Figure Gesture Drawings

Oksana started drawing figure at the end of 2017. Majority of these drawings were created during life drawing sessions at TSoFA studio from model. Oksana prefers to use willow charcoal for figure gesture drawings as it’s the softest and most easily movable media. Her favorite paper for practice is 18 x 24 rough newsprint. However, she used any other available paper such as construction paper or anything with rough texture. These drawings are called gestures, because they’re meant to capture movement of a fleeting pose. During these life drawing sessions, the model would first pose for 2 minutes, then for 5 minutes and so on with the longest pose of 20 minutes. Therefore, all of these drawings are pretty quick and rough. Some of these Oksana uses as reference for more detailed drawings.

Dynamic gesture, charcoal drawing
Two-pose female, charcoal drawing

Two-pose female, charcoal drawing

Pretty sure these are 20-minutre poses, but most likely I got distracted during the first one. Anyway, I like how both of these turned out. I think it’s time to set new goals for the direction of my art, and maybe for a lengthy post in my blog about how I started 😀

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Short pose two-figure, charcoal drawing

Short pose two-figure, charcoal drawing

I enjoy the geometric feel those extended lines add to the overall figure. Sometimes charcoal stick is bent, so it makes two parallel marks at the same time with only one movement of a hand. Quite often it results in a happy accident rather than an unwanted mark.

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Venus, charcoal sketches

Venus, charcoal sketches

Sometimes I forget how short these 3-minute poses are, and concentrate too much on one particular part of the figure. As the result, I usually end up with armless Venuses xD

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Female gesture poses, charcoal drawing

Female gesture poses, charcoal drawing

There used to be a time where I’d be unable to tell which model I drew. It was a generic figure and could have been anyone. So I’ve set my goal to make the figures more recognizable and individual, at least to me. I can tell the person from there drawings, and that makes me…

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Longer standing pose, charcoal drawing
15-minute pose, charcoal drawing
Two-pose male figure, charcoal drawing

Two-pose male figure, charcoal drawing

I’m trying out different paper, and this one is super smooth. Unfortunately, I don’t really know what it’s called 🙂 We have it at the studio for free ^^; However, I can’t figure out if I like the smoothness. I feel like it leaves less room for erasing as even willow charcoal just wants to…

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Short poses, charcoal drawing
Quick gestures, charcoal drawing

Quick gestures, charcoal drawing

This is a example of getting distracted mid-pose and not finishing it 😀 The other two gestures are ok ^^ These were done on rough newsprint, I think it’s my favorite paper so far for warm-up drawings.

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Two similar poses, charcoal drawing
Multi-pose charcoal drawing

Multi-pose, charcoal drawing

Sometimes the poses differ so much, and I think nothing of it while drawing… However, looking back at it later, I see just hilarious scenes and have a lot of questions as to what’s going on there? This probably was a cool dance party until one of them lost their airpod xD

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