Draw on That—Day Ten The Way of the Samurai

And now for the last "last class" of the season. :-(

For today's finale, we repeated the earlier class's warm up exercise with charcoal and doing some fun gesture drawings of our model. Our model today—my assistant Devon. Devon provided us with a quick series of 30 to 60 second poses to inspire us.

GESTURE DRAWINGS are drawings that capture just that—GESTURES, or quick poses. Gesture drawing is a quick way of sketching a posed model and capturing only the basics. This is a great skill for creating a super fast basic drawing, especially useful when trying to capture the basic elements of a model that is is about to change position!

So, in 30 to 60 seconds, what basic lines did these students use to capture our model? Check it out—

Like today's first class,  I wanted to present these students with something really different from everything anything we have done. For many of our classes, we have focused on drawing real objects or animals in relatively realistic ways. Today is the opposite of realistic. Today is about exaggeration and silliness.

For inspiration, I offered up a unique approach to drawing as demonstrated by the fantastic Geoff Gibson. Geoff works primarily with Sharpies and crazy shapes and lines to create fun alien characters. His stylized and funky drawings decorate paper, skateboards, snowboards and many a wall of those who know him.

After looking at some of Geoff’s work, we all took a try with this new drawing style. Here are my quick attempts today:

This year, I had the opportunity to video record Geoff in his home studio and ask him some questions about his process. I would post a link to it now but Geoff is shy and won't let me post him in video format online so check him out at http://www.samuraiinstreetclothes.com/. While the kids dove into their work, I let the short video play so they could hear Geoff talk about his work.

Now for the kids turn. Using long exaggerated lines, swirls and patterns they produced this great work. I loved these results!! I think some of the kids were surprised by their own wonderful ideas that came from this experiment!

And one last beautiful drawing as created by my assistant. I love how she used Geoff's idea of swirls as pattern. So beautiful Devon!!

With the last class complete, I thank all my lovely students for their participation. I had so much fun getting to know you and sharing this time with you. You were another brave group, willing to try new things. You inspire me so! Keep drawing!!