Chapter 6: Pushing the Gesture
Drawing Gesture from the Model ............................................................................
The action is the thing here. There is absolutely no sense in trying to get a likeness, that
is, a cosmetic likeness, or a personality likeness. The essence of femininity, yes, the
essence of a coy or seductive pose, yes.
Don’t be shackled by the model. If the model is short and you want to draw a tall girl,
draw a tall girl; if the model’s hair is short and you want long hair, draw long hair. If the
model strikes a pose you think you could improve by altering a little here or there, do it
on your drawing.
Take a moment before you start to see the pose. Feel yourself experiencing the pose
subconsciously. Actually feel the tension of a reach, the folding up sensation of a squash;
feel the pressure on the leg that the body is standing on, the weight of the body on that
foot; feel the relaxation of the other leg show it relaxed to emphasize the tension and
weight on the other side. The model’s head is turned to the right, turn your own head to
the right—feel the wrinkling of the skin as the chin squashes against the right shoulder -
feel the left side of the neck stretch. That is what you want to draw—that squash and
stretch.
After capturing the pose, begin to consider what effect that pose has on the costume. The
idea being that you don’t animate clothing running around doing its thing—you animate a
character that is a body, which just happens to have some clothes on it.
If you want to experiment and use a cartoon character in place of the human figure that is
fine. In any event try to caricature the pose, meaning go a little farther with the pose than
the model has done (or even could do—not being a cartoon character).
Stick to the Theme ...................................................................................................
An orchestra conductor, in a discussion on conducting Mahler's 1st symphony, said he
had to be careful not to have too many climaxes in the performance. It is a relatively long
symphony, 55 minutes in length, and is full of delightful passages that could be featured
each in their own right. But there needs be control over such a temptation so that the
overall theme of each of the three movements shall prevail.
Drawing is like that. We are the conductors who are tempted also to feature the many
interesting passages on the model. Some passages—a wrinkle, a belt buckle, a hair do,
are sensuous to the point where we want to render them into little masterpieces of non-
essential detail. Usually, a drawing has but one theme, and that theme must be featured or
the drawing disintegrates into a montage of unrelated climaxes.
There is a story to be told in drawing, whether it is one drawing of a model or many
drawings in a scene of animation. True, in both cases there are secondary actions and
costuming that must be dealt with, but the story (theme) is all important, while all else
must be kept in a subordinate role. Subordinate doesn't mean unimportant. Everything on
the drawing is there to help stress the story. Every line drawn should help direct the eye
to the theme.
