My morning was a little bit rushed, but I planned for that, so I didn’t FEEL rushed. I just didn’t have a large window of time to draw.

Still, I scheduled the time.

The cabin was freezing when I walked up the hill, so I had to warm up the cabin while I was doing my warmup! Yay for heaters!

I can feel stiffness in my shoulder today. I’m not sure if it’s from my workout or the cold. Maybe both. It definitely impacted the quality of my ellipses.

I started to get a little bit frustrated with my gesture drawings today, then I slowed down and thought about the FORCE method, stopped trying to “scribble draw” (as it’s described in The Natural Way to Draw), relaxed, and let the pose come out.

I still had an incredibly difficult time doing a gesture drawing of a muscular standing pose that was foreshortened. But I only had a minute to process the pose and it was time to move on to the last one.

After these, I rewatched some old Proko gesture drawing videos to see if anything would stick and maybe give me some new insight that I wasn’t experienced enough to really understand before. Revisiting information every so often is never a bad idea.

Simplified gestures, focusing on the line of action, really taking my time to analyze the form. Thanks, Proko!

It feels a little bit foreign to go back to drawing gestures this way. That means I really need to work on it. Looking at Proko’s videos, though (and actually taking notes as I went) made me realize just how much he pulls from Michael Hampton’s work.

I managed to get in a few more gestures before a meeting at work (after Occupational Therapy). I feel like they’re starting to come together a little bit. I’m still trying to slow myself down, though.

And even more gestures after the meeting!

And last, but not least, I got to finish up some wind-bars on one of my favorite clients to talk to. We ran into some issues last time around due to a lack of food before the appointment, but after a full recovery I got to go in and work on ’em some more!

What went well?

• I got discharged from OT! I’m good to go!
• Studying gesture instruction again. Going back to the beginning usually clarifies some gaps in knowledge.

What needs work?

• I lost about 6 pages of notes on gestures that I forgot to save… ?‍♂️
• Low energy by the end of the day, and I worked later than I usually do.

What did I learn?

I refreshed my memory on the way I enjoy doing gesture drawing. 🙂 Simplifying my process will allow me to add more and more nuance to my gestures over time. I think I was trying to complicate things too early, or pulling from too many sources of information.

Just keep practicing! Tomorrow should be another awesome day for art.