A new era begins: Now my goal for this semester is to experiment with gesture sketches, focusing on animals. Many of my classmates and I tend to not draw animals very often, and this is an excellent way to practice form, proportion, and movement in a low-pressure environment. These gesture sketches in particular took anywhere from 30 seconds to 2 minutes, with the intention of becoming more confident in capturing motion in new subjects.
Firstly, the weather was absolutely beautiful this weekend. I headed down to a nearby lake to draw the geese, who were already somewhat familiar with me. They tend to come out of the water whenever they see someone with food, but on this day that was not the case. For over an hour they swam on their merry way and only looked at me from a distance, and since they all look and behave exactly the same while swimming it was a bit pointless to sketch them. However, just as I was about to leave, they came to shore and I was very grateful to have three or four that came very close and even held some adorable poses such as stretching their wings and standing on one foot. I created a basic line of action, which their necks followed very clearly. This made the rest of their poses easier to create. Their bodies are teardrop shaped, and the pattern on their feathers, which I tried to capture, also helped convey form.
It is worth noting that while I was walking around the lake, I came across a giant turkey hen that flew up right in front of me and scared me half to death. She flapped away into the brush, and I unfortunately did not get a chance to draw her.
I decided to add some watercolor accents to my sketch pages, along with specific annotations to explain my process. Now that I had some practice with the geese, I got an opportunity to visit a local farm with highland cows and more. This was already a dream come true and a rare find for gesture drawing, but it became even better when I arrived and realized the animals were out and about so we could get as close as we liked! There was a little highland calf, whose name I believe was Daisy, who was very patient as I drew her up close. I even got to do sketches of her face.
Next, I drew some pigs! They were surprisingly easy, given that they were just round forms. I liked how their faces squished into the ground, and the piglets ran around so fast that it was a real challenge to capture their movement. Below are some more annotated poses, along with some more cows and even some sketches of my dog as she curled up for a nap. My dog is also basically a cylinder shape since she is a dachshund mix, and while she was even trickier to capture than the farm animals I was happy to get at least two gestures from her.
Overall, this was a very enjoyable practice. It can be intimidating to sketch such unpredictable subject matter, and the temptations towards perfectionism were strong but, as usual, unattainable. However, this helped facilitate growth in my attitude towards sketching, and also helped me better understand form and motion. Breaking these animals down into simple shapes such as spheres, wedges, and triangles helped increase understanding of their overall anatomy, and I even noticed the more sketches I did of the same kind of animal, the easier it became to capture their proportions. Not to mention, it helped get me outside, which, if you are an artist, you know can be a difficult ordeal. Here’s to more vitamin D, cute animals, and less perfectionism.
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