What Are Gesture Drawings?

Gesture drawings are works of art created in an extremely short amount of time, traditionally 30 seconds -- and certainly no more than two mintues.

Why bother with drawing something in a time period so frustratingly short? Gesture drawings are an excellent method of studying humans and animals in motion. They can help artists better understand the exertions of muscles, the effects of twisting on the body, and the natural range of motion in the joints. They help artists to place emphasis on movement, action, and direction, which can be overlooked during a long drawing.

Regular gesture drawing can be a fantastic way to increase your artistic skill. We recommend you start every day with at least five minutes of 30 second gesture drawings. Or, use it as a warm up to a longer work session. You will be amazed at the difference it makes.

Brought to you by Pixelovely

These tools are 100% free! However, if you'd like to pitch in a few dollars to help defray the cost of bandwidth for all these images, your support is appreciated.

News

  • March 26th 2012

    Fixed a bug that caused the buttons to distort in size when using the tools in Internet Explorer.

  • March 22nd 2012

    Thanks to all of you who sent concerned messages during the downtime of the last few days.

    I didn't take the gesture drawing tool down willingly. My host had some kind of server melt down and absolutely everything was lost. While this was annoying for the gesture drawing tool, it was a disaster for my business. I've spent the last several days moving to a new host, recovering what I can from backup, and working on repairs. I had to get all the way through repairing my professional sites before I could start in on personal projects like the gesture drawing tool. Thankfully, I'm most of the way through this grueling process, and I've been working on getting the gesture drawing tools back up this morning. They should be back up and running by the afternoon. Please let me know if you experience any further issues with them after that.

    I'm very sorry for the inconvenience. I'm definitely not planning to stop offering artist training tools any time soon! I love being able to provide them.

  • February 17th 2012

    Apologies for the downtime today. I just transferred this site to a new server, and there were a few messes that had to be cleaned up after the move.

  • November 2nd 2011

    10 photos of the stunning models Jude Hart and Sarah Lynn Dewey being photographed by Juan Stevens

    8 new photos from Markus J Ranum, including 7 new male photos.

  • November 1st 2011

    13 new animal photos from Flamingsmores. The sizes are a bit smaller than I prefer, but they are some of the most clear and interesting angles of amphibians we've had yet. Plus, baby squirrels. Awww!

  • October 28th 2011

    7 new animal photos from Vladimir, including some very challenging and adorable groups of kittens. If there's too many, just pick one to focus on for the gesture.

    And 22 new animal photos of all varieties from Amanda, who had quite the eventful trip to the zoo this summer.

    Thank you both for your generosity in sharing your animal pictures!

  • September 14th 2011

    I believe I've solved the issue where images were not resizing for many people. Hopefully this is helpful for you!

  • May 28th 2011

    Fixed a bug causing image resizing to fit your screen to malfunction.

    And, for the first time ever, also added resizing support for Internet Explorer.

  • May 24th 2011

    The gesture tools have been completely revamped!! Check out these new features:

    • CLASS MODE: A "class" will warm you up with quick gesture drawings, gradually ease you into longer poses, and even have built in break times during long classes.
    • Skip past images you don't like
    • Pause
    • Background now goes completely black to reduce distractions

    And new images:

    • 51 new images from Marcus J Ranum
    • 26 new vintage photos
    • 24 new images of ballerinas in action by SeaPeny
  • March 07th, 2011

    Hong Ly has agreed to let us use some of his images! I picked a very small fraction of what he had available, and it still came to over a hundred fantastic images for you to study with.

    His work is excellent. Please visit his site and thank him for allowing us to use his images!

  • February 22nd, 2011

    Updated the look of the site to make it easier to get around, and added this home page so that updates could be published.

    I am actively looking for more images to include in the gesture drawing tools. If you are a photographer, or know of a photographer you could put me in contact with, who is willing to provide written permission to use their images in these tools, please contact me!

  • December 27th, 2010

    A dozen stunning new images by Magicc Imagery, and one exquisite dark skinned beauty by Marcus Ranum were added to the human gesture drawing tool. We need a wider range of skin tones!

    A dozen new animal pics, from Irie Stock and thiselectricheart.

    Rewrote part of the scripts to make shuffling more efficient and less buggy.

  • December 16th, 2010

    Noticed that the bandwidth costs for hosting the gesture drawing tools are steadily climbing as they gain popularity, and on the advice of a few of the users have added a paypal donation button to help defray the costs. If you happen to have a few dollars, it's appreciated, but please do not feel obligated! I know a lot of you use the tools because you are students wanting to improve, and I know what it's like to be a broke student.

    Also added an option to see only "decent" (I.E. the important bits covered) models in the human gesture drawing tool, but at the moment there aren't that many of those available. The tool was largely intended to help with the human form, which meant all the muscles visible is preferable when locating images.