Instead of asking “what does the figure look like,” ask yourself, “what is the figure doing”? Virtually everything we see implies some kind of moving action. This animated behavior is what we call the gestural expression. Can you feel the directed energies coursing through the form of the figure? Can you feel yourself in the center of the form? Our ability to empathize with - to feel with a person, place, or thing - is needed to give emotive power to our drawings. The cultivation of this ability is crucial if you hope to draw the figure as it is - from within. The moving energy of gesture cannot be seen until it is experienced - it must be felt. Good drawings do not result from a mere accumulation of details. Without this felt looking and felt mark making in active and intuitive response to the energies and rhythms of the form, our drawings will become thin and limited. Working from the model, students will begin the term harnessing the power of line, shape, value, volume, space and texture to capture gesture and movement while strengthening overall compositional structure. How does Degas use the arc of a limb or the tilt of the torso to show us how the body moves through space and time? How does Egon Schiele capture a sense of movement and tremendous emotive power through his expressive line, dynamic poses, and anatomical distortion?

Students will experiment with different drawing/mixed media to discover which materials best convey their individual sensibilities. We will continue to mine and borrow from art history to challenge ourselves to reach a more complex understanding of compositional structure, movement and gesture - bringing this strength into our own drawings.

“Drawing is the basis of art. A bad painter cannot draw. But one who draws well can always paint.” Arshile Gorky