With a day off work and a hike in the future I’m excited to get my at in early and to try a new exercise of right-angle gesture study.
The actually exercise in The Natural Way to Draw by Kimon Nicolaides is called right-angle study. But he indicates that it should be done in a gestural manner so I felt a need to add “gesture” to the title.
If you want to read the exact text of the exercise you can go to this awesome site that has the whole book written out with images.
Basically, I’m looking at the model from one position but drawing him/her as if I was sitting a different place. For this exercise I’m looking at the model head on, and drawing her as if I was sitting directly to the right of her.
After having my guess of what I think the model will look like from the right I check my work and see how close I got.
I don’t have a live model to work with. I don’t even have images that can help here but what I did find was an awesome 3d pose website that gives me this ability. I’m sure you will like it if you like Écorché figures.
I ended up drawing the model from the right angle also and making notes of what needs work.
After doing this exercise I have to say I absolutely love it! Out of all of the exercises in Nicolaides’ book this is the only one that I feel I can get immediate feedback on my work which is super important with deliberate practice.
Wow, I was struggling with the memory gestures this morning. I still enjoy the exercise, not as much as the right-angle gesture study though.
I’m really taking my time here. I have an idea, a motive, a wonderful impulse that I want to communicate and I’m bending every stroke of the charcoal pencil to that motive.
It’s important, even essential, that I continually remind myself of the original idea with the list of the following word. It’s a bit esoteric.
Our neighbors lost their cat the other day. It’s a cat that prefers the outside and is outside most of the day. We were afraid that something bad happened to him.
Until I saw a man chasing the cat in my landlords yard across the street!
Long story short. This awesome gentleman thought that the cat was a stray because his color had come off and was keeping him safe. But I guess the cat must be free!
He was super cool about it and we reunited Cash the cat with their original owners and everyone on the block is happier.
Love the daily composition, the right-angle gesture study and my progress on Harry Potter. All of it done super early. Creative before reactive!!
Need to work a lot on my visual memory exercises.
The more I do these daily compositions the more I like them, plus I’m going to have to mark down all these new exercises I’m doing and make many of them part of a weekly practice.
