Most days I manage to make some time for doing some quick sketching with gesture drawing of human figures. I have found drawing the human form and gesture to be a profound challenge but like any challenge, the more you get into it the more it takes hold of you. I try to attend live sessions whenever I can and draw from life, but most of these come from reference pictures I find on the internet or videos at New Masters Academy or clothing catalogues or building trade magazines or pictures that I take myself here and there. I attend the live sessions at AWE in Eagan as often as I can and other sessions around the cities occasionally.
This is just another post mostly for myself on my journey learning how to observe elements of life in this brief moment on this blue green speck of dust floating in space. All this probably means nothing to anybody but me so if someone is actually reading this, you might want to consider that there are probably far better things you could be doing with your time.
I have a pile of old tractor feed bond printer paper that I have had for many years. In the old days of the tractor feed printers, you often had to throw away the first or last couple sheets and some place where my wife worked accumulated a stack of it and they were going to throw it away so she brought it home. It is larger than letter size, 14"x11". Anyway, in the past few years I have decided this is what it is for, my daily sketching. Also sometimes I use the back sides of old drawings or plans that are going to get thrown away. I like to have larger sheets of paper for this.
These are generally very quick one or two or five minute sketches, some I spend a little more time on maybe ten minutes at most. The vast majority of these types of sketches will get tossed. A couple times a year I go through them and save a handful and throw the rest in with the recycling. Here are some that I decided to save, (someone else will have to throw them away someday, hopefully a long time in the future).
