Gesture challenge 1
During Kimodameshi 2025, I made my goal improving at gesture drawing. And while I did see improvement, I could also sense that I needed a lot more practice. So when my new work sabbatical gave me an opportunity to really drill down on developing a skill, I opted to jump back into it. I’m coming at this with a two-pronged approach.
For an educational basis, I have chosen an online course made by Marco Bucci, who has been a great help to me on other occasions. I made the above drawing while watching one of his lessons, and I have to say I love it. His approach uses “searching lines” to try and find the curves and lengths you’re looking for. You can see my legs/feet are less well defined than the rest, but the gestures as a whole really speak to the original reference, which is the goal. Make a fast representation of a pose.
This is also practice working alongside one of Bucci’s lessons. I don’t like this one as much. We’re trying to move faster than I am ready. That said, in about half of these I can really see the pose.
Classes can lay groundwork, but to really learn a skill, you need to practice. These are gestures based on other artworks, based on artists I have discovered on Cara. Credits: Nathan Boyes, XavBouss
Marco gave a lesson that pointed to an Instagram/YouTube artist named Chromasketch. His work has the exaggerated spirit of 1970s animation, which gives them a very fun kind of expression. I’ve been using his cartoon-y figures for practice since then.
Around this time I decided I needed to be crediting my sources directly on the work. These are drawn from Cara artists again. Credits: Nathan Boyes, Ikusi, Mark Cuaderno
Credits: Adrian Moraru, more Chromasketch
These are drawn from the references provided during the Kimodameshi competition. I believe these are from Grafit Studio and Proko. The big guy is a model named Sajad Gharibi, referred to as the Iranian hulk
More drawings from Cara pieces. Why didn’t I label these ones? Credits: Nathan Boyes (I’m quite fond of his figures!), Jerboa, Catherine Veriga, Fayden art
Drawings from Reddit /r/TheArtOfTheTease
More Cara pieces. Credits: Bashart Studio, Katerina Ladon, Cole, Robert Well, Yannick Corboz
Medium: Digital
App: Artstudio Pro
Tools: Pencil