featured image: Pontormo – quick sketch
Key vocabulary:
- Location
- Scale
- Direction
- gesture
- proportion
- shape
- form
-
- Pontormo, quick gesture drawing
-
- Figure Studies (verso); Taddeo Zuccaro (Italian, 1529 – 1566); Italy; about 1553 – 1556; Pen and brown ink, brush with brown wash over stylus underdrawing and black chalk, with traces of red chalk offset (recto); red and black chalk (verso); 26.4 × 35.2 cm (10 3/8 × 13 7/8 in.); 91.GG.58
Quick 30 second gestures
1 – 2 minute gestures
3 – 5 minute gestures
We’re not drawing what the figure looks like, but what it’s doing. In a sense, we are making a drawing out of verbs, not nouns. Before an arm becomes an anatomically believable thing, it is, fundamentally, a direction.
The three most important questions we can ask are: where are the parts relative to each other (location), how big or small are they (scale), and finally, what direction are they going.
