In this drawing tip of the week we focus on an easy way to draw ten minute gesture poses. Ten minutes is kind of that in between type drawing. It’s not super short, but yet you still have to draw pretty fast to draw a full figure. There is that little bit of pressure to finish the drawing in ten minutes.

The first thing you want to do is decide upon whether or not you want to finish the entire pose from head to toe. If you do utilizing the “Opposite C” technique will make your job much easier.

There are hard techniques and easy techniques. The Opposite C technique is an easy one. How do I know this? I see the Opposite C technique immediately help students draw the figure better. The technique just flows.

When I teach this technique students seem to relax. They seem to draw the figure from head to toe in a much more relaxed way.

Now the one thing you want to also keep in mind with this drawing technique is this, you want to economize your line. What do I mean?

Do your ten minute figure drawings look a little messy? A little sloppy might be a different way to explain this. Now I don’t mean using a continuous line that looks busy. I mean a messy edge. Do you use way too much line to describe the edge of the model?

You see you want to try to slow down when you draw even during a ten minute gesture drawing. Breathe, slow down your hand movements. Make every line that you draw count. Your drawings will look much more elegant.

Two things. This is hard. Does this always work for me, no way. Especially when I haven’t been practicing.

Economizing your line might not fit with your personal style. Your style might be super messy on purpose, if so that’s cool. Go with what works for you. I ask my students to try to economize the line in a small section of their figure drawing. This provides them with a way to balance out the look and feel of their drawings.

So the next time you try to draw a short ten minute gesture pose incorporate two general ideas. One, use the Opposite C technique, and two, economize your line.

Show more detail with less line. In this case less is more elegant.

Thanks for reading.