Blocking in Gesture

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"Watson and the Shark-Rescue group- detail" John Singleton Copely
middle 18th/early 19th century, American

 In many ways, the gesture method  is the opposite of the contour method.  Where contour focuses the artist's eye and attention on the specifics of a small detail, gesture requires awareness of the whole. Contour tends to be a slow careful study of parts, and how they connect, eventually building a recognizable image.  Gesture is fast, ignoring details, seeking to express the essence of the whole. Gesture starts with the totality, the gestalt (define).  Contour builds the whole from a collection of parts, but never considers how they all fit together.  Gesture starts with the whole, dividing it into groups which contain the parts.  The gross shape of the image, how it fits the frame of the paper, the large movements within the composition, the total composition itself...these are the beginning issues of the gesture drawing.   Because of this, many artists find the gesture approach useful when "Blocking in" a drawing or painting,  the beginning phase when the artist establishes the broad elements of composition.

If the picture is in a realistic (define) style, "blocking in" refers to establishing the scale, scope and proportion of the elements of the picture.  Gesture is suitable for this phase.  Many artists will spend a few minutes freely drawing the subject, feeling out its size and the relative position of its parts and fitting it to the paper.  Once that is tentatively determined, the artist will stop and analyze the drawing, checking for relative sizes and positions of the parts.  One of the techniques artists use to do this is to find "anchor points."   An anchor point can be any important feature that occupies a  specific location on or within the image of the subject.
 

First the artist closes one eye in order to "flatten" the image of realty, to make it more like a photograph*. The artist then visualizes lines, horizontal and/or vertical as if they were drawn on the photograph's surface, thru these points and notices where they intersect other parts of the image.   Then the artist finds those anchors in their drawing and lightly draws horizontal and vertical lines on the paper thru those points to check if they intersect the other parts in a similar manner.  The artist can then make corrections and changes to their drawing.

Why not simply draw from photos?

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