I say this because in addition to their general, overall suckiness, I got stuck at the dentist's office the other morning and ended up missing class, which was very disappointing. I went in just for a simple x-ray and checkup, and it took two hours. Two hours. Then there was some mix-up where they wouldn't let me take the original x-rays even though the whole purpose of my being there was to get a set of x-rays to send off in my medical evaluation for my application to the Peace Corps.
Sigh.
Anyway, I missed class and it was very sad, because we did gesture drawing. I became even more sad when I discovered that the next journal assignment was to do some gesture drawings, and I had no idea how. Luckily Sara offered to meet with me a few minutes before the last class and give me a brief overview.
The assignment was simple: just go to somewhere there are people in motion and sketch for awhile.
Well, I am unnecessarily ambitious and went to my friend's breakdancing practice.
It was hard.
Seriously, those guys move fast. Also, I had never done this before. It did not start out well. Here are some of my first attempts.
But I gradually improved and learned to use longer, more abstract strokes. I discovered that adding more lines somehow makes the drawings considerably better. Now I understand why artists use charcoal, the mere fact that it leaves more material on the paper must make such a big difference. I stuck to drawing single figures for awhile, just while I got the hang of it.
Then I moved on to doing some actual gesture drawings. They aren't great, because I couldn't quite figure out how to capture the motion of the dancers without drawing more detailed sketches of each position. But there are a few that do seem to capture a tiny bit of the type of motion involved in breakdancing.
Overall, I'm happiest with some of my sketches of single and double poses. Some of them are pretty cool, I think.
This last one in particular I like a lot. It doesn't look like much, but if you've ever seen breakdancers perform, hopefully you'll agree that it captures a lot of the style. Well, better than my other attempts, anyway.
As dorky as I felt, sitting there drawing sometimes barely recognizable figures while everyone around me danced, this was a lot of fun. I kind of wish I had time to practice and get good at it, because I suspect that this could lead to some pretty cool artwork.
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