**Monalisa II 24x30 Pastel 5min Gesture Drawing**

Improvisation through Craft and Play©

'Craft' is using and working with the classical rules of life and gesture drawing (the rules of anatomy, perspective, and the masters’ techniques); it is the underlying core and backbone of how I work. I’ve absorbed, and follow these rules, but once in the Zone, in the truly inspired, improvisational part of the process, I “play”. In this realm I feel enormous freedom as I break rules and innovate. But always with self-control. In my experience, for a visually appealing image, the artist must exercise a degree of restraint in breaking the rules. Over time, I’ve been able to feel my way into what works – to work within the unknown, and intuitively working within a framework and then pushing outside of it. This exchange of form and freedom, “note and sub-note”, or “Craft and Play” is a balance, always changing. “Craft and Play” can’t exist without the other; the two together are integral to my process.

Process: A Note About My Style

Raw, rapid, bold, and abstract, my artwork is based on gesture drawing but is not gesture drawing. Gesture drawing is known as a warm-up technique for life drawing. My proposal is that it can be much more than that when pushed further. It can be an art therapy practice as well as a final art ‘product.’ I’m taking a centuries old technique and using it in a new way.

It is a fast-paced painting and drawing method. For me, it is raw, physical, mental, emotional, high-octane, always unpredictable, and requires the accessing of emotions and logic at the same time. It requires and allows, at the same time, total focus and the letting go of expectation, judgment, ego, and perfectionism. I have to move incredibly fast to capture the image as the model/subject moves quickly, and as such there is no room for self-critique. When in this “Flow” or in this “Zone”, time stands still and I feel transcendent, outside of myself. When successfully in the Zone, doing artwork in this way is a physical, cognitive, emotional and spiritual process.

Gesture Drawing

What is Gesture Drawing?
Rapid, bold, and abstract, Gesture Drawing is a fast-paced technique used by artists to warm up for Life Drawing (the rendering of a figure in space). The model poses for short poses ranging from 30 seconds to two minutes. The artist must be ready to capture the action, feeling, movement and emotion of the figure.

In Gesture Drawing, the artist draws what the figure is doing – not what it looks like. The artists must draw the entire figure all at once, and in a continuous, fluid line, with bold strokes, with confidence.

The Seven Rules of Gesture Drawing

Adapted from Bradley Stevens, Contemporary Realist & Professor of Fine Art, GWU

Draw what the figure is DOING not what it looks like.
See and Draw the WHOLE figure; draw all over.
Draw in a continuous fluid line, confident and sure, BE BOLD.
Do not confine yourself to the contours (the edges) NO Contours.
Do not start at the HEAD. Work up and down simultaneously.
Do not neglect the hands and the feet. At least a simple notation of them.
Look only occasionally at your drawing.
Use Line variation – many possibilities, u/edge, or side, fuzzy or thick.