
I would love to see or hear how you approached the figure gesture drawings. Were they short 5 minute poses? Did they use charcoal or pencil?
Hi Jackie – the gesture drawings were oh-so-short! The kiddos were given 30 seconds for each drawing – hop on the table, strike a pose, and GO! At first they were really hard for the kids, but after four or five, they really got the hang of it and captured the movement. The 30 second drawing time really forced them to focus in on the movement and figure. After about 10 of these 30 second drawings, we moved to more complicated poses – sitting on a chair, lying down…they got 45 seconds for these poses so they could quickly sketch in a chair or table top. Surprisingly, many kids got done in 30 seconds and then were able to fine tune their gesture work in the last 15 minutes. They used plain old pencils and drew in their sketchbooks for their gesture drawings.