Beginning Figure Drawing Part 1: Gesture & Structure

[New Masters Academy]

This is where the real fun begins! The figure is the most difficult and intimidating subject matter that an artist can tackle. As scary as this sounds, Steve Huston is here to help.

Steve is a world-renowned artist specializing in drawing and painting the figure. Despite his impressive bona fides Steve specializes in making complex information easy to understand for everybody. In the first installment of a new series, Steve demystifies the relationship between Gesture & Structure with a series of lectures and demonstrations. You’ll learn to conceptualize the forms of the body using simple shapes, see how the Old Masters used these techniques, and do a practice drawing session (then Steve will draw from the same images!).

Beginning Figure Drawing represents the culmination of decades of instruction to studios and professionals around the world where Steve has honed his teaching philosophy down to a fun and efficient experience.

We will assume you know nothing about figure drawing at all. Even if you’ve been drawing the figure for years this gives you a great starting point to clarify each idea and build each concept on top of another.

Materials

• Sharpie Markers
• Conté à Paris Pencils

[lord of drawing all the things]

This course is outstanding and really helping me have a lot of epiphanies…

but… what exactly is “The Elbow Test”

context = chapter 8: Balancing Gesture & Structure

“So, let’s look at the arm, then.
We’re going to do a gesture line.
Now we’re going to do a structure.
I can be a two-dimensional structure, or it could be a three-dimensional structure.
Now, how did we really get that?
We used the elbow test, great.
But, how did we really get that?
First, let’s look again at what our hopes would be…”

 

I used control+F in regards to the transcript; and that is the first of two mentions of “the elbow test”

but I’m not really sure what he’s referring to exactly.

I don’t recall any specific instruction on it;

(such as with “the pencil test” where he even has a chapter named that; and describes it in depth)

[lord of drawing all the things]

Also:

(same vid aforementioned)

What’s the BS test?

Basic structure?

I’ve command+F searched all the transcript for the whole beginning fig drawing pt1… for both “BS  test” and “Basic Structure Test”…

and only got one hit on the former (copy pasted below) and none on the latter

“So, longest sustained curve.
Use the elbow test.
Use the BS test.
The truth of it is the longest sustained curve is going to be what we see as the gestural
side because that’s taking the beginning and end to its farthest possible extreme and
giving us this nice curve.”

[lord of drawing all the things]

Steve Explains “the elbow test” in chpt 8 of this series of lectures

https://www.nma.art/videolessons/beginning-figure-drawing-parts-of-the-body/

[dmbokal]

I can’t find the photo reference he is using in chapter 10. Is there a reference for it?

[Chris]

I think the “BS” test has to do with drawing legs. Basically if you can see the ankle bones on the contour, treat it as a front view and use a “B” for the gesture line. If you can’t see the ankle bones on the contour, treat it as a side view and use an “S” shape for the gesture. On a front view where the leg is bent, use two straight lines for the inside lines, creating basically a bent “B” shape. On a side view where the leg is bent, use an exaggerated “S” shape.

Burne Hogarth talks about this in his book “Dynamic Figure Drawing,”and Steve mentions in one of his videos that he studied with Hogarth.

Best,

– C

• This reply was modified 6 years, 5 months ago by Chris.

[lena.pilz]

That is really helpfull christopherboulay, thank you!

[James Thach]

Can you guys pack all of the reference files into a zip file or some sort of way that makes them all downloadable in one click? Wanted to run through finding the gesture for all of the references and didn’t realize I’d have to download them individually.

[Andrea Lo Rillo]

How do you guys think I should approach this?

I was thinking of watching the lesson and then practice it for 1-2 weeks based on the length of each lesson.

What do you think I should do?

 

[Spyridon Panagiotopoulos]

I think I shall do that too, but I really wonder, is there a place to post and seek feedback? Because I have often found I thought I understood something, and then when I gave it to someone experiences I was proved horribly wrong!

[Daniel Daigle]

Yes you can post in the crit channels on the forums here, or on our discord

see the “discuss on discord” link at the top of the page

[William Caskey]

At the end of part one an assignment page is mentioned. I’m not seeing that in the references or anywhere, am I missing it?

• This reply was modified 2 years, 9 months ago by William Caskey.

[Daniel Daigle]

Hi William, Chapter 12 is the assignment.
In the future, we will add a pdf to the assignments tab, but thats a few months away. But don’t let that stop you, everything you need is in chapter 12 🙂

[Selorm Aglagoh]

What does he mean by “profile” in all of his lessons? He always says things like “leaning into a profile”, “looks like a profile”, “Notice, too, you can take something that’s almost a profile and make it a profile.”

[Daniel Daigle]

this often means the side view of the head, it may mean silhouette of the head depending on how he is using it

[Author]

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